Teen Malala's Nobel prize award sparks pride in Pakistani

Malala Yousafzai at Girl Summit 2014
in London on July 22, 2014. Credit:
Russell Watkins/DFID via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

(CNA/EWTN News).- Malala Yousafzai has received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17 – making her the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious award and prompting local Archbishop Joseph Coutts to laud the “great honor” she's bestowed on the country.


The Pakistani teenager gained global attention when she was shot in the head by Taliban activists in 2012, at the age of 14, as a punishment for her public campaign for the rights of girls to be educated.

She received treatment for her injuries in the United Kingdom, where she continues to reside with her family. Yousafzai has continued to campaign for global access to education.

“This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard,” Yousafzai told the press on Oct. 10 following her reception of the reward. “They have the right to receive quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life.”

“Through my story, I want to tell other children all around the world that they should stand up for their rights, that they should not wait for someone else, and their voices are more powerful.”

She also said she was “honored” to share the reward with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist known know for his work in promoting children's rights.

The announcement of Yousafzai's reception of the award also came as “wonderful surprise” to Archbishop Coutts, who serves as shepherd of Karachi, Pakistan.

“The fact that a young girl like this,” he told CNA, “a teenager, has won the prize, such a prestigious international award, is a source of great pride for us, and for the country as a whole. A great honor.”

Because the international community often associates Pakistan with terrorism, he said, this award “just shows that there's the other side to a country as well, that there are people like this little girl Malala who stand up to a lot of negative things that are happening.”

“It is really something wonderful that has happened,” he said.

Speaking about the significance of Yousafzai sharing the Nobel Peace Prize with Satyarthi, he said: “I think the connection there is: here is this child in Pakistan . . . who stands up so bravely for the education of women which was being threatened by a certain extremist group called the Taliban. Then the other side of the country is a senior person, a man who has been also working to save children.”

Child labor and abuse are issues common to both India and Pakistan, he said.

“Both of (the recipients), in their own way, have been working to protect children and to work for the development of children,” he said.

Established in 1901, the Nobel Prize is an international award given by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm Sweden.

It is awarded yearly for achievements in peace, as well as in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and literature.

Today in History October 12

October 12 is the 285th day of the year. There are 80 days remaining until the end of the year.

a patient in an iron lung tank respirator

Today's Highlight in History; 1928 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston




A negative pressure ventilator, which colloquially is called an iron lung, is a form of medical ventilator that enables a person to breathe when normal muscle control has been lost or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability. Examples of the device include both the Drinker respirator and the Both respirator. The negative form of pressure ventilation has been almost entirely superseded by positive pressure ventilation or biphasic cuirass ventilation.

Humans, like most other animals, breathe by negative pressure breathing: the rib cage expands and the diaphragm contracts, expanding the chest cavity. This causes the pressure in the chest cavity to decrease, and the lungs expand to fill the space. This, in turn, causes the pressure of the air inside the lungs to decrease (it becomes negative, relative to the atmosphere), and air flows into the lungs from the atmosphere: inhalation. When the diaphragm relaxes, the reverse happens and the person exhales. If a person loses part or all of the ability to control the muscles involved, breathing becomes difficult or impossible.

Iron lung from the 1950s in the Gütersloh Town Museum

In 1670, English scientist John Mayow came up with the idea of external negative pressure ventilation. Mayow built a model consisting of bellows and a bladder to pull in and expel air. The first negative pressure ventilator was described by Scottish physician John Dalziel in 1832. Successful use of similar devices was described a few years later. Early prototypes included a hand-operated bellows-driven "Spirophore" designed by Dr. Woillez of Paris (1876), and an airtight wooden box designed specifically for the treatment of polio by Dr. Stueart of South Africa (1918). Stueart's box was sealed at the waist and shoulders with clay and powered by a motor-driven bellows.The first of these devices to be widely used however was developed by Drinker and Shaw in 1928. The iron lung, often referred to in the early days as the "Drinker respirator", was invented by Philip Drinker (1894–1972) and Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr., professors of industrial hygieneat the Harvard School of Public Health.The machine was powered by an electric motor with air pumps from two vacuum cleaners. The air pumps changed the pressure inside a rectangular, airtight metal box, pulling air in and out of the lungs.

The first clinical use of the Drinker respirator on a human was on October 12, 1928, at the Boston Children's Hospital.The subject was an eight-year-old girl who was nearly dead as a result of respiratory failure due to polio. Her dramatic recovery, within less than a minute of being placed in the chamber, helped popularize the new device.

An Emerson iron lung. The patient lies within
the chamber, which when sealed provides
an effectively oscillating atmospheric pressure.

In 1931, John Haven Emerson (February 5, 1906 – February 4, 1997) introduced an improved and less expensive iron lung. The Emerson iron lung had a bed that could slide in and out of the cylinder as needed, and the tank had portal windows which allowed attendants to reach in and adjust limbs, sheets, or hot packs

-.Wikipedia

World Events

1773 – America's first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds' in Virginia.
1792 – First celebration of Columbus Day in the USA held in New York City.
1793 – The cornerstone of Old East, the oldest state university building in the United States, is laid on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse was the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 900 meters.
1810 – First Oktoberfest: The Bavarian royalty invites the citizens of Munich to join the celebration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.
1822 – Pedro I of Brazil is proclaimed the emperor of the Empire of Brazil.
1823 – Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1871 – Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, afterIndependence of India.
1892 – The Pledge of Allegiance is first recited by students in many US public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage.
1901 – President Theodore Roosevelt officially renames the "Executive Mansion" to the White House.
life in New Zealand history.
1918 – A massive forest fire kills 453 people in Minnesota.
1928 – An iron lung respirator is used for the first time at Children's Hospital, Boston
1933 – The United States Army Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz Island, is acquired by the United States Department of Justice
1960 – Television viewers in Japan unexpectedly witness the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, when he is stabbed and killed during a live broadcast.
1964 – The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits
1968 – Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain
1983 – Japan's former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei is found guilty of taking a $2 million bribe from Lockheed and is sentenced to 4 years in jail.
1984 – Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
1999 – The former Autonomous Soviet Republic of Abkhazia declares its independence from Georgia
2000 – The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39.
2002 – Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2003 – Michael Schumacher wins his 6th Formula One Drivers' championship at the 2003 Japanese Grand Prix to beat the 48 year old record held by Juan Manuel Fangio
2005 – The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.
2013 – 51 people are killed after a truck veers off a cliff in La Convención Province in Peru.

St Genevieve: Genevieve Nnaji's new Collection on Jumia

Genevieve Nnaji

Genevieve, Nigerian celebrity actress who recently relaunched her St. Genevieve clothing line has released another collection of her brand to her marketing partners, Jumia, an online retail store.


The new collection, 'Red Carpet Style' was launched today on Jumia exclusively and is themed around pieces; from formal to casual.

Taiwo Oshadipe's candlelight Procession

Taiwo Oshadipe, one half of the Oshadipe twins who died early on October was honoured with a candle light precession by friends, families and loved ones at their Abule-Egba residence.
It was a teary moment for all present.





Photos from Taiwo Oshadipe candlelight procession

The Catholic Church in Nigeria leads the fight against gay discrimination

(CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church in Nigeria has been at the forefront in fighting discrimination towards persons with same-sex attraction, says Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos, who adds that media coverage of the Church has been imbalanced.

Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos. Credit: Aid to the Church in Need.

In one of the strongest statements made about homosexuality during the first week of the Synod on the Family, the Nigerian prelate told the press on Oct. 8 that “the Catholic Church respects all human beings, and we believe we are all created in the image and likeness of God.”

Archbishop Kaigama said that the people of Africa believe marriage is only between a man and a woman, based on culture, biology, and religious belief. However, he stressed that this does not translate into support for the “the criminalizing of people with different sexual orientations.”

“The Catholic Church is in the forefront of defending them,” he said, “and we would defend any person with a homosexual orientation who has been harassed, who has been imprisoned, who has been punished.”

The archbishop criticized the media for focusing on the Church’s defense of marriage between a man and a woman, while ignoring the Church’s advocacy against discrimination towards persons with same-sex attraction.

“They forgot that we are serious defenders of human rights. We have our justice and peace department, we go to prisons, we see people who are unjustly imprisoned, or denied their rights.”

The media should have a balanced approach, he said, “in the sense that we respect human beings.”

Even though homosexual activity “is not in conformity with our culture and religion,” the archbishop continued, “we do not just throw away the persons. We embrace them in love. We try to share our point of view. We don't punish them.”

The pastoral care of persons with same-sex attraction has received relatively little attention thus far, although it is on the agenda for the Synod on the Family. At the opening session of the Synod on Oct. 6, Cardinal Peter Erdo noted “a broad consensus that people with a homosexual orientation should not be discriminated against.”

In an Oct. 10 briefing, Holy See Press Office director Fr. Federico Lombardi told the press that participants had noted the need for further discussion on issue of same-sex marriage.

The difficult and controversial questions “will come,” Archbishop Kaigama told the press. “By the grace of God, we're going to deal with them the best way possible for the good of the Church and the salvation of souls.”

Today in History October 11: The fall of Polaroid

October 11 is the 284th day of the year. There are 81 days remaining until the end of the year.

Today's Highlight in History 2001 – The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.

Polaroid Corporation is an American international consumer electronics and eyewear company, founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line until the February 2008 decision to cease all production in favor of digital photography products. In September 2014 Polaroid introduced its latest digital camera product, the Polaroid Cube.

The company's original dominant market was in polarized sunglasses, an outgrowth of Land's self-guided research in polarization after leaving Harvard University after his freshman year—he later returned to Harvard to continue his research.

After Polaroid defeated Kodak in a patent battle, Kodak left the instant camera business on January 9, 1986.

Polaroid developed an instant movie system, Polavision, based on the Dufaycolor process. The product arrived on the market when videotape-based systems were rapidly gaining popularity. As a result, Polavision was unsuccessful and most of the manufactured product was sold off as a job lot at immense cost to the company. Its underlying technology was later improved for use in the Polachrome instant slide film system.

The company also was one of the early manufacturers of digital cameras, with the PDC-2000 in 1996; however, they failed to capture a large market share in that segment.

They also made 35 mm and multi format scanners, such as Polaroid SpiritScan 4000 35 mm scanner (the first scanner with a 4000 DPI CCD) in 1999, and the Polaroid PrintScan 120 in 2000, the scanners had mixed reception and had heavy competition with Nikon and Minolta. All the line was discontinued after the firm went bankrupt.

On October 11, 2001, Polaroid Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Almost all the company's assets (including the "Polaroid" name itself, which had become almost synonymous with instant photographs) were sold to a subsidiary of Bank One. They went on to form a new company, which also operates under the name "Polaroid Corporation" It stopped making Polaroid cameras in 2007 and stopped selling Polaroid film after 2009, to the consternation of many users.

Since March 2010, instant film materials for vintage Polaroid cameras have again become available on the market, developed and manufactured by a group called The Impossible Project, at the former Polaroid production plant in Enschede, The Netherlands.

-..Wikipedia

World Events 

1852 – The University of Sydney, Australia's oldest university, is inaugurated in Sydney.
1862 – American Civil War: In the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and his men loot Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, during a raid into the north.
1864 – Campina Grande, Brazil, is established as a city.
1865 – Paul Bogle led hundreds of black men and women in a march in Jamaica, starting the Morant Bay rebellion.
1899 – Second Boer War begins: In South Africa, a war between the United Kingdom and the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State erupts.
1899 – The Western League is renamed the American League.
1906 – San Francisco public school board sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools.
1910 – Former President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane. He flew for four minutes with Arch Hoxsey in a plane built by the Wright brothers at Kinloch Field (Lambert–St. Louis International Airport), St. Louis, Missouri.
1929 – J. C. Penney opens store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, making it a nationwide company with stores in all 48 U.S. states.
1950 – Television: CBS's mechanical color system is the first to be licensed for broadcast by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
1962 – Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
1972 – A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.
1975 – The NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live debuts with George Carlin as the host and Andy Kaufman, Janis Ian and Billy Preston as guests.
1976 – George Washington's appointment, posthumously, to the grade of General of the Armies by congressional joint resolution Public Law 94-479 is approved by President Gerald R. Ford.
1982 – The Mary Rose, a Tudor carrack which sank on July 19, 1545, is salvaged from the sea bed of the Solent, off Portsmouth.
1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
1986 – Cold War: U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavík, Iceland, in an effort to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe.
1987 – Start of Operation Pawan by Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka that killed thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians and hundreds of Tamil Tigers & Indian Armysoldiers.
1996 – Pala accident: a wood lorry and school bus collide in Jõgeva county, Estonia, killing eight children..
2001 – The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.
2002 – A bomb attack in a shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland kills seven.

Today in History October 10

October 10 is the 283rd day of the year. There are 82 days remaining until the end of the year.




Today's Highlight in History 1897 – German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovers an improved way of synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).

Felix Hoffmann (January 21, 1868 – February 8, 1946) was a German chemist, credited for the first synthesized medically useful forms of heroin and aspirin, while he was employed as a chemist at Bayer.

Aspirin was first synthesized by Felix Hoffmann in 1897 in a stable form usable for medical applications. By acetylating salicylic acid with acetic acid, he succeeded in creating acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) in a chemically pure and stable form.

The pharmacologist responsible for verifying these results was skeptical at first, yet once several large-scale studies to investigate the substance's efficacy and tolerability had been completed, it was found Hoffmann had discovered a pain-relieving, fever-lowering and anti-inflammatory substance. The company then worked to develop a cost-effective production process that would facilitate the promising active ingredient to be supplied as a pharmaceutical product. In 1899 it was marketed for the first time under the trade name Aspirin, initially as a powder supplied in glass bottles.

Uncoated aspirin tablets, consisting
of approximately 90% acetylsalicylic acid,
 along with a minor amount of inert fillers and binders.

He was also the first to create a stable version of Diacetylmorphine or Heroin, but he was not its original inventor.

Following the synthesis of aspirin, Hoffmann moved to the pharmaceutical marketing department, where he stayed until his retirement in 1928. He was granted full power of attorney, over Aspirin

Hoffman was never married and died without issue on February 8, 1946 in Switzerland.

Aspirin also known as acetylsalicylic acid is a salicylate drug, often used as an analgesic to relieve minor aches and pains, as an antipyretic to reduce fever, and as an anti-inflammatory medication.

The active ingredient of Aspirin was first discovered from the bark of the willow tree in 1763 by Edward Stone of Wadham College,University of Oxford. He had discovered salicylic acid, the active metabolite of aspirin. Aspirin is one of the most widely used medications in the world, with an estimated 40,000 tonnes of it being consumed each year. In countries where Aspirin is a registered trademark owned by Bayer, the generic term is acetylsalicylic acid (ASA). It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, a list of the most important medication needed in a basic health system.

World Events

1780 – The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000–30,000 in the Caribbean.
1846 – Triton, the largest moon of the planet Neptune, is discovered by English astronomer William Lassell.
1860 – The original cornerstone of the University of the South is laid in Sewanee, Tennessee.
1868 – Carlos Céspedes issues the Grito de Yara from his plantation, La Demajagua, proclaiming Cuba's independence
1871 – The Great Chicago Fire: Chicago burns after a barn accident. The fire lasts from October 8 to October 10.
1897 – German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovers an improved way of synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
1910 – Tau Epsilon Phi: Tau Epsilon Phi Fraternity is founded on the campus of Columbia University in New York City, New York.
1913 – United States President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike thus ending construction on the Panama Canal.
1964 – The opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, is broadcast live in the first Olympic telecast relayed by geostationary communication satellite.
1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, signed on January 27 by more than sixty nations, comes into force.
1970 – Fiji becomes independent.
1970 – In Montreal, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
1971 – Sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
1973 – Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with evasion of federal income tax.
1975 – Papua New Guinea joins the United Nations.
1997 – An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay, killing 74.
1998 – A Lignes Aériennes Congolaises Boeing 727 is shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 41 people.
2008 – The 2008 Orakzai bombing kills 110 and injures 200 more.
2009 – Armenia and Turkey sign protocols in Zurich, Switzerland to open their borders.
2010 – The Netherlands Antilles are dissolved as a country.