shocking story

In a shocking development, a Nigerian man has allegedly tied the knot with his mannequin doll in Lagos state as photos of the newlywed husband went viral after he was spotted at the ceremony with his mannequin bride.
A Facebook user identified as Hilary Fortuna Nebenu, has taken to the social networking platform to share some shocking photos while revealing how a young man recently tied the knot with a mannequin during a wedding ceremony.

He posted the controversial photos and wrote:

Quote

"He just wedded his new sex doll in Lagos. TO ME, I WISH YOU HAPPY MARRIED LIFE.
"ABEG NO BE HIM FAULT the person wey do am dis thing na from him village but him don die. SO NO BLAME AM NA HIM VILLAGE PEOPLE DE INFORM. NA do de do am."

The name of the groom, and the authenticity of this social media report were not verified by TORI News as at the time of filing this report, but the photos have since gone viral online.

police rescue nigerian man in south africa

Police rescued a Nigerian man after he was attacked and about to be set ablaze in Rustenburg, North-West Province area, South Africa last Wednesday.
Eyewitnesses said the Nigerian identified as Desmond, was delivering hair products at his hair salon on Bethlehem Drive when he was attacked and doused with petrol, but the police arrived at the time he was about to be set alight and rescued him.
Police rescue Nigerian trader after he was attacked, doused with petrol and about to be set ablaze by mob in South Africa
Police fired rubber bullets and teargas to disperse a crowd of protesters who complained after the police took the victim away.
North West police said the man was opening his hair salon when he was attacked, doused with petrol and stabbed.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Pelonomi Makau, who confirmed the incident said the police responded quickly and rescue him before he was set alight.
“No one has been arrested, the same people who attacked him blocked the intersection of Oliver Tambo and Bethlehem Drive,” she said.
Police rescue Nigerian trader after he was attacked, doused with petrol and about to be set ablaze by mob in South Africa
The group barricaded the road near the taxi rank with burning objects and rubble and pelted the police with stones. Shops near the taxi rank were closed.
Confirming the incident on Friday, Mr Adetola Olubajo, the President of Nigerian Union, South Africa, said Desmond, hair piece hawker sustained multiple injuries.
"He was rescued when he was about to be set ablaze after being wet with petrol. Nigerians and their families told us that the situation is very dangerous and that their lives are not safe.
“They also alleged that some group of people were abducting Nigerians and requesting money to bail themselves. A Nigerian who couldn’t pay was murdered last month. This same group also looted businesses of foreign nationals, Nigerians in particular.’’ said Olubajo.

wizkid wears masks to davido's 30b concert in uk

Starboy boss, Wizkid, was captured on camera on Sunday night as he wore a black mask to perform at the ongoing Davido's #30Billion tour in the United Kingdom. Smade Entertainment kicked-off Davido’s #30Billion UK Tour on Valentines Day in splendid fashion, at The Athena in Leicester, England.
 

The six-leg tour which saw the singer visit Birmingham, Dublin, London, Manchester and Hertfordshire in the coming days, saw multi-award winning singer, Wizkid in a shocking outfit on Sunday night.

Wizkid was pictured wearing a mask as he joined forces with his colleague, Davido at a concert last night during the ongoing UK tour.
 

 

Pope in u-turn over resignation of divisive Nigerian bishop

Mon 19 Feb 2018

By Press Association

Pope Francis has backed down and accepted the resignation of a Nigerian bishop who had been rejected for years by the priests of his diocese, setting a precedent that could have repercussions elsewhere.

The announcement comes a matter of months after Francis warned priests of Nigeria's southern Ahiara diocese that they would lose their jobs if they did not obey him and accept Peter Okpaleke as their bishop.
It was not clear how many of them obeyed within the 30-day deadline given by Francis to accept Bishop Okpaleke last June.

But on Monday, the Vatican announced that Bishop Okpaleke is resigning and that Francis has named Monsignor Lucius Iwejuru Ugorji as Ahiara's temporary administrator.
Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Bishop Okpaleke to Ahiara in 2012, but the local clergy rejected him.
Ahiara is a very Catholic diocese of the Mbaise region, and its faithful objected to the appointment of an outsider from the Anambra region being imposed on them. The Mbaise had wanted one of their own and blocked access to the cathedral when Bishop Okpaleke was to be formally installed.
Instead, he was installed outside the diocese six months after he was appointed.
The case was a test of papal authority, and has echoes with another divisive appointment in the news concerning Chilean Bishop Juan Barros.
Bishop Barros has been rejected by many faithful and priests in southern Osorno, Chile, ever since Francis appointed him in 2015. They cite accusations by sexual abuse victims that Barros witnessed and ignored their abuse at the hands of Chile's most notorious paedophile priest.
During his installation Mass in 2015, protesters stormed the church, carrying signs saying they did not want Barros as their bishop.

buhari meets katsina senior citizens ( photo story)

boko haram suspects

Following the mass trial of hundreds of suspected Boko Haram extremists before a court at the Kainji military base in central Niger state, the Ministry of Justice on Sunday announced the release of 475 suspected members of Boko Haram on the ground that most of the cases against them were dropped for lack of evidence.
According to the ministry’s spokesman, Salihu Othman Isah, the release order was issued on Friday, with the 475 suspects to be returned to their home states for “proper rehabilitation” before being sent back to their families.

He disclosed that they had been arrested on grounds that they either belonged to Boko Haram, or had concealed information about the group’s plans or its members’ whereabouts.
“However, the Prosecution Counsel could not charge them with any offence due to lack of sufficient evidence against them. Therefore, the suspects were released,” Isah said.
Among those released was a young girl with a three-month-old baby from Borno State who was taken to a Boko Haram enclave by her brother and married off to his friend when she was 11. She was arrested in 2014 while trying to escape.
Equally among those freed were two mechanics and identical twins who were arrested in Bauchi State in 2010 after servicing a vehicle at their workshop which belonged to a Boko Haram member.

Nikolas Cruz charged in Florida High School shooting

Mark Fuhrman after school shooting: We can harden targets

Retired LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman and retired Las Vegas officer Randy Sutton provide insight on 'The Ingraham Angle' after deadly shooting at Florida school.

An alleged gunman accused of killing at least 17 people when he opened fire at a Florida high school as panicked students fled the bloodbath, was charged Thursday with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

Nikolas Cruz was booked into Broward County Jail on 17 counts of premeditated murder.  (Broward County Sheriff's Office)

Nikolas Cruz, 19, arrived at Broward County Jail early Thursday morning after investigators questioned him for hours. The 19-year-old, who was a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was taken into custody “without incident” Wednesday by Coconut Creek police in a Coral Springs neighborhood, located just a few miles from the high school itself.

Police said Cruz, who was identified as the only possible gunman, was taken to the hospital earlier because he “exhibited labored breathing.”
Cruz concealed himself in the crowd and was seen running out of the school with hundreds of terrified students, authorities said.
The carnage, however, had already taken its toll.
Noah Parness, 17, told the Associated Press the fire alarm went off for the second time in the day at around 2:30 p.m. Parness said students were calmly filing out of the school when he suddenly heard several pops.
"Everyone was kind of just standing there calm, and then we saw a bunch of teachers running down the stairway, and then everybody shifted and broke into a sprint," Parness said. "I hopped a fence."
An unidentified student described the gruesome scene in an interview with Fox News.
"The police came through the hallway to get us and in the hallway, I saw a big pile of blood, like, kind of smeared as if they were dragged away, and I saw two girls probably dead in the hallway," she said. "And then, coming down the stairs, there was some more blood and outside the building there was another guy – I think it was a teacher – who was, [I’m] pretty sure was dead."

The motive behind the massacre was not immediately clear. Lawmakers and officials suggested the shooting may have been planned.
Sheriff Scott Israel, from Broward County, said at an evening news conference the suspect carried an AR-15 rifle and had “countless magazines.” He did not specify how many shots were fired.
"It's catastrophic. There really are no words," Israel said.

"Everyone was kind of just standing there calm, and then we saw a bunch of teachers running down the stairway, and then everybody shifted and broke into a sprint."

- Noah Parness to AP

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told Fox News that Cruz was wearing a gas mask and may have had smoke bombs during the rampage.
Nelson said in a separate interview with CNN that Cruz used the fire alarm “so the kids would come pouring out of the classrooms into the hall.”
After speaking with authorities, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla, said in a tweet “it is clear attack was designed & executed to maximize loss of life.”
Cruz’s classmates had described him as a “loner” and “that weird kid that you see at school.”
Officials described Cruz as a volatile teenager whose strange behavior had caused others to end friendships with him, particularly after a fight that led to his expulsion.

Parents wait for news after a reports of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.  (AP)

Cruz was also described as having an “obsessive interest in weapons,” according to the Miami Herald. One teacher said Cruz was banned from entering campus with a backpack, the newspaper reported.
"All he would talk about is guns, knives and hunting,” Joshua Charo, 16, a former classmate, told the Herald. “I can’t say I was shocked. From past experiences, he seemed like the kind of kid who would do something like this.”
Another unidentified student told WJXT-TV that “everyone predicted” the shooting.
“Honestly, a lot of people were saying it was gonna be him,” the unnamed student told the news station. He said kids joked around that the student would be the one to “shoot up the school.”
An Instagram page apparently belonging to Cruz showed pictures of guns and knives. Israel said some of Cruz's social media posts were "very, very disturbing."
The Parkland shooting is the nation’s deadliest school shooting since Newtown.
Students and families will be able to see grief counselors at the Pines Trials Park Recreation Center, Coral Springs Gymnasium and Coral Springs Center for Performing Arts starting Thursday at 8 a.m., Broward County Schools officials said.
Counselors will also be made available for students and staff at Westglades Middle School and the Parkland Library, officials said.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will be closed Thursday and Friday.

Police and rescue vehicles are shown outside Broward Health North hospital, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018, in Deerfield Beach, Fla.  (AP)

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said her office would pay for the funeral expenses of the victims.
"We will pay for the funeral expenses of these poor victims," Bondi said. "We will take care of it."

Football

Three Real Madrid stars monitored by Jose

9 hours ago Guardian

Midfield needs strengthening

How to solve a problem like Paul Pogba seems to be the conundrum vexing José Mourinho right now and he believes Toni Kroos and Iscocould be the missing pieces in Manchester United’s midfield puzzle.

United have been longtime admirers of both playmakers, having attempted to lure Isco to Old Trafford in 2012.

The report in Guardian says United may be willing to play their trump card: David de Gea. It is explained, Mourinho is beginning to realise there is only so long De Gea will continue to put up with saving the reputations of Phil Jones and Chris Smalling, and is ready to play ball with Real Madrid .

United may be willing to pay up to £135m for Isco alone and with Real in disarray and a drastic overhaul expected at the Bernabéu in the summer, Mourinho also has Raphael Varane on his sight.

Valentine’s Day is coming up! It’s a great day to celebrate love. Use these quotes to make your own cards for your loved ones, or just read them to make yourself feel warm and fuzzy inside. Make your Valentine’s Day more loving with these inspirational Valentine’s Day quotes.

“When love is not madness, it is not love.” – Pedro Calderon de la Barca

“Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.” – Antoine de Saint-Expuery

“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” – Paulo Coelho

“Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.” – Unknown

“Trip over love, you can get up. Fall in love and you fall forever.” – Unknown

“A hundred hearts would be too few to carry all my love for you.” – Unknown

“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.” – Janos Arany

“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde

“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” – Robert Browning

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allen Poe

“Are we not like two volumes of one book?” – Marceline Desbordes-Valmomre

“I’ve fallen in love many times…always with you.” – Unknown

“What I need to live has been given to me by the earth. Why I need to live has been given to me by you.” – Unknown

“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.” – Robert Browning

“Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” – Zora Neale Hurston

“Love is a game that two can play and both win.” – Eva Gabor

“Without love, the rich and poor live in the same house.” – Unknown

“Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren’t even there before.” – Mignon McLaughlin

“Poetry spills from the cracks of a broken heart, but flows from one which is loved.” – Christopher Paul Rubero

“A man is not where he lives, but where he loves.” – Latin Proverb

“The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.” – Blaise Pascal

“True love stories never have endings.” – Richard Bach

“Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

“Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart.” – Kay Knudsen

“Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.” – Erich Fromm

“Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” – Robert Frost

“Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, and the joy in a heart.” – Unknown

“Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it.” – Swedish proverb

“We need not think alike to love alike.” – Francis David

“If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden.” – Claudia Ghandi

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle

“You don’t marry someone you can live with – you marry the person who you cannot live without.” – Unknown

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Thoreau

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” – A.A. Milne

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” – Thomas Merton

“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.” – Mignon McLaughlin

“A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” – Frank Morgan

“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.” – Anonymous

Don't give up

Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?  Maybe a fireman? A baker? A ballerina? Whether or not you still hold those childhood dreams of twirling about in a pink tutu or rushing off to extinguish a house fire, you probably have some sort of idea what you ultimately want to do with your life. BUT are you actually doing it? Are you working towards it? Or have you given up all hope on your dreams with the burdens of daily life pulling you down?

Pursuing your dreams comes along with many benefits!  Here are some reasons why you should not give up on your dreams:

1.  Failure.

This word seems counter-intuitive in reasons not to give up your dreams, but failure is more beneficial than you might think.  Most people don’t pursue their dreams for fear of failure.  Little do they know, this is one of the biggest ways we learn and grow!

Many famous and successful Americans had to fail over and over again to achieve what they hoped to in life.  Abraham Lincoln failed at war, as a businessman, as a lawyer and even at politics at first.  He pushed on through and became president of the United States.  Thomas Edison’s teachers called him “stupid” and he was fired multiple times before “failing” 1000 times attempting to invent the lightbulb.  Michael Jordan was once cut from his high school basketball team.  He later said,

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career.

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I’ve lost almost 300 games
26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot … and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed.”

If we can learn anything from these successful men, it would be to never give up on our dreams simply because of fear of failure.

2. Persistence.

With that failure comes persistence.  Persistence is something that can only be learned through hardships. If you never fall down, you can’t learn how to get back up. Each time we pick ourselves back up and forge through, we get a little bit stronger and more capable of achieving our ultimate goals.

3.  It’s better to try and fail than to wonder what might have been.

Have you ever regretted trying something in your life? Perhaps it was trying out for the school play. Or asking that special someone out on a date. That feeling of wondering what could have been might still eat at you even years down the road.

How do you avoid that feeling of regret? By trying. You don’t have to do something huge, but sitting down and making a plan with small steps on how you will achieve your dreams will start you off in the right direction.  Little by little you will forge a path towards your goals.

4.  Successes along the way.

If your dreams are big enough, you will have stepping stones of success along the way. Small achievements that can be celebrated and reviled in. These small victories can help push you through to the next goal and soon enough, your dreams will be realized.

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5.  The pursuit.

Many valuable experiences are found in the pursuit. There is a reason the pursuit of happiness is in the constitution. Memories, friendships, skills, life lessons, love. Basically, life is what happens when we make our way towards a goal. Applying for that college which seems out of reach, we might meet our soulmate. In seeking for that promotion, we might meet a best friend or mentor. Signing up for that team, we might get to travel the world. In order to value the pursuit, we need to follow our dreams!

6.  Success is often just around the corner.

If only you knew how close you were! If only you knew what an impact would be for one more phone call, one more interview, and just one more late night working on your passions. Often we give up far too soon. We can’t see what the future holds for us, but we sure can keep striving towards our dreams.

7.  Setting an example.

Finally, if you have children (or might have them some day), you will be setting a good example. Do we want our children to tell stories about how comfortable we were sitting on our couch watching sitcoms, or do we want to be remembered for the passion we had for life? Hopefully we can show the future generations what it means to chase after our dreams. Most importantly, in the words of Winston Churchill,

“Never Never Never give up

TIME. IT'S THE CURRENCY OF LIFE.

success hunger

As entrepreneurs, leaders, managers, and bosses, we must realize that everything we think actually matters. If we are seeking success, we must think successful, inspiring, and motivating thoughts. Read on to find the words of wisdom that will motivate you in building your business, leading your life, creating success, achieving your goals, and overcoming your fears. 100 Motivational Quotes That Will Inspire Your Success: 1. "If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission." --Anonymous 2. "Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out." --John Wooden 3. "To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong." --Anonymous 4. "If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary." --Jim Rohn 5. "Trust because you are willing to accept the risk, not because it's safe or certain." --Anonymous 6. "Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life--think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success." --Swami Vivekananda 7. "All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." --Walt Disney 8. "Good things come to people who wait, but better things come to those who go out and get them." --Anonymous 9. "If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got." --Anonymous 10. "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." --Winston Churchill 11. "Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly." --Proverb 12. "Successful entrepreneurs are givers and not takers of positive energy." --Anonymous 13. "Whenever you see a successful person you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them." --Vaibhav Shah 14. "Opportunities don't happen, you create them." --Chris Grosser 15. "Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value." --Albert Einstein 16. "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." --Eleanor Roosevelt 17. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas A. Edison 18. "If you don't value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents--start charging for it." --Kim Garst 19. "A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him." --David Brinkley 20. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." --Eleanor Roosevelt 21. "The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it." --Henry Ford 22. "If you're going through hell keep going." --Winston Churchill 23. "The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." --Anonymous 24. "Don't raise your voice, improve your argument." --Anonymous 25. "What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise." --Oscar Wilde 26. "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." --Anonymous 27. "The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success." --Bruce Feirstein 28. "When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you." --Lolly Daskal 29. "I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams." --Oprah Winfrey 30. "No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist." --Anonymous 31. "Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." --Nathaniel Hawthorne 32. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." --Albert Einstein 33. "Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting." --Anonymous 34. "Do one thing every day that scares you." --Anonymous 35. "What's the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable." --Anonymous 36. "Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." --Lolly Daskal 37. "Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent." --Anonymous 38. "Knowledge is being aware of what you can do. Wisdom is knowing when not to do it." --Anonymous 39. "Your problem isn't the problem. Your reaction is the problem." --Anonymous 40. "You can do anything, but not everything. --Anonymous 41. "Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." --Steve Jobs 42. "There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed." --Ray Goforth 43. "Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life." --A.P.J. Abdul Kalam 44. "I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." --Thomas Jefferson 45. "The starting point of all achievement is desire." --Napoleon Hill 46. "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out." --Robert Collier 47. "If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work." --Thomas J. Watson 48. "All progress takes place outside the comfort zone." --Michael John Bobak 49. "You may only succeed if you desire succeeding; you may only fail if you do not mind failing." --Philippos 50. "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear." --Mark Twain 51. "Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." --Pablo Picasso 52. "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing--that's why we recommend it daily." --Zig Ziglar 53. "We become what we think about most of the time, and that's the strangest secret." --Earl Nightingale 54. "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." --Vidal Sassoon 55. "Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. " --Les Brown 56. "I find that when you have a real interest in life and a curious life, that sleep is not the most important thing." --Martha Stewart 57. "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." --Anonymous 58. "The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same." --Colin R. Davis 59. "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." --Ralph Nader 60. "Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it." --Maya Angelou 61. "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others." --Bill Gates 62. "A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them." --Henry Kravis 63. "The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself." --Mark Caine 64. "People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy." --Tony Robbins 65. "When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." --Audre Lorde 66. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." --Mark Twain 67. "The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." --Bruce Lee 68. "There is no traffic jam along the extra mile." --Roger Staubach 69. "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." --Dale Carnegie 70. "If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." --Jim Rohn 71. "If you genuinely want something, don't wait for it--teach yourself to be impatient." --Gurbaksh Chahal 72. "Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning." --Robert Kiyosaki 73. "If you want to make a permanent change, stop focusing on the size of your problems and start focusing on the size of you!" --T. Harv Eker 74. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." --Steve Jobs 75. "Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference." --Robert Frost 76. "The number one reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors." --Napoleon Hill 77. "The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." --Denis Waitley 78. "In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it." --Jane Smiley 79. "Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time." --George Bernard Shaw 80. "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well." --Diane Ackerman 81. "You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them." --Michael Jordan 82. "Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going." --Jim Ryun 83. "People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing." --Dale Carnegie 84. "There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul." --Ella Wheeler Wilcox 85. "Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter." --Francis Chan 86. "You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction." --George Lorimer 87. "A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at." -- Bruce Lee 88. "Success is ... knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others." --John C. Maxwell 89. "Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice." --Wayne Dyer 90. "To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe." --Anatole France 91. "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all." --Dale Carnegie 92. "You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals." --Booker T. Washington 93. "Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable." --Theodore N. Vail 94. "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." --Herman Melville 95. "What would you do if you weren't afraid." --Spencer Johnson 96. "Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it." --Washington Irving 97. "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor." --Truman Capote 98. "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." --John R. Wooden 99. "You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it." --Margaret Thatcher 100. "A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done." --Vince Lombardi As we read these thoughts, know they are sources of guidance in times of need, they can give us inspiration in times of struggle, they can motivate us in times of tribulations--success is not final and failure is not forever: It is the motivation we to choose that matters most.

Funny world records

From the world's youngest woman with a full beard, to the world's largest domestic cat, the Guinness World Records (GWR) of 2017 have been unveiled.

Pictures and stories of the new record breakers were revealed on Friday after months of research and scouring the globe looking for the "best of the best", the GWR statement said.

"It's been another outstanding year for record-breaking," editor-in-chief of GWR Craig Glenday said.

"We've been able to pack the new book with 4,000 records — 80 per cent of which are new."

Among the record holders is body positivity campaigner and catwalk model Harnaam Kaur, 24, who took out the title for the youngest woman in the world to have a full beard.

Ms Kaur, from Slough in England, said it was "absolutely humbling" to be included, saying she overcame years of bullying to take ownership of her appearance and achieve this record.

'Diva' llama and 'gentle giant' dane achieve records

PHOTO: The record for the highest jump by a llama is held by nine-year-old Caspa. (Supplied: Guinness World Records)

The 2017 list also includes a record for the highest jump by a llama, which was taken out by nine-year-old Caspa from Porthmadog in Wales.

Caspa has been with his owner, Sue, since he was two years old. She described the llama, who is able to clear a 1.13-metre high bar, as "a total diva".

PHOTO: Ludo the Maine Coon took out the record for the world's longest domestic cat currently alive.(Supplied: Guinness World Record)

Also featured was Ludo the Maine Coon from Wakefield in South Yorkshire, who secured the record for the world's longest domestic cat currently alive.

He currently measures 118.33 centimetres long and is one of three Maine Coons owned by Kelsey Gill, who describes him as "just like any other cat".

PHOTO: Lizzy the great dane from Florida is the tallest living female dog. (Supplied: Guinness World Records)

The tallest living female dog, which is held by Lizzy the great dane from Florida, also features on the list.

She measures in at a massive 96.41 centimetres tall, but her owner Greg says Lizzy is a "gentle giant and very sociable".

GWR is the global authority on record-breaking achievement.

Mystery Snake

A mystery snake is said to have sneaked into the accounts office of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, in Makurdi, the Benue State capital and made away with N36 million cash.

Before now, JAMB candidates purchased scratch cards from JAMB state offices and other designated centers, to gain access to the Board’s website for either registration or to check their admission status but the reforms introduced by JAMB registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, recommended an end to the use of scratch cards.

A team of auditors was dispatched to different state offices of JAMB to take inventory of the sold and unsold scratch cards and recover whatever money that might have either been generated or mismanaged during the period of the sale of scratch cards.

On their visit to Makurdi office of JAMB, a sales clerk, Philomina Chieshe, told JAMB registrar and his team that she could not account for N36 million she made in previous years before the abolition of scratch cards.

In the course of interrogation, Philomena confessed that it was her housemaid that connived with another JAMB staff, Joan Asen, to “spiritually” steal the money from the vault in the accounts office.

She said: “I was one of the four sales clerks attached to JAMB office in Makurdi. My responsibility was to sell scratch cards to candidates and not involved in handling the revenues. It was the responsibility of Joan Asen and my other senior colleagues. I only remit money when am done selling the cards.

“Few months ago, there was issue of fraud in the Makurdi office. Auditors were sent from Abuja to carefully flip the record books of the office, to perhaps, ascertain the current state of affairs.

“The state Coordinator, Obilo, was not around when the audit team came. But in the course of the audit, N36 million was discovered to have been missing from the account. An investigation was launched. In the course of the investigation, it was discovered that Joan Asen, who is account staff and a lady outside JAMB have connived to steal the money.”

Philomina in her confessional statement said that Joan Asen and her accomplices confessed that they have been stealing the money “spiritually” through a mysterious snake that always sneak into the office to swallow the money from the vault.

According to her “It was a mystery to me too. I have been saving the money in the bank, but I found it difficult to account for it. So I started saving it in a vault in the office. But each time I open the vault, I will find nothing. I became worried and surprised how the millions of Naira could be disappearing from the vault. I began to interrogate everybody in the house and office, and no one could agree on what might have happened to the money. I continued to press until my housemaid confessed. She said that the money disappeared “spiritually”. She said that a “mysterious snake” sneaked into the house and swallowed the money in the vault.”