10 steps on how to deal with a backstabbing friend

Keep a calm and steady voice and use words that express your feelings. Avoid making statements that are accusations.

When you realize a friend has been talking about you in negative and detrimental ways behind your back, what should you do? After the initial shock at the sense of betrayal wears off, it’s important to salvage what you can and mend your own feelings. Follow these few steps to get a good friend to stop the backstabbing.
Ask your friend if you can have an important, quiet chat together. Tell your friend that you’ve heard negative rumors about you that were apparently sourced from your friend and that you’re trying to clear up things as quickly and carefully as possible.
Clarify your position. If the things said are only known by that friend, make this clear when bringing it up. There is little point in beating around the bush when this is clearly the case. However, say it kindly and with tact.
Speak Calmy. Yelling and getting over emotional usually doesn’t help the situation. Talk in a calm voice.
Seek out your friend’s side of the story before making assumptions about what has happened. Use open-ended questions to encourage discussion and avoid asking specific ones or grilling your friend. Simply ask what happened. Listen attentively and stay sympathetic.

• Ask your friend how he or she felt about what they said or did.
• Avoid interrupting. There may be a temptation to correct things they are saying but don’t; just listen for now.
• Always talk to your friend away from other people. You can’t have a serious conversation about your relationship issues when other people are around.
• If your friend won’t answer or evades the issue, persist gently but don’t push. It is important to avoid lapsing into a rant or an angry tirade against your friend, as this will only cause him or her to withdraw even further. Getting caught doing something negative to a friend is beyond embarrassing; it’s mortifying and most people know it’s an issue of broken trust. You’re working with fragility and shame, so take it carefully. If your friend continues to ignore you, don’t persist for now. Say that you’ll get back to them when they’ve had time to reflect on it. Leave time to simply cool off and reserve the talk for another time.

Tell your side of the story next. Keep a calm and steady voice and use words that express your feelings. Avoid making statements that are accusations. Simply explain how their actions have made you feel. Be as nice as possible but don’t sound desperate, accusatory or angry. Stick to the known facts and preface anything you’re unsure about with comments such as “I don’t know if it’s true but X said…”, etc. to show that you are still trying to make sense of the unknown, rather than presuming anything. Don’t mention the person who told you. If they mention names, take your cue from there.
Bear in mind that people who are more removed from you than your friend may have an ax to grind or simply like to stir up trouble. It is important to keep an open mind before launching into accusing your friend of letting you down and spreading rumors about you. Consider what you know about the people who have fed the stories back to you and what their agenda might be. Consider also why you think your friend might have said something she or he shouldn’t have––perhaps something slipped out without meaning to, perhaps a mistaken belief that someone else knew something caused your friend to elaborate or perhaps your friend was clueless about the real intentions of the person she or he spoke with. While your friend’s reasons aren’t excuses for their own behavior over which they have control, they are important aspects for you to consider when working out how you feel about the friendship from this time forth.
Ask your friend if you have done something to bring on this bout of backstabbing. It’s important to know whether you have somehow (even if the logic behind your friend’s thinking is illogical, odd or wrong) contributed to this state of affairs. Perhaps they think that you’ve hurt them in some way and that this is a way of “getting back” at you for something you’ve said or done. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding. At this point, it’s important to clarify the possibility that your friend sees things in this light.

• If you have done something to hurt your friend, apologize. Even if you did nothing wrong objectively, apologize for reacting with anger or simply for just what happened. Say something like: “I’m sorry if I hurt you in any way. It does not matter whose fault it is. I apologize for any hurt feelings this may have caused in our friendship and I am sorry that this has happened. Let us both try to put this aside and be friends again.”
• Know the difference between using “being hurt” by you as an excuse and genuine feelings of being hurt. This is only something you can judge from the circumstances at the time but it should be fairly clear to you. For example, a friend who says she backstabbed you because you owed her money and she was scared of not being able to pay her rent is making a mountain out of a molehill; whereas a friend who says she backstabbed you because you stole her boyfriend may have some justification in feeling hurt (depending on the context).

Tell your friend that you consider that friendship is stronger than rumors and gossip, and that you’re absolutely willing to work through whatever has happened to restore the trust in your friendship and move forward from this episode.

• Ask your friend what he or she needs from you. This may vary, depending on the situation (namely, whether it arose as a result of envy, a misunderstanding, anger, etc.).
• Explain to your friend what you need from your friend now. Use the “I-message” formula: I feel _____ when you _______ and I need for you to _______.
• Be ready to meet both needs. This is where the resolution begins. You begin understanding each other and the situation. As you hear similar needs from each other, the differences are put aside and you are able to work things through. Brainstorm together a few, or as many, ideas of how your situation may be resolved. Try your hardest to meet both needs. There may be room for negotiation and/or compromise. Be ready to give up a part of your needs in turn for making the both of you happy.
• Tell your friend how you feel about the decision and ask him or her if they’re content with it as well.
• Be flexible. Perhaps you need to accept that your friend did something very stupid but has a learned a solid lesson and won’t be doing it again. Staying objective allows you to accept the hurt and move on.

Slowly build back trust. Do not let these wounds stay forever and block ability to share secrets or be open and honest with another person. Life brings us trialing moments where trust gets broken, however temporarily or easily. The way in which we respond to that breach of trust says much about our own character as well as about the other person. The more resilient we are, the more likely we are to be merciful and give a person we care about another chance, setting aside outrage as an excuse to stay stuck in being hurt ourselves. Try once more and give your friend another chance, especially given the boundaries you’ve set together from the previous step.

• Be willing to forgive. Let go of any anger and try to focus on the good things about your friend. He or she will come around.
• Talk over any further disagreements and other obstacles. Make this a clear necessity of the friendship going forward, to prevent any real or perceived hurts from festering. More openness should be the key to your future together.

Decide what to do if your friend is not willing to ever discuss or overcome the lapse in judgment and where you feel that the friendship is no longer viable due to a breach of trust or irreparable differences. Perhaps this isn’t the first time it has happened, or perhaps your friend is already moving on from your friendship and this was a cheap shot way to rupture it. In such cases, protect yourself and go into damage control.

• Stick with the “I statement” method and tell your former friend how you feel. Explain why you no longer feel able to remain friends (breach of trust, a loss of honesty, outgrowing each other, etc.)
• Realize that while what has happened was disloyal, you cannot shoulder the blame for what happened or use it as a reason to distrust other people from this point. Your former friend chose to do what he or she did and the motivation and consequences rest entirely with them.
• Talk to someone else you trust, perhaps a parent, a spouse, another friend or even a counselor. Discuss what happened with someone neutral who can reassure you that your hurt is real but that you will also overcome what has happened. It is just important to have a shoulder to lean on at such a time.
• Avoid seeking revenge. Thoughts of revenge may flit in and out but never act on them. Revenge is all-consuming and has a tendency to cause the person acting in revenge to stoop to the level of the person they’re angry with. Forgive, learn and move on.
• YNaija.com

Cocaine in unthinkable packages

•Drug traffickers’ new tricks, receive prayers from pastors
By HENRY UMAHI
Nigerians were recently stunned when some neatly packed and appetising roasted chickens, which had arrived the country from Brazil, aboard a Turkish Airline flight from Sao Paulo, were discovered to contain hard drugs.  The drugs were concealed in the roasted chickens, with the intention to fool security officials. It was a new way drug traffickers devised to pull the wool on the eyes of security personnel at the airport and bring in hard drugs.
The kingpin of the drugs syndicate, Mr. Vincent Chegini Chinweuwa, had revealed that it took three days to package the roasted chickens for onward transmission to Nigeria, adding: “I was confident that the drug will not be detected. I’m surprised I’ve been caught.” A conservative estimate of the street value of the drugs, which was impounded, was put at about N24 million.
Airport Commandant of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, Mr. Hamza Umar, had said of this: “We discovered 2.655kg of cocaine inside roasted chickens.  It is a remarkable seizure because no one would have imagined cocaine worth several millions inside roasted chickens.”
Investigation revealed that drug traffickers have, indeed, devised various new ways to bring in their merchant of death into the country. Sometimes, they are caught. Some other times, they succeed in beating the security dragnet at the airports and borders.
Speaking on this, Chairman/Chief Executive of the NDLEA, Ahmadu Giade, said: “Drug barons are becoming more and more sophisticated in drug concealment, as recent discoveries show.  The essence of drug concealment is to avoid detection and seizure.  In order to prevent huge financial losses, arrests and prosecution, drug barons go the extra mile in hiding their drugs.”
Growing sophistication
Checks revealed that gone are the days when male drug traffickers simply ingested the stuff while their female counterparts inserted it into their private parts. The barons are now devising new ways of packaging drugs to beat security.
Twenty six-year-old Nzeka Christian was nabbed by eagle-eyed anti-narcotic agents at MMIA, with drugs packed in two big tins of tomato paste.  The street value of the drug was put at about N5 million. According to Umar, “the two big tins of tomato paste, with 1.8kg of methamphetamine, were found in Nzeka’s bag.  The bag contained clothes and foodstuff, like yams, rice, beans, garri and spaghetti.  The food items were meant to distract officers from the tomato paste.”
He added: “This is an interesting seizure, because it is not a common place concealment. The mode is a reflection of the sophistry of drug trafficking.  I am glad that the arrest has prevented the execution of the suspect in Malaysia.”
Interestingly, before embarking on the trip, Nzeka slept in the church and received prayers from his pastor for a successful outing. “I was in the Church and my pastor prayed for me for a successful trip,” he volunteered.
Indeed, investigations revealed that many drug traffickers now seek spiritual help before embarking on the deadly assigment. They contract pastors, alfas and spiritualists for help.
A source disclosed: “In the desperation of drug traffickers to succeed in their business, many of them are now going to pastors, alfas and spiritual people so that they can pray for them not to be caught by anti-narcotic agents at the airports or elsewhere”. It was gathered that many clerics of different hue are actually smiling to the bank because they are usually well renumerated by their ‘clients’. A cleric at Okota, Lagos, is known for praying for drug traffickers and his place is always a beehive of activities. In the same vein, an Owerri-based pastor popularly known as Odeshi pastor (indestructible pastor) is notorious for this. He was operating around Bongo village before his church was pulled down recently. Another of his ilk operates at Oko-Afo in Badagry area of Lagos.
Traffickers in illicit drugs also conceal their goods in customised underwear and hair wigs.  Recently, Miss Anene Blessing Iruoma, 26, and Miss Obiakor Maryam Okwudili were apprehended at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja for attempting to smuggle 3.6 kilogrammes of methamphetamines in their customised brassieres, pants and hair wig.  The destination of the duo was Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where drug traffickers pay the supreme price if caught.
Susan Eneanya, 32, was caught at the MMIA with 900g of methamphetamine hidden in the soles of a pair of shoes. When arrested, Susan said: “I did not know that things will turn out this way. I was given the assurance that the drug will not be detected and that everything would be fine.  I was told to ingest the drug, but I was afraid, so it was hidden instead inside the sole of one of my shoes and I felt it would not be detected.”
Twenty-five-year-old London-based fashion designer, Animasaun Sunbo, was arrested during the screening of passengers on a British Airways flight to London with 30 sachets of cocaine weighing three kilogrammes inside two chocolate containers inside her bag.
Also, one of the new methods of drug smuggling is turning cocaine into ice cream.  Martin Ikechukwu was nabbed by NDLEA operatives at the MMIA with 9.500kg of creamy substance that tested positive to cocaine while returning from Sao Paulo, Brazil. The parcels containing the ‘ice cream’ cocaine were strapped round the body of four coolers.  The street value of the drug was put at over N90 million.
Illicit drugs are also being smuggled in cooking pots. Nwokeocha Bartholomew Chimezie, 43, an indigene of Aro-Ndizuogu, in Imo State, was arrested at MMIA for concealing 4.1kg of heroine in cooking pots imported from India. The suspect said: “I went to India for an eye surgery.  In the process, I met a friend who gave me the cooking pots. He told me that it was a gift for his sister in Nigeria that just put to bed.”
Condoms for cocaine
Drug traffickers are also putting condoms to other uses. They use it to facilitate the ingestion of cocaine turned from powdery substance to oily matter. Egbo Innocent Oluchukwu and Ejimbe Christian Chidi were caught at MMIA for allegedly ingesting liquid cocaine poured into male condoms. According to Umar: “They thought that the scanning machine will not detect liquid cocaine, but they were wrong”.
Oluchukwu, who arrived from Tanzania, said: “The Venezuelan who gave me the drug told me that it will be difficult for the machine to detect liquid cocaine when ingested. I ingested 70 wraps of the drug using water because I was desperate.”
Wine and juice
Drug cartels are equally packaging drugs like wine and juice drinks. In other words, illicit drugs are being liquefied. Patrick Chukwuemeka (32) was arrested at MMIA with 7.1kg of liquid cocaine valued at N63.9 million.  The drug was emulsified and packaged as wine.
According to Giade: “The liquid cocaine that was first intercepted was packaged to look like juice sent through courier service from Trinidad and Tobago. In another case, it was difficult for the machine to pick out the liquid form of cocaine in the tummy of the trafficker, but our personnel were meticulous before our sophisticated machines finally discovered it.”
Relay race
To evade arrest, drug traffickers engage in some kind of relay race. Rather than take direct flights to their destination, they make painstaking detour.  For instance, heroin known to be trafficked from India, Pakistan and Iran, is now coming into Nigeria through other routes, such as Tanzania.
TheSun

Meet the world’s tallest teenager: 17 years old and 7ft 4.5 inches tall (PHOTOS)

inShare1

Brenden Adams is 7 feet 4.5 inches tall. He is considered the only person who has grown so fast and so big because of an altered chromosome 12.
Brenden Adams was born on September 20, 1995. He was born at Kittitas Valley Community Hospital and grew up in Ellensburg, Washington. His birthweight was an average 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measured at 19.5 inches long.  Because of the teen’s never-ending growth, he was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, a bleeding disorder, a heart disorder, and arthritis in his overgrown joints that started affecting him between the ages of two and eight. With of the fear of leukemia, doctors went in and performed a bone-marrow biopsy so that they could study his cells. To their surprise, the biopsy unveiled that the teen was suffering from a chromosomal disorder that causes him to grow at an accelerated speeds. It is said that only two percent of the population has this “balanced chromosomal inversion”. What happens is that some of the genetic material gets rearranged when the cells divide during the earliest stages of developing. The teen’s 12th chromosome was affected and altered which affects a person’s growth.
(Story continues after the photos)










The World’s Tallest Teen, Brenden Adams is not only tall, but he physically and visually is different. His mother says that he constantly needs his team of doctors and visits them frequently to maintain his growth and other physical body changes. The teen has abnormally huge joints, fatty tumors, and extra teeth.
He attends Morgan Middle School in Ellensburg, Washington and is a member of the football team. Even though the teen loves the game, it is said that he can’t participate the way he would like to due to health problems. The teen says, “I can’t run anymore,” adding, “I can’t be active like I used to.”
Although the teen feels guilt when it comes to the medical bills that his condition entails, his mother says, “No one has his condition in the world, but then no one in the world has his heart of gold,” and adds, “People are kind, people are generous, but I don’t believe there’s anyone with a heart like his.”
The Guinness Book of World Records names the world’s tallest teen, Brendan Adams as the tallest teen-age boy in the world.
Brenden excessive growth was successfully stopped in August 2008.
YNaija.com

How Telephone Glitch Frustrated Obama’s Move To Reach Jonathan

Laolu Akande

BOTH Presidents Barack Obama and Goodluck Jonathan wanted to talk on phone, but twice calls from the White House to Aso Rock failed to make the connection.
Authoritative sources confirmed during the week that efforts by President Obama to personally speak with Jonathan to return his congratulatory message has been aborted at least twice by the failure of the telephone system in Aso Rock.
After Obama’ s second-term election victory three weeks ago, President Jonathan was among the first world leaders to congratulate him, offering him a hand of fellowship.
In response to the congratulatory messages, Obama on the Thursday of the same election week, started calling back some of the world leaders, who had congratulated him, to appreciate their letters and words of felicitation.
At least, three White House press statements by Press Secretary, Jay Carney, since the week of the election, have listed names of leaders Obama has been able to speak to in return for their congratulatory messages. Based on those statements made available to The Guardian, the US President has not been able to reach out to the Nigerian president.
But US sources confirmed that President Jonathan is one of those Obama was personally keen on talking to, in acknowledgement of their early congratulatory messages.
Specifically, on Monday November 12, according to US sources, White House officials, having coordinated with the US Embassy in Nigeria, and the Nigerian Embassy in the US, got a number to call Aso Rock, but, on two occasions on that day, both calls were simply not picked up, causing a diplomatic embarrassment for Aso Rock. The number had been given by Aso Rock officials to enable President Obama reach President Jonathan.
A source explained that what should have been done, as is normal in diplomatic etiquette, is for the Nigerian President to have a hotline to reach leaders of other countries that are strategic to the country, so that such important calls are easily facilitated.
Sources close to the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed the practice and put the blame squarely on Aso Rock telephone system and some of its operators and officials.
Nigeria’s Ambassador to the US, Prof Adebowale Adefuye, confirmed that the US President wants to talk to Jonathan since after the election, but stated that it is yet to happen.
But he quickly added that the plans were still being worked out to make it a reality. He explained further that during this past week, President Obama was away in Asia and then returned for the Thanksgiving celebrations, a big holiday, which Americans mark every third Thursday in November. In most cases in the US, the holiday starts on the preceding Wednesday (November 21) until the following week, which is Monday, November 26.
An optimistic Adefuye, however, explained that he was aware that Obama is very keen on America’s strategic relationship with Nigeria and also his growing personal relationship with President Jonathan. He said he had seen the new US strategy for Africa in Obama’s second term, which ranks Nigeria very high on US priority in the next four years.
According to him, the call from White House to Aso Rock is going to be accomplished soon, adding that the US government has even indicated that a presidential trip to Nigeria has been agreed to in principle in the second term, starting next January.
Adefuye disclosed that the US government has been impressed about Nigeria’s role in resolving the Malian crisis, where Nigeria has reportedly approved to send about 600 troops.
Besides, the Ambassador noted that Nigeria-US relationship has been in the upswing in the last few years, especially with the tremendous success of the US-Nigeria Bi-National Commission (BNC).

He recalled that the US Vice President Joe Biden had promised to take the BNC to a higher level, suggesting a possible White House supervisory role of the BNC, giving it additional authority bite in the US governmental hierarchy.
Citing a specific example of the success of the BNC, Adefuye said a US power company, Symbion, recently won the bid for the Ughelli power station, linking this to the several investment forums that the Nigerian Embassy has hosted in Washington DC in the last one year.
He equally announced that the US Commerce Department and the Corporate Council for Africa (CCA) are planning a trade delegation to Nigeria in January to further explore US investment opportunities in the country.
TheGuardian

Saudi Arabia now tracking women electronically, notifying husbands by text

Saudi Arabia has implemented an electronic tracking system to monitor women and inform their husbands if they leave the country.
According to an Agence France-Press story, a new system implemented last week sends Saudi husbands text messages from the Saudi immigration agency when their wives are flying out of King Khaled International Airport, near Riyahd. Women are not allowed to leave the country without signed permission from their husbands.
Saudi Arabia, which ranked second worst in a Thomson Reuters global survey on women’s rights in mid 2012,  is a notoriously repressive country. Women are banned from driving, required to have a male guardian, just received the right to vote in municipal elections last year, and must cover most of their bodies, traditionally with a burqa or niqab.
“Women and girls in Saudi Arabia are treated as perpetual minors living under male guardianship all their lives – with restrictions on employment, political participation, travel, education, and healthcare,” Yasmeen Hassan, global director of Equality Now, told Trust.org in response to that survey.
Women being denied the right to leave the country without the permission of their husbands is nothing new, though this tracking technology is. But there are no details in the AFP story or any of the other breaking stories on how exactly the Saudi authorities are doing it.
Based on the limited information available, it may not be a tracking system that uses physical devices such as — and I know this is an awful comparison — a LoJack car-tracking system, which would require a significant infrastructure and ramp-up time for distribution of hardware. It sounds like a simpler system at borders and airports whereby immigration authorities ascertain a woman’s identity, look up her husband in a database, and text him manually or via an automated system.
UPDATE: based on the new local report, this is exactly how the system works.
Which is still, of course, appalling to Western mores and requires a government database that matches up women with male guardians — usually husbands or fathers.
InformationNigeria.org

Ngige faults Obasanjo’s power plants, says they were wasteful

The Deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power and a chieftain of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Senator Chris Ngige, has said that the power plants built by the government of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo during his tenure as president were wasteful.
The ace politician said this yesterday at the Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka, where he presented a paper on Power Supply in Nigeria; during the First Judiciary Day of the Student Union Government of UNIZIK.
According to him, the cost of securing and laying pipe to carry gas to the power projects at Papalanto, Oloronsogo, Geregu, Omotoso and other places, was enough to build more of such power plants and fund transmission and distribution projects.
While lamenting that the improved power generation across the country could not get to the people because the transmission network in the country was inadequate to carry it to the final consumers, he regretted that the contract management and supervision of the power projects had been very poor.
“We have put some power generating companies on hold because if we put them all on, there will be a system collapse in transmission lines, which are very old.
“But we (in the National Assembly) have stepped up our oversight in the sector. We have appropriated significant money in the 2013 Budget to the transmission company so that the more than 2,500 mega-watts of electricity trapped in the power generating companies can be transmitted to the people for use,” he said.
DailyPost

“There are many actors and pretenders on Nigeria’s political scene” – Senator Mark

President of the Senate, David Mark said that Nigerian political scene was full of actors and pretenders, noting that politics should be played with honesty, honour and a lot of integrity.
Mark said this on Friday during a condolence visit to the family of the late Senate Leader in the Second Republic, Dr. Olusola Saraki, in Ilorin, capital of Kwara State.
He noted that the late Saraki until his demise was a genuine politician who left outstanding legacies for the political development of Nigeria.
He said, “Baba is not dead. He lives on because a man, who lived as he did, does not die. In everything, he was always himself. He did not pretend. He was a natural man doing what he loved best. He did all he did from the bottom of his heart.
“Unfortunately there are many actors and pretenders on the political scene in Nigeria today. Politics should be played with honesty, with honour and a lot of integrity.”
He called on the people of Kwara state to celebrate Saraki instead of mourning his departure.
“I want to ask the people of Kwara not to mourn too much, as if the man has not left a legacy behind. What is left for us to do is to emulate his good deeds.
“He brought integrity and a humane quality to Nigerian politics. Let us celebrate his legacies and the fact that Kwara produced a man who was truly a national leader who has done the country proud.
“Kwara should continue to give this country people like Baba, someone who didn’t play politics of the self but sought consensus and became a bridge-builder in all ramifications.
“Let the legacies he has left become our guiding principles, to assure and reassure him that he did not live or die in vain. What will therefore make him happy where he is now is for peace to reign in Nigeria,” he said.
Mark was accompanied by a former National Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, Chief Bernabas Gemade; Alhaji Sodiq Ya’Ardua and Senator Olubunmi Adekunle.
DailyPost