Catholic Church must address Past Wrongs

A commission investigating abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has called on it to make an "unmistakeable and unequivocal" public apology.
It said the church must "heal the hurt and address the anger" of victims.
The church asked Dr Andrew McLellan to lead a review of how it handles allegations of abuse, following a series of scandals.

It took evidence from victims in a bid to improve support services and protect vulnerable children and adults.
Dr McLellan, a former moderator of the Church of Scotland, was tasked with coming up with proposals aimed at making the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland "a safe place for all".
The 11 review commissioners, who include a senior police officer, a journalist and an MP, were tasked with assessing the quality of support available to survivors.
'Absolute priority'
It was not within the scope of the commission to investigate or adjudicate on current or historical allegations.
The commission made eight recommendations, including calling for support for survivors of abuse to be an "absolute priority".
It also said justice must be done for those who have been abused.
The report also recommended that the church's safeguarding policies and practices be completely rewritten and subject to external scrutiny.
It called for a consistent approach to dealing with allegations across Scotland and improved training for those in the church.
Mr McLellan said: "The Bishops' Conference of Scotland should make a public apology to all survivors of abuse within the church.
"An apology must be made in a way that is unmistakeable and unequivocal."
'Heal the hurt'
He added: "The Bishops have said from the outset that they will accept our recommendations.
"That means that three things will happen.
"First and most important a beginning will be made to heal the hurt and address the anger which so many survivors feel.
"Second, the Catholic Church in Scotland will begin to confront a dark part of its past and find some healing for itself.
"Third, a significant step will be taken in restoring public credibility for the Catholic Church."
His review was announced following a series of scandals.
The Church faced allegations of abuse at the former Catholic boarding school at Fort Augustus Abbey in the Highlands.
The former leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, stepped down in February 2013 after admitting sexual misconduct.
The church said it would make public annual audits of all allegations received by the church.
It has published details of allegations dating from 2006 to 2012 and then for 2013.
The church also said it would instigate a retrospective investigation of historic allegations, dating back to 1947 - with work continuing on that.
It said any allegations uncovered as part of this, which had not been acted upon, would be passed to police for them to investigate.

Source:bbc news

We Can Produce Light Weapons – NASENI

The Executive Vice Chairman of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Prof. Mohammed Haruna has said with adequate funding, the agency is capable of implementing President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive on locally made weapons and other technological innovations.

He said, with the directive issued by the president last Thursday that NASENI should explore ways of working with the Defence Industries Corporation, Kaduna to manufacture the light weapons it had designed, the implementation of the Agency’s statutory funding provisions should no longer be delayed.

After top officials of the agency led by the executive vice chairman had briefed him on the state of affairs of the agency, the president had also directed NASENI to collaborate with the Nigerian Governors’ forum to ensure that the agency’s solar producing facilities are henceforth used for electrification purposes in states.

The NASENI boss who told journalists at the weekend that the major challenges facing the agency was poor funding noted that all the agency required to overcome its funding challenges is the implementation of the provision as contained in NASENI Establishment Act.

He said the January 1992 Decree No. 33 (now cited as NASENI Establishment Act CAP N3 LFN 2004) which established the agency specifies that NASENI is to be receiving 1percent of what accrue to the Federation Account, to be increased to 2percent after 10 years.

Haruna said, “The second funding source specified in the Act is collection of levy of 1 quarter percent on income or turnover of commercial companies and firms with turnover of N4million naira and above (which the last Governing Board raised to N100 million) to be collected by Federal Inland Revenue Service(FIRS)on behalf of NASENI.

“Unfortunately, however, these and other funding provisions in NASENI Act have never been implemented since its establishment 23 years ago.

“NASENI needs these statutory funding mechanisms in order to fulfill its mission for Nigeria as the hub of engineering infrastructure and industrial economic development”.

Haruna further observed that the founding fathers of NASENI did not envisage an Agency that would be encumbered by the usual civil service bureaucratic decision making processes.

He sad, while effective research and development cannot be realized under such processes, the idea of establishing NASENI was a model after similar Agencies in fast growing economies in Asia, including those of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

He said “The governments in those countries gave such Agencies a high level autonomy to operate outside the civil service systems thereby enabling the Agencies to take decisions and implement such technology development oriented outcomes with the mind of competing with the rest of the world as required in terms of technology advancement.

“The world today runs on global competition as the twin sectors of technology and economy serve as wheels on which nations advance the socio-economic wellbeing of their citizens. Nigeria cannot afford to see things differently”.

Amazon Hiring Employees For New Johannesburg Office

Amazon, the largest Internet-based retailer in the U.S., is expanding in South Africa with an office in Johannesburg and plans to hire more than 250 highly skilled workers in the next year, according to reports in BusinessTech and eNCA.

There will be openings for new, highly skilled workers including software development engineers; network development engineers; support engineers; technical account managers; systems engineers; solutions architects and other technologists.
So how big is Amazon? It started as an online bookstore but soon diversified. Now it sells just about everything plus it’s the world’s largest provider of cloud computing services. The company’s total assets in the fourth quarter of 2014 were $54.505 billion, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Amazon Development Center in Cape Town was established in 2004 to help build the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service. It develops technology for several Amazon businesses including Amazon Web Services.
The new Johannesburg office has been launched to support the growing customer base for Amazon Web Services.

Choosing to locate an Amazon Web Services office in South Africa speaks to the rapidly growing customer base, the broad set of talent there and the investment Amazon is making to support cloud adoption around the world, said Steve Midgley, head of Amazon Web Services for Europe, Middle East and Africa, in a prepared statement.
“By expanding our presence in South Africa, and through hiring highly skilled staff, we intend to further accelerate the growth of our cloud customers in Africa and around the globe,” Midgley said.
South African businesses were among the earliest adopters of Amazon Web Services when it launched in the country, eNCA reports.
“Customers based in South Africa are using Amazon Web Services to run everything from development and test environments to big data analytics, from mobile, web and social applications to enterprise business applications, public sector and mission critical workloads,” the company said, according to eNCA.
There will be job openings in both offices, BusinessTech reports.
African businesses that are customers of Amazon Web Services include Entersekt, PayGate and, Travelstart, Adcorp and Medscheme, according to BusinessTech.
Many of the new jobs in South Africa will involve working on Amazon EC2 as well as new services, pioneering networking technologies and next-generation cloud software.
According to eNCA, Amazon has had a South African presence for so long due in part to the fact that former EC2 developer Chris Pinkham returned to his home country, where he helped develop the product alongside Willem van Biljon.
The two subsequently left Amazon and founded software startup Nimbula, which was acquired by Oracle in 2013, eNCA reports.
Amazon’s Johannesburg office is part of its wider investment in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
- See more at: http://afkinsider.com/101892/amazon-hiring-250-plus-employees-for-new-johannesburg-office/#sthash.TiYVsB6i.dpuf

A windfall of $25,000! How would you spend it?

What would you do with $25,000? The winner of the Pay My Mortgage, Please Sweepstakes will get to make that decision soon. Zillow will award the winner $25,000 to pay their mortgage, allowing them more financial freedom throughout the next year. Even without a mortgage, they’re eligible for the cash prize.

We asked some personal finance experts what they would do with the winnings. Compare your plan with their choices.

Real Estate Goals

If I were given $25,000 to do with as I please, the money would go toward buying a new house for my family. We’re planning on moving within the next year so the funds would just add to the down payment we’re currently building. If we weren’t in the down payment-saving mode the funds would go in our taxable brokerage account to be invested in several low-cost index funds at Vanguard. — John Schmoll of Frugal Rules

If I was given $25,000 I would make a big, $20,000 payment on my mortgage balance. It’s our last debt. I would put $2,500 into a big extended family vacation and donate $2,500 to my church. — Philip Taylor of PTMoney

If I was given $25,000, I would set $5,000 aside for our travel/vacation fund and put the rest toward paying off the balances on our rental properties. Once those are paid off, I can essentially retire from my day job, so that would be a sweet gift! — Kim Parr of EyesOnTheDollar

Family First

If I were to win $25,000 I would invest the majority of it in my daughter’s college fund. She is two and her future is extremely important to me. The rest of the money would be spent to finish the basement on the house my wife and I just purchased. — Sean Bryant of OneSmartDollar

I would split the money in half and put them into college savings accounts for my kids. My wife and I spent the first 13 years of our marriage racking up over $109,000 in credit card debt, and then spent 5 years paying it all off. Because of that, we have not saved up as we had wanted to help with our children’s education. — Travis Pizel of EnemyOfDebt

Dig Out of Debt

If I was given $25,000 to spend I would put that money directly toward my law school debt. — Natalie Bacon of TheFinancialGirl

Take Care of Business

I’d put it in my business account. I’m self-employed, and our business runs lean, but having that much cash in our account would help us level up in ways that we can’t on a shoestring. — Kathleen Celmins of FrugalPortland

Diversify

If I had $25,000, I would use it in a few different ways. I would max out my Roth IRA with some of the money (about $4,000). I would take $10,000 and put it toward my basement refinishing project. I would put $6,000 into a few individual investing accounts outside of retirement. I would then take the rest ($5,000) and take my family on long vacation in the Mediterranean. — Grayson Bell of DebtRoundUp

Because our main goals in life are travel and retirement, The Debt Free Guys are strategic with every dollar we get, whether through work or winnings. For that reason, we don’t have a profound, one-word answer. Because Uncle Sam always has his hand out, we would first calculate our tax payment on the $25,000. For us, it would be about $5,000. We’d set that aside in a savings account until our taxes were due the following year. We can’t forget those in need, so we’d give $1,000 to charity. Our favorite and one we donate to now is Project Angel Heart in Denver, CO. We’d then think about the long-term benefits with this money and put $5,000 each in our Roth IRAs for investing, making a net contribution of $10,000. Even though the rate of return on the investment wouldn’t be on par with investing in the market, we’d invest another $7,000 on a home remodel project. Finally, because we love travel, we’d put $2,000 towards a vacation for that year. This way we see immediate and long-term benefits with this money. — David Auten & John Schneider of DebtFreeGuys

Want a shot at $25,000 to pay your mortgage or turn some of your dreams into reality? Enter the sweepstakes before August 31, 2015 for a chance to win.