EXCLUSIVE: 'I DID NOT RIG ANY VOTING SITE' - INI EDO

Lovely actress, Ini Edo is in the news again! Recently social media has been abuzz with allegations of vote rigging of the African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) by several actresses but most notably Ini.
In a hotly contested voting spree, which had Genevieve Nnaji leading initially, then finally being overtaken by Uche Jombo, Ini is said to have suddenly overtaken her with several thousand votes, leaving many very upset and angry. Allegations of vote rigging, and use of rigging software being employed, etc have been leveled against her.
There are many holes being punched in the whole AFRIFF polls. There have also been wide spread complaints in the categories such as in the Best Actor category where a London-based PR consultant said Desmond Elliot was intially said to have over 3,000 votes only for her to discover 45 minutes later that his votes had been decreased to 1,400 while another contestant Ali Nuhu's votes were inched up to 700!
The Best Producer/Director category was not left out with a blogger mentioning that he had just voted for a nominee and the person he voted for, was just 45 votes behind the then leading nominee only for the said nominees votes to be doubled by a hundred votes right before his very eyes!  The AFRIFF polls has since been suspended with the explanation being that the site has been compromised.
The fact of the matter was that the entire AFRIFF polls was flawed from the beginning. Pitching 18 prominent actresses against themselves to vie for one position is in itself asking for trouble! Showing the public the immediate result was also a combustive decision.
Meanwhile Ini who had been silent at first, finally decided to break her silence and respond to the public through Twitter.  She tweeted, 'I did not rig de votes or use any software to raise my votes,I came on tweeter and my fb page and asked my fans to vote 4 me.I heard some even went on air and announced.this allegation is a calculated attempt to smear my name for whtever reasons.to all my fans who voted,thank you.I appreciate all ur support and love,Godbless.happy thanksgiving Day'.

Newsmaker: Technocrat "oil man" takes charge of Libya lifeline

TRIPOLI (Reuters) — Libya's new oil minister is seen as the right kind of technocrat, deeply experienced yet not too closely tied to the former regime of Muammar Gaddafi, to help restore the OPEC member's economic lifeline after eight months of war.
Abdulrahman Ben Yazza is in his mid-50s and brings experience from both Libya's oil industry and Italian firm Eni, the largest foreign oil producer in Libya before the war.

New Libya Cabinet

He worked at Libya's Waha Oil company and at the state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC), culminating in a seat on the management committee. He then headed a joint venture between NOC and Eni.
"He's an excellent oil man," NOC Chairman Nuri Berruien told Reuters. "He's a first-class professional ... The most important (thing) is that he's from the oil patch. It is very important, it is good to work with people who speak your tongue."
A source close to Ben Yazza said the married father of four from Tripoli had been living in Milan for the last few years and traveling frequently to Libya.
"Ben Yazza is an old guy, well known and well liked. He knows Eni very well but that doesn't mean he will be pro-Eni ... he will be pro-Libyan," one Libyan oil industry source said.
"He's more a technocrat politician. Remember this is a transitory government, a bit like the Monti government in Italy ...It doesn't represent the power equilibrium and none of the big shots are in it."
Of all the new appointments in Prime Minister Abdurrahim El Keib's government, set to lead the country to elections next year, analysts and industry sources said Ben Yazza is seen as the most technocratic and least colored by the country's regional politics.
"In meetings he would listen to everyone's opinion," a person who worked with him at the NOC said, describing Ben Yazza as "very respectable."
NEW FACES
Before the February revolt, Libya's oil policy was run by the NOC headed by Shokri Ghanem, who defected in June and is believed to be living in Europe.
Officials have since indicated there will be changes, with plans to split commercial arrangements from policy.
Ben Yazza himself is seen as somewhat independent despite his NOC history, as a man who reportedly clashed at one point with Ghanem and who carries no strong affiliation with the ousted regime.
He is "very competent with a strong personality," one diplomatic source said.
"There were other candidates in the sector who had good international pedigrees, but they were often very closely associated with Col. Gaddafi - or they amplified their connections with Gaddafi in order to increase their prestige," said Geoff Porter, a U.S. independent expert on Libya.

New NASA rover to scout for life's habitats on Mars

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) — A nuclear-powered rover as big as a compact car is set to begin a nine-month journey to Mars this weekend to learn if the planet is or ever was suitable for life.

This artist's conception depicts the rover Curiosity, of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, as it uses its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument to investigate the composition of a rock surface on Mars is pictured in this NASA publicity photograph released to Reuters November 23, 2011.REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout

The launch of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory aboard an unmanned United Space Alliance Atlas 5 rocket is set for 10:02 a.m. EST Saturday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.
The mission is the first since NASA's 1970s-era Viking program to directly tackle the age-old question of whether there is life in the universe beyond Earth.
"This is the most complicated mission we have attempted on the surface of Mars," Peter Theisinger, Mars Science Lab project manager with NASA prime contractor Lockheed Martin, told reporters at a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday.
The consensus of scientists after experiments by the twin Viking landers was that life did not exist on Mars. Two decades later, NASA embarks on a new strategy to find signs of past water on Mars, realizing the question of life could not be examined without a better understanding of the planet's environment.
"Everything we know about life and what makes a livable environment is peculiar to Earth," said astrobiologist Pamela Conrad of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and a deputy lead scientist for the mission.
"What things look like on Mars are a function of not only the initial set of ingredients that Mars had when it was made, but the processes that have affected Mars," she said.
NEW MARS ROVER
Without a large enough moon to stabilize its tilt, Mars has undergone dramatic climate changes over the eons as its spin axis wobbled closer or farther from the sun.
The history of what happened on Mars during those times is chemically locked in its rocks, including whether liquid water and other ingredients believed necessary for life existed on the planet's surface, and if so, for how long.
In 2004, the golf cart-sized rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars' equator to tackle the question of water.
Their three-month missions grew to seven years, with Spirit succumbing to the harsh winter in the past year and Opportunity beginning a search in a new area filled with water-formed clays. Both rovers found signs that water mingled with rocks during Mars' past.
The new rover, nicknamed Curiosity, shifts the hunt to other elements key to life, particularly organics.
"One of the ingredients of life is water," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's astrobiology program. "We're now looking to see if we can find other conditions that are necessary for life by defining habitability or what does it take in the environment to support life."
The spacecraft, which is designed to last two years, is outfitted with 10 tools to analyze one particularly alluring site on Mars called Gale Crater. The site is a 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide basin that has a layered mountain of deposits stretching 3 miles above its floor, twice as tall as the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon.
Scientists do not know how the mound formed but suspect it is the eroded remains of sediment that once completely filled the crater.
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