Spider Clues

The credit boom in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years has been cause for almost as much consternation as celebration. While the emergence of Africa in capital markets is hailed as a significant development, the continent’s growing exposure to the global market has left it increasingly vulnerable to precisely the sort of shocks that are upsetting investors’ balance this year. Across emerging markets, prices for assets are falling as investors consider not just the impact of a possible US interest rate rise but the particular attributes of the countries themselves, against a backdrop of low growth in developed markets and falling commodity prices. The prevailing mood, according to Kamakshya Trivedi, analyst at Goldman Sachs, is caution.  Yet the size of Africa and the variety of countries it holds mean that quick judgments should be avoided, says Yvonne Ike, head of sub-Saharan Africa coverage at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. While the effect of globalisation has left Africa ...

President’s list of nominees doesn’t include portfolios Adeosun was finance commissioner in Ogun state for four years Kemi Adeosun, a former investment banker and London-trained accountant, may be Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s pick for finance minister, according to analysts including Bismarck Rewane, chief executive officer of the Financial Derivatives Co. Adeosun, who was finance commissioner of Ogun state in the south-west of Nigeria for the past four years, is the most likely candidate to fill the role from a list of cabinet nominees Buhari sent to lawmakers, said Rewane and Manji Cheto, vice president of risk adviser Teneo Intelligence. “Adeosun has a strong background,” Rewane said by phone on Tuesday from the commercial capital, Lagos. “She has a lot of energy and is high on integrity. She’s pro-reform and is a realist.” Buhari’s cabinet nominations come more than four months after the 72-year-old former military leader took office following a decisiv...

Just hours after  three sponsors of the Islamist sect Boko Haram were arrested , another suspected sponsor, Aliyu Hussaini, who has also been parading himself as an army general, has been arrested. According to a statement by the Nigerian army on Tuesday, Hussaini was arrested by soldiers of the 33rd Artillery Brigade in Bauchi state during a raid, The nation reports. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter The Boko Haram sponsor who had been parading himself as an army general “The 33 Artillery Brigade, Nigerian Army, has recorded another landmark success in the ongoing Operation Zaman Lafiyah as troops of the brigade recently arrested one Aliyu Hussaini, popularly known as Colonel, a suspected Boko Haram terrorist and an Impostor who has been parading himself as a Brigadier-General in the Nigerian Army. “The troops, who were acting on a tip-off, said Aliyu Hussaini was a sponsor and also a member of the Boko Haram terrorist organisation. (They) carried out a raid op...

President Muhammadu Buhari President Muhammadu Buhari says his government is currently preparing the 2016 national budget that will include fresh policies and measures aimed at encouraging rapid diversification of the economy. He emphasised that the fresh policies would be given full effect in the 2016 budget and would be a departure from the nation’s current over-dependence on the oil and gas sector. The president was speaking at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa in Abuja yesterday while receiving a delegation of French investors, the Movement of the Enterprises of France (MEDEF), led by its president, Mr. Pierre Gattaz. The French investors’ visit to Nigeria was a follow-up to President Buhari’s recent trip to Paris. The president said the new policies would boost domestic manufacturing and attract greater investment to Nigeria’s agricultural and mining sectors. He urged Gattaz and the French trade mission, comprising over 50 companies with interest in manufacturing, agricultur...

While Sunday saw the 58 th  anniversary of “Leave It To Beaver’s” first episode premiere, Monday there’s another “beav” in the news – one whose debut beat the Cleavers by about 166 million years. According to a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, an ancient fossil belonging to a previously unknown species of beaver–like mammal has been discovered in northwestern New Mexico. 

There’s no shortage of  performance advice , is there? The elephant in the room is the fact that it’s  challenging to interpret : Everything comes with caveats and disclaimers, and sometimes one piece of advice can seem to actively contradict another. Phrases like “The DOM is slow” or “Always use CSS animations” make for great headlines, but the truth is often far more nuanced. Take something like loading time, the most common performance topic by far. The problem with loading time is that some people measure  Speed Index , others go after first paint, and still others use  body.onload ,  DOMContentLoaded  or perhaps some other event. It’s rarely consistent. When it comes to other ways to measure performance, you’ve probably seen enough JavaScript benchmarks to last a lifetime. You may have also heard that 60 FPS matters. But when? All the time? Seems unrealistic.