#HEADLINES

= President Goodluck Jonathan has nominated former governor of Bauchi State, Alhaji Adamu Mu'azu, as Chairman of the National Pension Commission.

= The Federal Executive Council has approved a loan of 100 million dollars from Indian Import Export Bank to boost power supply in three states.

 = The Senate has unanimously agreed that there should be stiffer and tougher punishment like life imprisonment for perpetrators of sexual assault.

 = The Plateau State Independent Electoral Commission has fixed January 30th, 2014, as the date for the conduct of fresh elections into local councils.

 = The 78-year old father of the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Tourism Development, Chief Nelson Belief, has been kidnapped.

 = The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) has said it is in talks with Ugandan warlord Joseph  Kony with the aim of making him surrender.

 = French authorities have named a man arrested on suspicion of carrying out recent gun attacks in Paris as Abdelhakim Dekhar.

 = More than 2,000 Afghan elders have begun their grand assembly to discuss the text of a long-awaited bilateral security agreement with the US.

 = Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi  says he is not disappointed to have been left off the shortlist for the FIFA coach of the year award.

= South African athlete, Oscar Pistorius, has been indicted on two new gun-related charges, which are believed to allege that he recklessly shot his gun out of the open sunroof of a car last year and fired someone else's handgun at a restaurant weeks before he killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

 = New Zealand singer and songwriter, Lorde spends an 8th week at the top of Billboard Hot 100 with her track “Royals”, tying Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” for most weeks at the summit this year.