Team Nigeria climbs to fifth place on All Africa Games medals table

Nigerian athletes continued to garner more medals at the ongoing All-African Games in Congo Brazzaville to place fifth on the medals table at the end of Thursday’s event.

In a statement issued from Congo on Friday, Steven Nelson, who is the Deputy Director, Press, National Sports Commission, said Nigeria now has 52 medals.

He said the 52 medals which include nine gold, 20 silver and 23 bronze, was won in Badminton, Weightlifting, Gymnastics, Cycling and Karate as at September 10.

The breakdown shows that athletes in Badminton won two silver and nine bronze medals, while athletes in Karate garnered two silver and Cycling one gold.

Athletes in Gymnastics won one bronze, while those in Weightlifting won eight gold, 18 silver and 11 bronze medals.

Team Nigeria’s improvement on the medals table followed Thursday’s impressive performance which saw Nigeria winning three gold, eight silver and nine bronze medals in Weightlifting and Badminton events respectively.

In the women’s weightlifting 75kg category, Otunlabilkis Abiodun won three gold medals; Winifred Eze Ndidi, competing in the 69kg weight category, won three silver medals; while in the men’s 85kg, Anyolewachi Micheal won bronze medal.

The outing of Team Nigeria in cycling was also impressive.

The female team comprising of Happy Okafor, Tombrapa Grikpa, Rosemary Marcus and Glory Odiase emerged first with a time of 37:12:19 seconds to clinch the gold medal in the 25km race.

Brain game ‘improves lives of schizophrenia patients’

A computer-based brain-training game could improve the daily lives of people with schizophrenia, say University of Cambridge researchers.

Tests on a small number of patients who played the game over four weeks found improvements in memory and learning.

This could help people to get back to work or studying after a diagnosis.

Schizophrenia is a mental health condition that causes a range of psychological symptoms, from behaviour changes to hallucinations.

Many patients also experience cognition problems, which affect their memory and ability to function independently.

Designed and developed by researchers at Cambridge with the help of patients, the brain-training game has a wizard theme with various levels of difficulty.

It asks players to enter rooms, find items in boxes and remember where they put them, testing their so-called episodic memory.

Better-equipped

Prof Barbara Sahakian, from the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and who researched the impact of the game, said patients who played it made significantly fewer errors in tests afterwards on their memory and brain functioning.

She said this was an indication that they were better prepared to function in the real world.

Prof Sahakian said treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia was important, but slow progress was being made towards developing a drug treatment.

She added that the memory game could help where drugs had so far failed – with no side-effects.

“Because the game is interesting, even those patients with a general lack of motivation are spurred on to continue the training.”

Although the results are promising, the research team said more research was needed on larger groups of patients to confirm the findings.

The researchers added that any memory training games had to be used in conjunction with medication and psychological therapies.

Game of Thrones leads Emmy nominations 2015

Game of Thrones is leading the Emmy award nominations with 24 nominations.

American Horror Story: Freak Show and mini-series Olive Kitteridge received 19 and 13 nominations.

House of Cards, Mad Men are up for 11 nominations while Downton Abbey and Wolf Hall are up for eight.

Wolf Hall’s Mark Rylance is up against Ricky Gervais and David Oyelowo in the best actor in a mini-series or film category.

Gervais is shortlisted for his role in the Derek Special while Oyelowo has been recognised for his role as Peter Snowden in Nightingale.

Rylance’s co-star Damian Lewis is nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall.

Emma Thompson is up for best actress in a mini-series or film for her part in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street Live From Lincoln Center – she is up against Maggie Gyllenhaal for her role in the BBC drama The Honourable Woman.

Queen Latifah, Jessica Lange, Felicity Huffman and Frances McDormand have also been nominated in that category.

Notable omissions include Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory who has won four times for best actor in a comedy and is the best paid actor on US television.

Julianna Margulies, who won best actress in a drama series for The Good Wife last year, didn’t get a nomination and hit show Empire missed out on a best drama nomination.

Friends stars

There are nominations for former Friends co-stars – Matt Le Blanc, who played Joey, has been nominated for his part in comedy series Episodes while Lisa Kudrow aka Phoebe has made the shortlist for her part in The Comeback.

Gervais’s Office collaborator Stephen Merchant has landed a nomination for his TV movie Hello Ladies: The Movie – he has a writing nod for that film too.

It is up against ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Curtain, Poirot’s Last Case, Bessie, Killing Jesus, Nightingale and the critically maligned Grace of Monaco.

Jim Carter and Joanne Froggatt have been nominated for their roles in Downton Abbey.

While Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey and Diana Rigg from Game Of Thrones all make the acting award categories.

Uzo Aduba from Orange is the New Black and Cat Deeley presenter of So You Think You Can Dance announced the nominees for the 67th annual awards.

Their shows were nominated and they received personal nominations for awards too.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Andy Samberg will host the ceremony in Los Angeles on 20 September.