ROME –IFAD staff held hands singing Kumbaya recently but Director General Kanayo Nwanze has ended the euphoria by hiring a new Budget Director from his native Nigeria, UN sources say.

ROME–American Overseas School Head Beth Pfannl reveals in an interview how the “American system of education produces students like global leader Steve Jobs.”

ROME – Poverty buster José Graziano da Silva surprised neighbours the other day when he kicked in the doors of the elevator in his smart apartment block on the Aventino hill, FAO sources say.

 The Food and Agricultural Organisation Director General, known for bawling out subordinates in his previous job in charge of the UN agency’s Latin American division, evidently put the boot into the lift in a fit of rage over frustrations in his ambitious plans to end world hunger, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

 ROME – Chilean Samuel Varas, an associate of FAO DG Jose da Silva Graziano, has been hired as interim IT chief operating officer at the agency, bypassing normal UN procedures, FAO sources say.

 Varas’s comfortable dlrs 20,000 a month plus emoluments D1 appointment was disclosed in a recent email by FAO CIO Florentin Albu. “There was no competitive recruitment for this,” a veteran FAO watcher commented.

 “The ‘ad-interim’ is the loophole. It will also allow Varas to assume Albu’s role once Albu goes in August when his contract expires.”