BBC news 2010-03-09 加文本

2010-03-09 BBC

BBC News with Mary Small

Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan has sacked the country's National Security Adviser in the wake of ethnic violence that left hundreds dead at the weekend. The announcement was made after a special security meeting in the capital Abuja. Earlier, police said they had restored order to three villages in the center of the country where the violence occurred. Here is Caroline Duffield.

Nigeria's acting President Goodluck Jonathan was closeted in a meeting with security officials all afternoon. It broke up, and it was confirmed that the powerful National Security Adviser had been sacked. Abdullahi Muktar Sarki is replaced with Aliyu Gusau, a retired general. It comes amid the ongoing security crisis in Plateau State. Hundreds of corpses are still being counted and buried after areas, south of Jos town, returned to furious bloodletting at the weekend.

The United States has eased sanctions on Iran, Sudan and Cuba in an effort to increase the use of the Internet and social networking sites there. The new regulations will authorize the export of web-based services including instant messaging. Kim Ghattas reports.

Internet freedom is fast becoming a principle of American foreign policy. The Treasury Department said that its decision to lift the ban on export of Internet software and services would make it easier for people in Iran, Sudan and Cuba to use the Internet and communicate with each other as well as the outside world. The statement added this would allow people in those countries to exercise their most basic rights. The technology will likely be bought by small businesses, and some of it will help circumvent government restrictions of the use of programs like Twitter and even Internet-based email accounts.

The Ugandan government says it'll have to relocate around half a million people living in mountainous areas because of the danger of mudslides. Hundreds of people are thought to have been killed last week by a huge mudslide on the slopes of Mount Elgon, in the east of the country. Here is Will Ross.

The State Minister for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru told the BBC the government had no other choice than to relocate 300,000 people living on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, as well as 200,000 people from the Ruwenzori Mountains and Kigezi region, in the west of the country. Mr Ecweru admitted that people would be reluctant to move from their ancestral homes, and he said that it would be a major challenge to find suitable land for them.

The German Justice Minister has described Vatican confidentiality rules as a wall of silence. She was outlining progress in prosecutors' inquiries into alleged child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy. Investigations are now underway in 18 of the Catholic Church's 27 dioceses in Germany. The Minister was referring to a Vatican confidentiality rule which requires all allegations to be first investigated by the Church itself.

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President Obama has strongly criticized health insurance companies in a renewed push for the passage of his stalled health care reforms. In a speech in Philadelphia, he said insurance companies were denying coverage to some and raising premiums for others in a bid to maximize their profits. The White House wants the House of Representatives to vote on the bill in two weeks’ time.

The European Union's Human Rights watchdog has said that Britain's forthcoming general election will be in breach of human rights because prisoners aren't allowed to vote. The Committee of Foreign Ministers said it was seriously concerned by the British government's failure to apply an EU ruling that banning prisoners from voting was illegal. The Committee said it would consider the issue again in June, which would most likely be after the British election.

Scientists think they found a species of tiny wood-eating marine crustaceans that could help them develop new bio-fuels. They say the creatures called gribble have a unique digestive system that can turn wood into sugar. With more details, here is our environment reporter Matt Mcgrath.

The wood-boring gribble have long been the bane of sailors' lives, causing large amounts of damage to boats and piers. But researchers at two British universities say the creatures' unique abilities to digest the apparently indigestible could be very useful in converting wood and straw into liquid bio-fuels. Enzymes found in the stomachs of gribble are able to turn the cellulose and lignin in wood into sugars. The scientists hope to be able to decode the genes that make these enzymes, and then produce them on an industrial scale. Sugars could then be fermented to produce alcohol for fuel.

State media in Cuba has accused a dissident journalist of blackmail, 12 days after he began refusing food in protest against the treatment of political prisoners. In its first reference to the hunger strike, the Communist Party daily Granma accused the journalist Guillermo Farinas of being an American agent.

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