2010-03-18 BBC
BBC news with Zoe Diamond.
The acting President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan has dissolved the government. The announcement comes a month after he assumed the executive powers because of the long illness of President Umaru Yar'Adua. Peter Greste reports from Abuja.
There's been a talk of cabinet reshuffle for weeks now, ever since the national assembly moved Goodluck Jonathan from vice-president to acting President two months ago. But few people expected the wholesale dissolution that came on Wednesday. He made no public statement but the outgoing Information Minister Dora Akunyili said permanent secretaries would take charge of the ministries until a new cabinet is appointed. No Ministers will lose their jobs, some will be reappointed, but this kind of sweeping change makes it clear the acting President is trying to assert his control over the cabinet made up largely of the President Yar'Adua's appointees.
Germany is pressing the 16 Euro countries to consider harsher measures to safeguard the stability of the European single currency. In a speech to Parliament, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the current financial crisis in Greece as the greatest challenge yet for the Euro. From Brussels Gavin Hewitt has more.
This may be remembered as the day the single currency changed. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it should be possible to expel a country from the Euro-zone if it consistently ran up big deficits. The Euro's founders were inspired by the belief that the Europe's destiny lay in closer union. A single currency was a fundamental pillar of that[1]. The presumption was always that the Euro Zone would expand. Angela Merkel raised the possibility today that it could even contract.
The Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou says he would prefer a European solution to his country's debt problem that Greece would seek help elsewhere if necessary. Mr. Papandreou was speaking at a news conference alongside the President of the European Commission after talks in Brussels. Asked by reports that Greece[2] could turn to the IMF for support. Mr. Papandreou said all options remained open.
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland Cardinal Sean Brady has apologized for any failures on his part in connection with the church investigation into abuses by a pedophile priest. The Cardinal said he was ashamed that he had not always held the values he believed in. Mark Simpson has this from Belfast.
Father Brendan Smyth[3] was one of Ireland's most notorious pedophile priests. He was jailed in 1994. Cardinal Brady knew by complaints against him in 1975, but he didn't tell the police. He wasn't a senior figure in the church at the time and he wasn't the only one who knew of the complaints. But today at the St.Patrick's Day * he admitted he hadn't acted properly. There has been a series of child abuse scandals and cover-ups in Ireland. The Pope is writing a pastoral letter[4] to Irish Catholics. It's expected at the end of this week.
That's Mark Simpson reporting from Belfast. This is Zoe Diamond with the latest world news from the BBC here in London.
A United Nation's report says nearly a quarter of a billion people around the world escaped from slum living conditions in the last decade. However the UN Human Settlements Program UN-HABITAT said the housing effort was outstripped by population growth. The head of UN-HABITAT organization Anna Tibaijuka told the BBC that the improvements in the numbers of slum dwellers are not always apparent.
Over the last years, we have seen about 24 million people lived out of the slums.Every 14 more people though are joining in the slum dwellers, so that you find improvements are not as dramatically as visible as they are[5], but improvement is taking place particularly in North Africa, in countries like in Egypt,Morocco and Tunisia.
The Paris club of rich credit countries have agreed to cancel all the debt owe to them by Afghanistan. In the statement, the group said the write-off would be worth more than a billion dollars. The Afghan government agreed to spend the additional resources on reducing poverty.
Police in Cuba have arrested the wives and mothers of dissidents after they staged a protest march in the capital Havana. The women, known as the women in white were demanding a release of some 50 government critics who were still being held after the mass arrest 7 years ago. Witnesses said about 30 of protesters were put into buses by uniformed police and driven off. They had earlier been followed and heckled by crowds of government's supporters.
President Alan Garcia of Peru has dismissed his Justice Minister for granting a pardon to a disgraced media executive. The former owner of a TV station was filmed receiving once of cash in bribes from a former senior administration official.He was pardoned because of ill health after being sentenced to 8 years in prison,but he was later seen at fashionable beaches and also at restaurants. That's the latest world news from the BBC here in London.