A round-up of today's world news stories in brief
Full Nigerian cabinet dissolved
ABUJA – Nigeria’s acting president Goodluck Jonathan dissolved the cabinet yesterday in a further step to assert his authority just over a month after assuming executive powers.
“He did not give us any reason for the dissolution of the cabinet. Permanent secretaries will take charge of the ministries from tomorrow,” said outgoing information minister Dora Akunyili.
The powerful governors of Nigeria’s 36 states and senior ruling party officials must now put forward nominees for new ministers who will be screened and approved by the senate, a process which could take weeks.
In the interim, Mr Jonathan is the sole administrator of Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil and gas producer, because as acting president he has no deputy. He took over the role in Feb- ruary during the three-month absence of president Umaru Yar’Adua who was under- going medical treatment in a Saudi clinic. – (Reuters)
ElBaradei memoir to look at Iraq war
UNITED NATIONS – Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN nuclear watchdog, will disclose details in his memoirs of conversations with US officials who pushed for a war in Iraq that he fought in vain to prevent, the publisher said. The book by ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is called Crawling Away From Armageddon and will be published in autumn 2011 by Henry Holt and Co’s Metropolitan Books.
The memoirs will be “rich with anecdotes from the centre of the nuclear fray,” said Mr Holt.
Mr ElBaradei will disclose discussions from before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 between UN weapons inspectors and senior members of former US president George W Bush’s administration such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.
Mr ElBaradei was at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency for 12 years from 1997. – (Reuters)
Vatican opens Medjugorje inquiry
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has opened an investigation into reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Medjugorje, southern Bosnia, which have drawn more than 30 million pilgrims and divided the Catholic Church.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s top doctrinal body, has named an international commission of inquiry headed by Italian cardinal Camillo Ruini, a confidant of Pope John Paul, the Vatican said yesterday.
Since six children first reported visions of the Virgin Mary on a hillside near Medjugorje in 1981 Catholics have debated whether the visions were a modern-day miracle, wishful thinking or an elaborate fraud.
“This commission, composed of cardinals, bishops, theologians and experts, will work in a confidential manner and submit the result of its investigation to the Congregation,” the Vatican said. – (Reuters)