“Nigeria” on The Daily Caller

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI issued pleas for peace to reign across the world during his traditional Christmas address Sunday, a call marred by Muslim extremists who bombed a Catholic church in Nigeria, striking after worshippers celebrated Mass. (more)

A suicide car-bomb attack on the United Nations office in Nigeria’s capital city Abuja killed at least 18 on Friday, and a radical Muslim sect from that country’s northeastern region has already made claims of responsibility through telephone calls to broadcasters at the BBC and Voice of America. (more)

When the new Congress convenes in January, all eyes will be fixed on the economy.  There is, however, another policy crisis: nine years have passed since September 11, 2001 and fourteen years since Osama bin Laden declared war against the U.S., yet the threat from the al Qaeda network continues to grow.  Meanwhile, the U.S. response remains ad hoc, lacking an overarching strategy and a clear procedural approach to al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.  Congress must help correct this deficit. (more)

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Authorities in Nigeria say as many as 40,000 girls and women have been trafficked to nearby West African countries to serve as sex workers. (more)

“Hey, Frank. Can you believe it was only 18 months ago you guys announced the sale of the first piece of BP — that $10 billion Alaska plot they nicknamed Palin’s Peaks — to start paying for their Gulf clean up?  And today, they’re auctioning off their last field, that hell-hole in Nigeria.” (more)

China has at least $2.5 trillion in foreign exchange and must, due to its own balance of payments rules, invest it all overseas. Most unavoidably goes into American bonds, the only market big enough to absorb it.[1] However, since the beginning of 2005, the PRC has invested almost $200 billion in foreign assets outside bonds. Official Chinese data are unhelpful, but The Heritage Foundation’s China Global Investment Tracker sorts non-bond spending by country and sector. The tracker is current through June 30, 2010. (more)

If there’s one thing everyone knows these days, whether they’re happy about it or not, it’s that we live in a “global” economy.  This fact is taken as so obvious that anyone who disputes it is regarded as not so much wrong, but as simply ignorant—not even worth arguing with.  So it may come as a shock to many that, in reality, the cliché that we live in a borderless global economy does not survive serious examination.  The key is to ignore the Thomas Friedmanesque rhetoric flooding the media and get down to some hard numbers. (more)

An eagerly-awaited submarine cable linking West Africa to Europe has gone live, paving the way for cheaper and more reliable internet access in one of the world’s fastest-growing telecoms markets, its operators said on Friday. (more)

I am not a man of science. Biology is as far as I got in high school. I passed by the grace of an aging professor who blessed me with a D. Physics was an academic horror I was asked by faculty not to undertake. (more)

YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) – The southern Nigerian oil state of Bayelsa accused its deputy governor of misconduct on Tuesday, deepening a political standoff and heightening the risk of unrest ahead of elections next year. (more)

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s drug enforcement agency says it has arrested a politician who allegedly swallowed 2 kilograms (nearly 4.5 pounds) of cocaine to fund his election campaign. (more)

There’s a first-floor apartment in the Armour Square neighborhood where actor Ben Stiller lived. Then David Duchovny moved in, as did Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis. (more)

On April 5, there was an explosion at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia; 29 lives were lost. Fifteen days later, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico; 11 lives were lost. These two human and environmental tragedies share more than just the month of April. They both, sadly, provide important headlines that pull back the curtain on the extent of our national energy appetite. And they should be a stark wake-up call for the large numbers among us who take for granted our access to reliable and affordable energy as to the complexity of our nation’s energy DNA. (more)

Last week we reported that Americans are now paying 80 cents more per gallon for gasoline—an increase of 39 percent compared to this time last year. We also discussed how one major cost element—federal and state taxes—inflates your cost at the pump. Noting the overall retail price at the pump is too high, we promised to delve into other factors and cost components in this edition. (more)

Reporting from Kumbwada, Nigeria – The palace, under a rusted corrugated roof, looks mostly like a shed. Only one delicate pair of feet in its single room is shod, and they are in black rubber flip-flops. (more)

“He did not give us any reason for the dissolution of the cabinet. Permanent secretaries will take charge of the ministries from tomorrow,” outgoing Information Minister Dora Akunyili told reporters after a lengthy cabinet meeting. (more)

Hundreds of people, including many women and children, were killed in ethnic violence near the city of Jos in Nigeria at the weekend, officials say. (more)