Nigeria’s acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, has dissolved the country’s cabinet, government sources say. Read the full story

U.S. security services were aware ‘a Nigerian’ in Yemen was planning a terrorist attack weeks before a passenger jet was targeted on Christmas Day. ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.

Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, is being held at a federal prison in Michigan on a charge of trying to destroy an aircraft.

He attempted to ignite explosive stored in his underpants as the flight from Amsterdam, carrying 280 passengers, made its final descent into Detroit on Friday.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an alliance of militants based in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, said the action was retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen.

The group said in an internet statement that the failed attack exposed the ‘large myth’ of American and international security services and claimed only a ‘technical error’ had prevented the bomb from detonating.

It also emerged today,  in a case bearing chilling similarities to the attempt by Abdulmutallab, that a Somali man tried to board a commercial airliner last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion.

He was arrested before the November 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then on to Djibouti and Dubai. He is now in custody,

The tools the man carried are similar to those found on Abdulmutallab.

An official familiar with the incident confirmed that the substances carried by the Somali passenger could have been used as an explosive device.

Like the captured Somali, Abdulmutallab also had a syringe filled with liquid. The substances seized from the Somali passenger are being tested.

The November incident received little attention before the Christmas Day attack but U.S. officials have now learned of the Somali case and are rushing  to investigate any possible links between it and the Detroit attempt.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and instructions from Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen – which lies across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia.

Similarly, large swathes of Somalia are controlled by an insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has ties to Al Qaeda. Western officials also say that examination of equipment used in some Somali suicide attacks leads them to believe it was originally assembled in Yemen.

Amnesty International, a global human rights watchdog, yesterday accused the Nigerian Police of being responsible for hundreds of extra-judicial executions, other unlawful killings and enforced disappearances every year. It also said the majority of the killings go uninvestigated and the police officers responsible go unpunished. Read the full story