supremacy

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World News from the BBC

The Netherlands has unfrozen $143m in seized Libyan assets and given the funds to the World Health Organisation. A spokesman for the Dutch government said the funds would be used to provide medicines and surgical equipment in areas held by rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi's forces.

Police in Nigeria have shot dead a suspected suicide bomber as he drove a car packed with explosives into the police headquarters in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. They say the Islamist sect Boko Haram, which wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, was behind the attack. Mary Harper reports.

The police said they found large quantities of gunpowder and several cans of petrol in the vehicle, enough to cause a massive explosion right at the heart of police operations in Maiduguri.

They've blamed Boko Haram, a radical Islamist sect that has for the last two years carried out numerous attacks mainly in northern Nigeria. For its side, the army is investigating alleged abuses of civilians and unlawful killings by soldiers involved in what's proving to be a long and difficult fight against Boko Haram.

President Obama has

set off

on a bus tour of Midwestern states to try to regain the political initiative after weeks of bad economic news and repeated attacks by Republican opponents. He's visiting Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa to spur his supporters in three states he took in the last presidential election, and can ill afford to lose next year.