Bain

DurbinCulbertson

In Somalia's war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu, the BBC's Mohamed Mwalimu says more than 4,000 people are crammed into one camp, called Safety. Meanwhile, News of the World owner News International said it had authorised law firm Harbottle & Lewis to answer any questions from Scotland Yard and the Commons home affairs committee about its work for the company. The BBC's Africa correspondent Andrew Harding says the emotive word "famine" is used rarely and carefully by humanitarian organisations, and it is the first time since 1992 that the word has been applied to a situation in Somalia. Nearly half the Somali population - 3.7 million people - were in crisis, he said, with most of them in the south. During Wednesday's House of Commons debate on the phone-hacking scandal, MPs called on News International to publish the full exchanges about e-mails examined by the legal firm. In April 2010 US President Barack Obama issued an executive order naming al-Shabab a terrorist organisation, meaning no US aid could go to areas under its control, our analyst adds. The law firm had said it was being prevented from responding to "inaccurate" comments made by News International chairman James Murdoch because the company would not allow it breach its duty of client confidentiality. Labour MP Nick Raynsford said that, when Mr Coulson was at Downing Street, the cabinet secretary was alerted to evidence of illegal phone hacking, covert surveillance and hostile media briefing against a senior government official - the cabinet secretary later denied it. One woman he met arrived after a long trip, much of it on foot, carrying her one-and-a-half-year-old son on her back - only to realise, when she arrived, that he was dead.