BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. I'm Tim Franks. President Trump may have signalled that he's keen to wrap up his war in Iran within a few weeks. His rhetoric, though, continues to be fearsome over what he's about to unleash. Overnight in Washington, he posted his latest threat on social media. Now, military, the greatest and most powerful by far anywhere in the world, hasn't even started destroying what's left in Iran. Bridge is next, then electric power plants. In other words, this was detailed to go with a rather more expansive warning he gave in his address on US TV on Wednesday evening Washington time. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They're all dead. There's obviously some debate over whether there are indeed discussions ongoing about terms to end this conflict and also about how far there has been a change of regime in Iran. What's also clear is that Iran is still able to hit back, obviously, with its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, that passageway so important to global trade flows, and also in its ability to launch at least some missiles and drones around the region, including the United Arab Emirates. Our correspondent Lorna Gordon is in Dubai. The latest round of attacks from Iran appear to have targeted oil and gas infrastructure in the region. Of course, it comes after Donald Trump threatened Iran again and warned there was much more to follow after attacking that bridge. Overnight, he repeated his warning that electricity-generating plants could be next. What we've seen in the early hours of today that in Kuwait, an oil refinery, one of its biggest oil refineries, there was targeted. It's not the first time it has been attacked by drones. This latest attack resulted in fires breaking out. Specialist crews were deployed to try and contain the blaze at the plant, which refines more than 300,000 barrels of oil a day. Iran attacked another bit of infrastructure. A desalination plant was damaged. And then across in Abu Dhabi, one of the Emirates, operations have been suspended at its biggest natural gas processing facility after a fire caused by falling debris from successful military interception, we are told. The site there, crucially, is also the starting point for a crude oil pipeline to a key port which sits outside of the Strait of Hormuz. Lorna Gordon in Dubai. Let's get some further reaction to President Trump's threats to bomb Iran as he put it back to the Stone Age. First, what is the mood among the people of Iran? The regime has imposed an internet blackout and security forces are threatening anyone passing information to the foreign media. But using trusted sources, the BBC has managed to obtain testimonies from ordinary Iranians suffering under wartime conditions. We've hidden their identities and are not using their real voices. This report from our correspondent Fergul Qeem. It is a harsh spring of broken glass, wind blowing through collapsed buildings that sends dust sweeping along empty streets. For the people of Tehran, the only news they can trust is that which they see and hear happening before them. From inside Iran, we've obtained first hand testimony of people trapped between American and Israeli airstrikes and state repression. We saw smoke rising into the sky, but we didn't know what place had been targeted. Satara is an office worker in Tehran. After that, everyone working in the company panicked. People were shouting and screaming and running away. For one to two hours the situation stayed like that, complete chaos. Now like millions of Iranians, she's unemployed and feels trapped in her home, running out of food with no money to buy any. I don't know how this massive wave of unemployment will be handled. There is no support system and the government will do nothing for all these unemployed people. I believe the real war will start if this war ends without any outcome. Nightly bombing has stolen her ability to sleep naturally. She lies awake, worrying about the present and the future. I can honestly say I haven't slept for several nights and days in a row. I try to relax by taking very strong painkillers so I can sleep. The anxiety is so intense that it has affected my body. When I think about the future and imagine those conditions, I truly don't know what to do. Satara has now fled the city for a rural area. As she left she passed the ruins of the latest air strikes. Tina is a nurse in a hospital outside Tehran. I witnessed extremely distressing scenes. They were not bringing in the wounded. They were bringing in bodies that were not even recognisable. Some had no hands, some had no legs. It was horrifying. Tina says she's haunted by the images of suffering she's lost. A pregnant woman was brought to us. Because of bombardment in her area, her home was close to a military centre and their house was damaged. When they brought her to the hospital, neither the mother nor the fetus was alive. They ambushed us in one of the alleys, the alley leading to the square. They fired bullets and tear gas. These are the pellets near the spinal cord and these are the ones near my heart and on top of it. This here is the trace of tear gas and this bruising is from the force of impact. Benam is a former political prisoner here showing an x-ray of the damage done by a shotgun to his body. He was wounded by regime gunfire in the January anti-government demonstrations. Then the state killed thousands of its own people and the threat of that violence is ever present. Benam is now suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Once you see how easily your life can be threatened, that a simple incident or a twist of fate can mean death or survival. After that, your life no longer holds the same value for you and that experience makes you care less about yourself. I will not heal until the day we are in a free world looking back on the suffering we endured in an unfree world and laughing at it. But in Iran, one month into the war, the hour of laughter seems very far away. Firkul Keen with some of the voices of those under this intense bombardment in Iran. Among those watching from the outside is the United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher. What does he make of the conduct of this war and some of the language its orchestrators are using about how they're going to wage it? Well those are concerns echoed by 100 specialists in international law who warned of suicide. This is a series of violations by the US, Israel and Iran in this latest war in the Middle East. One of the signatories to that letter is Rebecca Hamilton, professor of law at American University in Washington DC and she joins us now. Professor Hamilton, thank you for your time here on News Air. Is this war really being waged in a different way to recent wars? Yes. So it is, first of all, the decision to initiate the war is in conflict with the clear violation of the UN Charter. It goes against the cornerstone provision that prevents or prohibits states from using force against other states subject to certain narrow exceptions, none of which apply here. So there's first of all the fundamental concern about how the war was initiated and then when we look at the conduct of the war, what is concerning is when you couple the conduct that we are seeing, civilian sites and civilians that have been struck, may or may not have been the intended targets, but certainly it looks like appropriate precautions were not taken to distinguish between civilian and military targets. That often happens in war, but when you couple it with what we're seeing this time that is different, is this alarming disrespect at a rhetorical level from senior members of the Trump administration for the laws of war at all? Does the rhetorical level really matter? I mean, yes, we heard, for example, early on the US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegceth, saying no stupid rules of engagement will tie the US military's hands in their campaign. You could see that as braggadaccio, you could see it in more serious terms. Why do you think that it has to be taken more seriously? It has to be taken more seriously when you couple it with the action that we're seeing on the ground. So if you had rhetoric that was completely disconnected from what we're seeing on the ground, then maybe you could dismiss it as some kind of deeply misguided bravado. However, when we are seeing in actual fact schools that are being bombed, bridges that are being bombed, and when you have serious questions about whether these are military targets, certainly a number of them we can say they clearly are not, and you put that together with the rhetoric that is dismissing rules of engagement as stupid in the words of Pete Hegceth, that's when the concern really kind of comes to the fore. Yeah, and I'm sure that the US military, which hasn't actually come to any conclusion about that initial strike on the girls' school, which had those ruinous consequences, they would say, look, we never deliberately targeted school as far as a bridge is concerned, I guess there could be the argument as to whether it could be used for some sort of military resupply. I mean, these are questions that need to be thrashed out. I just wonder whether you think that the direction of travel is sort of back to a time when, in a sense, the collaboration was the rules-based order that you hold so much store by, that what's happened since the Second World War that actually maybe we're going back to a time when war is going to be prosecuted in the way that wars have always been prosecuted. I think that is exactly the risk and that is exactly why more than 100 US-faced international lawyers came together with this letter to signal our concern about what we are seeing in the Second World War. And to emphasize that it is absolutely vital that we fight to uphold the very hard-won struggles in the aftermath of two world wars to say that we really need a system that respects the U.N. Charter, the international rules around how we conduct ourselves in the midst of war are there to protect both civilians and to protect our people. And that is worth fighting for. More on that in about 20 minutes. Our main headline this hour, Iran has continued its attacks on its Gulf neighbors, striking critical infrastructure in Kuwait after President Trump threatened to escalate further the U.S. bombing campaign. You're with New Zealand Life from the BBC, I'm Tim Franks. The U.S. military may be involved in a major conflict overseas but the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth, is also it appears fighting time to wage battles at home in the Pentagon itself. He's just fired the head of the U.S. Army, General Randy George. It's a remarkable move to make in the middle of the war but it appears to be part of Mr. Hexeth's long-running campaign to remake the U.S. military more in what he sees as his own unencumbered, hard-charging image. Eric Schmidt is the National Security Correspondent for the New York Times. What's he been reading into Mr. Hexeth's decision to get rid of General George? The differences between Hexeth and George were not rooted in any philosophical differences over the direction of the U.S. Army. Rather, it was a product of Hexeth's long-running grievances with the Army as a service and battles over personnel decisions and his troubled relationship with General George's boss, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll. Driscoll was a close friend of the vice president, JD Vance. They were roommates in law school and Hexeth's been trying to get Driscoll fired for the last several months and Driscoll's been able to use his relationship with Vance to fend Hexeth off. So there's been brewing tensions over different issues. Most recently, they clashed over Hexeth's desire to an ultimate decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals. Which is unusual, isn't it? It's very unusual. Usually, the Army basically has purview to decide through these promotion boards where they look at the officer's record and as long as there are no blemishes, there are no investigations for serious matters underway. This is all kind of an in-house type thing and the defense secretary signs off on them as kind of a pro forma move. What was interesting about this was that two of the officers targeted by Hexeth are black and two are women, raising questions about Hexeth's potential bias in race and gender. And what is his problem as far as you understand it with the Army secretary? So the civilian appointed by President Trump to oversee the Army, Dan Driscoll, because as you say, I mean this is not somebody who's sort of from the old regime who was sort of worked under the Biden administration or anything like that. Where do you see the conflict there coming from? Well, I think it boils down to basically personality disputes. In particular, both sources inside the Hexeth camp as well as in the Army say Hexeth felt threatened by Driscoll. Obviously, when Hexeth was taking criticism for some of his early actions, particularly the so-called signal gate scandal where he spoke about classified information about a strike in Yemen with a journalist on a signal call. There are lots of rumors that Driscoll would be the guy who would replace Hexeth. Should Hexeth be fired or be forced to leave the job? So I think Hexeth in feeling some kind of paranoia, this according to sources in the Pentagon, believed he needed to take out his rival. And Driscoll and General George had formed a tight relationship over the last years. They tried to transform the Army into more nimble, agile force, incorporating new technology into America's largest armed service. Eric, I mean, there are often personality battles at the highest levels of government. I guess a lot of our listeners obviously will be wondering how far does this matter as far as the world's most powerful military is concerned? And also the fact that it is obviously engaged in a major conflict overseas. Is it spilling over? Well, the timing of it couldn't be worse. It's talking to very senior Army officials yesterday in that, as you point out, the Army is involved as the rest of the US military forces, some over 50,000 American troops in the Middle East now are joining the war against Iran. And at the very least, this sends kind of a demoralizing message to many senior officers and other troops in the Army that their boss could be just kind of sacked like this. And somebody who's really developed a reputation is kind of a transformative leader in a very effective combat soldier himself with long tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And that was Eric Schmidt, National Security correspondent for The New York Times. I think we can all agree, can't we, that the octopus is one of the most fascinating creatures in the sea. Fascinating and mysterious. Among its mysteries has been its reproductive process to put it more crudely, how it does sex. Now scientists at Harvard think that they've unlocked part of the enigma about how the male is successful. But before we get on to how, with Professor Nicholas Bellonio, the senior author of the study published in the Journal of Science, let's begin with what the process actually involves with these many tentacled beings. The male has one specialized arm. It's the third arm from the right. And it uses this arm not only to identify the female, but then it inserts the arm into the female mantle. And then the arm searches around the internal organs and finds the overduct. And then once it finds the overduct, both the male and the female freeze. And then the male passes a sperm antifor, which is a package of sperm from its mantle down the length of the specialized arm to the overduct. And then that's when fertilization happens. Right. And just to be clear, the mantle is this sort of bulbous structure behind the eyes. Yes, the head. How does the male know when it sort of hit the right part as it were? And what have you discovered on that? We discovered this kind of by accident. So they don't mate often. And octopuses actually don't interact often. They're solitary. When they do interact, they're very aggressive. And so we wanted to observe mating in the lab. And so our idea was to put two octopuses into one tank, but be mindful that they are aggressive together. So we put a barrier between them. And then we put little holes in that barrier so that they could sort of get used to one another and recognize that there is an octopus in the tank. And then our plan was to remove the barrier so they could mate. However, the male octopus was able to put the specialized mating arm through one of those holes, find the female and initiate mating. So this told us already that they were able to mate without visual information because they were blocked by this barrier. And they could do the same thing in complete darkness. So the discovery, even at that point, is that this specialized arm for mating is actually a sensor of the female. And that led to the rest of the study, which is to define how it serves as a sensory organ, which was unknown. Your research, and I'm not in any way sort of downplaying it, but it's essentially it's all about sort of trying to work out how the male is, you know, responds to stimuli and is satisfied and decides where he's going to stick his tentacle. Is there any suggestion or interest in how female octopuses decide that they're going to allow a male to mate with them? Yeah, definitely. This is a really interesting part of the system. So there's two things that the female does that contributes to selection of a mate. One is the behavioral aspect that we watched with this barrier where she will accept or not accept the male to find her with the hectic collar and initiate mating so she can swim away if she doesn't like that particular male. And then the other part that's really interesting to me is that she also can select which sperm she uses to fertilize the eggs. So even from wild caught females can look in the oviduct, find a different sperm from different octopuses of the same species. Also even some octopuses of different species will try to cross mate and she can save the sperm for a really long time and then decide not only when to fertilize the eggs but which sperm to select. And that was Professor Nicholas Bellono from Harvard University. You're listening to News app from the BBC. Welcome back to News app. Pam Bondi has been sacked from her position as US Attorney General, the country's most senior law officer in other words and replaced temporarily by President Trump's former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche. Ms Bondi had been a close ally of Mr Trump but he's reported to have become frustrated at her failure to secure convictions against his political enemies. She's also been criticized for her handling of the release of files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Gloria Allred is one of the best known women's rights lawyers in the US and is representing a number of survivors of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and his circle. She gave her reaction to my colleague, James Menendez. It's long overdue. I represent a number of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and some of Ms Maxwell and Pam Bondi just made a complete mess of the release of the Epstein files. Many of the survivors supported and rallied and lobbied for the Epstein Files Transparency Act to release all of the Epstein files. But they did always say that they wanted the names of the victims, the survivors, who wanted to be Jane Doze, in other words not use their legal name to be redacted so that that privacy could be respected. And in fact, all of the files were supposed to be released on December 19th. They weren't all released. One of the reasons the Department of Justice, which Pam Bondi headed, gave for not following the law and the release of all the files was that they needed more time to protect the names of the survivors who wanted to be Jane Doze and make sure that the legal names were redacted in the files. So they took more time in violation of the law. And then when they released the names or the files, the names of the Jane Doze and legal names were published for all to see, including in many cases, their photos, their driver's licenses, their passports. The impact was very traumatic for many of the Jane Doze, and it was just devastating to them. What about her appearance before the House Judiciary Committee? That was back in February. What about the tone of her appearance? I mean, she got a lot of criticism for not apologizing directly to survivors. What was the impact of that? Well, that was a disgrace. She avoided, evaded, and tried to escape answering questions that were directed at her. Instead, she went on the attack calling members of Congress names, blaming other people. I've never seen anyone do that before the Judiciary Committee. They all knew that she was not wanting to answer the questions directly. She was covering, she was trying to mimic President Trump and just go on the attack and call people names, ad hominem attacks, which people usually do when they don't want to give the facts or they don't want to discuss the law. It's the lowest form of argument, a transparent effort to avoid responsibility and accountability. And that was Gloria Ored speaking to James Menendez. This is NewsHour live from the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Franks. And just to say, there are multiple reports coming in from various news agencies, which themselves are citing Iranian state TV and other Iranian state media sources saying that they have shot down, Iran has shot down a US fighter jet. There are no, there's no confirmation of this from the US or from any other sources, but Iranian state TV is claiming that the fighter pilot ejected from an aircraft in southwest Iran and that they have put out a bounty on the pilot and his co-pilot for their delivery into Iranian custody. Obviously, if we get any more on that, we will bring it to you. In the meantime, though, we're going to head out into space. It's known in space scientists shorthand as the burn, or to give it its fuller name, Transluna Injection Burn. And for the four astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission, it's been the next key stage for them, the firing of the main engine for their final push towards the moon. And according to the commentary we heard from Mission Control at NASA, it all went pretty much flawlessly. 10 seconds until Transluna Injection Burn start. Integrity, good engine, good control. Velocity of the spacecraft ticking up now over 23,900 miles per hour. Integrity looks like a good burn. We're confirming. Orion, now 520 miles away from Earth. Just five minutes ago we were only 115 miles above Earth's surface. That distance will continue to increase as we are now on a trajectory to fly around the moon for the first time in over 50 years. As for the four astronauts who are now on route to loop around the moon to go further into space than anybody to this point, they are sounding utterly thrilled by the ride. I just kept saying to them yesterday, like, I really like it up here. I wish I could have gone here sooner. Well, the first thing I would say is, trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful. And from up here, you also look like one thing. You know, Homo sapiens is all of us, no matter where you're from or, you know, what you look like. We're all one people. There's nothing that prepares you for the breathtaking aspect of seeing your home planet both lit up bright as day and also the moon glow on it at night with the beautiful beam of the sunset. We have been to the moon before 1969, 1968 through 1972. It's been a long time since we've been back. And I got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this. Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort. And we are now just realizing the gravity of that. You heard from Reed Wiseman, the commander of that mission. And we also heard from Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover. And Christina Cook, I can speak now to Caroline Johnson, science reporter for the Washington Post. She's been covering this mission. Caroline, what struck you so far? So far, it's been going pretty well. There hasn't been a lot to report about going wrong. The biggest drama so far has been about a malfunctioning toilet that now is fixed. So it's been just kind of a beautiful kind of engineering marvel to see how this is going. And we're all very excited for them to arrive at the moon and actually start to take some observations and eventually get back home. Yeah. And despite the fact that there will be some who will say, oh, it's been done before, it was done decades ago. And it's an incredibly safe process these days because NASA has done lots more checks and standards are higher these days. I mean, it is still a remarkable and, well, correct me if I'm wrong, potentially slightly risky mission this, isn't it? Oh, yes, there's a reason we haven't gone there in decades. It's much more dangerous, it's much more technically challenging, and it's much more expensive than the kind of spaceflight we've gotten used to hearing about. It has become almost familiar and kind of humdrum to hear about commercial spaceflight, people reaching low earth orbit, or the International Space Station where astronauts live for long periods of time. But this is going beyond earth's orbit into deep space. And there, there are greater risks just from being farther away from any kind of help or return. But also, there's radiation, there's health effects that could affect them. There's just not the infrastructure once you get the moon is quite far away, even though we have been there more than 50 years ago before I was born, you know, like I've never seen people go there or around it. So we're definitely doing something that's pretty new for a lot of people alive today. And it will, of course, if all goes well, pave the way for stuff that really is new in terms of the possible establishment of a lunar base, which then in turn could be the springboard for much greater space exploration. That's the goal. That's the vision. And it's definitely ambitious. So this is a test flight of this equipment. I mean, even though we have been to the moon before, we haven't used this rocket or this capsule to put to transport humans anywhere. So this is really a first test. And they're going to do a lot of learning about, you know, how it functions, what could be improved, you know, like things like that to eventually, you know, they do want to build a base on the moon, they do see it as a platform or stepping stone to get further into the solar system eventually to Mars. Those are obviously huge goals. And I mean, beyond the extraordinary science and the technology and the engineering, I mean, there is something remarkably human and beguiling, isn't there? I mean, about just the fact that they're these four individuals cramped into these very tight quarters who were on the most extraordinary journey and their faces, I mean, they seem genuinely reaved and smiles, don't they? Yeah, the human element of exploration and going places is really something that even though we've sent many spacecraft to much further than the moon, it gives you a sense of personal connection to these places that most of us will never go. It is a remarkable thing to witness. Caroline Johnson, thank you for helping us try and be along for the ride. Caroline Johnson, science reporter with the Washington Post. After five years of harsh military rule, Myanmar has got a new president today, only he's not really new. General Min Aung Hlaing, the man who led the 2021 coup against the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, that has been selected to lead the new notionally civilian administration by parliament packed with military men and loyalists. The move is widely seen as an attempt by the military regime, which has been internationally ostracized to win more legitimacy. It is a long shot. The civil war ignited by the coup continues with daily airstrikes carried out against the large areas of Myanmar under the control of opposition forces. Our southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, has just been to Myanmar to watch the last military parade presided over by Min Aung Hlaing before he notionally gave up command of the armed forces. On a vast parade ground overlooked by towering statues, thousands of soldiers march with impressive precision in front of their commander-in-chief. He's an unpre-possessing figure, short and stout with blinking bespectacled eyes. Yet today, General Min Aung Hlaing is by far the most powerful man in Myanmar, despite having led a catastrophic coup that tipped his country into civil war and being accused in international courts of genocide and crimes against humanity. They hold this parade every year in the strange citadel-like capital of Nipidor. It's a reminder to the people of Myanmar of the tenacious hold the military has had over their country for most of its modern history. The formidable weaponry on display also a reminder of how much this regime has been propped up by support from Russia and China. But this is the last time Min Aung Hlaing will preside over this. Five years after his coup, he's hanging up his uniform to become a civilian president. His final speech to the troops was as unyielding and unapologetic as all the others he's given here. The military has a constitutional right to get involved in politics, he said, and he dismissed those who've taken up arms against his regime as terrorists, led on by what he called foreign aggressors. There wasn't a hint of regret over the thousands of lives lost because of the coup. Jo Wynne, not his real name, was a student when he was arrested for taking part in a small flash mob protest in Yangon three years ago. He described days of torture in the interrogation centre. They beat me with iron bars, he told me. They burnt me with cigarettes, slashed my leg with a knife and sexually assaulted me. Only recently released from prison, he said he's had enough and wants to leave Myanmar. Thousands of other young people have already gone. If I stay in this country, I will always face all kinds of oppression. There is forced conscription that really worries me. We are under constant surveillance. I love my family. I want to stay with them, but going overseas is now the best option for me. Dinsar Shunlei Yi made that decision a few months after the coup. As an organiser of the movement resisting military rule, there was already an arrest warrant out for her. From exile, she's kept up her campaign to restore democracy and she's not impressed by Minong Line in civilian guise. He cannot credibly present himself as a legitimate president. He is not my president, he's not our president. For many people in Myanmar, this is not a transition to democracy, but simply an attempt to normalise impunity. They have long been enjoying Myanmar. Unlike the villages in Myanmar's contested areas, you don't really see the impact of the war in Myanmar's cities like Yangon, but people here are definitely feeling it. Rapid inflation, businesses closing down. I'm in the factory district of Langtire. It's Sunday and the workers who live here are all dressed in their colourful finest, waiting for buses to take them to parks or pagodas to spend their day off. So let's ask them what they expect of their new notionally civilian government. They won't care about us, said this motorbike taxi driver. We'll still have to rely on ourselves. With the fuel shortages caused by the Iran war, he complained that his earnings no longer covered even his food and rent. Like so many who've not fled overseas, he said all he could do was try to survive, or waiting to see whether anything will change when the same military men remain in charge. And that was our southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head, just recently back from Myanmar. You're listening to News Out. Here with News Out, it's live from the BBC. I'm Tim Franks. One of the clearest consequences of the war in the Middle East is the surge in the price of oil. That has to be seen as a bad thing for most people around the world. But what about for those countries that produce and export the stuff? Is it equally simple that for them the price rises just good news? Take Nigeria, for example, Africa's leading oil exporter. Jida Pratt is country manager, a trade grid and a specialist on the energy market. Every time crude oil prices rise, for someone who produces crude oil, then what it means is that from a revenue standpoint, we end our money as a country. So that's a positive. The second thing would be if you looked at it that from the refinery point of view, for a long period of time, we didn't have enough refineries in Nigeria. Most of them were Maori bond. Now we have a super refinery flow from a refinery point of view. It's also in net positive for Nigeria. So top of my head, those are the two major positives with rising crude oil prices for Nigeria. Right. But at the same time, I mean, obviously Nigeria has long been an oil exporter and those riches that revenue hasn't necessarily been felt throughout the country. So is it possible to gauge how far this benefit is being spread? And when you look at it that someone who produces so much oil, the first thing is that when we couldn't refine, we found out that we had to export all the oil and then import petroleum products in terms of distillates, refined petroleum products. So at this stage we are now, crude oil prices have gone up. So while the revenue for the government in terms of the federation account is higher, sadly, the prices of petrol, diesel, gas, which are the things that affect the average everyday man in Nigeria have also gone up. And that's because there's a direct relationship between crude oil prices and what you call refined petroleum prices. So sadly, transportation has gone up. They are now attendant and I'll say inflationary effects as well. So while we're earning on the revenue side for the federation, the effects are a bit far reaching in terms of public transportation and things like inflation. It goes beyond oil. So when things like liquid, natural gas, and energy are affected by the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, then that can drive up prices because it can affect fertilizers and other things that are so important for food. So what you're suggesting is that although there may be some benefit to government revenue in the shorter term, people are likely to feel the inflationary effects of all this. That is so correct. And when you look at things like what are the ways around this, Nigeria produces a lot of crude oil, but she also produces a lot of gas. While gas is cleaner and cheaper, sadly, we haven't been able to, and I use the word commercialize in terms of public transportation. So the question comes to mind, what should happen now in the interim? If revenues are increasing, it means that when you look at benchmark budget prices, $65 a barrel, crude oil is about $115 today. So the question is that does the government want to relook that situation and offer open market selling price of crude oil for the local refineries at a discount rate instead of a premium? That might be one way to look at it in the short run. And there was G. Day Pratt, country manager at Trade Grid, specialist on the energy market, speaking to me from the Nigerian city of Lagos. The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem has held a service today, Good Friday, and the reason that's significant this year is because earlier this week Israeli police had prevented Cardinal Pierre Batista Pizzabella from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the place of worship revered as the site of Christ's crucifixion. Holy Week leading up to Easter has been a subdued affair as the war against Iran continues and Iran continues to launch missiles towards Israel. But as our correspondent Sebastian Usher has been finding out, the spirit of this city of such immense significance for Christians, Muslims and Jews is surviving. Welcome back. It's good to be back. Yes, very quiet. Old friends meeting up again in the Christian quarter in the old city, lamenting events that have made Holy Week leading up to Easter a shadow of itself. Issa, a Jerusalem resident whose family has lived here for generations, tries to be hopeful, as befits the man known as the city's one and only Santa Claus. Whatever happened, still Jerusalem, you can feel the heart still beating. With him, a Tom and Samantha, an American couple who've been coming here for Easter for the past eight years and were not going to be put off this year. It's so powerful to be in the place where where Jesus walked, where all of the Holy Week events literally took place. So that is so moving to us. We come to pray. The events need prayer. So for Samantha and I, it felt like something very important to do right now. But yeah, it feels different. Our families definitely felt more trepidation about it. I'm standing here in what is normally, especially during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter, one of the busiest parts of the old city of Jerusalem. Very, very unlike any time that I've seen here before in the old city, just looking to my left, I see the gateway which leads into the church of a Holy Sepulchre. That's closed. There are two guards who are stopping people from going in there. Three weeks ago, a fragment from an Iranian missile made impact on the edge of the old city. Just a few hundred meters from the church of a Holy Sepulchre, Al-Aqsa and the Western Wall, all closed for fear of mass casualties, where a missile to strike during mass religious gatherings. So on Palm Sunday, the church of Bethpage up on the Mount of Olives held a mass for local Christians. The bejoyous procession with thousands of worshipers from near and far holding palms that normally sets off from there was cancelled. The destination is traditionally the church of a Holy Sepulchre. At the same time that mass was being held in Bethpage, the Latin patriarch Cardinal Pier Batista Pizzaballa was denied entry to Jerusalem's most revered church by Israeli police. The incident sparked an international outcry. The break in centuries old tradition was also felt deeply by local Christians like Isa. Let's make me feel sad first as a patriarch because he's a leader of the head church of Jerusalem. Good afternoon everyone. Two days later inside the Latin Patriarchate, Cardinal Pizzaballa played the incident down as a misunderstanding and he reiterated how he and other religious leaders accepted the wartime restrictions but grieved that Holy Week felt bereft. The Jerusalem without pilgrims is not complete. You see that it's almost almost there unfortunately. A place of life but without life in this moment which is very safe. And that report from our correspondent in Jerusalem, Sebastian Usher. And that's it from this edition of NewsHour. From me, Tim Franks and the team here in London, thanks for your company.
