A member of Nigeria's Islamist Boko Haram sect on Saturday claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks that killed at least 63 people in the northeast of the country the day before.

"We are responsible for the attack in Borno (state) and Damaturu," Abul Qaqa told an Agence France Presse correspondent by phone.

Several explosions ripped through Nigeria's troubled northeastern and predominantly Muslim city of Maiduguri on Friday, including a suicide bomb attack on military offices, the army said.

Another one of the bombs went off outside the offices of the state intelligence agency, a military spokesman in the city said.

A one-month old baby, said to hold a diploma, was on the Nigerian government payroll, officials have discovered, exposing the levels to which corruption runs in Africa's most populous country.

The name of the infant was recently found on the payment voucher of a local government council in northern Nigeria during an exercise to fish out ghost employees from a bloated workforce, Garba Gajam, justice commissioner for Zamfara State told Agence France Presse late Wednesday.

Hackers have hit the website of Nigeria's top anti-corruption agency over a government official suggesting tighter Internet control in Africa's most populous nation.

A group of hackers calling themselves NaijaCyberHacktivists claimed the attack Friday on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's site, which saw its usual home page replaced with a warning from the group. The hackers said the attack was a response to suggestions the government censor Internet content.

A Nigerian actor known for his comedic roles has found himself in a real-life absurdity: His bowel movements are being dutifully reported on front pages after he was detained for suspected drug trafficking.

Following two -- some say three -- bowel movements after being detained for allegedly seeking to transport drugs in his stomach while boarding a plane to Paris, the actor known as Baba Suwe has so far come up clean.

Attackers used explosives and gunfire to target an army patrol near a wedding in violence-torn northeastern Nigeria, killing at least three civilians, the military said Sunday.

The incident on Saturday, Nigeria's Independence Day, occurred in Maiduguri, hit by scores of attacks blamed on an Islamist sect known as Boko Haram, which also claimed an August bombing of U.N. headquarters in the capital Abuja.

Dozens of attackers suspected to belong to a gang of robbers raided a northern Nigerian village armed with guns and machetes, killing at least 18 and burning homes, a police source said Sunday.

A group of around 150 assailants attacked Ligydo, a remote farming and herding village in Zamfara state, on Saturday, killing 18 people and seriously wounding six others, a senior police officer told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Fresh overnight attacks killed at least 15 people in Nigeria, the latest in a wave of recent killings in an area beset by sectarian violence, a local government official said Saturday.

"Fifteen people were killed ... in Vwang district of Jos south local government area of Plateau state in a midnight attack," a government spokesman Pam Ayuba said.

Global death rates among newborns under one month old are dropping, a study by the World Health Organization showed Tuesday.

"Newborn deaths decreased from 4.6 million in 1990 to 3.3 million in 2009," the U.N. health agency said in a statement.

The death toll from a clash between Christians and Muslims in deeply divided central Nigeria has risen to at least 13, a hospital official said on Tuesday.

"Thirteen corpses have been transferred (from another hospital closer to the violence)," Ishaya Pam, chief medical director at Jos University Teaching Hospital, said after Monday's clash.