Boko Haram wants to swap kidnapped girls for jailed members
Darpan News Desk IANS, 09 May, 2014 11:55 AM
Former Boko Haram negotiator, Shehu Sani has said the group plans to exchange the 300 kidnapped schoolgirls for its "comrades" in jails in Nigeria, media reported Friday.
Sani allegedly said that nearly 300 schoolgirls kidnapped last month in the country by Islamist militants could be released in exchange for its jailed comrades, the Nigerian Tribune reported.
He believed the video, in which Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau threatened to sell the girls as slaves, showed he was planning to use them as "bargaining chips".
Sani said he believed the footage, released Monday, was an attempt to persuade the Nigerian government to release the Islamist militant prisoners.
Japanese search and rescue teams joined Chinese aircraft Sunday in the hunt for signs of missing Malaysian plane -- MH370 -- which has mysteriously vanished.
Search for a missing Malaysian airliner yielded no result even more than a fortnight after it disappeared but Australian acting Prime Minister Warren Truss Sunday said the hunt will continue as long as there is hope. Search continued in the southern Indian Ocean after sightings of debris believed to be from the plane
The search for the missing Malaysian airliner ended Saturday in the southern Indian Ocean with the sighting of some objects with the naked eye even as China said that one of its satellites has spotted an object in the search area.
It looks like a replay of the Devyani Khobragade affair that strained India-US relations, but it isn't. A former domestic worker has slapped a civil suit against Bangladesh's consul general in New York and his wife accusing them of keeping him in slave-like conditions.
New Zealand beat England by nine runs via the Duckworth-Lewis method in their opening World Twenty20 game at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium here Saturday
