Boko Haram attack kills hundreds in Nigeria |
Officials estimate the death toll at 300 in town left unguarded during attempts to rescue missing schoolgirls.
Last updated: 08 May 2014 06:28
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A Boko Haram attack has killed hundreds in Nigeria's northeast, multiple sources have said, as police offered $300,000 for information leading to the rescue of more than 200 schoolgirls held hostage by the armed group.
The latest attack reported on Wednesday targeted the town of Gamboru Ngala on the border with Cameroon, where gunmen earlier this week razed scores of buildings and fired on civilians as they tried to flee.
Area Senator Ahmed Zanna put the death toll at 300, in an account supported by numerous residents.
Zanna said the town had been left unguarded because soldiers based there had been redeployed north towards Lake Chad in an effort to rescue more than 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram on April 14.
The mass abduction has sparked global outrage and offers of help from the United States, Britain, France and China.
South Korea says North sent drones
Three captured aircraft were programmed to cross border, fly over military bases and return, defence ministry claims
Three drones that crashed in South Korea had onboard flight programming that showed they were launched from North Korea and were meant to return after flying over military installations, the defence ministry in Seoul has said.
South Korean and US officials jointly examined the three drones, which were recovered in three different locations near the Korean border over a two-week period starting in late March. The second was discovered soon after a three-hour artillery barrage between North and South Korea in waters near a disputed maritime border.
The drones' penetration of South Korean airspace raised questions about air defence capabilities.
Over 1,200 disputed works of art left to Bern museum
Reclusive collector Cornelius Gurlitt exacts revenge on Germany for taking paintings
Derek Scally
Reclusive art collector Cornelius Gurlitt has exacted posthumous revenge on his native Germany.
A day after he died in Munich, his will bequeaths to the Art Museum in the Bern the spectacular collection – with works by Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and dozens of other modern masters – and seized by German investigators two years ago as suspected Nazi looted art.
Mr Gurlitt described the 1,280 works as the only thing he ever loved, but he died without seeing them again. Now, in protest at what he viewed as an illegal appropriation, the 81-year-old has made sure the works will never again be seen in Germany, either.
South China Sea tensions rise as Vietnam says China rammed ships
May 8, 2014 - 6:55AMNguyen Phuong Linh and Michael Martina
Vietnam says a Chinese vessel intentionally rammed two of its ships in a part of the disputed South China Sea where Beijing has deployed a giant oil rig, sending tensions spiralling in the region.
The Foreign Ministry in Hanoi said the collisions took place on Sunday and caused considerable damage to the Vietnamese ships. Six people suffered minor injuries, it said.
"On May 4, Chinese ships intentionally rammed two Vietnamese Sea Guard vessels," said Tran Duy Hai, a Foreign Ministry official and deputy head of Vietnam's national border committee.
"Chinese ships, with air support, sought to intimidate Vietnamese vessels. Water cannon was used," he told a news conference in Hanoi. Six other ships were also hit, other officials said, but not as badly.US schools pull essay questioning Holocaust |
California district apologises for asking children to discuss whether they believed Nazi crimes "were an actual event".
Last updated: 08 May 2014 06:22
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The school board of a southern California district has admitted as "wholly inappropriate" asking pupils to write an essay on whether they believed the Nazi Holocaust really happened.
The local newspaper, the San Bernardino Sun, reported that 2,000 13 and 14-year-old pupils in the district were asked: to write an "argumentative essay", based on cited evidence, on whether they believed the Holocaust was "an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth”.
The essay plan was developed by teachers drawing on work presented in a course on the diary of Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
End of oil boom threatens Norway's welfare model
By Balazs Koranyi11 minutes ago
Norway's energy boom is tailing off years ahead of expectations, exposing an economy unprepared for life after oil and threatening the long-term viability of the world's most generous welfare model.
High spending within the sector has pushed up wages and other costs to unsustainable levels, not just for the oil and gas industry but for all sectors, and that is now acting as a drag on further energy investment. Norwegian firms outside oil have struggled to pick up the slack in what has been, for at least a decade, almost a single-track economy.
How Norway handles this "curse of oil" - huge wealth that bring unhealthy dependency in its train - may hold lessons across the North Sea in Scotland, which votes on independence from the United Kingdom later this year, relying at least in part on what it sees as its oil revenues.
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