Foreign News
Dozens kidnapped by rifle-wielding men in northwest Nigeria village

Armed men have abducted dozens of women and children in northwestern Nigeria, the latest in a spate of kidnappings that have plagued the region.
Police said the incident took place on Sunday in the village of Kafin Dawa in Zamfara State. Residents reported men carrying assault rifles going door to door, kidnapping people.
“We found out that they kidnapped more than 50 women, including married women and girls,” said Hassan Ya’u, a resident who managed to escape but had his younger sister kidnapped.
“The entire village was gripped by fear as gunshots echoed throughout the operation,” said another resident cited by Nigeria’s Daily Trust news site, which reported 43 people were kidnapped.
Zamfara police said they have deployed additional security forces to the area.
Kidnapping for ransom by armed men, known locally as bandits, is rife in northwest Nigeria due to high levels of poverty, unemployment and the proliferation of illegal firearms.
In March this year, gunmen abducted more than 130 students in the northwestern town of Kuriga for ransom.
The students were freed “unharmed” several weeks later after intensive “backchannel” negotiations, the government said at the time.
Abductions from Nigerian schools were first carried out by the armed group Boko Haram, which seized 276 students from a girls’ school in Chibok in northeastern Borno State in 2014. Some of the girls were never released, with most of them forcefully married to the fighters.
In another mass kidnapping in July 2021, armed men took more than 150 students in a raid. The students were reunited months later with their families after they reportedly paid ransoms.
At least 1,400 children have been abducted since 2014.
[Aljazeera]
Foreign News
Trump sanctions International Criminal Court, calls it ‘illegitimate’

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
The measure places financial and visa restrictions on individuals and their families who assist in ICC investigations of American citizens or allies.
Trump signed the measure as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Washington.
Last November, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, which Israel denies. The ICC also issued a warrant for a Hamas commander.
A White House fact sheet circulated earlier on Thursday accused the Hague-based ICC of creating a “shameful moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel by issuing the warrants at the same time.
Trump’s executive order said the ICC’s recent actions “set a dangerous precedent” that endangered Americans by exposing them to “harassment, abuse and possible arrest”.
“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel,” the order said.
It adds that “both nations [the US and Israel] are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war”.
The US is not a member of the ICC and has repeatedly rejected any jurisdiction by the body over American officials or citizens.
Foreign News
India ‘engaging with US’ after shackled deportees spark anger

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar has told parliament the government is working with the US to ensure Indian citizens are not mistreated while being deported.
His statement came a day after a US military flight brought back 104 Indians accused of entering the US illegally.
One of the deportees told the BBC they had been handcuffed throughout the 40-hour flight, sparking criticism.
But Jaishankar said he had been told by the US that women and children were not restrained. Deportation flights to India had been taking place for several years and US procedures allowed for the use of restraints, he added.
Deportation in the US is organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“We have been informed by ICE that women and children are not restrained,” Jaishankar said.
He added that according to ICE, the needs of deportees during transit, including for food and medical attention, were attended to and deportees could be unrestrained during bathroom breaks.
“There has been no change from past procedure,” he added.
However Jaspal Singh, one of the deportees on the flight that landed in Amritsar city in the state of Punjab on Wednesday, told BBC Punjabi that he was shackled throughout the flight.
“We were tortured in many ways. My hands and feet were tied after we were put on the plane. The plane stopped at several places,” he said, adding that he was unshackled only after the plane landed in Amritsar.

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is “critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States” and it was US policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens”.
The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the “farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.
President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.
Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.
In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.
Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.
Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.
[BBC]
Foreign News
More than 100 women raped and burned alive in DR Congo jailbreak, UN says

More than 100 female prisoners were raped and then burned alive during a jailbreak in the Congolese city of Goma, according to the UN.
Hundreds of prisoners broke out of Munzenze prison last Monday, after fighters from the M23 rebel group began to take over the city.
Between 165 and 167 women were assaulted by male inmates during the jailbreak, an internal UN document seen by the BBC says.
The report states that most of the women were killed after the inmates set fire to the prison.
The BBC has not been able to verify the reports.
Goma, a major city of more than a million people, was captured after the Rwanda-backed M23 executed a rapid advance through eastern DR Congo.
The city was plunged into chaos, with bodies lying in the streets and missiles reportedly flying over residential homes.
Footage from last week’s jailbreak showed people fleeing from the building as smoke rose in the background. Heavy gunfire could also be heard.
[BBC]
-
News5 days ago
New Bangalore-Jaffna flights in the works
-
News3 days ago
CID questions top official over releasing of 323 containers
-
News5 days ago
Cardinal says ‘dark forces’ behind Easter bombs will soon be exposed
-
News5 days ago
HRCL reports on Rohingya asylum seekers
-
Features4 days ago
A singular modern Lankan mentor – Part II
-
Features4 days ago
Bharath Rang Mahothsav Parallel Festival in Colombo
-
News5 days ago
Ishadi Amanda makes history as First Runner-Up at 40th Mrs. World Pageant
-
Business6 days ago
Dialog partners with EcoMatcher to launch transparent, tech-driven tree planting in Sri Lanka