Nigeria's president has been sent a new video of the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in which they beg him to spare their lives through a prisoner swap.

A photograph of a young girl at the Europa League soccer final who bears an uncanny resemblance to missing Madeleine McCann has gone viral.

A girl who spent several months last year as a hostage of Boko Haram has told how she was ordered to fight alongside the Islamists in ambushes on the Nigerian military.

The father of one of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram has spoken of the "other worldly" moment when he saw his daughter's face on the hostage video released by the group.

A wealthy Briton has been arrested in Spain on suspicion of holding a group of women against their will and fathering at least seven children with them.

One of the teenagers who escaped from the Islamic extremist group that abducted more than 300 schoolgirls has said the kidnapping was "too terrifying for words".

'She's a brave wee girl', say police of an eight-year-old who was grabbed from her driveway and put in a car before she managed to escape.

Pressure is growing for Western military drones to be used in the hunt for more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in Nigeria, as the terrorist thought to be holding them threatens to "marry off" girls aged as young as 9.

Western countries are in talks with Nigerian security forces to help rescue hundreds of kidnapped schoolgirls still missing three weeks after they were seized.

The moment that Mary Quin thought she would die was in a gunfight with an AK-47 jammed into her spine.

A 10-year-old British girl was sexually assaulted in Praia da Luz in 2005 - possibly by a man who is now a key suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance, the Metropolitan Police have revealed.

A radical Islamic cleric standing trial in New York on global terrorism charges will come face-to-face with a NZ woman caught in a terrifying kidnapping decades ago.

Auckland crime figure Petar Vitali has been sentenced to five years and six months in prison for assaulting a young woman who believed she was his biological daughter.

Notorious Auckland crime figure Petar Vitali will be sentenced today for a brutal attack on a young woman who looked on him as a father.

British police seek help from Portuguese to detain alleged burglars at Algarve resort.

The bogus sign language interpreter at the Mandela memorial service was in a group who burned two men to death in 2003, say a cousin and three friends.

Investigators have released a photo of a man being sought over the attempted abduction of a 13-year-old girl who was dragged off her bicycle into bush near Timaru.

A description of the man accused of dragging a 13-year-old girl off her bicycle and into bushland near Timaru last night has been released.

Three teens accused of holding three young men at knifepoint and forcing them to drive around Wellington for hours are yet to enter a plea for kidnapping charges.

Three teenagers will appear in court in Lower Hutt today charged with kidnapping after a car-jacking which lasted about five hours on Saturday night.

A US woman who lived in numerous countries, including New Zealand, while on the run for 20 years for the alleged kidnapping of her daughter, has been arrested in Australia.

Three teenagers were allegedly held up at knife-point, assaulted and forced to drive around Wellington by a younger group of teens during a five-hour kidnapping ordeal overnight.

A passenger travelling 180km/h in a car put her feet against the dash as she fought to protect herself and a kidnapped 15-month-old baby.

A Tauranga man has been sentenced to three years and four months in jail for kidnapping and bashing a man who had just accidentally killed his 18-year-old friend.

Two men have been charged with abduction after they allegedly tried to drag a 22-year-old woman into a van at 9.30pm in Dunedin on Saturday night.

In a radical shift in thinking, a man spotted carrying a young girl in his arms has now emerged as the key suspect for the abduction of Madeleine McCann.