Boko Haram warning: 'Don't ever put your daughters in school again'

The Nigerian girls from the Government Girls Science and Technical College Dapchi who were kidnapped and set free. Photo / AP

Nigeria: Boko Haram Islamic extremists brought back nearly all of the 110 girls they had kidnapped from a boarding school last month, dropping them off in the middle of the night with a warning: "Don't ever put your daughters in school again." Several of the girls interviewed said they had been travelling for days before the convoy of vehicles arrived in the centre of the town of Dapchi. "We were freed because we are Muslim girls and they didn't want us to suffer. That is why they released us," said Khadija Grema, one of the freed girls who said a Christian classmate remained captive. Six girls are still unaccounted for. One 14-year-old told reporters that five girls had died. The abductions evoked painful memories of the tragedy in Chibok, where 276 girls were kidnapped from their boarding school. Nearly four years later, about 100 of them have never returned home.

Australia: Heavy rain is expected on the New South Wales mid-north coast as residents in the Hunter region mop up after a drenching over the past 36 hours. The NSW SES is tracking 800 jobs for assistance mostly in the Hunter in the Lake Macquarie region. Five vehicles have been pulled from floodwaters in the Hunter Region, SES spokesman Phil Campbell told AAP. Residents of Dungog have copped 152mm of rain since early yesterday. Dungog schools will be closed as a precaution. The town of Tocal received 124mm, Williamstown 122mm and Maitland 119mm, a BOM meteorologist said. Rain is set to ease in the Hunter as the trough moves north.

Spain: The Catalan Parliament speaker has set a tomorrow vote to elect as the next regional president a former separatist minister who could be indicted on rebellion charges only one day after. Speaker Roger Torrent made a hastily called appearance in the regional parliament to announce that Jordi Turull, the former chief of the Catalan Presidency, has the widest support to be voted in as the Spanish region's next president. Turull is the third separatist candidate to be proposed, following foiled attempts to re-elect the ousted president and now fugitive Carles Puigdemont, and the jailed pro-independence activist Jordi Sanchez, who withdrew today.

Kazakhstan: Two American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut are on their way to the International Space Station. A Soyuz rocket carrying the three men blasted off from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan. On board the capsule were Nasa astronauts Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold, and Roscosmos' cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev. The spacecraft is set to dock at the orbiting outpost tomorrow. The trio will join station residents Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos, Scott Tingle of Nasa and Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The new crew will spend about five months at the space station.

The Soyuz rocket has been rolled out to the launch pad in Baikonur, Kaz. for the launch of @Astro_Feustel, @OlegMKS, and @astro_ricky - https://t.co/BMRt2IecRb pic.twitter.com/LiaQDzFx41

— NASA HQ PHOTO (@nasahqphoto) March 19, 2018

Iraq: The country has detained or imprisoned at least 19,000 people accused of connections to Isis or other terror-related offences, and sentenced more than 3000 of them to death, according to an analysis by AP. The mass incarceration and speed of guilty verdicts raise concerns over potential miscarriages of justice — and worries that jailed militants are recruiting within the general prison population to build new extremist networks.

United States: A strong Pacific storm dropped heavy rain on a swath of coastal California, where thousands of people have been evacuated because of the threat of debris flows and mudslides from bushfire burn areas. The storm came ashore on the central coast and spread south into the Los Angeles region and north through San Francisco Bay, fed by a long plume of subtropical moisture called an atmospheric river. Mud and rockslides closed several roads.

Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offers resignation ahead of impeachment vote, leaves palace. https://t.co/BC3dMI8E8R pic.twitter.com/M5BYHIs20g

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 21, 2018

Peru: Embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offered his resignation ahead of an impeachment vote, seeking to put an end to a debilitating political drama playing out just three weeks before the Andean nation is set to host US President Donald Trump for a regional summit. Kuczynski said he didn't want to become an obstacle to Peru's development. But the former Wall Street investor lashed out at opponents led by the daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori for plotting his overthrow with damaging leaks of confidential documents that raised doubts about his integrity during his six-decade long career in private business. Congress must still accept his resignation before power can transfer to Vice-President Martin Vizcarra, who is currently serving as Peru's ambassador to Canada. Yesterday secretly-shot videos were revealed in which several of the President's allies were caught allegedly trying to buy the support of an opposition lawmaker to block the conservative leader's impeachment.

United States: A rare US$1000 note from 1863 is expected to sell for about US$1 million at an auction in Baltimore. Stack's Bowers Galleries says the bill is one of only two of its kind available to collectors.

Ahed Tamimi: Palestinian slap video teen gets eight months in plea deal https://t.co/sy2Dx7zznq

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 21, 2018

Middle East: A teenage Palestinian girl who was filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank has accepted a plea deal under which she will be sentenced to eight months in prison, her lawyer says. Ahed Tamimi, 17, became a hero to Palestinians after the December 15 incident outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh was streamed live on Facebook by her mother and went viral. The soldiers had deployed during a weekly Palestinian protest in the village against Israeli policy on settlements in the West Bank. Tamimi was 16 at the time of the offence. Her trial began last month and she faced 12 charges, including aggravated assault.

United States: The Minneapolis police officer charged with murder over the shooting death of unarmed Australian woman Justine Damond has been granted bail of US$400,000 after appearing in court. Mohamed Noor made his first court appearance over the death of Damond. Noor will next appear on May 10.

Brazil: A nonprofit organisation says the mother of a councillor shot dead in Rio de Janeiro has received a call from Pope Francis. Fundacion Alameda, whose leader is a close friend of the Pope, said in its Twitter account that the mother of Marielle Franco talked to the Pontiff.

Big. Russia’s @tvrain becomes the third news outlet (after @ru_rbc & @kommersant) to say it won’t have reporters working in the Duma after Ethics Committee ruled MP Leonid Slutsky didn’t violate “behavioral norms” by allegedly sexually harassing at least 3 female journalists. https://t.co/9XJdwmwrlJ

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) March 21, 2018

Russia: The Russian Parliament's commission on ethics cleared a senior member of the Lower House, who has been accused of sexual harassment in a case that has drawn nationwide attention. The panel decided that the accusations against Leonid Slutsky, head of the State Duma's foreign affairs committee, were unfounded. Slutsky has been accused of sexual harassment by three female journalists. One of them, Farida Rustamova of the BBC's Russian Service, said that during a visit to Slutsky's office last March, he urged her to dump her fiance, then "ran his hand, the flat of his palm, up against my nether region." Daria Zhuk, a producer at the independent TV station Dozhd, accused him of using vulgar language and trying to touch and kiss her at the station's studio in 2014. Yekaterina Kotrikadze, deputy editor-in-chief at the RTVI TV station, said Slutsky pushed her against the wall and tried to kiss her in his office in 2011.

Netherlands: Following the death of a teenager whose parents say she killed herself with a substance she ordered online, Dutch prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into a group. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal in the Netherlands, but only if carried out under controlled conditions by medical professionals on patients who are terminally ill and wish to die. Prosecutors had been looking at the Final Wish cooperative since September, they said in a statement. Final Wish made headlines last week when the father of 19-year-old Ximena Knol said on television the group should be shut down.

The puppy was reportedly sick and going to die, but local animal activist Jill Parrish, who filed a police report about the incident, thinks Robert Crosland, a junior high science teacher in Preston, Idaho, is the sick one. https://t.co/fNjoWnYXkX

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) March 13, 2018

United States: The Idaho attorney general's office says it's investigating an alleged animal cruelty case amid claims that a teacher fed a sick puppy to a snapping turtle in front of several students after school. A document obtained by AP following a public records request names Robert Crosland as the teacher. Crosland is a science teacher at Preston Junior High School in eastern Idaho. Several parents have come forward to say Crosland fed the puppy to the turtle on March 7.

Vatican: The head of the Vatican's communications department resigned after he mischaracterised a private letter from retired Pope Benedict XVI, then had a photo of it digitally manipulated and sent out to the media. A week after AP exposed the doctored photo, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Monsignor Dario Vigano and named his deputy to run the Secretariat for Communications for now. But Francis kept Vigano on in the department in a lesser capacity.

- agencies