A public affairs analyst, Mr Sola Ojewusi, has blamed the federal and state governments over the kidnap of over two hundred school girls in Chibok, Borno State.

Speaking as a guest on Sunrise Daily, Channels Television’s breakfast programme on Monday, Ojewusi blamed the lack of synergy between the governments and the West African Examination Council (WAEC).

Reacting to a comment credited to the Head of WAEC’s National Office in Nigeria, Charles Eguridu, Ojewusi said “there seems to be a disconnect right from all forces that should have given the security needed to this kind of people involved.

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Nigeria’s government faced mounting pressure to locate school girls seized three weeks ago in an abduction claimed by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which in a video has threatened to sell them in “markets.”

Gunmen on April 14 raided dormitories in an all-girls secondary school in remote Chibok in northeastern Borno state and drove off in trucks with more than 200 students. About 275,000 people have signed a petition posted on Change.org demanding the government do more to rescue the girls amid demonstrations in the capital, Abuja, commercial hub, Lagos, and cities including New York, London, Atlanta and Washington.

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Some churches are advising members not to pack heat, after Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law sweeping gun legislation that the NRA called “the most comprehensive pro-gun bill in state history” but which critics decry as the “guns everywhere” law

Robert Wright, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, sent an open letter last week to the 56,000 members that make up the dozens of Episcopal churches throughout north Georgia with a simple message: Don’t bring guns into the house of God.

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As these girls are held hostage, it is vital that we act on their behalf. Here are the top 3 things you can do to help these young women:

1. Pray

The number one thing that persecuted Christians ask for is our prayers. And though to some it might seem like a passive reaction, we believers know that prayer has changed the course of history. God has changed the hearts of leaders, fellow-countrymen and even persecutors because of the faithful prayers of Christians around the world. Here are some specific ways in which you can pray for them.

2. Spread The Word & Educate

Some prominent leaders, artist and other influencers are shedding light on this important story by using the hashtag #bringbackourgirls.

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The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has released a list of names of the girls Boko Haram terrorists abducted at the Government Girls College, Chibok, in Chibok Local Government Area of Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, on April 15.

The full list of names may be viewed at the end of the article.

According to CAN, among the girls abducted were 165 Christian girls and 15 Muslim girls.

The Punch reports that figures it obtained from Evangelist Mathew Owojaiye, President of Old Time Revival Hour, and former chairman of Northern States Christian and Elders Forum (NOSCEF), also estimated the number of the abducted girls at about 180.

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Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan met through the night with security, school and state officials and issued a new directive that “everything must be done” to free the 276 girls held captive by Islamic extremists, one of his advisers said Sunday.

It was the first time the president met with all stakeholders, including the principal of the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in northeastern Nigeria where the girls and young women were kidnapped in a pre-dawn raid April 15, presidential adviser Reuben Abati told reporters.

Nigerians’ outrage at the failure to rescue the students and protest marches last week in major Nigerian cities as well as New York City have spurred to action Jonathan’s government, which many see as uncaring of the girls’ plight.

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Kate Haugan was standing backstage early that afternoon about three weeks ago, waiting to be fitted with a wireless microphone. In less than an hour, she and the rest of the cast members would take the stage at the Jewish Community Center here for the final performance of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The play was adapted, of course, from Harper Lee’s classic novel about the confrontation between bigotry and tolerance in 1930s Alabama, and it fit into this particular Jewish Community Center’s taste for drama with a conscience: “The Laramie Project,” “Next to Normal,” “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Even more than the others, “To Kill a Mockingbird” had proved a roaring success, nearly selling out the five previous shows.

Just then, the stage manager, Jayson Chandley, raced past Ms. Haugan, shouting: “There’s a shooter out front! Stay out of the hallways!”

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The number of kidnapped schoolgirls missing in Nigeria has risen to 276, up by more than 30 from a previous estimate, police said, adding that the actual number abducted by Islamic extremists on April 14 was more than 300.

Police Commissioner Tanko Lawan said the number of girls and young women who have escaped also has risen, to 53.

He told a news conference Thursday night in Maiduguri, the northeastern capital of Borno state, that the figures keep increasing because students from other schools were brought into one school for final exams last month after all schools in Borno state were shut because of attacks by Islamic extremists.

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Anglican leaders are hailing the report Nudging Anglican Parishes to Prevent Violence Against Women, saying it points to a paradigm shift in the way Anglican communities assist in tackling family violence now and in the future.

In Australia, one in three women has experienced violence and one woman dies each week as a result of violence in the home. Most of their tormentors are not strangers lurking on busy streets, but their friends, acquaintances, husbands, brothers and fathers. The rest of the data on violence against women is equally disturbing.

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Suspected members of the militant Islamist group Boko Haram are believed to be holding 187 girls hostage in north-eastern Nigeria, after kidnapping them from their boarding school in Chibok at night.

Several girls managed to escape and get back to their families during the kidnapping on 14 April, but most are still being held. The Christian Association of Nigeria has called for prayer and fasting for the girls’ safe release.

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The National Council of Churches USA has joined in “urgent solidarity” with Christians and other faith groups around the world to call for the release of 234 Nigerian school girls kidnapped April 14 by the Boko Haram extremist sect.

Speaking out with special urgency is the Church of the Brethren, one of the NCC’s member communions. Leadership of the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria (Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria””EYN) has reported that most of the girls are EYN.

“This act of cruel violence tears at the hearts of Brethren who are called as witnesses of God’s call to live in love and peace with our neighbors,” said Stan Noffsinger, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren in the U.S.

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The BBC’s Will Ross speaks to Abba Moro, the Nigerian Interior Minister…

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At least 18 people, including 10 children, have been killed in a Syrian government air strike in the northern city of Aleppo, activist groups say.

A missile struck Ain Jalout school in the Ansari district, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Images showed blood on corridor walls and debris in classrooms.

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Demonstrators are to march through the Nigerian capital Abuja to press for the release of more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by militants two weeks ago.

They say they will march to the National Assembly and demand more action from the government, which has been criticised for not doing enough.

The Islamist group Boko Haram has been blamed for abducting the girls from their school in Chibok, Borno state.

Boko Haram has not yet made any response to the accusation.

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Fifteen local chiefs and three staff from Médecins Sans Frontières among the dead in assault on clinic

At least 22 people, including 15 local chiefs and three members of staff of the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières, were killed in an attack on a town in the Central African Republic, officials said on Sunday.

The attack on Saturday was in Nanga Boguila, about 450 km (280 miles) north of the capital Bangui. Some 2,000 French and over 5,000 African peacekeepers are struggling to halt waves of violence that have gripped the country over the last 18 months.

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The jihadist group’s escalating campaign of terror has claimed 4,000 civilian lives in just four years, and Boko Haram is now linked to the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls. But who are they?

Their name means “western education is forbidden”, and while the group has targeted many schools – and schoolchildren – it has also attacked churches, mosques, police stations, government buildings, bus stations and even a UN compound, as well as carrying out assassinations and kidnappings.

The sect claims to be fighting for a strict sharia state in northern Nigeria and is believed to receive guns and money from Salafist al-Qaeda-linked insurgent groups in the Islamic Maghreb and beyond. Boko Haram is estimated to have killed 4,000 people during its four-year-insurgency. The Nigerian military is estimated to have killed almost as many in its efforts to hunt down and kill the insurgents….

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While out on an unrelated assignment, CBS 2 investigative reporter Dave Savini decided to stop by a South Side Subway sandwich shop for a meal.

Savini was struck by the fact that the counter of the store at 116th Street and South Halsted was encased in bullet-proof glass.

Such a sight would be common at crime magnets like gas stations or currency exchanges, but a Subway?

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Maybe RoboCop is closer to becoming a reality than you think.

Engineers at Clemson University are trying to get research moving to create a robot capable of responding to a violent attack at a school, such as what happened at Sandy Hook or Columbine.

“This will save lives,” said Dr. Juan Gilbert, presidential endowed professor and chairman of the Human-Centered Computing Division at Clemson.

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Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday, called on the Federal Government to ensure the release of 230 students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, who were abducted by members of the Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

Professor Soyinka made the call on a day a coalition of women’s rights in Borno expressed their readiness to mobilise thousands of women to embark on a voluntary search and rescue mission into the notorious Sambisa forest, to ensure the release of the abducted students.

Senate President, David Mark, on his part described the abduction of the girls as sacrilegious.

Meanwhile, members of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, have threatened to kill the abducted students, should the search to recover them continue.

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The destruction of the weapons would be one of the few positive developments in three years of war that has left tens of thousands of Syrians dead and forced millions from their homes. And it would allow the Obama administration to claim a success in its response to the use of chemical weapons in suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian capital, last August.

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Hundreds of people were killed because of their ethnicity after South Sudan rebels seized the oil hub of Bentiu last week, the UN has said.

They were targeted at a mosque, a church and a hospital, the UN Mission in South Sudan said in a statement.

It added that hate speech was broadcast on local radio stations, saying certain groups should leave the town and urging men to rape women.

The Nuer community are seen as supporters of rebel leader Riek Machar

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This week, as Jews celebrate the Passover holiday, they are commemorating the Bible’s Exodus story describing a series of plagues inflicted on ancient Egypt that freed the Israelites, allowing them to make their way to the Holy Land. But over the past century, another exodus, driven by a plague of persecution, has swept across the Middle East and is emptying the region of its Christian population. The persecution is especially virulent today.

The Middle East may be the birthplace of three monotheistic religions, but some Arab nations appear bent on making it the burial ground for one of them. For 2,000 years, Christian communities dotted the region, enriching the Arab world with literature, culture and commerce. At the turn of the 20th century, Christians made up 26% of the Middle East’s population. Today, that figure has dwindled to less than 10%. Intolerant and extremist governments are driving away the Christian communities that have lived in the Middle East since their faith was born.

In the rubble of Syrian cities like Aleppo and Damascus, Christians who refused to convert to Islam have been kidnapped, shot and beheaded by Islamist opposition fighters. In Egypt, mobs of Muslim Brotherhood members burn Coptic Christian churches in the same way they once obliterated Jewish synagogues. And in Iraq, terrorists deliberately target Christian worshippers. This past Christmas, 26 people were killed when a bomb ripped through a crowd of worshipers leaving a church in Baghdad’s southern Dora neighborhood.

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“I feel as if I’m dead,” said Khalil al-Hariri, an archaeologist and the director of the Palmyra Museum, near the ruins. He spends his time waiting for government permission to resume his early-morning explorations, and worrying about the plundering, which he says is “destroying culture, destroying civilization.”

Officials at Unesco, the United Nations agency that works to protect historic places, have classified as endangered all six of Syria’s World Heritage sites, including Palmyra. But conflict keeps them from assessing the damage in person. In recent weeks, as the government consolidated control of the desert highway to Tadmur from the city of Homs, it allowed journalists to visit, among the first outsiders to arrive since armed revolt spread to the region in late 2011.

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Around 100 girls are thought to have been abducted in an attack on a school in north-east Nigeria, officials say.

Gunmen reportedly arrived at the school in Chibok, Borno state, late last night, and ordered the hostel’s teenage residents on to lorries.

The attackers are believed to be from the Islamist group, Boko Haram, whose militants frequently target schools.

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Read it all (every photo has a story just click on each person)

Watch it all and I recommended Kleenex.

Dozens of people have been killed in two blasts that rocked a crowded bus station on the outskirts of Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, officials say.

The blast happened as commuters were about to board buses and taxis to go to work in central Abuja, the BBC’s Haruna Tangaza reports.

Eyewitnesses say there are dead bodies scattered around the area.

This may have been another attack by the Islamist militant group known as Boko Haram, correspondents say.

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One hundred and thirty five civilians have reportedly been killed in North East Nigeria since Wednesday. The killings, which took place in the State of Borno, were carried out in at least three separate attacks.
The attackers are suspected to be from the Islamist Boko Haram movement. Human rights organizations say that at least 1,500 people, half of them civilian, have been killed in the region this year.
Vatican Radio’s Linda Bordoni spoke to Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos in Plateau State which is also in the North Eastern region of Nigeria. Archbishop Kaigama appeals for help and support in tracing the roots of the Boko Haram group in what could prove a necessary attempt to reveal who is behind the group, who provides its militants with arms, what is its scope beyond wreaking fear, death and destruction”¦

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In February, the 20 or so Christian families still living in the northern Syrian town of Raqqa were given the same choice. The cost of protection is now the equivalent of $650 in Syrian pounds, a large amount for people struggling to make ends meet in a war zone. The other two options remain unchanged. This time the offer came from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), an extremist antigovernment group that seized Raqqa in May 2013 from more-moderate rebel brigades and declared the town the capital of its own Islamic state.

Most of Raqqa’s 3,000 Christians had already fled the fighting, leaving just a few families in a place suddenly run by a group known for its violent tactics in both Iraq and Syria, including beheadings and floggings”“tactics so ruthless that even al-Qaeda has disowned the group. The number had fallen even further by the time ISIS commanders promised the Christians that as long as they paid the levy, the one church that had not already been destroyed in the fighting would be left untouched and the Christians would not be physically harmed. They would have the right to practice their religion as long as they didn’t ring bells, evangelize or pray within earshot of a Muslim.

Church leaders urged Raqqa’s Christians to pay the militants. “[ISIS] told me that all I need to do is pay the taxes, and they will protect me,” says George, a 17-year-old Christian music student still living in Raqqa. “I know that under the Caliphate, Christians got a lot of things in return for paying taxes. The Christian community was left in peace.” That hasn’t been the case so far in Syria’s new Caliphate. When ISIS arrived in town, it warned Christians to stay out of sight and hide their crucifixes.

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Gunmen have killed 135 civilians in north east Nigeria since Wednesday, a senior official from the region has told the BBC.

Borno state senator Ahmed Zannah said the killings took place in at least three separate attacks in the state.

The attackers are suspected to be from the Islamist Boko Haram movement.

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