ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigeria’s government is negotiating the release of another 83 of the Chibok schoolgirls taken in a mass abduction 2½ years ago, but more than 100 others appear unwilling to leave their Boko Haram Islamic extremist captors, a community leader said Tuesday.
The unwilling girls may have been radicalized by Boko Haram or are ashamed to return home because they were forced to marry extremists and have babies, chairman Pogu Bitrus of the Chibok Development Association told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
MILAN – Former Italian Premier Mario Monti came out Tuesday against a constitutional referendum on which the government’s current leader has staked his future, lending weight to the “no” campaign seeking to force early elections.
Premier Matteo Renzi has said he would resign if the referendum fails, and opposition politicians and dissenters in Renzi’s own Democratic Party have come out strongly against the ballot question in a bid to challenge his nearly three-year-old government.
Renzi has been campaigning hard to pass the measures, which he says will make the country more competitive.
VIENNA – The building where Adolf Hitler was born may be spared demolition, but emerge heavily disguised.
On Monday, Austria’s interior minister, Wolfgang Sobotka, told the daily Die Presse that “the Hitler house will be torn down.”
On Tuesday, he said the term “torn down” is debatable but the building, in the western town of Braunau, will be so thoroughly redesigned that it “will not be recognizable.”
Associated Press
