The only Christian among the 110 schoolgirls abducted last month by Boko Haram ran away from her kidnappers but was caught and brought back three days later, according to fellow captives speaking in their first face-to-face interview since they were returned to their families last week.

Leah Sharibu is the only one of the Dapchi girls that Boko Haram refused to hand over after negotiations with the Nigerian government, apparently because she refused to renounce her faith and convert to Islam. She is still held by the group. Kidnapped by a militant group that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions across north-east Nigeria and the surrounding region, the girls’ extraordinary bravery shines through their testimony. Speaking to the Guardian from their homes in Yobe state, the girls who had to leave their friend behind described how Leah and two others escaped together. “She didn’t tell us she was leaving,” said Aisha Ibiwa. “We thought she was just going round the corner, but she sneaked out along with Maryam and Amira [two classmates].”(theguardian)…[+]

Detectives investigating the attempted murders of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal have said they believe the pair were poisoned with a nerve agent at the front door of his Salisbury home. Specialists investigating the poisoning of the the Skripals have found the highest concentration of the nerve agent on the front door at the address, police said. Counter-terrorism detectives will continue to focus their inquiries on the home address for the coming weeks, and possibly months, after the father and daughter were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury earlier this month.

Local police have retaken control of The Maltings shopping centre, where the Skripals were first discovered, and London Road cemetery from counter-terrorism detectives, where officers focused their investigation into the nerve agent attack in previous weeks. More than 130 people could have been exposed to the chemical weapon in the aftermath of the poisoning in Salisbury, which the UK government believes was committed by the Russian state. In response to the poisoning, more than 150 Russian officials have been expelled from more than 25 countries, and the UK government is considering further measures to punish Russia, including a ban on the City of London from selling Russian sovereign debt. Public health experts are still working to establish whether the nerve agent attack presents a long term risks to Salisbury’s residents, which will receive a £1m support package from central government to help recover.(theguardian)…[+]

The leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to hold a summit at a village on the border between the two countries on 27 April, only the third-ever such meeting and another sign of a thaw in relations. Senior officials of the two Koreas met on Thursday to prepare for a rare inter-Korean summit, days after the nuclear-armed North’s leader Kim Jong-un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China. Kim is due to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in late April at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone, followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

At the Unification Pavilion on Panmunjom’s northern side, the leader of Pyongyang’s delegation Ri Son Gwon said Thursday’s talks were aimed at paving the way for a meeting between the leaders of North and South – the first direct public reference to a summit by any Northern official or media outlet. “Over the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place,” said Ri, who is chairman of the North’s reunification committee. The rapid rapprochement on the peninsula was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and comes after a year of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes, which saw Kim and Trump engage in a fiery war of words.(theguardian)…[+]

The Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai has made a tearful return to Pakistan in her first visit to her native country since she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012 for advocating education for girls.

Yousafzai, travelling with her father and younger brother, met the prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, in the capital, Islamabad, before giving a brief speech on national television. “It’s the happiest day of my life. I still can’t believe it’s happening,” she said, wiping away tears. I don’t normally cry … I’m still 20 years old but I’ve seen so many things in life,” she added. Yousafzai spoke of the importance of education and about the efforts of her charitable foundation to help girls, often switching between English and the Pashto and Urdu languages. “Welcome home,” Abbasi told Yousafzai. “When she went away, she was a child of 12. She has returned as the most prominent citizen of Pakistan.”(Theguardian)…[+]

A former Canadian university student has pleaded guilty to killing six men who were praying in a Quebec City mosque in January 2017, averting a trial in one of the country’s rare mass shootings. Alexandre Bissonnette told a Quebec City court that he wanted to change his previous plea of not guilty. The judge declared him guilty on six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Six people were killed and another 18 wounded in the attack during evening prayers at the Quebec City Islamic cultural center, also known as the Grande Mosquée de Quebec. Bissonnette – at the time a student in the social sciences faculty at Laval University – also faced five charges of attempted murder. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, initially described the shooting as a terrorist attack, although prosecutors did not charge Bissonnette with terrorism.(theguardian)…[+]

Nobody in Miskolc can say with certainty that they have ever seen a migrant or a refugee in the city. A few residents think they might have seen one or two people back in 2015 but cannot be sure. Others say their friends have seen migrants in the streets but admit they have not seen any themselves.

And yet, in this city of 160,000 inhabitants in north-east Hungary, a fierce election campaign is under way in which there is one overriding issue being discussed ahead of the vote on 8 April. It is not the recent series of corruption scandals involving government officials and vast sums of money. Nor is it the depressing state of local healthcare or low wages. It is migration.(theguardian)…[+]

France has honoured its heroic gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, who died saving hostages’ lives at a supermarket siege last week, with all the respect, gratitude and emotion the grieving country could muster. In a state ceremony that conveyed France’s pride and profound sadness, President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute on Wednesday to the officer who he said had the “gratitude, admiration and affection of the whole country”.

It was the first time Macron had been called upon to deliver a state funeral homage since his election in May 2017. He stood grim-faced as the Marseillaise was played. His speech made reference to Joan of Arc, members of the French resistance and others who had died for the country.

Before hundreds of people, including former presidents, government ministers, military officers and members of the public, Beltrame’s coffin was carried into the cour d’honneur at Les Invalides by 10 gendarmes who had known him. Hundreds more gathered outside. Beltrame’s képi, the gendarmerie’s headgear, in which he kept a photograph of himself with his wife, Marielle, and his decorations were carried by two officers. He was posthumously promoted to colonel and made a commander of the Légion d’Honneur. Beltrame was hailed a hero after volunteering on Friday to take the place of a female hostage being held by the suspected Islamist gunman Radouane Lakdim, 25, who had already killed three people.(theguardian)…[+]

An Italian man has finally been acquitted of stealing an aubergine nine years after being charged, ending a legal wrangle that cost taxpayers thousands. The man, then 49, had the aubergine in his bucket when police caught him trying to escape through a privately owned field near Lecce, in the southern region of Puglia, in 2009.

While being taken away, he pleaded with the police that he had tried to steal it because he was unemployed and desperate to feed his child. However, the courts initially showed no mercy, sentencing him to five months in prison and ordering him to pay a €500 (£440) fine. That punishment was reduced on appeal to two months in jail and €120. The man’s legal counsel was still not satisfied and took the case to the court of cassation in Rome, Italy’s highest appeals court, where the defendant was acquitted nearly a decade after he was arrested. The court criticised the lower courts in Lecce for not taking into account the extreme weakness of the prosecution’s case given the man’s financial situation. La Repubblica newspaper quoted the ruling as saying that the man “was definitely acting to satisfy the hunger of his family … there are grounds for justification”.(theguardian)…[+]

Three Indian journalists have been mown down by vehicles and killed in separate incidents over recent days in what their families and rights groups claim were deliberate attacks. The deaths of the reporters Sandeep Sharma in Madhya Pradesh state, and Navin Nischal and Vijay Singh in Bihar state, have underlined India’s status as one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, particularly in languages other than English and outside large cities. Sharma, 36, had recently conducted an undercover “sting” that claimed to have produced footage of a senior police official in his area agreeing to accept a 25,000-rupee (£272) bribe each month in exchange for allowing sand mining in a protected crocodile sanctuary.

“After that he was getting lots of threats from people,” said Rizwan Ahmad Siddiqui, editor-in-chief of News World, the local television news channel where Sharma worked. “He was denied police protection and the police asked for the camera he had used to conduct the sting,” he said. “They took the original recording and never gave it back.”(theguardian)…[+]

White House officials have been looking into whether $500m in loans that went to Jared Kushner’s family real estate company may have spurred ethics or criminal law violations, according to the head of the federal government’s ethics agency. David Apol, acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, said in a letter sent late last week to representative Raja Krishnamoorthi that the White House counsel’s office told him officials were investigating the loans to Kushner Companies and whether “additional procedures are necessary to avoid violations in the future”.

Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, asked Apol on 1 March about a New York Times report in February that Kushner Companies accepted $184m in loans from Apollo Global Management and $325m from Citigroup last year over a span of several months after Kushner met officials from the two firms.

As Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions. Late on Monday, Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said “the White House counsel concluded there were no issues involving Jared”. Several White House officials contacted for comment were not immediately available to confirm whether White House lawyers had completed the inquiry.

Lowell denied any improprieties by Kushner, saying “he was not involved with his former company after he entered government service; the transactions in question came after that; he had nothing to do with those transactions; the transactions had nothing to do with any of his meetings in the White House”. Both companies have insisted their officials did nothing wrong in meeting with Kushner. In one case cited by the Times, Citigroup lent $325m to Kushner Companies in spring 2017, shortly after Kushner met Citi’s chief executive, Michael Corbat. Last week, Citigroup’s general counsel told several Democratic lawmakers in a letter that the loan was “completely appropriate”.(theguardian)…[+]