Globe Trot: Nigerian villagers strike back against Boko Haram

NIGERIA: The United States is flying manned surveillance missions over northern Nigeria to try to locate more than 200 schoolgirls abducted last month by terror group Boko Haram. Meanwhile, the governor of Borno state says he has information on their whereabouts. And we received word this morning of civilian-mounted attacks in Borno against Boko Haram. According to reports, residents of three villages have repelled an attack by the Islamist fighters, killing about 200 of them in the Kala Balge district. Locals say the area near Lake Chad and the Cameroon border came under attack last week, with Boko Haram killing perhaps 400 people and destroying hundreds of cars and dozens of houses.

The concerted effort to find the schoolgirls should not exist apart from wider recognition of the threat posed by Boko Haram and other al-Qaeda affiliated militants in north and west Africa. The U.S. narrative so far, points out Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea, has not helped Nigerian boys and girls, men and women fleeing terrorist attacks.

INDIA’S low-caste “Dalits” are taking a sizable step into politics with a newly formed Christian political party and a campaign dedicated to earning seats in a new state assembly. With India’s five-week election ending two days ago, the new party will be important given the likely dominance of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, who claim every Indian has to be a Hindu.

HAITI: There’s hope for Flight 370. Five hundred years later, divers believe they’ve found the remains of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria off the northern coast of Haiti.

WE’RE FOLLOWING: The general election in Ukraine, less than 2 weeks away, and elections next week in Malawi, where unrest threatens.

AND LISTENING: “A strange thing I have observed over many years in this business of news gathering and news presentation is that by some infallible process media people always manage to miss the most important thing. It’s almost as though there were some built-in propensity to do this. In moments of humility, I realize that if I had been correspondent in the Holy Land at the time of our Lord’s ministry, I should almost certainly have spent my time knocking about with the entourage of Pontius Pilate, finding out what the Sanhedrin was up to, and lurking around Herod’s court with the hope of signing up Salome to write her memoirs exclusively. I regret that this is true. Ironically enough, as the dramatization of the public scene gains impetus, so we move farther and farther from the reality of things and become more and more preoccupied with fantasy.”—Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom (Grand Rapids, 1980), pages 38-39.