Witnesses: Extremists abduct 17 village girls

ABUJA, NIGERIA >> Islamic extremists have abducted 17 girls in northeast Nigeria, witnesses said Saturday as the West African nation’s military said it “remains resolute in decisively countering the terrorists.”

Members of the Boko Haram jihadi group attacked Pemi, a village in the Chibok local government area of Borno state, on Thursday, two residents said. The state is where Boko Haram’s decadelong insurgency against the Nigeria government has been concentrated.

In a statement late Friday, Islamic State also claimed responsibility for killing “many Christians” and setting fire to two churches and several houses during an attack on the Borno town of Bimi.

Authorities blame Boko Haram for the killing of tens of thousands of people in Nigeria and elsewhere.

The abduction of the girls from Pemi recalled the 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, a remote town.

Thich Nhat Hanh, noted Zen Buddhist monk

HANOI, VIETNAM >> Thich Nhat Hanh, the revered Zen Buddhist monk who helped spread the practice of mindfulness in the West and socially engaged Buddhism in the East, has died. He was 95. The death was confirmed by a monk at Tu Hieu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam who said that Nhat Hanh, known as Thay to his followers, died at midnight Saturday.

A post on Nhat Hanh’s verified Twitter page attributed to The International Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism also confirmed the news.

Born as Nguyen Xuan Bao in 1926 in Hue and ordained at age 16, Nhat Hanh distilled Buddhist teachings on compassion and suffering into easily grasped guidance over a lifetime dedicated to working for peace. In 1961, he taught comparative religion for a time at Princeton and Columbia universities. He then lived in exile from Vietnam at Plum Village, a retreat in southern France he founded.