Boko Haram forces 50,000 to flee homes

Boko Haram forces 50,000 to flee homes

NIAMEY, Niger

More than 50,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in southeastern Niger after a series of attacks by Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.

Attacks by the Nigeria-based fighters Friday, Sunday and Monday on the town of Bosso and its military post forced people to flee to Toumour, about 19 miles to the west, the agency said.

The U.N. also said the security and humanitarian situation in the Diffa region has worsened. A May 31 attack in the town of Yebi killed nine people and forced 15,000 to flee.

Drill to prepare for major catastrophe starts in Northwest

CAMP MURRAY, Wash.

The Pacific Northwest kicked off a massive earthquake and tsunami drill Tuesday as part of a multiday event to rehearse scenarios on how the region would deal with a dual natural disaster that could kill thousands, cut off coastal communities, and collapse phone and Internet service.

The four-day event, called Cascadia Rising, is built around the premise of a magnitude-9.0 earthquake 95 miles off the coast of Oregon that results in a tsunami. Both events likely would destroy buildings, roads and buildings and disrupt communications.

Major General Bret Daugherty, commander of the Washington National Guard, said that when the Cascadia Subduction Zone – a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia – ruptures, “it will result in a catastrophe like nothing we have ever seen.”

Father gets life for selling daughters to child pornographer

GREENEVILLE, Tenn.

A Tennessee man who sold his three daughters to a man who raped them and used them in child pornography has been sentenced to life in prison.

U.S. District Judge J. Ronnie Greer called it one of the most horrible crimes he had ever seen when he sentenced the 63-year-old father Monday, according to a statement from the office of acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr.

According to court records, both parents were involved with the abuse and exploitation of the children and were indicted in 2013.

The girls were age 12, 14 and 16 when police discovered what happened to them, federal prosecutors said in a statement. It was not immediately clear when police made that discovery, however.

The Associated Press is not naming the parents to protect the identities of the daughters.

FBI director: IS still main threat

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn.

The director of the FBI said Tuesday that the Islamic State group is currently the main threat facing the United States, both in its efforts to recruit fighters to join its members overseas and to have others carry out violence in America.

Director James Comey said the IS group poses a third potential threat: a “terrorist diaspora” that he said eventually will flow out of Syria and Iraq and end up in Western Europe, where members will have easy access to the U.S.

“There’s three prongs to this ISIL threat,” Comey said. “The recruitment to travel, the recruitment to violence in place, and then what you saw a preview of in Brussels and in Paris – hardened fighters coming out, looking to kill people.”

He said officials are “laser-focused on that.”

Associated Press