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US flying manned surveillance aircraft over Nigeria in hunt for missing girls
• ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- A Nigerian government official said "all options are open" in the search for missing schoolgirls that's now being actively supported by U.S. surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.
• Boko Haram, the militant group that is holding some 276 female students kidnapped , says in a new video that the girls will only be freed after the government releases jailed militants.
• The group, which wants to impose Islamic law on Nigeria, has killed more than 1,500 people this year in a campaign of bombings and massacres. Boko Haram's kidnapping of schoolgirls at a boarding school in northeast Nigeria last month has focused international attention on the extremist group amid outrage that most of the girls have not been rescued.
• Nigeria's government, which has repeatedly denied allegations that was slow to respond to the mass abduction, had initially suggested there would be no negotiations with Boko Haram. Now it appears that stance may be relaxed.
• Mike Omri, the director of Nigeria's National Orientation Agency, said late Monday that the government will "use whatever kind of action" it takes to free the girls.
• ___
Scorn, icy stares are part of the job for lawyers who represent despised terrorism suspects
• NEW YORK (AP) -- People in the courthouse sometimes shun them. Friends, and even family, sometimes question their principles.
• For the small band of lawyers who defend the most despised terror suspects -- the ones accused of hatching al-Qaida plots to kill Americans around the world -- this is the highly uncomfortable life they chose.
• They are the true believers in the legal principle that everybody deserves representation in court, even if it means they get the same scorn and sometimes the same scrutiny as the people they represent.
• Just ask Anthony Ricco, who was among a handful of respected defense lawyers summoned to the federal courthouse in Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks because they might be needed for potential suspects. He recalled his mother telling him, in a temporary moment of outrage, "If you go down there to represent them, I (Continued on page 31)
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