In a statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had acted only as a neutral intermediary and were not involved in the negotiations.
ICRC vehicles arrived at a refugee camp on the Cameroon border at about midday on Saturday, sources quoted by the AFP news agency said.
They drove into the bush and returned some hours later with the 13 who were then flown in four helicopters to Maiduguri.
Details of the negotiations were not revealed.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionSome of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls were released in 2016 and 2017
In October 2016 and May 2017 the ICRC was also an intermediary in the release of some of the 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram from the town of Chibok in 2014.
On Saturday, Mr Buhari called on the Nigerian army to intensify efforts to bring home more than 100 Chibok schoolgirls still missing.
Boko Haram is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.
Image captionArtwork: The way ‘Oumuamua tumbles suggests it was involved in a collision
The space interloper ‘Oumuamua is spinning chaotically and will carry on doing so for more than a billion years.
That is the conclusion of new Belfast research that has examined in detail the light bouncing off the cigar-shaped asteroid from outside our Solar System.
“At some point or another it’s been in a collision,” says Dr Wes Fraser from Queen’s University.
His team’s latest study is featured in Sunday’s Sky At Night episode on the BBC and published in Nature Astronomy.
It is yet another intriguing finding about this strange object that has fascinated scientists since its discovery back in October.
‘Oumuamua comes from a different star system. Its path across the sky confirms it does not originate in our solar neighbourhood.
Initially, it was thought the object could be a comet, but it displays none of the classic behaviour expected of these cosmic wanderers – such as a dusty, water-ice particle tail.
‘Oumuamua is in all likelihood an asteroid, albeit with a highly unusual shape. It has been described as resembling a cigar or cucumber, where the longest dimension is over 200m.
The Queen’s team wanted to establish the exact nature and rate of the object’s rotation.
To do this, the group studied variations in its brightness over time.
Media captionWes Fraser explains what is meant by tumbling with the aid of a ping-pong bat
Almost immediately, Dr Fraser and colleagues could see that it was not spinning periodically like many small asteroids, but spinning chaotically – it was tumbling.
In Sunday’s Sky At Night programme on BBC Four, the Queen’s researcher illustrates this with the aid of a tennis table bat.
Throw it in the air one way and it will turn over evenly about a single axis; throw it up another way and it is possible to make the paddle turn over in an apparently haphazard way.
“It quickly starts to wobble around chaotically, and that’s what we call tumbling,” he tells presenter Chris Lintott.
The most probable explanation is that ‘Oumuamua has been hit by another object at some point in its history.
The team can’t say exactly when that happened but what they can say is that the tumbling will continue for at least a billion years.
“The tumbling actually causes stresses and strains internal to the object, and that slowly but surely squeezes and pulls on the object just like tides on the Earth to remove energy from the spin,” explains Dr Fraser. This dampening process takes a very, very long time.
Dr Fraser says it is reasonable to assume the collision occurred in ‘Oumuamua’s own stellar system before it was then kicked out.
“It’s hard to know if it was during planet formation or after the planet formation process,” he tells Chris. “Certainly, more collisions happen while planets are growing than afterwards, so that’s a very good guess. But unfortunately we can’t get a high-resolution image of this thing to see what kind of crater is on it that might be attributed to the collision that caused it to start tumbling.”
Image copyrightLSSTImage captionArtwork: The LSST should become operational in the next few years
The hunt is now on for more ‘Oumuamua-like objects. Extrapolating from this one discovery, there ought to be some 10,000 of them passing through our Solar System inside the orbit of Neptune.
The trouble is – being so small and dark, they are extremely hard to spot.
There is though, a new observatory coming that may change this game completely. It is called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and it will come online in the next couple of years.
With its 8.4m primary mirror and super-digital camera, it will image the entire viewable sky from its position in Chile every few nights.
If anything is moving across the sky, it will be hard to escape the attention of the LSST.
“It is basically the perfect sort of tool to find objects like ‘Oumuamua. We expect to find 100s of them with the LSST,” Dr Fraser says.
The Sky At Night programme, The Mystery of ‘Oumuamua, is broadcast on BBC Four on Sunday at 22:00 GMT, after which it will be available on the iPlayer.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionThe lawyer was a pro-democracy activist, a critic of Pakistan’s security establishment, and a women’s rights defender
Prominent Pakistani human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir has died at the age of 66.
She reportedly suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to hospital, where she later died.
The pro-democracy activist championed women’s rights throughout her career.
She was imprisoned in 1983 and put under house arrest in 2007. Five years ago, leaked documents suggested that some intelligence officers had planned to kill her.
More recently she spoke out against OP’S NEWS Persian journalists being put on trial in Iran, as part of her role as UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran.
Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi led tributes to Ms Jahangir, saying her death was a great loss for the legal fraternity, and praying for her and her family.
In her career, Ms Jahangir was a staunch defender of human rights and women’s rights, and a pro-democracy activist, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
She worked closely with her sister Hina Jilani on many of her endeavours.
In 2014 Ms Jahangir told AFP news agency she had seen changes in the perception of human rights in Pakistan.
“There was a time that human rights was not even an issue in this country,” she said. “Then prisoners’ rights became an issue.”
“Women’s rights was thought of as a Western concept. Now people do talk about women’s rights.”
Asma Jahangir’s career:
Trained as a lawyer and worked in Pakistan’s Supreme Court from age 30
A critic of the military establishment
Jailed in 1983 for pro-democracy activities
Put under house arrest in 2007 for opposing military leader’s removal of Supreme Court chief justice
Co-founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and of the first free legal aid centre in Pakistan
Co-founder of the Women’s Action Forum, set up to oppose law that reduced a woman’s testimony in court to half that of a man’s
The first female leader of Pakistan’s Supreme Court bar association
Winner of several awards including the Unesco/Bilbao prize for the promotion of a culture of human rights and the French Legion of Honour
Served as UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion and on human rights in Iran
Suspicion for that attack fell on an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) group in Sinai and Mr Sisi authorised troops to use “all brute force” necessary to restore “security and stability” to the region within three months.
Egyptian ground troops, air forces and navy joined with border guards and the police for the operation, dubbed Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionArmy vehicles took up positions on the western bank of the Suez Canal
The statement says they found a communication centre and six drug farms.
The Sinai peninsula, where Egypt’s most active militants are based, borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Last week the New York Times reported that unmarked Israeli aircraft were carrying out covert strikes in Egypt with the Egyptian president’s approval.
Egypt denied this, and Israel declined the chance to comment.
Suspicion for that attack fell on an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) group in Sinai and Mr Sisi authorised troops to use “all brute force” necessary to restore “security and stability” to the region within three months.
Egyptian ground troops, air forces and navy joined with border guards and the police for the operation, dubbed Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionArmy vehicles took up positions on the western bank of the Suez Canal
The statement says they found a communication centre and six drug farms.
The Sinai peninsula, where Egypt’s most active militants are based, borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Last week the New York Times reported that unmarked Israeli aircraft were carrying out covert strikes in Egypt with the Egyptian president’s approval.
Egypt denied this, and Israel declined the chance to comment.
Formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, the group first appeared in September 2011 and rebranded itself with an IS pledge of allegiance in November 2014.
The group generally targets Egyptian security forces in northern Sinai but also claimed an attack on a tourist site in southern Sinai in April of last year.
In the first part of 2017 IS stepped up attacks against Christians in Sinai and elsewhere in Egypt, claiming two deadly attacks on churches in Tanta and Alexandria on 9 April.
IS started to scale up its attacks in Sinai from September 2017 onwards, as it started losing territory in Iraq and Syria.
In addition to its attacks on Christians, IS has adopted a threatening tone against Sufi Muslims, whom it considers to be heretics.
The head of the IS religious police in Sinai had previously said that Sufis who did not “repent” would be killed. IS has beheaded a number of Sufi men whom it accused of “sorcery”.
The group did not say it had carried out November’s attack on the al-Rawda mosque in northern Sinai but it is widely believed to have been responsible. Locals said the mosque was popular among Sufis.
Image captionThe Sinai peninsula borders Israel, the Gaza Strip, the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea
Media captionThe story of the jet, why it was in Syria, and how it was shot down
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says his country will defend itself “against any attack” after carrying out what appear to be its largest strikes on sites in Syria in decades.
Israel launched raids against Iranian targets after saying it had intercepted an Iranian drone crossing the Syria-Israel border.
Iran denies the allegation.
During the offensive an Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down by Syria air defences, crashing in northern Israel.
Its pilots ejected from the plane and were taken to hospital.
It is believed to be the first time Israel has lost a jet in combat since 2006.
Mr Netanyahu warned that Israel’s policy to defend itself against “any attempt to harm our sovereignty” was “absolutely clear”.
“Iran brazenly violated Israel’s sovereignty,” he said, adding: “They dispatched an Iranian drone from Syrian territory into Israel… Israel holds Iran and its Syrian hosts responsible.”
Image copyrightAFPImage captionRemains of a missile were found near the site of the F-16 jet crash in northern Israel
Mr Netanyahu said Israel would oppose any attempt by Iran to entrench itself militarily in Syria.
But he also said during a meeting with military chiefs that “Israel seeks peace”.
In other reaction:
The US state department said it supported Israel’s right to defend itself, blaming Iran for the confrontation
In a phone call with Mr Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the need to avoid a “dangerous escalation”. He has been supporting President Assad’s government in Syria’s civil war
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate de-escalation in the actions that he said threaten a “dangerous spill-over” across Syria’s borders
Image copyrightAFPImage captionIsraeli soldiers are in the alert in the occupied Golan Heights
What caused the escalation?
Israel’s military says one of its combat helicopters downed an Iranian drone infiltrating Israel on Saturday. It tweeted footage of the incident.
In response, Israel said it attacked Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria, during which an F-16 jet was fired upon, Israel says, causing it to crash.
The two pilots were able to parachute to safety before it came down in an empty field near the town of Harduf in northern Israel.
Israel says it then carried out a second wave of strikes on both Syrian and Iranian military targets.
The Israeli military said it had inflicted huge damage on targets in Syria in the “most significant attack” of its kind against the country since the 1982 Lebanon war.
Syria’s state media say air defences opened fire in response to an Israeli attack on a military base, hitting more than one plane.
Iran is Israel’s arch-enemy, and Iranian troops have been fighting rebel groups in Syria since 2011.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionThese Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon celebrated the downing of the Israeli jet in front of UN troops
Tehran has sent military advisers, volunteer militias and, reportedly, hundreds of fighters from its Quds Force, the overseas arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
It is also believed to have supplied thousands of tonnes of weaponry and munitions to help President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which is fighting on Syria’s side.
Tehran has faced accusations that it is seeking to establish not just an arc of influence but a logistical land supply line from Iran through to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Image copyrightREUTERSImage captionSwedish bookseller Gui Minhai, who is detained in China, gave a video interview in which he condemned Stockholm. It’s not clear if he was speaking under duress.
State media in China have accused Sweden of a movie-style plot to spirit away detained bookseller Gui Minhai, who has Swedish citizenship.
On Friday a video interview was released in which he accused Stockholm of “sensationalising” his case.
A Chinese tabloid condemned Sweden for trying to “demonstrate its diplomatic heroism by ‘saving the bookseller'”.
Mr Gui, who was briefly freed from custody last October, has been in and out of Chinese detention since 2015, when he went missing during a holiday in Thailand.
What is the Chinese press saying?
The Global Times, a nationalistic paper, accused Sweden of tricking Mr Gui into a plan designed to free him from Chinese custody.
It says the bookseller was banned from leaving the Chinese mainland over allegations he had been involved in “illegal business”.
Image copyrightPHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionPlacards showing missing bookseller Gui Minhai (R) and his associate Lee Bo, pictured in 2016
The Global Times accused the Swedish foreign ministry of “craving the limelight in the EU and the West”, and said it had made itself “a laughingstock”.
Human rights groups including Amnesty International have warned that the interview has the hallmarks of a forced confession.
“Looking back, I might have become Sweden’s chess piece,” Mr Gui says in the footage. “My wonderful life has been ruined and I would never trust the Swedish ever again.”
Katarina Byrenius, a spokeswoman for Sweden’s foreign ministry, has said the video “changes nothing”.
“We continue to demand that our citizen be given the opportunity to meet with Swedish diplomatic staff and medical staff,” she wrote in an email to Reuters news agency.
“It’s almost certainly a forced confession,” said William Nee, a China researcher with Amnesty International.
“The fact that he’s kind of repeating talking points that the [Chinese] government wants to put out … and as far as we know he’s in incommunicado detention. He doesn’t have lawyers of his choice or consular access right now,” he told Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK.
What’s the background?
Mr Gui, who has published books on the personal lives of Chinese Communist Party leaders, has spent much of the past two years in Chinese custody.
He first made headlines in 2015 when he vanished from Thailand and resurfaced in China, along with four other Hong Kong-based publishers.
After his disappearance, there were allegations that he had been abducted by Chinese agents across international borders in an extrajudicial process.
Chinese officials, however, say Mr Gui and the four other men all went to China voluntarily.
Image copyrightEPAImage captionThe missing plane was An-148 like the one in this archive picture
A Russian airliner carrying 71 passengers and crew has crashed after vanishing from radar screens as it left a Moscow airport for the Urals, media say.
The Saratov Airlines An-148 regional jet was en route to the city of Orsk when it went missing.
An emergency services source has told Interfax news agency the plane crashed and there was “no chance” of survivors.
It reportedly fell near Argunovo, about 80km (50 miles) south-east of Moscow.
According to another news agency, the jet vanished from radar screens two minutes after it left Domodedovo Airport.
What do we know about Saratov Airlines?
Saratov Airlines is based in Saratov, 840km south-east of Moscow.
In 2015 it was banned from operating international flights when surprise inspectors found someone other than the flight crew was in the cockpit.
The airline appealed against the ban and changed its policy before resuming international charter flights in 2016.
It flies mainly between Russian cities but also has destinations in Armenia and Georgia.
Media captionTest shows fire danger of paraffin-based creams
Hundreds of fire deaths may be linked to the use of skin creams containing paraffin, a senior firefighter warns.
If people use the creams regularly but do not often change clothes or bedding, paraffin residue can soak into the fabric and act as an accelerant when it comes into contact with a cigarette or a flame from a heater.
A OP’S NEWS investigation found most creams do not carry warnings despite the risk.
The medicines regulator is conducting a safety review into the creams.
Last March a OP’S NEWS investigation discovered 37 death were linked to skin creams containing paraffin in England since 2010. It is believed there have been a further eight deaths since November 2016.
Media captionTest shows fire danger of paraffin-based creams
Hundreds of fire deaths may be linked to the use of skin creams containing paraffin, a senior firefighter warns.
If people use the creams regularly but do not often change clothes or bedding, paraffin residue can soak into the fabric and act as an accelerant when it comes into contact with a cigarette or a flame from a heater.
A BBC investigation found most creams do not carry warnings despite the risk.
The medicines regulator is conducting a safety review into the creams.
Last March a BBC investigation discovered 37 deaths were linked to skin creams containing paraffin in England since 2010. It is believed there have been a further eight deaths since November 2016.
But fire services are now warning the creams – used for conditions like eczema and psoriasis – may have played a role in many other deaths without investigators realising.
Firefighter Chris Bell, who is a watch commander with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, says the actual number of deaths linked to the creams is likely to be much higher.
“Hundreds of thousands of people use them, we’re not sure how many fire deaths might have occurred but it could be into the hundreds,” he said.
His concerns were echoed by Mark Hazelton, group manager for community safety at London Fire Brigade.
He said many fire services do not have forensic investigation teams able to properly assess the role of paraffin cream in fires.
‘I seem to have set myself on fire’
Image copyrightFAMILY PHOTOImage captionBrian Bicat’s daughter Kirsten says the family had no idea his clothing was a fire risk
Brian Bicat, 82, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, died last September after being set on fire.
died last September after being set on fire.
It is believed cigarette embers sparked paraffin residue from his skin cream and set his clothes alight.
His daughter Kirsten said her father’s wife Kathleen returned from a walk to find him conscious but severely injured.
“The flat was full of smoke and there was a pile of smouldering clothes on the floor outside the bathroom burning a hole in the carpet,” Kirsten said.
“My dad was sat on the bed with no clothes on, and covered in water and hair singed, looking sort of dazed and he said ‘I seem to have set myself on fire’.”
‘Human firelighter’
The grandfather of three, who used to run a jazz club, was airlifted to hospital suffering third degree burns across half his body and later died.
Image copyrightFAMILY PHOTOImage captionMr Bicat with his son Thomas
Kirsten said the family had no idea his clothing had become a fire risk.
“One minute he was going to jazz club, going on holiday to the bird watching sanctuary, playing Scrabble and being larger than life like he was, then the next minute just completely gone. It’s just so hard to get your head round,” she said.
“The clothes that he wore were obviously saturated with the creams so he unwittingly turned himself into a firelighter and who knew that could happen?”
No warnings
Last year the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) asked all manufacturers of skin creams that contain paraffin to carry a fire-risk warning.
But a joint investigation between 5 live Investigates and Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire has discovered just seven of 38 products containing paraffin that are licensed in the UK have put warnings on their packaging.
The MHRA said it was conducting a review around safety information concerning paraffin-based skin creams and was continuing to “collaborate closely with partner organisations including both manufacturers and the fire service to further reduce the risks associated with paraffin-containing topical products”.
John Smith, chief executive of The Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB), which represents manufacturers of branded over-the-counter medicines, said: “We recognise that all emollient products need clear information on packaging that warns users about the potential risk if their clothing or bedding comes into contact with a naked flame.”
He said PAGB was engaged closely with the ongoing MHRA review.
“Many manufacturers have already added warnings, and others are in the process of doing so,” he added.
The world of music and film has been paying tribute.
Mr Jóhannsson received Oscar nominations for his work associated with Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 crime drama Sicario and a Grammy nomination for the 2016 alien thriller Arrival.
When he was nominated for an award for The Theory of Everything, a 2014 film depicting the early life of physicist Stephen Hawking, Mr Jóhannsson said that it was a “challenge to do justice to the scope of the film”.
In an interview with the site Collider at the time, the composer said that he opted for “pure orchestral expression” for the film, adding that this was “a new thing for me and something that I enjoyed”.
On Saturday Mr Jóhannsson’s manager, Tim Husom, said that he had “lost my friend, who was one of the most talented musicians and intelligent people I knew”.
Among those to pay tribute to the musician was film critic Mark Kermode, who said the loss of a “great innovator” was “very sad news”.
US actor Elijah Wood, who knew Mr Jóhannsson through his work on the soundtrack to the film Mandy, said he was “distraught and saddened”.
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