Boko Haram leader denies he's dead

LAGOS • The leader of Nigeria's Boko Haram denied he had been killed or ousted as chief of the Islamist group in an audio recording released on Sunday attributed to him by security experts.

In the eight-minute message, Abubakar Shekau rebuffed claims by Chadian leader Idriss Deby that he had been replaced and called the president a "hypocrite" and a "tyrant".

Mr Deby declared last Wednesday that efforts to combat neighbouring Nigeria's Boko Haram militants had succeeded in "decapitating" the group and would be wrapped up "by the end of the year".

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Software update grounds 440 flights

WASHINGTON • A software upgrade at an air traffic centre in Leesburg, Virginia, may have led to more than 440 flights getting cancelled along the heavily populated US

east coast over the weekend, the US Federal Aviation Administration said on Sunday.

Travel operations at airports affected by the glitch have now returned to normal after tens of thousands of passengers were affected by flights up and down the Atlantic Coast being cancelled or delayed. REUTERS

Freshwater species in NZ dying out

WELLINGTON • Almost three quarters of New Zealand's native freshwater species are facing extinction, and government plans to step up farming will worsen the problem, ecologists warned yesterday.

A report from the Society for Conservation Biology said 74 per cent of native freshwater fish, mussel and crayfish species were now listed as threatened with extinction. XINHUA