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ByMichelleFaul The Associated Press LAGOS, NIGERIA Under the guns of their captors, dozens of barefoot girls sat huddled together wearing gray Muslim veils as they chanted Quranic verses in Arabic. Some Christians among them said they had converted to Islam. "I swear to almighty Al- lah, you will not see them again until you release our brothers that you have cap- tured," the leader of the Boko Haram terrorist network threatened, an assault rifle slung across his chest. A video released by the group Monday offered the first public glimpse of what it claimed were some of the nearly 300 Nigerian school- girls kidnapped a month ago. The girls' plight has spurred a global movement to secure their freedom. It is not known how many suspected Boko Haram members are detained by security forces. Hundreds were killed last month when leader Abubakar Shekau's fighters stormed the mili- tary's main northeastern barracks in Maiduguri, the terror group's birthplace and the headquarters of a year-old military state of emergency to put down the 5-year-old Islamic uprising. In the video, two of the girls were singled out for questioning. "Why have you become a Muslim?" one girl, who looked to be in her early teens, was asked. "The reason why I be- came a Muslim is because the path we are on is not the right path," the girl said, nervously shifting her body from side to side, her eyes darting back and forth. "We should enter the right path so that Allah will be happy with us," added the girl, who said her name had been changed to Halima be- cause she had converted from Christianity to Islam. Like the other girls, she wore a bulky gray hijab that cov- ered her body from head to toe, revealing only her face. A second girl, who ap- peared to be in her mid- teens, was asked if she or any of the others had been mistreated. No, she said, adding that they had experi- enced nothing "except righ- teousness." As the girls chanted Is- lamic verses, some clasped their hands together in what appeared to be the Christian style of prayer before quickly turning their palms upward, as Muslim worshippers do. The girls' families have said most of those seized April 15 from a school in the northeastern town of Chibok are Christians. It was impossible to fully authenticate the video, though parents were try- ing to turn on a generator in Chibok, hoping to watch the video and identify their daughters, said a town leader, Pogu Bitrus. "There's an atmosphere of hope — hope that these girls are alive, whether they have been forced to convert to Islam or not," he told The Associated Press by telephone. "We want to be able to say, 'These are our girls.'" The video showed about 100 girls, indicating they may have been broken up into smaller groups as some reports have indicated. Fifty-three girls man- aged to escape and 276 re- main missing, police say. Bitrus said vegetation in the video looked like the Sambisa Forest, some 20 miles from Chibok, where the girls were believed to have been spirited away. In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Car- ney said U.S. intelligence experts were "combing over every detail" of the lat- est recording. He said ad- ministration officials have seen the video and "have no reason to question its authenticity." In a video last week, Shekau threatened to sell the girls into slavery. It arrived amid unverified reports that Christians among the students had been forced to convert to Islam and that some were taken to neighboring Cam- eroon and Chad, where they were forced to marry their abductors. The latest video, ob- tained by The Associ- ated Press, came through channels that have pro- vided previous messages from Shekau, who spoke in the video in the Hausa language of northern Ni- geria. Wearing camou- flage fatigues, he clutched an assault rifle in the foot- age, which was imprinted with the Boko Haram in- signia — a Quran resting on two crossed assault ri- fles — and below a black ji- hadi flag. NIGERIA BokoHaramdemands fighters' release for girls SUNDAYALAMBA—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Brig. Gen. Chris Olukolade, Nigeria's top military spokesman,le , Director General, National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri, centre, and Frank Mba, National police spokesman, right, attend a press conference on the abducted school girls in Abuja, Nigeria, on Monday. By George Jahn The Associated Press VIENNA A once-promising U.N. attempt to probe suspi- cions that Tehran worked on atomic arms is faltering — and with it, hopes that Iran and six world powers can meettheirJulytargetdatefor an overarching nuclear deal. With efforts to draft the text of an agreement start- ing in Vienna on Wednes- day, both sides say that meeting the informal July 20 deadline remains pos- sible. The U.S. administra- tion gives it a 50-50 chance, and Iranian Foreign minis- ter Mohammad Javad Zarif recently said the talks are progressing at an "unex- pectedly fast pace." The United States, Rus- sia, China, Britain, France and Germany want to re- duce Iran's present nuclear weapons-making potential. Tehran has been engaging with them over the past six months in exchange for full sanctions relief, even though it insists it has no interest in such arms. But the U.N's Inter- national Atomic Energy Agency is no nearer to clos- ing the books on persistent allegationsthatIranworked on nuclear arms in the past. While the IAEA's probe is formally separate from the talks, the U.S. and its allies insistthatTehranmustpro- vide satisfactory explana- tions to the U.N. agency as part of any overall deal. Back in November, Teh- ranagreedtogointodeeper explanations of its work on detonators that have a vari- ety of uses, including spark- ing a nuclear explosion. That has not happened. Three diplomats told The Associated Press Monday that in a recent formal re- sponse, Iran continues to insist that there is no nu- clear link to the detonators. Tehran says they were de- veloped only to set off con- ventional military blasts, and later for civilian uses. The IAEA outlined its suspicions in a 2011 report on a wide range of sus- pected weapons experi- ments. It said then that Iran's work on the detona- tors is of concern, "given their possible application in a nuclear explosive device, and the fact that there are limited civilian and conven- tional military applications for such technology." Signed soon after Iran's reformist government took office, the November Iran- IAEA deal was seen as im- portant for testing Tehran's professed willingness to de- escalate tensions over its nuclear program. The U.N. agency and its western members had hoped the agreement would finally mean Iran would crack open the door on what they say was secret nuclear weapons work. But Tehran's latest re- sponse suggests it is not ready to change its stance. The IAEA first ap- proached Iran about the detonators six years ago. When told of their latest re- sponse, Olli Heinonen, who headed the agency's Iran in- vestigation until 2010, said it was "pretty much how they explained it in 2008." With the clock ticking down on the informal July comprehensive deal target, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano was pushing ahead on the probe nonetheless. Two of the diplomats said senior agency officials met Monday with Iranian rep- resentatives in attempts to persuade Tehran to engage on three additional areas of suspected weapons work even as they sought more answers on the detonators. The diplomats are in- volved with international efforts to track and curb Iran's nuclear program. They did not detail what those new areas could be and demanded anonymity because they were not au- thorized to divulge confi- dential information. WORLD United Nations' nuclear probe of Iran falters Landscape/Fence Steve's Tractor &LandscapeService •FenceBuilding•Landscaping • Trenching • Rototilling • Disking • Mowing • Ridging • Post Hole Digging • Blade Work • Sprinkler Installation • Concrete Work Cont. 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