Like building a fire or doing your taxes , knowing how to drive stick is a life skill that's no less useful if your life is one of crime. That's the lesson a South Carolina man learned this week when his kidnapping attempt was thwarted by a manual transmission, the Associated Press reports.

Fighters suspected of being members of Boko Haram kidnapped around 80 people Sunday in an attack on villages across the border from Nigeria in Cameroon, Reuters reports. Many of those taken were children.

ISIS released the latest in a series of propaganda videos featuring British journalist John Cantlie today, this one shot in Mosul in the style of a news report.

A woman accused of kidnapping and sexually assaulting two Amish girls last week with her boyfriend is now claiming that she only did it because of their "abusive and submissive" relationship.

An arrest has been made in the case of the abduction of two Amish girls in Oswegatchie, N.Y. As reported by the Associated Press, Delila and Fannie Miller, aged 7 and 12, were found safe 24 hours after their abduction on Wednesday, when they turned up at a stranger's house in Hermon, N.Y., about 13 miles away from their family's farm stand.

The bodies of the three Israeli teens kidnapped earlier this month were found just north of the Palestinian city of Hebron. Israeli security forces, who have been looking for the teens in the West Bank, have sealed off the area.

In a video obtained by the AFP, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau admitted to kidnapping more than 200 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria last month. "I abducted your girls" he said. "I will sell them in the market, by Allah. There is a market for selling humans."

Nearly six years after the disappearance in Iran of private investigator Robert Levinson, and two years after his family received an anonymous email confirming that the former FBI agent was still alive, five photographs taken by Levinson's captors have been released. "I am here in Guantanamo," reads a sign Levinson is holding in one photo. "Do you know where it is?"

While Katherine Jackson has made headlines the past few days for being kidnapped by her own children who want you to know that they definitely didn't kidnap her, she's not the only celebrity mom who was kidnapped this week. Baseball superstar Cal Ripken, Jr.'s 74-year-old mother, Violet, was also abducted and, thankfully, returned home.

The eight children abducted from foster care by their mother—seven boys, each named "Nephra Payne," and their sister Nefertiti—were found safe in Harrisburg, Penn.. They "showed no signs of physical abuse"; their mother, Shanel Nadal, was arrested. [NYP]

An odd alert went out over New York City's "Notify NYC" system on Tuesday evening: "The NY State Dep of Criminal Justice Services has issued a Missing Child Alert for 8 children, all named Nephra Payne ages 11 months to 11 years." Eight kids with the same name? Surely that's some kind of mistake?

Holly Bobo, a 20-year-old nursing student in Tennessee, was apparently dragged into the woods near her home yesterday by a man dressed in camouflage. Hundreds of volunteers are now looking for her.

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul — the one who's scared of Meet the Press — had such an exciting college experience. Once, he kidnapped a lady and forced her to take "bong hits" and worship a water god. Kids!

The New York Times' David Rohde, who spent seven months as a hostage to a Taliban warlord in Afghanistan, has just returned to the paper's newsroom.

Did the New York Times want to keep reporter David Rohde's kidnapping in Afghanistan quiet because they feared for his safety, or because they didn't want to drive up his ransom price? Rohde himself has suggested the latter.

After being held hostage by the Taliban for seven months in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a compound to freedom. He apparently just "climbed over the wall" but still: badass happy ending! [NYT]