In this task, you are given news articles and you need to generate a highlight, i.e., a short summary, with a maximum length of 10 lines.

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (CNN)  -- Trash litters its cities. Electricity is sporadic at best. There is no clean water. Medical and educational services are limited. Basic infrastructure is severely lacking. "Planet in Peril" met in a secret location with members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. These are not conditions that should plague one of the richest oil states in the world. Hundreds of billions of dollars has been made from the Niger Delta's oil reserves and many people have gotten very rich. Conversely, the average Nigerian has suffered as a result of the country's oil prosperity. The United States Agency for International Development says more than 70 percent of the country lives on less than a dollar a day -- the population is among the 20 poorest in the world. Oil companies are only part of the equation. The other is the Nigerian government. Transparency International, a global organization intent on stamping out corruption, has consistently rated Nigeria's government one of the most corrupt in the world. Nigeria's federal government and oil companies split oil profits roughly 60-40. The money is then supposed to make its way down to the local governments to fund various projects. Somehow, little money actually reaches its intended destination. Nigeria's own corruption agency estimates between $300 billion to $400 billion has been stolen or wasted over the last 50 years.  Lisa Ling travels to secret location to meet notorious Nigerian militant group » . Gov. Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state, one of the largest oil producers of Nigeria's 36 states, acknowledges past problems with corruption, but thinks progress is being made. "There's a lot of improvement," Amaechi said. "The work being done by the corruption agency and the federal government has somehow been able to control the level of corruption in government." Over the last few years, a culture of militancy and violence has arisen in the absence of jobs and services. Kidnappings for ransom, robberies and even murder happen with regularity. The biggest and most powerful armed group is the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND. They say they are at war against the Nigerian military and the oil companies operating there. MEND, formed in 2005, said it has more than 30 camps throughout Nigeria. Members are armed with high-tech weaponry they said was obtained from "foreign sources." Hundreds of people have been killed on both sides and countless oil workers have been kidnapped. Over the years, MEND's attacks on oil pipelines have halted oil production and, therefore, raised the price of oil around the world. They demand oil profits be distributed to average Nigerians of the Niger Delta and said they will not stop their attacks until their objectives have been fulfilled.  See environmental battle lines for "Planet in Peril" » . The battle is over oil -- one of the world's most valuable resources. But to most Nigerians -- oil is a curse. It has provoked an environmental disaster of monstrous proportions. Since the 1970s, the United Nations estimates there have been more than 6,000 oil spills in the Niger Delta -- that is equal to more than 10 times the amount spilled from the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Yet, there is no international outcry and rarely are the spills reported, even to most Nigerians. They are still happening and the consequences are nothing short of devastating. Communities along the Niger Delta have lived off subsistence fishing and agriculture for decades. Collecting food becomes impossible when a spill happens, like one that occurred in August. The waterways and mangroves are blanketed in thick brown oil sludge that goes on for miles. Toxicity overpowers the air and a sense of lifelessness pervades the landscape. Many say it will take 10-15 years for the area to be free of contamination -- if the cleanup effort commences in a timely manner. The August spill was a result of a leak from an old pipeline that had corroded. It took the oil company three months to clamp the leak, but the company said it wasn't reported for a full month after it began. Once the leak was reported, the company said it was denied access to the site by the community. Leaders of the village deny that, and the finger-pointing between the two sides is nothing new -- there is no love lost here.  Who is telling the truth? Who knows? Either way, the creeks are blackened. This is life in the Niger Delta.
Nigeria is one of world's richest oil states; people are among poorest in world .
Nigerian agency: $300 billion to $400 billion in oil profits squandered, stolen .
Militant group MEND attacks oil pipelines, demands profits given to Nigerian people .
UN: Niger Delta has had more than 6,000 spills; 10 times more than Exxon Valdez .

(CNN) -- For centuries, Timbuktu has existed in the Western imagination as a byword for the most exotic, far-flung place conceivable. Situated on the southern edge of the Sahara, it acquired a near-mythical status in distant countries for its fabled inaccessibility, and for the accounts of the dazzling material and intellectual wealth to be found there. Intrigued visitors continue to be drawn by the treasures that survive from the city's medieval golden age as an important academic, religious and mercantile center -- its great earthen mosques, and hundreds of thousands of scholarly manuscripts held in public and private collections. The city, today part of present-day Mali and known as the "city of 333 saints" for the Sufi imams, sheiks and scholars buried there, was made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. But there are fears this carefully preserved legacy could be under threat from groups of armed rebels who have overrun the ancient city this month, in the vacuum left by retreating Malian government forces. Irina Bokova, the director general of UNESCO, has called on the groups to respect and protect the city's heritage. "Timbuktu's outstanding earthen architectural wonders that are the great mosques of Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, must be safeguarded," she said. "Along with the site's 16 cemeteries and mausolea, they are essential to the preservation of the identity of the people of Mali and of our universal heritage." Timbuktu, which has a population of about 50,000, is held by at least two rival groups who have been involved in a northern uprising against Mali's government, headquartered in the southern capital of Bamako. One is Ansar Dine, a Salafist Islamist group that seeks to impose Sharia law. The other, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), has been fighting for an independent homeland for the nomadic Tuareg people in the country's north, and earlier this month unilaterally proclaimed independence for the region they call Azawad. Read also: Rwanda genocide survivors cycle towards London 2012 . Following the overthrow of Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi, many Tuareg who had been fighting for Gadhafi's forces reportedly returned to northern Mali, bringing their weapons with them. Last month, a Tuareg uprising triggered a military coup against Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure by officers dissatisfied with the government's efforts to put down the insurrection. But in the disorder following the coup, the rebels seized large areas of the north. Martin van Vliet, a researcher at the African Studies Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, said that while Timbuktu was no longer a city of vital economic or military importance, it stood out as an important prize for the rebels due to its symbolic significance. "The group that controls Timbuktu controls the symbolic capital of the entire region, because it's that well-known across the world. If you control that city, it will be known." Historically, Timbuktu's legend began to spread throughout the medieval world when the Emperor of Mali made his pilgrimage to Mecca through Cairo in 1324, and dazzled those he encountered with the gold his party carried. Early in the 16th century, reports of the city on the sand -- then part of the Songhay Empire -- filtered back to Europe through the Moorish diplomat and writer Leo Africanus, adding to the city's near-mythical status as an African El Dorado. Becoming the first European to reach the city subsequently became an obsession for Western explorers, many of whom perished in the desert sands. In 1824, the Geographical Society of Paris even offered a reward for the first European to accomplish the feat. Two years later, however, the person to do so met with disaster. Scottish explorer Gordon Laing survived an attack by Tuareg nomads en route to Timbuktu, only to discover on arrival that its wealth had greatly diminished since its heyday. Laing stayed a month in the city, then was murdered two days after leaving. During its golden age, Timbuktu was a thriving desert trading town at the heart of important trade routes for gold and salt, and a major intellectual and spiritual center, which played a key role in the spread of Islam in Africa. Islamic scholars traveled great distances to study in the city's university, which had 25,000 students during its zenith, and was comprised of three mosques. Read also: Sculpting peace in Mozambique . Constructed from mud bricks and wood in the distinctive Sudano-Sahelian architectural style, the Sankore, Sidi Yahia and Djingarei-ber mosques have been maintained and remain major attractions in the city today. The latter, Timbuktu's oldest, was built in the early 14th century, while the Sankore, during its heyday, was said to have the largest collection of books in Africa since the Library of Alexandria of antiquity. "Timbuktu in the 14th to the 16th century was an important university city where many manuscripts referring to knowledge of astronomy, economy, religion, mathematics, physics, and medicine were produced," said Lazare Eloundou, chief of the Africa unit for UNESCO's World Heritage Center. Comprising the other significant component of Timbuktu's heritage legacy, this immense trove of scholarly manuscripts -- estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands -- remains in the city in state and private collections. For generations, local families have protected the fragile manuscripts, some of which date from the 13th century, from invaders. Fearing that those responsible for the current unrest could loot or destroy the treasures, librarians and curators are making efforts to hide the texts or smuggle them out of the city to safety. While there have been reports that offices of local libraries have been looted by the gunmen, no significant losses of the documents have yet been reported, according to Eloundou. "We are still concerned by what could happen there in case there is a fight -- we're concerned about the risk of damage," said Eloundou. "We also don't know what the reaction of the Islamist groups will be with regard to the manuscripts." He said the city's heritage was vastly important to locals -- as a source of cultural pride, but also of income. Even if the city's treasures survived unscathed, they stood to lose out from the uprising as it could plunge the region into isolation once again. In addition, an estimated 200,000 people have been displaced by the uprising in the wider region. "The fact this part of the country has been taken by the Tuareg rebellion and Islamist groups does not allow any more tourists to visit, and the communities depend a lot on the tourism revenue," he said. "This is really going to affect their lives."
In medieval times, Timbuktu, in present-day Mali, was an important intellectual center .
Known for its great mosques and trove of manuscripts, the city has world-heritage status .
Islamist and Tuareg rebels have occupied the city in recent weeks .
UNESCO fears the important site could be destroyed or looted by rebels .

(Mental Floss) -- There was a time when movie props were worthless. When a film wrapped, the studio would often recycle props and costumes for use in other films, or sometimes simply throw them away. But that's changed over the years, and now movie collectibles are a big business, with high-profile props going for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, when you start talking that kind of money, there are bound to be a few crooked characters who will do whatever it takes to get their hands on a piece of Hollywood history. 1. Has anyone questioned the flying monkeys? It's believed there were six or seven pairs of Dorothy's famous ruby red slippers made for the production of the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz". Of those, the location of four pairs is currently known, including one that resides in the Smithsonian. The Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, had their own pair, until the shoes were stolen one night in August 2005. The case went cold until this past April, when police received a tip that a resident in Homer Glen, Illinois, had not only bragged about paying someone to steal the slippers, but openly displayed the shoes in a glass box. Police raided the alleged thief's house, but didn't find the ruby red shoes. For now, the case remains open, and the shoes are still at-large. 2. "Easy Rider" choppers chopped . There are few motorcycles more iconic than the ones ridden by Peter Fonda and the late, great Dennis Hopper in their counterculture classic, "Easy Rider." There were four custom motorcycles built for the film -- two copies of each bike, including the "Captain America" chopper ridden by Fonda, featuring a star-spangled fuel tank and an extra long fork for the front wheels. One of the Captain America bikes was destroyed during filming, while the other three motorcycles were stolen from a storage garage before the film was even in the can. Obviously the bikes weren't famous yet, so they were presumably stripped and sold for parts. The thieves left the damaged Captain America bike, which was later restored, and now resides at the National Motorcycle Museum in Anamosa, Iowa. Mental Floss: What 10 Movie Props Later Sold For . 3. The man without the golden gun . In the 1974 movie "The Man with the Golden Gun," James Bond takes on Scaramanga, an expert assassin who charges $1 million per kill. The hitman's signature is a custom-made, solid gold gun that can be cleverly disassembled and disguised as everyday items like a cigarette case, a lighter, a pen, and a cuff link. There were three prop guns made for the film -- one that came apart, another that didn't come apart, and one that could fire a blank round. In October 2008, one of these props (it's unclear which one it was) was discovered missing from its display case at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, England. Police still have no leads on the disappearance of the prop, worth an estimated £80,000 ($117,000) on the collector's black market. 4. The case of the missing "Maltese Falcon" There were a handful of falcon statues made for the 1941 noir classic, "The Maltese Falcon", starring Humphrey Bogart as Dashiell Hammett's famous private eye, Sam Spade. Over the years, nearly all original models of the bird have been lost, making the few remaining copies very valuable -- including one that sold for nearly $400,000 in 1994. For promotional purposes, plaster casts of the bird were made upon the film's release, and Elisha Cook, Jr., a character actor who played a henchman in the film, got his hands on one. His copy of the bird was later acquired by John's Grill in San Francisco, a restaurant dedicated to Hammett, who often wrote and ate there in the 1930s. The replica bird was on display for years, sitting on the second floor in a display case for all to see. That is, of course, until the day it disappeared in 2007. Mental Floss: Who Invented the Gatorade shower? After the falcon went missing, John's Grill offered a no-questions-asked reward of $25,000 to the person who brought it back, but no one came forward. The owner could have easily gotten a good replacement replica off eBay for a few hundred bucks, but he took a different approach instead. He put the $25,000 towards the creation of a new, original design of the Maltese Falcon that is a more stylized interpretation than the one used in the 1941 film. The new statue is five inches taller than the original and weighs around 150 pounds, three times heavier than the plaster replica that was stolen. To ensure this bird doesn't go missing, it's been bolted down and is monitored 24/7 by closed-circuit cameras. With that much security, the next time someone messes with this Maltese Falcon, it won't take Sam Spade to crack the case. 5. Well, that's one way to get an Oscar . In March 2000, a few guys got their hands on the ultimate movie collector's item when they stole 55 Oscars just days before the Academy Awards ceremony. Anthony Hart, a dock worker at delivery company Roadway Express, conspired with a fellow employee, truck driver Lawrence Ladent, to load 10 boxes of Oscars onto Ladent's truck. Ladent then took the statues to the home of accomplice John Harris for safekeeping until they could line up black market buyers. However, the men got spooked by the publicity surrounding the missing statues and dumped the boxes in an alleyway instead. Shortly after, Harris' half-brother, Willie Fulgear, found 52 of the Oscars while rummaging through the trash, looking for packing boxes to use during a move. After reporting his find to police, Fulgear collected a $50,000 reward from Roadway Express, but the other men didn't make out quite so well. Anthony Hart received the lightest sentence with three years probation. John Harris was sentenced to six months in jail, three years probation, and had to pay $921 to the Academy in restitution for the three missing statues. Lawrence Ledent was given six months in prison, five years probation, had to pay the Academy $1,050, and pay Roadway Express the full amount of the reward they offered to Fulgear. As for the three missing Oscars, one was found in 2003 during a Miami drug raid, but the other two are still out there somewhere. Mental Floss: Where 10 Oscar winners keep their statues . 6. Big bucks in spandex . Apparently no one's spider-sense was tingling when crooks made off with four hand-made superhero suits from the set of the first Spider-Man film. Each Spider-Man costume, valued at around $50,000 a piece, disappeared from a locked building on the Sony Pictures lot, leading authorities to believe it was an inside job. Police received a tip from the ex-wife of a former security guard at Sony, Jeffrey Gustafson, who said he might be involved in the theft. Police searched Gustafson's home and found records indicating that one costume was at a friend's house, two were traced to a collector in New York, and the last one was in the collection of a man in Japan. Adding to Gustafson's woes, police also found in his home a mannequin dressed in a $150,000 Batman costume that went missing from the Warner Bros. lot in 1996. Not coincidentally, Gustafson worked as a security guard at Warner Bros. at the time. For stealing the Spidey suits, Gustafson got 9 months in jail, 5 years probation, and had to pay $93,000 in restitution. Mental Floss: Strange robberies: Madonna's bustier . 7. Do collectors dream of rubber handguns? As he's hunting android replicants in a dystopian future, "Blade Runner's" Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, carries a strange-looking handgun that has captivated sci-fi fans for decades. The prop was custom-made using pieces from real firearms, including a bolt action from a rifle, two triggers, various knobs and dials, and even LED lights. To prevent their very expensive, one-of-a-kind prop from breaking, the producers made two solid rubber copies that were indistinguishable from the original at a distance, and could be knocked around during stunt scenes without getting damaged. But during the shoot, one of the dummy guns went missing and was never seen again. Oddly enough though, about a month after the film was released, highly accurate plastic replicas of Deckard's gun began appearing for sale on the collector's market. These knock-offs were so close to the ones used in the film that they must have been created using molds taken from the missing, now presumed stolen, dummy gun. While it's certain the thief made a pretty penny by selling the dummy gun, he would have surely been better off stealing the custom-made gun instead -- it sold at auction in 2009 for $270,000. Mental Floss: 10 weird pieces of unclaimed luggage . For more mental_floss articles, visit mentalfloss.com . Entire contents of this article copyright, Mental Floss LLC. All rights reserved.

James Bond assassin Scaramanga had a golden gun that went missing .
Three of the "Easy Rider" choppers were stolen before that film was released .
Four hand-made superhero suits were stolen from the set of the first Spider-Man film .
Two rubber copies of "Blade Runner's" strange-looking handgun were taken .