Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Venezuela's Guaido says intelligence agents seize his chief of staff

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Thursday intelligence agents had arrested his chief of staff following a pre-dawn raid, signaling that President Nicolas Maduro may be cracking down on the opposition's challenge to his rule. Guaido invoked the constitution in January to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro's 2018 re-election a fraud, and has been recognized by dozens of Western nations as the country's legitimate leader. Ethiopian crash captain untrained on 737 MAX simulator: source

The captain of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight did not practise on a new simulator for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 before he died in a crash with 157 others, a pilot colleague said. Yared Getachew, 29, was due for refresher training at the end of March, his colleague told Reuters, two months after Ethiopian Airlines had received one of the first such simulators being distributed. Special Report: Forgotten victims - The children of Islamic State

The hallways of the Rusafa Central Criminal Court in Baghdad teemed with anxious toddlers on the days their mothers were on trial. Then they vanished again, into the women's prison, where they have lived for the past year and a half. They sleep on thin mattresses in crowded cells, bored, hungry and often sick. They are the foreign children of Islamic State. Among them is Obaida, the two-year-old son of a Chechen woman, Laila Gazieva. Gazieva was detained in late 2017 while fleeing the Islamic State stronghold of Tal Afar in northern Iraq, and convicted six months later for belonging to the militant Islamist group. On the day Gazieva was sentenced to life in prison, so too were at least a dozen other young women, court records show. Prosecutors: Utrecht gunman had terrorist intent, other possible motives under investigation

A suspected gunman arrested for killing three people on a Dutch tram this week is believed to have acted with terrorist intent, and authorities are also investigating whether he had other personal motives, prosecutors said on Thursday. Prosecutors said they believe the suspect, 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, acted alone in the shooting in the city of Utrecht, but the investigation is still ongoing. Islamic State defeated at final enclave: Syrian Kurdish media

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized all of Islamic State's final enclave at Baghouz, Syrian Kurdish news outlet Hawar reported on Thursday, defeating the jihadists after a weeks-long battle. Citing its correspondents, Hawar said the SDF had "liberated all of Baghouz from the Daesh mercenaries" and with that the campaign had "ended with the defeat of Daesh and the victory of the SDF". Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Ethiopians cheer as London museum returns plundered royal hair

A London museum has handed back locks of hair cut from the corpse of an Ethiopian emperor during a British invasion 150 years ago, after a campaign by activists seeking the return of hundreds of pieces of colonial plunder. Ethiopians, many dressed in the national colors of red, gold and green, cheered as staff at the National Army Museum handed over the remains in a black leather box to Ethiopia's minister of culture, tourism and sport on Wednesday. Special Report - Shattered sanctuary: In Christchurch, an imam seeks to rebuild

Ibrahim Abdelhalim was at his mosque last week in the Linwood neighborhood of Christchurch, New Zealand, delivering a prayer as he usually does on Friday afternoons. The 67-year-old grandfather had already spoken about "tasting the sweetness of faith" as a Muslim obedient to God and willing to serve humanity. He heard a pop-pop-pop in the distance. New Zealand bans military type semi-automatic weapons used in mosque massacre

New Zealand will ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in its worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. In the immediate aftermath of last Friday's shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Ardern labeled the attack as terrorism and said New Zealand's gun laws would change. Pilots searched for right checklist before Lion Air crash: investigators

Indonesian investigators said on Thursday the cockpit voice recorder from a crashed Lion Air Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 jet showed pilots were searching for the right checklist in their handbooks and were experiencing airspeed and altitude issues. The details revealed at a press conference corroborated a Reuters report on Wednesday that was based on three sources with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder's contents. EU readies short Brexit delay - if May wins parliament over

European Union leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday to give Prime Minister Theresa May an offer to delay Brexit beyond March 29, on condition that she can finally win over her many opponents in parliament next week. Nearly three years after Britons narrowly voted in a referendum to leave the EU, May has been unable to unite her divided cabinet, parliament or nation behind her exit plan.