HOSTAGE RELEASED

In this Feb. 24 picture, Macon Hawkins from Kosciusko, Texas, surrounded by militants and held hostage, speaks to journalists in the Niger Delta area. On Wednesday, he was released to the Nigerian military. "I have no animosity toward them at all," Hawkins said. "I've seen their little villages, they're dirt poor, poor as field mice," he said. The kidnappers are demanding that people in the country's south receive a greater share of their region's oil wealth.