World News Update, what you need to know

King Abdullah II has vowed Jordan will take tough action after hanging two convicted militants in response to the burning alive of one of its pilots by the Islamic State group.

ELSEWHERE:

JAKARTA - Only diplomatic efforts can save Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan from the firing squad in Indonesia, after their bid for a judicial review was rejected. Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says he is "hopeful" that a British grandmother on death row in Indonesia could escape execution.

FREETOWN - Sierra Leone says it will reopen the country's schools on March 30, after a seven-month shutdown to limit the spread of the Ebola virus.

NEW YORK - Lawyers for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York say they have amassed new evidence that agents of Saudi Arabia "knowingly and directly" helped the hijackers.

ATHENS - Pirates have hijacked a crude oil tanker off the Nigerian coast, taking three hostages and killing the vessel's Greek deputy commander, the Greek coastguard says.

BEIRUT - Syrian Kurdish forces have made fresh advances near the flashpoint town of Kobane, bringing the number of villages they have recaptured from the Islamic State group to 50, a monitor says.

ATHENS - Greek judges are sending 72 members of anti-immigration party Golden Dawn to trial for crimes including murder, a judicial source says, after the party finished third, with 17 seats in parliament, in last month's election.

GOMA - Twenty-three people have been hacked to death in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which has been plagued by a spate of massacres blamed on Ugandan rebels, the army says.

LONDON - Britain has turned to a senior New Zealand judge to head an inquiry into historical child sex abuse after two previous chairs were forced to resign over their establishment links.

TAIPEI - At least 23 people were killed when a TransAsia Airways plane clipped an overpass soon after take-off and plunged into a river in Taiwan, the airline's second crash in seven months.