Floodwaters strand Pakistanis in south
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's disaster management agency said Thursday that it had evacuated thousands of people stranded in parts of the country's south after it was hit by floods, as military and civil authorities sent rations and supplies to the regions where waters were receding.
Ahmad Kamal, the spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, said the floods entered southern Sindh province Wednesday, leaving thousands of people homeless.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in a series of visits to flooded areas, promised that his government would rebuild homes and that damaged roads and other infrastructure would be restored by utilizing all resources. So far, Pakistan has not issued any international appeal for the flood victims.
Heavy monsoon floods, which began Sept. 3 in Kashmir, have so far killed 523 people and affected 2 million in Pakistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Kamal said no deaths had been reported in southern Pakistan, where the flooding was expected to hit two main districts this weekend.
Group says Nigeria police torture routine
JOHANNESBURG -- Nigeria's police and military routinely torture women, men and children as young as 12 with beatings, shootings, rape, electric shocks and pliers used to pull out teeth and nails, Amnesty International charged Thursday.
Most of those detained are denied access to the outside world or visits from family or lawyers, said the new report, collated from hundreds of testimonies over 10 years.
Amnesty International says torture has become so institutionalized in Nigeria that many police stations have an informal "officer in charge of torture."
Nigeria's police force denied the charges Thursday, saying in a statement that since Nigeria came out of decades of military dictatorship in 1994, "the police force has significantly improved on its human rights records." But the statement said the police agency will investigate the allegations.
Kerry dials up pressure on Afghan rivals
KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ratcheted up the pressure on Afghanistan's rival presidential contenders to reach a compromise on a national unity government, reminding them that Washington and the international community will withdraw financial support if they fail to strike a deal, a campaign official said Thursday.
Kerry, who brokered an agreement last month committing the two Afghan candidates to accept the results of an internationally monitored recount, has taken a leading role in trying to resolve the standoff over the drawn-out election between Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
Kerry dialed into a meeting of Abdullah's leadership council late Wednesday and early Thursday that was attended by President Barack Obama's top representative to the region, Dan Feldman, as well as the U.S. and British ambassadors and the top U.N. representative to Afghanistan, said Nasrullah Arsalai, an Abdullah campaign manager.
"I think it helped a lot because I saw in our leadership council the flexibility to see the realities and see the necessity of flexibility more than before," Arsalai said.
Belgium arrests Liberian civil-war figure
BRUSSELS -- Belgium has arrested a high-ranking member of the rebel movement that plunged Liberia into conflict more than two decades ago and charged her with war crimes and crimes against humanity, a spokesman for federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The charges against Martina Johnson, former head of the heavy artillery unit for the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, are believed to be the first against a Liberian for international crimes committed during the country's first civil war.
Johnson has been described as a leader of Operation Octopus, a brutal 1992 battle for Liberia's capital city, Monrovia, in which thousands were killed or raped and looting was rampant. Liberian victims filed a complaint against her in 2012 in Belgium.
Johnson was arrested this week, said Jean-Pascal Thoreau, the Belgian prosecutors' spokesman. She will appear today before a judge who will decide whether to keep her in detention, Thoreau said.
Led by Charles Taylor, the front launched its assault on Liberia in December 1989. Tens of thousands of people were killed before the civil war ended in 1996, the year before Taylor became president. A second, four-year civil war ended when Taylor stepped down and fled to Nigeria in 2003.
Taylor is serving a 50-year sentence in Britain for war crimes and crimes against humanity related to his involvement in neighboring Sierra Leone's civil war.
-- COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS
A Section on 09/19/2014