Nigeria postpones presidential election
KANO, Nigeria -- Nigeria's electoral commission delayed the presidential election until Feb. 23, making the announcement a mere five hours before polls were set to open today. It cited unspecified "challenges" amid reports that voting materials had not been delivered to all parts of the country.
"This was a difficult decision to take but necessary for successful delivery of the elections and the consolidation of our democracy," commission chairman Mahmood Yakubu told reporters in the capital, Abuja.
More than 84 million voters in the country of some 190 million people had been expected to head to the polls in what is seen as a close and heated race between 76-year-old President Muhammadu Buhari and top challenger Atiku Abubakar, a billionaire former vice president.
Pence, Kushner visit Auschwitz memorial
WARSAW, Poland -- U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited the memorial site of Auschwitz on Friday along with the Polish president and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.
It was the first visit for Pence, a conservative Christian, to the site where German forces murdered 1.1 million people, most of them Jews but also Poles, Roma and others, during the Nazis' occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.
Pence and his wife, Karen, were joined by Polish President Andrzej Duda and first lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda.
"It seems to me to be a scene of unspeakable tragedy, reminding us what tyranny is capable of," Pence said hours later during an event Friday evening on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
"I traveled in our delegation with people who had family members who had been at Auschwitz -- some had survived, some not. But to walk with them and think that two generations ago their forebears came there in box carts and that we would arrive in a motorcade in a free Poland and a Europe restored to freedom from tyranny is an extraordinary experience for us, and I'll carry it with me the rest of our lives," Pence said.
Pence toured an exhibition hall that includes human hair and personal belongings of the victims before a wreath-laying at the Death Wall in a courtyard where prisoners were executed.
The second part of the visit took them to the nearby satellite camp of Birkenau, the site of the murder of Jews from across Europe.
The couples also placed candles at a memorial to the Holocaust victims.
Sexual violence reported in South Sudan
JUBA, South Sudan -- Brutal sexual violence committed with "pervasive impunity" and a level of "premeditation" persists in South Sudan's northern region, the United Nations said Friday.
At least 134 women and girls were raped, including some as young as eight, between September and December last year, according to a report issued by the U.N. Human Rights Office and the U.N. Mission in South Sudan. An additional 41 women and girls suffered different forms of sexual and physical violence, said the report.
Even though South Sudan signed a fragile peace deal on September 12 to end the country's five-year civil war, which killed almost 400,000 people, the U.N. warns that endemic conflict-related sexual violence continues in northern Unity state.
Almost 90 percent of the women and girls were raped by more than one perpetrator and often over several hours, said the U.N. report. Pregnant women and nursing mothers were also among the victims.
Most of the attacks were carried out by youth militia groups loyal to First Vice President Taban Deng Gai as well as South Sudan's government army, said the report.
The government is conducting its own investigation into the charges, however after a preliminary inquiry it denied that the accounts were real.
8 miner employees held in dam collapse
SAO PAULO -- Brazilian police arrested eight employees, including two executive directors, of the mining company Vale on Friday as part of a criminal investigation into a dam rupture that killed more than 160 people.
The dam, filled with mining waste and sludge, burst three weeks ago, sending a tidal wave of mud crashing down on the company cafeteria at a mining complex in Brumadinho in southeastern Brazil. The torrent continued downhill, slamming into homes and contaminating rivers. At least 166 people were killed and 147 remain missing.
The eight people arrested were "directly involved in the safety and stability" of the dam that collapsed, according to public prosecutors. They will be held for up to 30 days as the investigation continues.
Police also carried out 14 search and seizure warrants at Vale offices and at the offices of four employees of the Brazilian subsidiary of TUV Sud, a German industrial testing company, which inspected the Brumadinho dam twice last year, most recently in September.
Vale said in a statement Friday that it was fully cooperating with authorities, and that it would "continue to support the investigations in order to determine the facts," as well as offering unconditional support to the families affected.
-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports
A Section on 02/16/2019