Kentucky prison riot quelled
BURGIN, Ky., Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Several inmates suffered minor injuries in a Kentucky prison riot that was not brought under control until Saturday, police said.
There were no injuries to the staff of the medium-security Northpoint Training Center in Burgin, said Lt. David Jude of Kentucky State Police.
The riot began Friday shortly after prison officials eased restrictions on a lockdown, with inmates setting fire to buildings, breaking windows and throwing rocks at guards, The Advocate-Messenger (Danville, Ky.) reported Saturday. The lockdown occurred Tuesday after a group of inmates got into a fight over stolen personal property, authorities said.
Fires still burned Saturday morning, several buildings were a total loss and the prison's 1,200 inmates were transferred to other facilities. No inmates escaped, Jude said.
Squads from at least five state police posts responded to the riot, entering the prison in protective gear and throwing tear gas to subdue the inmates, Jude said.
Afghan election fraud, violence alleged
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- The Afghanistan presidential election was marred by fraud and intimidation, including two women whose fingers were cut off, a watchdog group says.
Jandad Spingar, director of the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan, said the group's 7,000 observers reported stuffed ballot boxes, voting by proxy and other irregularities, The Wall Street Journal reported. But he said the group is still tabulating its findings and has not yet determined whether the fraud was so pervasive the results were unfair.
European groups generally hailed the election as a sign of democracy in Afghanistan, while acknowledging flaws.
In some provinces, many polling centers were closed because of fear of violence, Spingar said. In Uruzgan, six of the 36 polling centers for women opened.
The threat of violence was not an empty one. Ahmed Nader Nadery, the foundation's chairman, said one observer saw insurgents cutting off the fingers of two women in Kandahar province. The Taliban had threatened to remove the ink-stained fingers that proved someone had voted.
On Friday, a convoy carrying ballot boxes to Kabul was ambushed, and one election worker was killed, and there have been reports of up to 26 people killed on Thursday's election day.
With results of the election still up in the air, President Hamid Karzai and his chief rival, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have both claimed they are ahead.
Aid groups suspend work in southern Sudan
GENEVA, Switzerland, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- The United Nations says it has suspended humanitarian work in southern Sudan because of attacks by a Ugandan rebel group.
The Lord's Resistance Army has uprooted thousands of civilians this month, spreading panic near Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, U.N. officials said Saturday in a release.
The rebels reportedly kidnapped 10 girls, burned a church, set fire to homes, and stole food and medical supplies from stores and health centers, Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Twenty-nine humanitarian workers were evacuated from Ezo by helicopter Aug. 13, leaving thousands in the area without assistance, he said.
Since last October, an estimated 360,000 Congolese civilians have been displaced by attacks from militant groups, Mahecic said.
The World Food Program still hopes to boost food assistance to southern Sudan by 25 percent this year, U.N. officials said.
CIA interrogation involved drill, gun
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Former and current U.S. officials say a CIA report details the U.S. agency's threatened use of a drill and gun in the interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect.
The unidentified officials said the report, due for release to the public next week, details how captured al-Qaida commander Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was threatened with a power drill and a gun by CIA interrogators in an attempt to procure information, The Washington Post said Saturday.
The anonymous officials said he gun and drill were not used on Nashiri but placed nearby in an attempt to instill fear in him.
The CIA inspector general's report, which was written in 2004, offers details regarding the federal agency's interrogation program, particularly those efforts used on Nashiri following his capture in November 2002.
The Post said three months before Nashiri was captured, then-Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel head Jay S. Bybee informed CIA officials that threats of "imminent harm" were legal as long as they did not expose prisoners to prolonged mental harm.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said government prosecutors have reviewed all the incidents detailed in the report.
"The CIA in no way endorsed behavior -- no matter how infrequent -- that went beyond formal guidance," he said.
GOP: Obama 'fast and loose' with facts
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama is playing "fast and loose" with the facts in the healthcare reform debate, a Republican Party leader said Saturday.
Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., said during the weekly GOP radio address that the Democratic president "has said he'd like to stamp out some of the disinformation floating around out there. The problem is the president, himself, plays fast and loose with the facts."
Price, sounding familiar Republican criticisms of the Obama's proposals, said the measures under consideration in Congress would force Americans into "government-run" health policies that necessitate they abandon their current private plans.
"The plan being promoted by the White House would give Washington the power to make highly personal medical decisions on behalf of patients -- on behalf of you," Price said.
Saying the "most striking misinformation" from Obama is "there are only two options out there for America -- that it's his way or the highway," Price touted a "third way" the GOP says will "increase coverage and lower costs without putting a bureaucrat between you and your doctor."
