More than 3,000 people were killed in South Sudan in brutal massacres last week in bloody ethnic violence that forced thousands to flee, the top local official in the affected area said Friday.

"There have been mass killings, a massacre," said Joshua Konyi, commissioner for Pibor county in Jonglei state.

Turkey's former army chief Ilker Basbug was arrested Friday over an alleged bid to topple the Islamist-rooted government, the Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.

"The 26th chief of staff of the Turkish republic has unfortunately been placed in preventive detention for setting up and leading a terrorist group and of attempting to overthrow the government," Ilkay Sezer, a lawyer for Basbug, was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

The husband of Ukraine's jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko sought political asylum in the Czech Republic at the end of last year, a Czech newspaper reported Friday.

Oleksandr Tymoshenko, a 51-year-old businessman who also has a stake in Czech company International Industrial Projects, has a fair chance of getting the asylum, the Pravo daily said.

Eight NATO soldiers have been killed in a series of bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, the military said Friday.

Three died on Thursday, another lost his life in a blast on Friday and four more were killed in second attack later the same day.

A Philippine journalist has been shot dead in an ambush, police said Friday, the latest such attack in one of the world's most dangerous countries for the media.

Christopher Guarin was attacked late Thursday by two unidentified men on a motorcycle as the 41-year-old radio commentator and newspaper publisher was driving in the southern port of General Santos, they said.

Iran's foreign minister said Thursday he would like to see talks with world powers on his country's nuclear program resume in Turkey, but was waiting for a venue and date to be agreed.

"Personally I think that Turkey is the best place for the talks to take place. But it should be at a place of mutual agreement," Ali Akbar Salehi said in a televised joint news conference with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed Thursday the U.S. military would maintain its "superiority" and bolster its presence in Asia despite planned cuts to the defense budget.

"So, yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know -- the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats," Obama told reporters at the Pentagon.

Turkey will buy a first batch of two F-35A Joint Strike Fighters as a sign of its commitment to the troubled U.S.-led program, the government's defense procurement agency said on Thursday.

A statement said the government had authorized the order to meet the future needs of the Turkish air force for next-generation fighter planes.

Around 100 people were evacuated Thursday from a village in the northwest of the Netherlands as high waters threatened to overwhelm a dyke, local authorities said.

"About 60 households, including several farms, have been evacuated on a voluntary basis," local authority spokesman Michiel Zijlstera told AFP.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday ordered the transfer of the U.S. military prison at Bagram to Afghan control within a month, citing reports of human rights violations there.

Karzai issued the order after receiving a report detailing "many cases of violations of Afghan Constitution and other applicable laws of the country, the relevant international conventions and human rights," his office said.