World news in brief

A soldier who went to pick up the book from the floor was killed when it exploded.

“Normally if that book is lying somewhere on the floor, you tend to pick it up immediately just for respect,” said Saeed, the chief instructor at a school training Pakistani forces how to detect the so-called improvised explosive devices, which have become increasingly popular in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the insurgency in Pakistan’s northwest, near the Afghan border.

The Associated Press was the first foreign media outlet to be allowed access to the facility, according to the Pakistani military.

Saeed and other instructors at the military’s Counter IED, Explosives and Munitions School say it is important to constantly come up with new ways to prevent such homemade bombs because that’s exactly what the militants are doing.

Ukraine protester kidnapped

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Police on Friday opened an investigation into the kidnapping of an opposition activist, who said he was held captive for more than a week and tortured in the latest in a string of mysterious attacks on anti-government protesters in the two-month-long political crisis.

Dmytro Bulatov, 35, a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, went missing Jan. 22. Bulatov was discovered outside Kiev on Thursday. He said his kidnappers beat him severely, drove nails into his hands, sliced off a piece of ear and cut his face. He said he was kept in the dark all the time and could not identify the kidnappers. After more than a week of beatings, they eventually dumped him in a forest.

“They crucified me, they nailed down my hands. They cut off my ear, they cut my face. There isn’t a spot on my body that hasn’t been beaten,” Bulatov said on Channel 5 television. “Thank God, I am alive.”

Bulatov’s face and clothes were covered in clotted blood, his hands were swollen and bore the marks of nails.

“Dmytro asked to pass his greetings to everyone and to say that he has not been broken and will not be broken,” a grim-looking Poroshenko told Channel 5. “That he is full of energy and despite the fact that his body has been beaten, Dmytro’s spirit is strong.”