LUCKNOW, India (AP) — Police arrested a third suspect Saturday in the gang rape and slaying of two teenage cousins found hanging from a tree in northern India, as a top state official said he was recommending a federal investigation into a case that has triggered national outrage. The three suspects detained in the attack in Uttar Pradesh state are cousins in their 20s from an extended family, and they face murder and rape charges, crimes punishable by the death penalty, said police officer N. Malik. Two other suspects from the same village are also being sought, he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan has been freed by the Taliban in exchange for the release of five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Obama administration officials said Saturday. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban Saturday evening, local time, in an area of eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border. Officials said the exchange was not violent and the 28-year-old Bergdahl was in good condition and able to walk.
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s army seized power in a May 22 coup, the Southeast Asian nation’s second in eight years. Here, four Associated Press correspondents who have been covering the crisis and the political turmoil leading up to it offer their insight into recent events: Q: THAILAND IS KNOWN AS THE “LAND OF SMILES.” WHY IS THERE SO MUCH POLITICAL TURMOIL?
BANGKOK (AP) — In junta-ruled Thailand, the simple act of reading in public has become an act of resistance. On Saturday evening in Bangkok, a week and a half after the army seized power in a coup, about a dozen people gathered in the middle of a busy, elevated walkway connecting several of the capital’s most luxurious shopping malls.
BEIJING (AP) — When visiting friends in China’s capital, environmental activist Wu Lihong must slip away from his rural home before sunrise, before the police officers watching his home awaken. He rides a bus to an adjacent province and jumps aboard a train just minutes before departure to avoid being spotted. In a neighboring province, veteran dissident Yin Weihong finds himself hauled into a police station merely for keeping in touch with old friends from the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. While he’s technically a free man, the treatment makes it virtually impossible to keep a job or have a normal home life.
SINGAPORE (AP) — China’s aggressive moves to claim jurisdiction over land and sky in the Asia-Pacific risk undermining peace and security in the region and beyond, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday. Beijing scoffed at the “groundless” charges. Hagel told an international security conference that the United States “will not look the other way” when China and others try to restrict navigation or ignore international rules and standards.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Saturday it has sentenced a South Korean Baptist missionary to hard labor for life for allegedly spying and trying to set up underground churches, the latest in a string of missionaries to run into trouble in the rigidly controlled North. North Korean state media said the missionary was tried Friday and admitted to anti-North Korean religious acts and “malignantly hurting the dignity” of the country’s supreme leadership, a reference to the ruling Kim family. The rival Koreas have different English spelling styles for Korean names, so the North called the missionary Kim Jong Uk, but Seoul has previously referred to him as Kim Jung Wook.
BEIJING (AP) — Their hopes raised and dashed, relatives of passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines plane want a new plan to find it after the search was suspended following a new setback. The 84-year-old mother of Australian passenger Rod Burrows no longer expects to live to see the mystery of Flight 370 solved.
BEIJING (AP) — China has indicted eight people on terrorism charges in connection with an attack on Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Gate last year that killed two tourists and three assailants, the government said Saturday. The eight were arrested within days of the Oct. 28 attack, in which a man drove an SUV through a crowd of tourists before stopping in front of the gate and setting the vehicle on fire. A Chinese visitor and a tourist from the Philippines were killed, along with the vehicle’s driver, his wife and mother-in-law, according to Chinese authorities.
BEIJING (AP) — Some went missing. Some lost their freedom. Some can’t escape the images inside their head, or the guilt they feel for surviving. The June 4, 1989, military crackdown to end weeks-long student protests is a key moment in the history of Communist-ruled China for the outside world. Within China, it is all but erased. Even personal acts of memory are considered subversive.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan official says a roadside bombing in the country’s east has hit two cars, killing 12 civilians. The attack took place on Saturday morning in the eastern Ghazni province, in Giro district.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Taliban fighters attacked several Pakistani military posts along the Afghan border Saturday, sparking an hourslong gun battle that included Pakistan launching airstrikes into Afghanistan, authorities said. Pakistan said soldiers killed 16 militants, while Afghan officials said the airstrikes killed five civilians. The fighting was the latest cross-border attack along the volatile and porous Pakistan-Afghanistan boundary and again tests the two countries’ already uneasy relations.
BANGKOK (AP) — In his first address to the public since taking control of Thailand in a bloodless coup, the head of the military junta said it could take more than a year for new elections to be held because peace and reforms must be achieved first. Army commander Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha repeated warnings against protests or resistance to the army’s May 22 takeover, saying they would slow the process of bringing back “happiness” to the Thai people.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has expressed deep concern about the reported firing of a Chinese blogger who had met with Secretary of State John Kerry and urged the U.S. to challenge China’s Internet restrictions. Zhang Jialong reported on finance for Tencent Finance, part of China’s largest social media company. He wrote in a blog last weekend he was fired after being suspended for “radical expressions” he made when he and several other bloggers met Kerry in Beijing in February.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior U.S. diplomat will travel to New Delhi next week to meet with India’s new government. Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Desai Biswal will be in India between June 6-9, after stops in Tajikistan and China.
