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look to speed up efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute and boost economic ties.
• China says Premier Li Keqiang's choice of India for his first trip abroad since taking office in March shows the importance Beijing attaches to improving relations with New Delhi.
• "We think very highly of this gesture because it is our view that high-level political exchanges between our two countries are an important aspect and vehicle for our expanded cooperation," said India's external affairs ministry spokesman, Syed Akbaruddin.
• Jasjit Singh, a defense analyst and director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in New Delhi, said last month's border standoff was unlikely to overshadow Li's three-day visit, the first stop of a foreign tour in which he will also visit Pakistan, Switzerland and Germany.
• Singh said Indian and Chinese leaders are likely to review border talks that have failed to produce a breakthrough despite 15 rounds of discussions over the past 10 years. The two sides also will probably discuss working together in Afghanistan after next year's U.S. pullout and cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, he said.
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• AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- Syrian activists say government airstrikes and heavy shelling of a strategic town near the Lebanese border have killed at least 16 people, including rebel fighters.
• The rebel-held Qusair is home to about 20,000 residents and has been besieged for weeks by government troops. Opposition activists say members of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group are also fighting with President Bashar Assad's troops in the area.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 16 people were killed Sunday in Qusair but that the death toll is expected to rise.
• The town is strategically important because it links Damascus with the coast, where regime loyalists are concentrated. This includes Alawites, followers of a Shiite offshoot to which the Assad family belongs. The rebellion against Assad is largely driven by Syria's majority Sunnis.
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