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June.
• Authorities insist the elections will be free and fair, rejecting activists' claims that the Election Commission is biased and that voter registration lists are tainted with fraudulent names.
• Demonstrators wearing yellow T-shirts, waving banners and chanting slogans poured into downtown Kuala Lumpur, massing near a public square that police had sealed off with barbed wire and barricades.
• "I'm here because I'm a Malaysian and I love my country," said information technology manager Burrd Lim. "There's no election that's perfect, but I want one that's fair enough."
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• ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (AP) -- In these days of shrinking defense budgets, the U.S. is looking to its southern neighbors to help monitor and protect the Asia Pacific region in the years ahead.
• Traveling to Colombia, Brazil and Chile this week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta underscored the importance of those nations as military partners in a region where the U.S. influence in a number of countries is being challenged by China. And as the military relationships grow, defense officials say it can only help U.S. economic and political ties across the continent.
• Panetta's talks with senior defense leaders from the three nations also focused on how the United States can support their military efforts, including those directed at the expanding threat of cyberattacks, according to several senior defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meetings were private.
• U.S. officials left the region thinking that at some point there may be opportunities to talk with South American nations about helping to train Afghan forces after NATO combat troops leave at the end of 2014. Officials would provide no details on which nations might eventually be willing to take on some of the training mission, which will be in need of advisers as other NATO nations pull their troops out.
• With the U.S. shifting its focus away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon's new military strategy puts more importance on the Asia Pacific region, where North Korea is a growing threat and China is rapidly building its military and its political and economic influence.
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