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punishable by the death penalty, said police officer N. Malik. Two fugitive suspects from the same village are also being sought, he said.
• Facing growing criticism for a series of rapes, officials in Uttar Pradesh -- which has a long reputation for lawlessness -- also arrested two police officers and fired two others Friday for failing to investigate when the father of one of the teenage girls reported them missing earlier in the week.
• India has a history of tolerance for sexual violence. But the gang rape, which was followed by TV footage of the corpses of the 14- and 15-year-old girls swaying as they hung from a mango tree, triggered outrage across the nation. The father who reported the girls missing, Sohan Lal, has demanded a federal probe.
• "I don't expect justice from the state government as state police officers shielded the suspects," said Lal, a poor farm laborer who refused to accept a payment for 500,000 rupees ($8,500) offered by the state government as financial help. He told reporters Saturday that he would accept no help until the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's FBI, takes over the investigation.
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• 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?
• Thai society is undergoing major change, and politics over the past decade has in part been a battle between the old royalist ruling class and an ascendant majority based in the north and northeast that has benefited from development and has begun to see itself as a political force.
• Much of that struggle has played out around one man -- former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire tycoon deposed by a 2006 coup who now lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a prison sentence on a corruption conviction. The issue of whether to support or oppose Thaksin and his powerful political machine has divided friends, families and the nation.
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