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all honesty, we may never be able to get on the ground there."
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• BANGKOK (AP) -- Hundreds of demonstrators shouting "Freedom!" and "Democracy!" rallied briefly Sunday near a major shopping mall in the heart of Thailand's capital to denounce the country's May 22 coup despite a lockdown by soldiers of some of the city's major intersections.
• Thailand's new military rulers had deployed thousands of troops and police officers to several key locations across Bangkok to prevent an expected series of rallies from jelling. But only one small group of protesters showed up -- at a site that lacked any mass army presence.
• They gathered on an elevated walkway beside the Terminal 21 shopping mall, chanting and holding signs saying "No Coup." Scores of police and helmeted soldiers with riot shields came to the scene, and the mall's owners shut the nine-story complex and asked customers to leave for their safety. There was no violence, however, and the protest fizzled after a couple of hours.
• "I am here because I don't want a coup. I want elections and democracy," said a 66-year-old female protester who asked to be identified only as Ratchana because of concerns over being detained.
• "This is the 21st century," she said. "There shouldn't be any coups, but they still keep happening ... because Thais are afraid" to speak out.
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• INCHEON, South Korea (AP) -- Less than two months after the ferry Sewol sank, court proceedings over the disaster are set to begin for 15 crew members over the disaster -- four of them for homicide. The job of defending them falls almost entirely on six state-appointed lawyers, three of whom started practicing law only this year.
• The defendants are surrounded by hostility in South Korea, all the way up to President Park Geun-hye, who has called the crew's actions murderous. Private lawyers have abandoned their cases. Even the family of a deceased crew member who was praised as a hero speaks of him with shame.

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