Tuesday,  June 03, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 320 • 32 of 39

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AP News in Brief
Taliban release video showing handover of captured US soldier to Americans in east Afghanistan

• KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban on Wednesday released a video showing the handover of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, touting the swap of the American soldier for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo as a significant achievement for the insurgents.
• The 17-minute video, emailed to media, shows the moment of Bergdahl's handover. He was freed on Saturday after five years in captivity, and exchanged for the five Guantanamo detainees who were flown to Qatar, a tiny Gulf Arab country which has served as a mediator in the negotiations for the swap.
• Since his release, the 28-year-old from Hailey, Idaho, was reported to be in stable condition at a military hospital in Germany.
• The Taliban video shows Bergdahl in traditional Afghan clothing, the white salwar kameez, clean-shaven and sitting in a white pickup truck parked on a hillside. More than a dozen Taliban fighters with machineguns, their faces mostly covered by headscarves, stand around the truck and on the hillside.
• Bergdahl is seen blinking frequently as he looks out of the truck and appears to be listening as his captors speak to him. A Black Hawk helicopter then lands and two Taliban fighters, one carrying a white piece of cloth tied to a stick of wood, lead Bergdahl half the way toward the helicopter, a few hundred meters (yards) away.
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Analysis: Blending tea party and mainstream energies, GOP voters pick grade-A Senate nominees

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican Party continues its disciplined march toward an impressive lineup of candidates this fall, when it hopes to wrest the Senate majority from Democrats and control both chambers of Congress during President Barack Obama's final two years.
• Tuesday's primaries produced another batch of Senate nominees who seem about as promising as party leaders could have hoped for. There's still plenty of time for stumbles, of course. But so far, the GOP appears to be sidestepping the type of gaffe-prone and fiercely ideological candidates who blundered into excruciating

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