BANGKOK, May 24
Thailand's military tightened its grip on power on Sunday as it moved to quell growing protests, saying anyone violating its orders would be tried in military court.

Defying the military's warning against anti-coup protests, hundreds of Thais today marched across the tense capital shouting "get out, get out" and confronted soldiers as the junta firmed up control and demoted three key state officials of the ousted regime.

In the largest march since the coup on Thursday, over 1,000 people held protest march in one of Bangkok's busiest shopping districts.

Tensions rose high after protesters shouting "Get out, get out, get out!" confronted the armed soldiers, who blocked their ways to the city's Skytrain and upscale malls.

The military also took its first steps to revitalise a battered economy, saying nearly a million farmers owned money under the previous government's failed rice-subsidy scheme would be paid within a month. The military overthrew the government on Thursday after months of debilitating confrontation between the populist government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and the royalist establishment.

Ex-PM Yingluck released?

Former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has been released by the military junta which has asked her to help maintain peace and not to get involved with protesters or any political movement, a media report said today. Yingluck is no longer in military custody, CNN reported. A source close to Yingluck also confirmed that she was released from a military camp, the report said. — Agencies

2 dead, 52 hurt in blasts

Bangkok: Police say at least nine bombs exploded in Thailand's restive south, killing two people and wounding dozens. The blasts were in a southern province that is facing an Islamic insurgency. 

US cancels army exercise

WASHINGTON: The US has cancelled an ongoing military exercise with Thailand and scrapped several bilateral engagements while urging restoration of democratic rule in the country in the wake of a bloodless coup

KABUL, May 25
The Islamist Taliban have freed most of the 27 prisoners captured last week in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhanshan province, a local official said on Sunday, but three remained captive because of their senior rank.

The prisoners, most of them police officers, were taken in a battle for Yamgan district, after several days of fighting. “They still hold the prison chief, police chief and a NDS (intelligence agency) agent,” district governor Nawroz Mohammad Haidari said by telephone.

Yamgan initially appeared to have fallen to the Taliban, but local officials say it has since been recaptured by Afghan forces. Violence has intensified since the Taliban launched the start of the summer fighting season on May 12. — Reuters

BRUSSELS, May 25
European elections culminated on "Super Sunday" with EU's 28 countries going to the polls, with the vote expected to confirm the dominance of pro-EU centrists despite a rise in support for the far-right and left.

Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Poland are among the major EU member that voted on Sunday, representing the bulk of the 388 million Europeans eligible to cast ballots and elect the 751 deputies to sit in the European Parliament from 2014-2019.

The European Parliament has said it will announce preliminary results shortly after 2100 GMT on Sunday. Final results and the precise allotment of seats in parliament is expected to be announced by the end of Monday. — Reuters

KIEV/DONETSK, May 25
Confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine's presidential election on Sunday with an absolute majority, exit polls showed, averting the need for a runoff vote next month that he had said could destabilise the country.

Two polls gave Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman with long experience in government, 55.9 to 57.3 per cent, well ahead of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in second place with just over 12 per cent. If confirmed by results on Monday, there will be no need for a runoff vote on June 15.

Ukrainians, weary of six months of political turmoil, hope their new president will be able to pull their country of 45 million people back from the brink of bankruptcy, dismemberment and civil war. But, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Poroshenko, armed pro-Russian separatists barred people from voting in much of Ukraine's Donbass industrial heartland on Sunday, turning the main city of Donetsk into a ghost town.

Poroshenko, 48, has promised closer economic and political ties with the West in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he will also have to try to mend relations with Ukraine's giant northern neighbour, which provides most of its natural gas and is the major market for its exports.

The election marked the culmination of a revolution that erupted last November, forced a pro-Russian president to flee in February and spiraled into an existential crisis when Moscow responded by declaring its right to invade Ukraine. — Reuters

BEIJING, May 25
China has launched a nationwide, year-long "anti-terror operation", state media said on Sunday, days after announcing a similar crackdown targeting the troubled Xinjiang region following an attack which killed dozens.

Security forces were ordered to prevent militants moving beyond the region in China's far west, which has a large Muslim Uighur minority and where five suicide bombers struck on Thursday Xinjiang capital of Urumqi.

"Police are urged to stop terrorists from striking again and prevent terrorists and religious extremists from spreading from Xinjiang to the rest of the country," said the official Xinhua news agency, citing China's Ministry of Public Security.

A similar campaign was launched in Xinjiang on Friday after the region's deadliest attack at a vegetable market. The attackers ploughed two vehicles into an open market and hurled explosives, killing 31 people and wounding 94 shoppers.

As many as 23 terror and religious extremist groups have been busted and over 200 suspects arrested in Xinjiang Uygur region in May, security authorities said Sunday. Over 200 explosive devices were also seized in the police raids. Many of the suspects were in their 20s and 30s, who would watch terror video the Internet and electric storages and learned how to make explosives. — Agencies

Jerusalem, May 25 (AP)
The offices of the Israeli and Palestinian presidents have confirmed that they have accepted an invitation from Pope Francis to visit the Vatican together next month.

At the end of an open-air Mass in the biblical town of Bethlehem today, Francis invited the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the Vatican to pray for peace.

The offices of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres both said they would attend. The 90-year-old Peres, who is stepping down this summer, has been a fervent supporter of Mideast peace efforts. His decision risks upsetting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is angry about outreach efforts by other politicians at a time when Abbas is reconciling with the Islamic militant group Hamas. — AP

United Nations, May 25
Eight Indian soldiers, who lost their lives while serving in UN peacekeeping operations last year, are among 106 military, police and civilian personnel to be posthumously awarded a prestigious UN medal this week for their courage and sacrifice in the line of duty.

The Dag Hammarskjold Medal, named after the second UN Secretary General, will be awarded on May 29, which is commemorated as International Day of UN Peacekeepers.

The Indian peacekeepers to be awarded are Lt Col Mahipal Singh, Lance Naik Nand Kishore Joshi, Havildar Heera Lal, Naib Subedar Shiv Kumar Pal and Havildar Bharat Sasmal from the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) who were killed in April last year when they were ambushed by over 200 attackers near Jonglei State as they escorted a UN convoy.

Subedar Dharmesh Sangwan and Subedar Kumar Pal Singh died in action in December in Akobo following an assault on an UNMISS base. Sepoy Rameshwar Singh, deployed as a peacekeeper in the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was killed in February 2013.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will oversee a solemn wreath-laying ceremony in the honour of fallen peacekeepers at the Peacekeepers’ Memorial. — PTI

New York, May 25
A 111-year-old US man has been crowned the world’s oldest living man by the Guinness World Records.

Guinness announced Dr Alexander Imich, a parapsychologist and retired chemist, from the New York City as the new oldest living man.

The latest record was verified after the previous title holder Arturo Licata of Italy passed away last month aged 111 years and 357 days.

Imich was born in present-day Czestochowa, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire, on February 4, 1903.

In 1951, he and his wife, Wela, immigrated to the US from the Soviet Union and Imich has lived in Manhattan alone since she passed away in 1986, said Guinness.

While his own longevity has surprised even himself, Imich credits his life to good genes and an overall moderate, healthy lifestyle by which he has eaten very leanly his entire life. — PTI