It's early Friday evening, at a small municipal stadium in Bangkok. The sun is going fast, but the rally for the pro-military Palang Pracharath party is just getting started.

Candidate Watchara Kannika is on the stage, warning would-be voters to keep out the "liars" and vote for "the truth." That truth, he says, is the country's coup-leader-turned prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, who toppled an elected government five years ago.

A version of this story was first posted by member station WBUR.

In a move that appeared aimed at what some view as a growing trend of political correctness on college campuses, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to bar federal research grants to institutions that don't "avoid creating environments that stifle competing perspectives."

On Thursday morning, Sayyad Milne was washed and wrapped in white cloth. His loved ones buried him on a bluff overlooking Christchurch, New Zealand.

He was killed last Friday while he prayed with his family and friends, one of 50 people shot dead at two mosques that day.

He was 14.

Sayyad's classmates from Cashmere High School say he was good-natured, played goalie for the school soccer team and had dreams of playing internationally.

Ahmed Shalaldeh, with his 2-year-old daughter in a stroller, came to the burial to pay his respects.

North Korea withdrew staff from a liaison office with South Korea in a surprise move on Friday that appears to be the latest fallout from a disappointing summit earlier this month between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

In a Friday morning meeting, North Korean officials informed their South Korean counterparts of the decision to pull out of the office at Kaesong that had served as the main point of contact between the neighbors, citing "instruction from a superior authority," a likely reference to Kim.

Dr. Mitchell Creinin never expected to be in the position of investigating a treatment he doesn't think works.

And yet, Creinin will be spending the next year or so using a research grant from the Society of Family Planning to put to the test a treatment he sees as dubious — one that recently has gained traction, mostly via the Internet, among groups that oppose abortion. They call it "abortion pill reversal."

Two U.S. service members were killed during an operation in Afghanistan Friday, the U.S.-led NATO Resolute Support mission in the country said in a brief statement.

Their names were being withheld in order to first notify family members.

It brings the total number of U.S. service members killed this year in the country to four, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Thirteen American service members were killed last year in Afghanistan.