Thirteen men are being held after a Swiss tourist (centre) was robbed and gang-raped in the central state of Madhya Pradesh of India.

Local police superintendent C. S. Solanki told the Press Trust of India that the woman and her husband had camped out for the night in a forest after bicycling from the temple town of Orchha on Friday when they were attacked by a group of eight men.

He said the couple were beaten and had their belongings stolen, and that the woman was gang-raped.

Solanki said police were questioning 13 men in connection with the attack.

India has seen outrage and protests against rape and attacks on women since the fatal gang-rape of a young woman in a moving bus in New Delhi in December.

Latvian SS ceremony sparks friction

Hundreds of Latvians commemorated World War II veterans who fought in Waffen SS divisions in an annual event that stokes ethnic animosity between Latvians and minority Russians.

Latvians laid flowers at the Freedom Monument in Riga, the nation’s capital, while a small group of mainly Russians protested behind barricades about 50 feet away.

A large police presence kept the two sides apart.

At one point an additional unit of police in riot gear was called on to prevent a scuffle where protesters had hung photographs of the Holocaust on a mock death camp fence.

Police detained several people at the procession.

Many Latvians consider March 16, or Legionnaires Day, as an opportunity to commemorate war veterans, while Russians see it as glorifying fascism.

15 killed in Jordan bus accident

Officials in Jordan say a bus carrying Palestinian pilgrims has overturned and crashed into a trailer on a highway near the Israeli border, killing 15 people.

A Civil Defence statement said that 14 pilgrims and the driver were killed in the accident yesterday, while 32 Palestinians were injured.

The statement said the pilgrims were passing through Jordan on their way back to the West Bank from Muslim holy shrines in the cities of Mecca and Medina in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

It added that the bus driver lost control of the brakes, skidded and collided into a trailer, then overturned about 20 kilometres east of the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge.

The bridge across the Jordan River is used for passengers and cargo traded with the West Bank.

Publisher reissues Pope ‘biography’

The naming of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis has inspired the enthusiasm not only of many Roman Catholics, but also a publisher planning to relaunch a book about him by his official biographer Sergio Rubin.

The Jesuit. Conversations With Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio will be reissued on Tuesday as The Jesuit. The Story of Francisco, The Argentine Pope, said Maria Estomba, a spokeswoman for the Spanish publishing house Ediciones B.

Ediciones B now owns Latin American publishing group Vergara, which in 2010 issued the original Spanish-language book.

The book is based on two years of conversations Mr Rubin and a fellow journalist, Francesca Ambroguetti, held with then-Cardinal Bergoglio, but is not strictly a biography, Ms Estomba said.

The publishing house plans to translate the book into several other languages, she said.