Is it wrong to buy sex?

NEW DELHI — An American woman was gang-raped Tuesday in the northern Indian resort town of Manali, police said. The 30-year-old woman was picked up early Tuesday morning by men in a truck as she was hitchhiking back to her guest house after visiting a friend, police officer Sher Singh said. The three men in the truck then drove to a secluded spot and raped her, he said. She went to police and they filed a rape case. No arrests had been made as of Tuesday afternoon, Singh said.

OTTAWA — A new report by a respected international human rights watchdog has accused RCMP officers of abusing aboriginal women and girls in northern British Columbia. New York-based Human Rights Watch uncovered one allegation of rape and others of assault by Mounties against aboriginals in rural B.C. communities. The alleged incidents were uncovered as part of a broader investigation into charges of systemic neglect of missing and murdered aboriginal women along B.C.’s Highway 16, nicknamed the “Highway of Tears.”

NEW DELHI — A bone test is being conducted to confirm the age of a young suspect in custody in the fatal assault and gang rape of a woman on a bus in India’s capital, while prosecutors will seek the death penalty for five other men arrested with him, police said Tuesday. The six will be formally charged in court on Thursday on accusations that they kidnapped, gang raped and murdered the 23-year-old woman in New Delhi on Dec. 16, police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said.

The U.S. Defense Department has launched a research initiative aimed at potentially building autonomous robots in a few years — machines increasingly able to perform a greater range of tasks without human intervention.

A privately funded shelter for male victims of domestic abuse — believed to be the only refuge of its kind in the country — has closed. Men’s rights advocate Earl Silverman said he can’t afford to keep the Men’s Alternative Safe House (MASH) running. Since it opened out of his house about three years ago, close to 20 men have passed through, he said. Among them was a “father with two children, a one-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy and he was fleeing a violent, alcoholic wife.”

OTTAWA — An RCMP officer charged with multiple assault and sex-related counts following a child-abuse investigation made a brief court appearance Friday and was remanded in custody to next week. Clutching a sheaf of papers, the man stood slouched with his head down, flanked by Ottawa police officers during the short hearing. Tears appeared to well in his eyes as he occasionally glanced up at the judge with an evident look of worry.

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A Mogadishu court on Tuesday handed down one-year prison sentences to a woman who said she was raped by security forces and a reporter who interviewed her. The judges decided the woman falsely claimed she was raped and had insulted the government. The judges based their decision on medical evidence that the woman was not raped, said the court’s top official, Ahmed Aden Farah. Farah said the woman’s prison term would be delayed by one year so she could care for her young child.

The lawyer representing three of the men charged with the gang rape and murder of a medical student aboard a moving bus in New Delhi has blamed the victims for the assault, saying he has never heard of a “respected lady” being raped in India.