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The monarch, a close ally of the United States, is relying on the elections to quiet his critics and has promised that the contest could usher in the formation of strong political parties and allow the public a greater say in the selection of the government. His critics have dismissed the vote as an attempt by him to avoid yielding any measure of his absolute powers and say it is likely to contribute to a spreading sense of political alienation.

The country's main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Islamic Action Front, boycotted the vote, increasing the chances that the election would be followed by more unrest. The Brotherhood and other groups which did not vote complained about an election law that underrepresents the kingdom's majority citizens of Palestinian origin, favoringmembers of tribes loyal to the king.

At several polling stations in Amman, the capital, campaign workers said turnout was light but that they expected larger numbers later on Wednesday, a holiday. By early afternoon, the election commission's spokesman, Hussein Bani Hani, said turnout had reached 24 percent of the roughly 2.3 million registered voters, according to the Petra news agency. In all, 1,425 candidates are running for 120 seats in the lower house of Parliament.

David Martin, the European Union's chief election observer, told The Associated Press that there was "no intimidation or harassment of voters" and only minor violations related to campaigning outside of polling stations.

Before the vote, many Jordanians complained about the numbers of familiar faces among the candidates, members of previous, feeble legislatures who came to power in elections widely viewed as rigged. In the days before Wednesday's elections, the authorities announced the arrest of several well-known candidates on bribery charges, though their names remained on the ballots.

Outside a polling station in Umm al-Sumaq neighborhood in Amman, two brothers argued about whether the election mattered at all. "It is very important!" said Mansour Naimat, a retired air force officer, as campaign workers handed out fliers directly outside the polling station.  Mr. Naimat said he cast a vote for a candidate who served in a previous legislature, and whose signature achievement, by Mr. Naimat's reckoning was wresting a local graveyard from government control.

His brother, Hassan Naimat, laughed at the contest. "Not a lot of people will vote," he said. "Eighty percent of the parliament is coming back. They are the same." 

The group, Human Rights in China, said in a statement late Tuesday that Mr. Gao's younger brother and his father-in-law visited Mr. Gao on Jan. 12. The New York-based group cited Mr. Gao's wife. The older brother, Gao Zhiyi, confirmed the visit when reached by telephone on Wednesday, but said he had no further details because the younger brother had not yet returned to the family's hometown in Shaanxi Province.

Foreign human rights advocates say they fear for Mr. Gao's life since there has been no word on his well-being or whereabouts for long stretches of time. Foreign governments have condemned China for its harsh treatment of Mr. Gao over the years.

The previous family visit also took place at Shaya prison in Xinjiang, on March 24, 2012. Human Rights in China said there was no information from this latest visit on a possible release date for Mr. Gao. The group said that during the latest visit, "Mr. Gao's mind seemed clear and he spoke normally."

It said the younger brother was told by the authorities not to talk with Mr. Gao about his case or prison conditions. The two were also barred from discussing Mr. Gao's wife, Geng He, and two children, who fled to the United States in 2009 with the help of a Christian organization that spirited them from China to Thailand.

The younger brother was also told not to give any interviews to the news media after the visit. The brother asked when the family would next be permitted to see Mr. Gao and was told the family had to "follow old ways," according to the human rights group.

Mr. Gao is a rights lawyer and devout Christian who was subjected to long periods of detention and what he called torture by security forces after he took on politically delicate cases. Those included defending ordinary Chinese whose land had been taken from them and given to developers and persecuted members of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement. Mr. Gao was once a celebrated lawyer praised by the party and the state. He renounced his membership in the ruling Communist Party in 2005 and denounced the government.

In December 2011, the authorities revoked the suspension of the five-year prison sentence, just days before the sentence was to have been completed, and sent him to a prison in Xinjiang. The announcement said that Mr. Gao would be imprisoned for another three years for violating terms of his suspended sentence. But rights advocates called this a flimsy excuse to increase pressure on him. Mr. Gao had been in policy custody during much of the so-called suspended prison sentence, which he was given in December 2006 after being convicted of "inciting subversion of state power."

Mr. Gao said he suffered excruciating torture when he was abducted by security officers and detained for 50 days in autumn 2007, during the period of the suspended prison sentence.

"We will ensure," Ms. Gandhi pledged in a nationally broadcast speech on Sunday, "that she will not have died in vain."

Ms. Gandhi's vow encapsulates the challenges facing the Indian judicial system. In a South Delhi courtroom on Thursday, arguments are scheduled to begin in a trial for five men accused in the rape, which galvanized the nation and captured the attention of the world. The trial will take place in a "fast track" court for crimes against women that was set up in response to public furor over the assault.

But whether the trial can treat the defendants fairly and provide justice for the victim and her family while also laying the groundwork for sweeping changes in India's judiciary system remains very much an open question. Police allege that the rape was a premeditated and vicious attack in which the five men and a teenager, who is being tried separately, raped the victim one by one and then tried to murder her and destroy evidence to cover up the crime. The men are charged with robbery, gang rape and murder, and could be sentenced to death by hanging if found guilty.

All five will plead not guilty, their lawyers said.

Rare in its reported savagery, the Dec. 16 rape on a moving bus in South Delhi propelled thousands of Indians into the streets to protest. They were outraged over not just the attack but also what many women describe as a pattern of harassment, assault and ill treatment that keeps them bound to a second-tier citizenship even as many increasingly educated and urbanized women are advancing in the workplace. It is a country, they note, where Ms. Gandhi is chairwoman of the governing Congress Party, yet hundreds of millions of other women are still trapped in a web of traditional strictures.

The government, by some measures, has responded forcefully. The rape "has left an indelible mark and shaken the conscience of the nation," India's chief justice, Altamas Kabir, wrote in a Jan. 5 letter to India's state high courts, urging them to set up fast-track courts for crimes against women similar to South Delhi's. These cases need to be dealt with "expeditiously," he wrote, to curb what he described as a "sharp increase" in violence against women. Already, several states have established such courts, and many others are expected to follow suit.

Even though the police investigate only a small number of rape and sexual assault allegations, the courts are badly backed up. Over 95,000 rape cases were awaiting trial in India at the beginning of 2011, according to government figures, but just 16 percent of them were resolved by the end of the year. Of the cases that go to trial, about 26 percent yield a conviction, half the rates in the United States or Britain. Women's rights activists say the process often yields more trauma for the victim than punishment for the guilty.

In one extreme example, legal proceedings against dozens of men charged with the rape of a teenage girl in Kerala in 1995 are still under way. In August 2011, the victim, now in her 30s, asked that the court proceedings be stopped, saying she could not bear to relive the incidents yet again. The Kerala High Court refused, and the victim is expected to appear in court as a witness in February.

But creating a fast-track system to deal with rape cases highlights the shortcomings of the entire Indian judicial system, critics say, and may even add to the problem.

"Grotesque as this case has been," said Rebecca John, a New Delhi criminal lawyer with 25 years of experience, "there have been many other grotesque examples." By creating five fast-track courts for crimes against women, and pulling in judges to preside in them, the government has only increased the burden on other courts, she said.

If included in a United Nations study of 2008 data from 65 nations, India's ratio of 14 judges per million people would have been the fourth-lowest, besting only Guatemala, Nicaragua and Kenya.

"The Indian judicial system tends to work pretty well, when the process is set in motion," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "The flaws lie in the delays" in getting cases heard, she said.

This week, a three-member panel of legal experts that formed in response to the protests over the Delhi rape is expected to present suggestions for how the justice system can be improved.

Adding more judges in India is a difficult, haphazard process, however, since it is handled individually by states. "There are various issues that lead to posts of judges not being filled, ranging from budgetary constraints, to the lack of qualified candidates, to just apathy," said Mrinal Satish, an associate professor at the National Law University in New Delhi.

While some see the Delhi trial as a model for handling crimes against women, it is different in many ways from most cases, lawyers and women's activists said.

Unusually, there is a witness to the attack. The woman's 29-year-old companion told the police what he remembered, but he was unconscious for some of the assault after being beaten with a metal rod that was also used against the woman, who died in a Singapore hospital from her injuries.

Second, the police moved quickly after the attack was reported, in part because of the media attention. They have collected DNA evidence linking the five defendants to the attack, the prosecutor in the case said, including blood and semen found on their clothing, on the victim and in the bus.

The attack was also particularly brutal. Bite marks were discovered all over the woman, according to evidence cited in a court document. She was tortured with an iron rod inserted into her vagina and rectum. At one point, according to the police, one of the suspects pulled out some of the woman's internal organs. She bled profusely and lost consciousness.

The trial will pit an eclectic group of defense lawyers, one of whom has courted controversy by alleging publicly that the rape was the victim's fault, against one of Delhi's most trusted public prosecutors, who also happens to be one of the most overworked.

Rajiv Mohan, the prosecutor, is handling about 150 other cases, he said in an interview. He often juggles six or seven cases a day, he said.

Defenses mounted by the five accused will vary, according to interviews with their lawyers and others involved with the trial. Two of the men, Pawan Gupta and Vinay Sharma, have offered to turn state's witnesses, the police said.

A. P. Singh, a lawyer who represents Mr. Sharma and another defendant, Akshay Thakur, said Mr. Sharma was not on the bus when the attack occurred. M. L. Sharma, a lawyer who has publicly stated that "respectable" women do not get raped, is petitioning the Supreme Court to move the case out of Delhi, arguing that his single-named client, Mukesh, will not get a fair trial because of the intense publicity.

Veteran Delhi lawyers say the judge, Yogesh Khanna, is considered balanced, known for trying to avoid unnecessary delays.

He will be tested. The rowdy, sometimes violent protests that shook Delhi in the days after reports of the attack became public included angry knots of citizens demanding that the men be hanged, even before the victim died. A hurried trial, followed by a knee-jerk death penalty verdict, would be a mistake, many say.

With this case, said Pinki Virani, an activist and author, "only the short-term optics are being addressed, not the permanent outcomes."

Although it was not the first time North Korea issued such strident rhetoric, its posture, coming under the new leadership of Kim Jong-un, threw a direct challenge to President Barack Obama as he starts his second term, and Park Geun-hye, who will be sworn in as president of South Korea next month. After years of tensions with North Korea, both Mr. Obama and Ms. Park have recently said they were keeping the door open for dialogue with North Korea on the premise that such engagement should lead to the eventual dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.

Simultaneously, Washington reaffirmed its policy of punishing North Korea for moving toward the development of long-range missiles tipped with a nuclear warhead when it spearheaded international backing for a unanimous Security Council resolution on Tuesday.

The resolution condemned North Korea's Dec. 12 rocket launch as a violation of earlier resolutions banning the country from any tests involving ballistic missile technology, and added new sanctions.

In a swift rejection of the U.N. warnings, North Korea said on Wednesday that it will take "physical counteraction" to bolster its "nuclear deterrence both qualitatively and quantitatively." It said, "There can be talks for peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the region in the future, but no talks for the denuclearization of the peninsula."

By "physical counteraction," analysts in Seoul said, North Korea most likely meant detonating another nuclear device to demonstrate advances in bomb-making. After analysing the debris of the rocket North Korea fired in December to put a satellite into orbit, South Korean officials said that North Korea indigenously built key components of a missile that can fly more than 6,200 miles.

The analysts said Washington would watch whether a new nuclear test involved a uranium device, as opposed to the previous two tests that used plutonium bombs. North Korea has recently revved up efforts to enrich uranium, ostensibly as fuel for its new nuclear reactor under construction but for practical purposes as a new and more stable source of fuel for nuclear bombs.

North Korea unveiled a brand-new uranium enrichment plant to a visiting American scholar in 2010. But U.S. and South Korean military intelligence officials, using satellite imagery, have since detected more facilities that they suspected could be part of a more expansive enrichment program, military officials here said.

"A nuclear test is the most likely option for the North," said Choi Jin-wook, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

In recent months, international experts have detected what appeared to be new tunneling activities and efforts to fix flood damages in the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in northeastern North Korea. Kim Min-seok, spokesman for the Defense Ministry of South Korea, told reporters last month that North Korea could conduct a third nuclear in a short notice once its leadership decided to. North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test in Punggye-ri in 2006 and again in 2009.

Each of those tests came as North Korea was protesting a United Nations' decision to impose more sanctions as punishment for rocket tests.

Washington and its allies "know better than any others about the fact that ballistic missile technology is the only means for launching satellite and they launch satellites more than any others," the North Korean statement said on Wednesday. "This is self-deception and the height of double-standards. The essence of the matter is the U.S. brigandish logic that a satellite launch for peaceful purposes by a country which the U.S. antagonizes should not be allowed because any carrier rocket launched by it can be converted into long-range ballistic missile threatening the U.S."

In recent years, North Korea has made it increasingly clear that it is determined to keep its nuclear weapons at whatever costs, undermining a once-popular belief that the Pyongyang regime's brinkmanship was a mere bargaining ploy designed to get as many concessions as possible in exchange for nuclear weapons.

On Wednesday, blaming Washington's "hostile policy," the North said it "drew a final conclusion that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is impossible unless the denuclearization of the world is realized." The 2005 deal in which North Korea and the United States agreed in principle upon the dismantling of the North's nuclear weapons program in return for diplomatic incentives "has now become defunct," it said.

The case of Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, 51, was different from previous lese majeste cases because Mr. Somyot directly challenged the law itself, saying it violated the right to free expression.

Thailand's constitutional court swept aside that challenge last month and laid out the justification for the law, saying the king deserves "special protection" under the law because he is the "center of the nation."

"The king holds the position of head of state and is the main institution of the country," the court ruled. Insulting the king, the court said, "is considered an act that wounds the feelings of Thais who respect and worship the king and the monarchy."

Mr. Somyot was not the author of the two articles that the court said violated the law - the writer, Jakrapob Penkair, a former government spokesman, has fled to Cambodia. But as the editor of the magazine, which was called The Voice of Taksin and is now defunct, Mr. Somyot was responsible for its content, the court said.

Similar to a decision last week, where an anti-government protester was sentenced to two years in prison for insulting the king, the articles never mentioned the king's name.

The first article is a jumbled tale about a family that plots to kill millions of people to maintain its power and quash democracy. The court ruled on Wednesday that the writer was describing the Chakri dynasty of Thailand's current King, Bhumibol Adulyadej.

The second article is a fictional tale about a ghost who haunts Thailand and plots massacres. The court ruled that the author was comparing the ghost to King Bhumibol.

"There is no content identifying an individual," the court said. "But the writing conveyed connection to historical events."

International human rights groups immediately criticized the verdict. Human Rights Watch said it would "further chill freedom of expression in Thailand."

Amnesty International called the verdict a "regressive decision - Somyot has been found guilty simply for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and should be released immediately."

The European Union issued a statement saying the ruling undercuts "Thailand's image as a free and democratic society."

Thailand's lese majeste law calls for prison sentences of three to 15 years in jail for "whoever defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the regent."

The court added one year to Mr. Somyot's 10 year-sentence for a separate case where Mr. Somyot was accused of libeling a general involved in the 2006 coup.

Mr. Somyot, who has been denied bail since being arrested in 2011, was brought to the courtroom in shackles. His lawyers said he would appeal the verdict.

His wife, Sukanya Pruksakasemsuk, said she was concerned about her husband's health because he suffers from high blood pressure and gout.

"Is it reasonable to send someone to 11 years in jail for expressing something?" she said. "I don't think so."

The projected vote will be held only if his Conservative Party wins the election scheduled for 2015, he planned to say, and the ballot will take place in or before 2018.

Mr. Cameron had initially planned to deliver the address in the Netherlands on Friday but postponed it because of the hostage crisis in Algeria. The speech is a defining moment in Mr. Cameron's political career, reflecting a belief that by wresting some powers back from the E.U., he can win over the support of a grudging British public which has long been ambivalent – or actively hostile – toward the idea of European integration.

Speaking in London early on Wednesday, the excerpts said Mr. Cameron will say: "It is time for the British people to have their say. It is time to settle this European question in British politics."

"I say to the British people: this will be your decision. And when that choice comes, you will have an important choice to make about our country's destiny," according to the excerpts.

He ruled out an immediate ballot, saying that the turmoil within the 17-nation zone which uses the euro, of which Britain is not a member, meant that the broader European Union was heading for sweeping reforms.

A referendum before those changes are made, he said, would present an "entirely false choice."

In his speech, Mr. Cameron planned to say that he will ask for a mandate at the 2015 election for a Conservative government to negotiate a new relationship with the European Union.

"And when we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice to stay in the E.U. on these new terms, or come out altogether. It will be an in-out referendum," he said.

Mr. Cameron added that he will complete the negotiation and hold this referendum within the first half of his next term, if he wins one, suggesting that the vote would take place in 2017.

Mr. Cameron had been under mounting pressure from his Conservative Party to make the announcement. The United States has been unusually public in its insistence that Britain, a close ally, stay in the union. Last week, a White House spokesman quoted President Obama as telling Mr. Cameron by telephone that "the United States values a strong U.K. in a strong European Union, which makes critical contributions to peace, prosperity and security in Europe and around the world."

Excerpts from the speech which were published on Friday quoted Mr. Cameron as saying that unless the European Union changed the way it is run, Britain would "drift toward the exit."

According to those excerpts, Mr. Cameron planned to note "a gap between the E.U. and its citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years and which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is — yes — felt particularly acutely in Britain."

"If we don't address these challenges, the danger is that Europe will fail and the British people will drift toward the exit. I do not want that to happen. I want the European Union to be a success, and I want a relationship between Britain and the E.U. that keeps us in it."