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BEIJING (AP) — Police in China's restive western region shot dead 13 assailants who rammed a truck into a police office building and set off explosives in an attack Saturday that also wounded three officers, state media said.

The Tianshan website said in a one-line report that no civilians were hurt in the attack in Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang's southwest. Officials in the region contacted by phone either said they were unclear about the situation or refused to comment.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based group World Uyghur Congress, said he called several residents in the Yecheng area who described hearing rapid gunfire, likely from police, before an explosion rang out. He said that authorities quickly placed the county under martial law and started rounding up people in a nearby market.

"It's undeniable that the armed police are using excessive force to deal with the unrest in the region. Why did they need to shoot them dead on the spot?" Dilxat Raxit said. "If they just injured them they would still have a chance to be put through the legal process."

It was the latest in a series of attacks pointing to growing unrest in the sprawling region of Xinjiang, where the native Muslim Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) people want more autonomy from Beijing. Last month, a market bombing killed 43 people in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi.

Chinese authorities have blamed the attacks on extremists bent on overthrowing Beijing's rule. The government says the assailants have ties to Islamic terrorist groups abroad, but provides little direct evidence.

The government has sought to stem the attacks by handing down heavy punishments to people authorities say organized, led and participated in terrorist groups, committed arson, murder, burglary or illegally manufactured explosives. Earlier this month, China executed 13 people in Xinjiang for such crimes.

Uighur activists say public resentment against Beijing is fueled by an influx of settlers from the Han majority in the region, economic disenfranchisement and onerous restrictions on Uighur religious and cultural practices. China says it has made vast investments to boost the region's economy and improve living standards.

TOKYO (AP) — The study that led Japan to apologize in 1993 for forcing Asian women into wartime prostitution was confirmed as valid by a parliament-appointed panel Friday after South Korea and China slammed the review as an attempt to discredit historical evidence of such abuses.

Officials said Japan stood by its earlier pledge not to change the landmark apology.

"We concluded that the content of the study was valid," said lawyer Keiichi Tadaki, who headed the five-member panel that reviewed about 250 sets of documents used for the government study that was the basis of the 1993 apology.

The new investigation focused on how the study, which included interviews with 16 former Korean victims, was conducted, not evaluation of its historical findings. But any discussion of bitter World War II history is sensitive, especially when Japan's relations with its two closest neighbors are soured by territorial disputes.

The panel started its study in April after Nobuo Ishihara, a top bureaucrat who helped in the 1993 study questioned the authenticity of the interviews, while suggesting Seoul possibly pressured Tokyo into acknowledging the women were coerced. Ishihara spoke at parliament as a witness for a nationalist lawmaker who demanded the review.

Tadaki, who briefed the contents of the report, said Japan had enough evidence from other documents to produce the apology and that the hearings of the women were supplementary and intended to show Japan's compassion rather than to verify historical evidence. His team's report acknowledged Tokyo and Seoul negotiated at length over the wording but that did not distort historical facts mentioned in the apology, he said.

Historians say 20,000 to 200,000 women from across Asia, many of them Koreans, were forced to provide sex to Japan's front-line soldiers. Japanese nationalists contend that women in wartime brothels were voluntary prostitutes, not sex slaves, and that Japan has been unfairly criticized for a practice they say is common in any country at war.

Abe himself has been criticized by South Korea and China for backpedaling from past Japanese apologies and acknowledgements of wartime atrocities.

Japanese officials interviewed 16 of such women in 1993 at South Korea's request as part of an investigation that led to the apology by then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, and known as "the Kono statement," which acknowledged many women were forced into prostitution for Japan's wartime military.

The report said Seoul urged Tokyo to show sincerity and acknowledge coercion to make an apology acceptable to the South Koreans. The two countries agreed to keep secret their negotiations over the apology statement.

The report noted Ishihara had insisted Japan should never acknowledge all comfort women were forced. It said Japan was initially reluctant to meet the women due to fear it would create an uncontrollable and endless situation.

In 1995, Japan provided through a private fund 2 million yen ($20,000) each to about 280 women in the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea, and funded nursing homes and medical assistance for Indonesian and former Dutch sex slaves. In South Korea, seven women accepted the money out of more than 200 eligible recipients, following criticism of the private fund instead of official compensation.

Seoul has criticized Japan's verification as a contradictory action, meaningless and unnecessary.

"The Japanese government should clearly know that action that again picks on the painful wound of the victims will never be forgiven by the international society," South Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il told reporters. He urged Japan to admit its responsibility and immediately propose a solution that the elderly victims can accept.

Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga reiterated Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pledge not to revise the 1993 apology, saying that evaluation of the historical evidence should be left up to historians and scholars.

"Japan's relations with South Korea are extremely important and we will try to explain this issue to gain understanding," Suga said.

The United States counts both Japan and South Korea as key allies. The State Department said it took note of Suga's statement and the Abe government's position to uphold the apology.

"Because South Korea and Japan have so many common interests, it's important they find a way to resolve the past in the most productive manner and look to the future on how they can work together on issues they share," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.

Relations are already strained in the region, and adding to the ire, the South Korean navy on Friday conducted live-fire exercises in seas near islands that are claimed by both countries. Top Japanese officials protested the drills, but South Korean officials said the exercises were routine and rejected Tokyo's demands to cancel them.

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Associated Press writers Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul, Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — Netflix is expanding its empire of original content with a talk show to be hosted by Chelsea Handler.

The online TV network said Thursday that the outspoken comedian's new show will begin in early 2016. It will update the format of her current E! talk show, "Chelsea Lately," but retain the comedic focus on entertainment and cultural issues. No other details were provided.

Handler will end the seven-year run of "Chelsea Lately" on Aug. 26.

The Netflix deal with Handler begins with a standup performance premiering on Oct. 10. She will also create four specials debuting in 2015.

Handler's announced departure from E! had earlier sparked speculation that she might find a late-night home on a broadcast network.

Netflix has already scored with original scripted series including "House of Cards."

NEW YORK (AP) — All but closing the books on one of the most lurid crime cases in New York history, the city has agreed to a $40 million settlement with five men who were falsely convicted in the vicious 1989 rape and beating of a Central Park jogger, a city official said Friday.

The official had direct knowledge of the agreement but wasn't allowed to discuss it publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. City Comptroller Scott Stringer confirmed that a settlement had been reached but would not disclose the amount except to say that the $40 million figure was "in the ballpark."

The deal still needs final approval from the comptroller and a federal judge.

The five black and Hispanic defendants were found guilty as teenagers in 1990 in the attack on a white woman — an investment banker — who had gone for a run in the park.

With New York awash in murder and drugs at the time, the crime was seen as a terrifying symbol of the city's racial and class divide and evidence that it was sliding into lawlessness. The case gave rise to the term "wilding" for urban mayhem by marauding teenagers.

The defendants served six to 13 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out in 2002 because of evidence that someone else, acting alone, committed the crime. The five brought a $250 million civil rights lawsuit against police and prosecutors.

Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement that the tentative settlement signifies "a monumental victory" for the men and their families.

"It is also a victory for those in the community that stood with them from day one and believed in their innocence in this case," Sharpton said. "As supporters, we were viciously attacked for standing with them, but we were on the right side of history."

The victim, Trisha Meili, then 28, was found in the brush, more than 75 percent of her blood drained from her body and her skull smashed. She was in a coma for 12 days, suffered permanent damage and remembers nothing about the attack.

Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, both 14 at the time, Antron McCray and Yusef Salaam, 15, and Korey Wise, 16, were rounded up and arrested. After hours of interrogation, four of them gave confessions on video.

At the trials, their lawyers argued the confessions were coerced. At the time, DNA testing was not sophisticated enough to make or break the case.

In 2002, a re-examination of the case found that DNA on the victim's sock pointed to Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist who confessed that he alone attacked the jogger.

Then-District Attorney Robert Morgenthau stopped short of declaring the five innocent but withdrew all charges and did not seek a retrial. The statute of limitations for charging Reyes had run out; he is serving a life sentence for other crimes.

The case that stood as symbol of urban lawlessness became instead an example of a colossal breakdown in the legal system.

Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer for the five men, declined to comment.

Andrew G. Celli, a lawyer who represented documentary filmmakers and others with an interest the case, welcomed news of a settlement.

"A settlement this large, this dynamic, will have an impact," he said. "It will cause police and prosecutors to think a bit more carefully about the ramifications of a particular investigation."

The AP does not usually identify victims of sexual assault, but Meili went public as a motivational speaker and wrote a book.

While the five men have been exonerated, some troubling questions persist: The two doctors who treated Meili after the attack said in recent interviews with The Wall Street Journal that some of her wounds were not consistent with Reyes' account.

The doctors said that should call into question Reyes' claim that he acted alone.