Thailand

Wild elephants in Thailand stumbled upon a feast when they found a tapioca delivery truck with a flat tire, officials said on Monday. The driver, Somkuan Sirisat, said he had gone for help to repair the tire on Sunday night — and when he returned, he found five or six elephants surrounding his truck and devouring its contents.

Former anti-apartheid activist Valli Moosa of South Africa was elected the new president of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) on Wednesday. IUCN is deemed the world’s largest conservation network. Moosa, (47) born in Johannesburg, has served on the United Nations Environment Programme governing council, the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, and the South African Business Trust.

Twenty-three tigers have died and 30 more are sick from bird flu at a private zoo in Thailand after eating the carcasses of infected chickens, but health officials said on Tuesday that there is little threat to humans. Thai veterinarians are checking for the disease at chicken farms where the zoo got the birds that were fed to the tigers.

A young Thai man lost his penis to his knife-wielding wife and then forgot to bring his severed member with him to hospital, fatefully delaying a reattachment operation, news reports said on Monday. Sornlam Yotbanya (24) had a heated argument with his wife, Rungnapha Pongalee (32), on Sunday night about his mistress.

Members of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) on Tuesday in Bangkok voted down — for the sixth time in a row — Japan’s proposal to legalise trade in minke whales. The 13th Cites conference of parties voted 67 against, 55 in favour and 14 abstentions on Japan’s proposal.

Member states to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) on Monday adopted an ”action plan” that places further controls on the illegal ivory trade in Africa. The plan, Cites document 29,1, calls on African ”range states” with large elephant populations to prohibit unregulated domestic sales in ivory, placing the onus on sellers to prove that their sources are legal.

Complaints by feminist groups have forced Bangkok authorities to replace signs that called on women but not men to remain chaste on city buses where Thai youths are known to have sex, an official said on Friday. The Bangkok Mass Transit Authority on Friday began posting improved versions of the signs.

South African elder statesman Nelson Mandela, who turns 86 on Sunday.

Experts called on Thursday for urgent work on HIV-killing gels that could help protect women who can’t rely on condoms, while democracy icon Nelson Mandela told the world not to ignore tuberculosis (TB) in its battle against Aids. TB is a common diseases that attacks Aids patients after their immune systems have been destroyed.

South African activists on Wednesday decried the government’s decision against recommending the use of a key anti-Aids drug that can prevent the virus from being passed by infected mothers to their children. The South African government’s drug council has said it won’t recommend that nevirapine be used by itself.

An acute shortage of doctors trained to deliver life-saving drugs to people living with HIV/Aids in Asia is severely hampering treatment efforts, a report said as the 15th International Aids Conference entered its second day on Tuesday. India has only one trained doctor for every 10 000 people living with HIV.

The threat of HIV/Aids can be countered by abstinence, loving relationships and marriage instead of relying solely on condoms, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told delegates at the International Aids Conference in Bangkok on Monday.

The first summit meeting of national leaders on HIV/Aids in Bangkok next week has been called off because only one of the invited leaders is showing up. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said only Ugandan President Lieutenant General Yoweri Museveni and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan are now coming.

Part of an 11-storey department store collapsed on Wednesday in the Thai capital, injuring at least seven people including two seriously, police said. A section of the New World Department Store caved in from the eighth floor where workers had placed rubbish ahead of a planned demolition.

A huge fire on Friday razed a densely populated slum area in Bangkok near several Western embassies and luxury hotels, leaving thousands of Thais homeless, police said. The blaze, one of the biggest in Bangkok in recent years, destroyed virtually all 700 wooden houses in the Tungmahamek slum area.

Bird flu’s grip on Asia tightened on Friday with new outbreaks in China as well as Thailand where the deadly virus was also detected in a leopard, a tiger and two domestic cats. China reported two new confirmed cases of bird flu, bringing the tally to 48 outbreaks in more than half its provincial-level regions.

The death toll from Asia’s bird flu crisis rose to 21 on Wednesday, with confirmation that a four-year-old Thai boy had died of the virus, which has staged new outbreaks in several countries. As more cases broke out in Thailand, China and Japan this week, the United Nations warned Asia’s bird flu crisis was far from over.

Asia’s bird flu crisis showed no sign of easing on Monday as new outbreaks of the disease that has left 20 people dead were reported across the region. Thailand, which on Saturday confidently predicted it would have eradicated the disease by the end of the month, saw its campaign to wipe out bird flu suffer a setback with nine new outbreaks.

After killing millions of chickens and ducks across Asia, bird flu is feared to have jumped to more exotic species, possibly killing a leopard and cranes in Thailand and pheasants in Taiwan. The disease has killed 14 people in Vietnam and five in Thailand, and still has not been controlled in several Asian countries.

Two additional people died from bird flu, bringing Asia’s death toll to 12 on Monday, while China said it suspected the virus has reached poultry in one of its most remote corners and United Nations officials warned that the outbreak was far from over.

Thailand, one of Asia’s largest poultry exporters, said on Wednesday it is free of the bird flu epidemic that has swept parts of Asia, but said hundreds of thousands of chickens have died from cholera and bronchitis. Thailand was estimated to produce about one billion chickens in 2003.

Thailand on Friday carried out its first executions by lethal injection after abolishing the firing squad, putting to death three drug traffickers and a murderer at the notorious Bang Kwang jail. However, London-based rights group Amnesty International condemned Friday’s executions.

Thai soldiers were scrambling on Tuesday to save a royal palace, an important historical landmark, from floodwaters that have submerged parts of southern and central Thailand, affecting more than 200 000 people and leaving one boy dead. Thailand’s royal household has helped in relief efforts.