Phuket’s postcard-perfect beaches once welcomed masses of backpackers, but the island is rapidly turning into an upmarket holiday spot by becoming Asia’s premier sailing destination. Phuket is already the crown jewel of Thai tourism, attracting about five million visitors this year — or one-third of all tourists to Thailand.
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/ 26 December 2007
Sucking up sugar cane with their trunks and circling busy traffic roundabouts, the elephants that roam Thai towns at festival time seem as much at home in the city as in the forest. But entertaining locals and tourists is now a life-or-death business for elephants and their keepers.
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/ 23 December 2007
The party backing ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra easily won the most seats in Sunday’s election, a stunning rejection of the coup which booted out the telecoms billionaire in 2006. With 93% of the vote counted, the People Power Party was heading for 228 seats in the 480-member Parliament.
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/ 12 December 2007
They are chalk and cheese — an all-action sport and a quiet board game — but both are part of the attraction at the South-East Asian Games in north-eastern Thailand. Sepak takraw is being held in a stadium at the top of a shopping mall in front of raucous fans, while Go, a demonstration sport here, is taking place in a quiet university conference room.
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/ 23 November 2007
A proposed new law to boost patriotism in Thailand would be ”chaotic” because it would require motorists to stop when the national anthem is played twice a day, lawmakers said on Friday. A vote on the Flag Bill proposed by a group of retired and active duty generals in the army-appointed Parliament was deferred on Thursday to allow a committee to study it.
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/ 29 October 2007
Microsoft, seeking to expand in the medical sector, has agreed to acquire the assets of a privately held, Thailand-based health information system company, the software giant announced on Monday. Global Care Solutions specialises in creating software modules for hospitals’ clinical and administrative operations.
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/ 24 October 2007
More sex-crimes charges were filed on Wednesday against a suspected Canadian paedophile captured last week following a global manhunt, Thai police said. Christopher Paul Neil (32) was arrested in Thailand on Friday following a worldwide search led by Interpol to track down a man seen in 200 internet photos abusing a dozen Asian boys.
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/ 20 October 2007
Canadian paedophile suspect Christopher Neil has denied charges that he molested underage children in Thailand, police said on Saturday, a day after a global manhunt ended with his arrest in a dusty Thai town. A Thai court ordered Neil detained for another 12 days for further investigation.
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/ 19 October 2007
Canadian paedophile suspect Christopher Neil, unmasked by nifty computer work by German police and a unique Interpol internet appeal, was arrested in rural Thailand on Friday. Police said they had picked up the 32-year-old, accused of raping young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia several years ago, in the province of Nakhon Ratchasima.
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/ 15 October 2007
United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari told Burma on Monday to stop arresting dissidents and Thailand proposed a regional forum including China and India to nudge the reclusive military junta towards democratic reform. Gambari said the continued arrests and intimidation of activists were ”extremely disturbing”.
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/ 14 October 2007
The sudden flooding of a cave in Thailand’s southern province of Surat Thani killed at least five German tourists and their two Thai guides and left two others missing, park officials said on Sunday. Rescue workers had located seven bodies in the cave, including five Germans, one male adult, a female and three children.
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/ 14 October 2007
A total of six activists were rounded up by Burmese authorities in a raid on a safe house over the weekend, Amnesty International said on Sunday, as the junta continued to hunt for protest leaders. ”There is no information on where they are being detained,” the group said in a statement.
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/ 10 October 2007
A Burma opposition leader who was arrested during last month’s mass protests against the junta died due to torture during interrogation, an activist group said on Wednesday. And in Washington, the United States threatened new sanctions against Burma after media reports of the death of Win Shwe.
The appointment by Burma’s junta of one of its most trusted troubleshooters as a go-between for detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi suggests the generals may be serious about negotiations. Aung Kyi is a major player within the junta and will act as more than an errand boy, those who know him say.
United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari may not have met Burma junta supremo Than Shwe at the weekend, but the fact he is still in the country suggests his mission is far from failed. The schedule for Gambari’s mission was threadbare — 24 hours and one meeting with Than Shwe.
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/ 29 September 2007
Burma or Myanmar? As the military regime has cracked down on pro-democracy protests in the Asian country this week, a war of words has flared again over what to call the troubled nation. The United States and the BBC prefer the old name, Burma, while the United Nations, Japan and other nations have adopted Myanmar.
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/ 24 September 2007
Hunkered down in their new capital, far removed from the largest anti-government movement since 1988, Burma’s ruling generals are caught in a rare dilemma. They can either come down hard on the Buddhist monks leading the protests — and risk turning pockets of dissent into nationwide outrage as reports.
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/ 18 September 2007
Thai authorities probing a plane crash that killed 89 people in Phuket discovered on Tuesday that a system designed to check for dangerous winds was not fully working, an official said. Attention had earlier focused on the pilot, with officials saying he had been warned of a dangerous wind shear by air-traffic control but decided to land anyway.
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/ 17 September 2007
Heavy monsoon rain hampered the retrieval of five bodies trapped in the wreckage of a budget airliner that crashed while trying to land on the Thai resort island of Phuket, killing 88 people. The Indonesian captain and his Thai co-pilot were both killed, but 42 people survived the crash.
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/ 16 September 2007
A budget airliner filled with foreign tourists crashed on the Thai resort island of Phuket on Sunday, killing 88 people as it broke up and burst into flames while trying to land in heavy rain, officials said. The remaining 42 people on board the flight from Bangkok survived and were being treated in nearby hospitals for a variety of injuries, including burns.
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/ 16 September 2007
A Thai passenger jet with 128 people on board crashed on Sunday while coming in for landing in bad weather on the resort island of Phuket, police and officials said. At least 39 people were killed, Thailand’s Deputy Transport Minister said. "Thirty-nine dead bodies were found. About 50 injured were sent to hospital," the minister, Sansern Wongcha-um, told reporters.
Star Trek actor Walter Koenig urged fans of the iconic sci-fi series on Tuesday to turn their wrath on Burma’s military junta, an earthly ”outpost of tyranny”. Koenig, who battled Klingons and Romulans as an original member of the Starship Enterprise crew, said he hoped to mobilise Trekkies to join a campaign against the ruling generals blamed for human rights abuses.
In a plush Bangkok ballroom one evening, hoteliers, ambassadors, celebrity chefs and socialites gathered to dine on foie gras, oysters and sushi while they talked about promoting Thai cuisine. Between helpings of Alaskan king crab, French wine and melt-in-your-mouth Parma ham flown in from Italy, the assembled crowd discussed ways of putting Bangkok on the international culinary map.
Thailand’s army-installed prime minister said on Tuesday that ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra would be allowed to return to the kingdom to defend himself against corruption charges. ”His reason for wanting to return is understandable. He needs to come to fight the charges” made by an anti-corruption panel, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told reporters.
Ousted Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was banned from politics for five years, along with 110 Thai Rak Thai (TRT) executives, after a top court dissolved the political party on Wednesday over electoral fraud. ”All of the TRT party executives at the time the wrongdoing was committed will be subject to the ban,” said one of the nine judges ruling on the party.
A rare spate of protests in Burma means the junta is very unlikely to release democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi when her latest year of house arrest expires this weekend, former political prisoners say. The last time Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, in 2002, she drew huge crowds on a tour of the country.
A 6,1-magnitude earthquake struck northern Laos on Wednesday, shaking buildings as far away as Bangkok, about 800km to the south, and Hanoi to the east. Shoppers fled some of the Thai capital’s many malls in panic and some high-rise office blocks were evacuated after they swayed.
Video-sharing website YouTube has agreed to block four clips Thailand says insulted its revered king, the latest twist in a spat that has stirred fierce debate about freedom of expression on the internet. Insulting royalty is a serious offence in Thailand.
Nations have the money and technology to save the world from the worst ravages of global warming, but they must start acting immediately to succeed, experts at a United Nations climate conference agreed on Friday. After five days of testy negotiations, the experts from 120 nations agreed on a report laying out proposals to fight climate change.
Climate-change experts battled for agreement on Thursday on how to fight global warming as crucial United Nations talks entered their final phase, with China railing against the cost of action, delegates said. Week-long negotiations between scientists from 120 nations are expected to go well into the night in Bangkok.
Welcome to the United Nations climate talks, where days of frustration, political point-scoring, long hours and sheer exhaustion guarantee a memorable meeting, if not always much progress. And if you’re the last one standing, you’re the winner. This process is agreement by exhaustion,” a senior delegate at UN climate talks in Bangkok said this week.
A major climate meeting opened on Monday in the Thai capital, Bangkok, with delegates debating how to rein in rising greenhouse-gas emissions that could threaten hundreds of millions with hunger and disease in the coming decades. ”The time to act is now,” said Chartree Chueyprasit, a deputy secretary in Thailand’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.