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Thailand's army chief has announced that the military is taking control of the government. The coup came after two days of inconclusive talks between the main political factions. Thailand has been in political turmoil for months. On Tuesday the army imposed martial law. A curfew has been declared, effective across the country from 22:00 to 05:00 local time. Political party leaders, including opposition leader Suthep Thaugsuban, were taken away from the talks venue after troops sealed off the area......

Washington (AFP) - The White House has promised the United States will not use vaccination programs as cover for spy operations -- after the move was attempted during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

A large number of People’s Liberation Army troops have reportedly been spotted heading towards the China-Vietnam border as tensions between the two countries continue to escalate, reports Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily. Sing Tao Daily is generally considered to be aligned to Chinese state media. Thousands of Chinese nationals living or on business in Vietnam have already fled the country amid anti-China riots, which were sparked by a tense standoff between Chinese and Vietnamese naval ships near a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters off the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on May 4. The Chinese foreign ministry...

The army in Thailand has announced the imposition of martial law amid political crisis "to keep law and order". The army has also granted itself wide-ranging powers to enforce its decision. The military said it had taken the action to preserve peace and order. The move comes after a long-running political crisis, and escalating tensions between the government and the opposition.

They included Defense Minister Douangchay Phichit and his wife. Douangchay was also one of the country's deputy prime ministers and a high-ranking member of its Politburo, the main decision-making body for the country's all-powerful Communist Party, which has ruled the single-party state since 1975. The economically poor, landlocked country has a population of seven million. Others killed included Minister of Public Security Thongbane Sengaphone, Vientiane Governor Sukhan Mahalad and at least one other senior ruling party official. Information about the crash, and those on board, came from Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee in neighboring Thailand. Lao National Television showed images...

AT YAI, Thailand -- Bombs exploded at a police station and a convenience store in a tourist city in Thailand's violence-plagued south Tuesday, injuring nine people, police said. The first bomb exploded in front of a 7-Eleven store near a school in Hat Yai city, wounding two men and three women, police Col. Passakorn Klanwan said. The second explosion went off about 15 minutes later in the parking lot at the main Hat Yai police station, injuring four others, he said. Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/06/4100476/9-injured-in-bombings-in-thailands.html#storylink=cpy

A video showing an elderly man “cooking himself" in a pot filled with boiling water has been reported by a Russian TV channel. The man in the YouTube video looks like he is making a big dish of soup with vegetables and people gather around him waiting for a taste. The TV channel discloses that is a ritual held every year in the town of Yamaga, Thailand. The 71-year-old man, identified as Kenzo Koya, has been doing this ritual for several years. He says in the beginning he was affected by the heat which left burns on his body, but...

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 flew around Indonesian airspace apparently to avoid detection after vanishing from radar screens on March 8, a media report said today, suggesting the possibility of a more sinister reason behind the jet's disappearance..... After reviewing radar data provided by neighbouring countries, investigators have now found that the jetliner curved north of Indonesia before turning south toward the southern Indian Ocean, CNN quoted a Malaysian official as saying. The official also suggested the possibility of a more sinister reason behind MH370's disappearance a month ago. The plane's flight path clearly showed that someone on the plane was...

A suspected World War Two bomb has exploded in a Bangkok scrap yard, killing at least seven people and injuring 19. Workers were using a blow-torch to take the bomb apart and detonated it in the process, officials say.

Tectonic Summary Re-analysis of Proposed Submarine Aircraft Crash Site for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 Map of Seismic Analysis of Proposed Submarine Aircraft Crash Site The University of Science and Technology of China has announced a possible location for the crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 based on two seismic recordings (stations KUM and IPM of the Malaysia National Seismic Network; see map). The proposed site is in the Gulf of Thailand (orange hexagon on map). The time of the event reported by the Chinese was 2:55 AM (on 3/8/2014, which equates to 18:55 UTC time on 3/7/2014).

New information from the Thai government bolsters the belief that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took a sharp westward turn after communication was lost. The Thai military was receiving normal flight path and communication data from the Boeing 777-200 on its planned March 8 route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing until 1:22 a.m., when it disappeared from its radar. Six minutes later, the Thai military detected an unknown signal, a Royal Thai Air Force spokesman told CNN. This unknown aircraft, possibly Flight 370, was heading the opposite direction. Malaysia says the evidence gathered so far suggests the plane was deliberately...

The search for MH370 enters a new phase based on new satellite data received, said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. He told a press conference on Saturday that the search and rescue operations at the South China Sea has ended and all assets will be focussed on two new corridors. “A northern corridor stretching approximately from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand, or a southern corridor from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean,” he said. Najib said based on satellite data, MH370’s last communication with the satellite was in one of two possible corridors. Najib said the...

As the search for the missing flight MH370 enters its 10th day with few clues as to its whereabouts, the New Straits Times said today the Boeing 777-200ER dropped 5,000 feet (1,500m) to evade commercial radar detection. In an exclusive story, the government-backed paper said investigators analysing MH370’s flight data revealed that the 200-tonne, fully laden twinjet descended 1,500m or even lower to evade commercial (secondary) radar coverage after it turned back from its flight path en route to Beijing. snip Investigators poring over MH370’s flight data had said the plane had flown low and used “terrain masking” as it...

Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Iranian Middleman Asked Thai Agent to Book Tickets on Stolen Passports By Gianluca Mezzofiore March 10, 2014 12:24 PM While the search for the missing Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight continues, the mystery surrounding the two passengers who used stolen passports to board flight MH370 intensifies. The Financial Times exclusively reported that the Thai travel agency that booked the tickets for the men had been asked to by an Iranian middleman. It is fairly common for fraudulent documents to be used on regional flights for illegal immigration or drug smuggling but the fact that the aircraft...

Fishermen from this village believe they may have seen the missing Malaysia Airlines flight on the night it disappeared flying low over the Gulf of Thailand. It's not clear whether what they saw was flight MH370 or whether it is the latest in a string of false leads in the search for the missing plane, but if true it would suggest that the plane may have flown low to avoid radar, what is known as "terrain masking." On March 8 flight MH370 disappeared from radar as it flew north over the Gulf of Thailand towards Vietnam en route to Beijing....

Thailand's military said Tuesday that its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 just minutes after the jetliner's communications went down, and that it didn't share the information with Malaysia earlier because it wasn't specifically asked for it. A twisting flight path described Tuesday by Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn took the plane to the Strait of Malacca, which is where Malaysian radar tracked Flight 370 early March 8. But Montol said the Thai military doesn't know whether it detected the same plane.

Asian military officials may be staging a mass cover-up over missing flight MH370, because they do not want to expose gaping holes within their countries' air defences, a leading aviation expert has suggested...[SNIP]...Now Thailand's military say they detected a plane at 1.28am, eight minutes after MH370's communications went down, heading towards the Strait but didn't share the information because they were not asked for it.

An Oberlin College professor has filed a lawsuit because, she claims, another professor on the Oberlin faculty has harassed her and created a hostile work environment for female employees for years. The plaintiff is Eunjung An, professor of French and cinema studies ... comparative literature professor Ali Yedes informed an unnamed Oberlin employee last year that he had helped his nephew obtain a student visa to the United States expressly to “stab and kill someone from his department.”.. Yedes serves as the school’s “Muslim Religious Life Affiliate (Islamic Center of Cleveland).” .. An’s lawsuit claims that Yedes has been engaged...

Saturday European officials indicated two of the people on board were using passports that had been stolen in Thailand. On Sunday Malaysia’s transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said Malaysian intelligence officials were also checking the identities of two other passengers, according to The Associated Press. “All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies,” Hishammuddin said, according to The AP. “We do not want to target only the four; we are investigating the whole passenger manifest. We are looking at all possibilities.”

Investigations into the stolen passports of two passengers listed on missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 have swung to the Thai resort island of Phuket, where there is a thriving stolen passport racket. Police in Malaysia have also viewed CCTV footage of the passengers on the flight, specifically looking for images of two men listed as Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kozel. Mr Maraldi, 37, was surprised to see his name on the passenger manifest because he was in fact holidaying in Thailand. He rang his father, Walter in Cesena, Italy, according to Italian press reports. “Ciao, dad,” the younger...