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Yahoo article based on AP

The leaders of Thailand and Malaysia agreed on Friday to boost security cooperation and consider building a border wall to combat transnational crime and smuggling, an idea that appears to be gaining popularity elsewhere in the world. People-trafficking and the smuggling of contraband, including drugs and petrol, have flourished along the Thai-Malay border for years until a crackdown by Thai officials on human traffickers caused some of the routes to shut down last year. Analysts say separatist insurgents operating in Thailand’s deep south use Malaysia as a base to launch and plan their attacks.

A series of blasts across Thailand targeted the tourist towns of Hua Hin, Phuket and other locations, leaving at least three dead and many injured. They came hours after twin bombs killed one person in the seaside resort town of Hua Hin, near the capital Bangkok. On Friday, the town was hit again by multiple blasts. Two explosions were also reported in the popular tourist destination of Phuket.

Three Thai human rights activists have been charged with criminal defamation over a report alleging torture by soldiers in southern Thailand. Allegations of military abuses in the south, home to a longstanding Muslim insurgency are nothing new. But there has been a sharp increase in the use of criminal defamation laws against government critics in recent years, BBC correspondent Jonathan Head says. Rights groups condemned the charges. The trio face up to two years in prison if found guilty of defaming the military, and a further three years if they are found to have violated the country's computer crimes act.

<p>BANGKOK – Thailand’s navy will seek Cabinet approval to purchase its first submarines in 65 years, the country’s defense minister has said.</p> <p>Prawit Wongsuwan, who is also deputy prime minister, said Friday that the submarines will cost 36 billion baht ($1 billion) in total, with payments to be made over 10 years. He said the first of the Chinese-made Yuan class S26T submarines will be purchased out of the 2017 budget.</p>

What do you do when you witness your house being broken into by a freakishly huge monitor lizard? Record the whole incident down of course. Attanai Thaiyuanwong was in for a rude surprise on Sunday when he arrived back at his home in Nonthaburi, Thailand, to find an unwelcome visitor trying to get into his house. The intruder was a giant monitor lizard, that looked as tall as an adult human, was standing upright on its hind legs with its mouth around the door knob.

The pilot's comments were made in a social media chat group used by Nok Air pilots that was later leaked. In it a pilot posted a picture of Yingluck about to board their Nok Air flight over the weekend. One chat member responded with "We have prey on board". Another then added "CFIT". CFIT is an aviation acronym for "controlled flight into terrain", a term used to describe when a pilot unintentionally crashes a plane that has no technical problems. Panthongtae Shinawatra - the son of Yingluck's brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled as premier by a 2006 coup -...

Some female high school runners are questioning the fairness of the Alaska state track meet results after a biological male made it to the finals in the 100 meter and 200 meter dashes. Haines High School senior Nattaphon Wangyot, an immigrant from Thailand, was born male but identifies as female. She was allowed to compete on girls’ teams because the Alaska School Activities Association allows individual districts to decide how to handle transgender athletes on teams. Haines’ policy states “For the purposes of gender identification for interscholastic activities, the district will consider the gender identity based on the student’s consistent...

BANGKOK – A Thai man is recovering from a bloody encounter with a 10-foot python that slithered through the plumbing of his home and latched its jaws onto his penis as he was using a squat toilet.

More than four decades after the fall of Saigon, Washington is still holding on to various classified details about its fight in Southeast Asia. Among the Pentagon media arm’s still-secret records are photos and video of updated World War II-era bombers the U.S. Air Force sent to hit Laos. In May 1966, pilots and crews from the 603rd Air Commando Squadron brought eight B-26K Invaders from their base in Louisiana to Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand. Desperate to stem the flow of troops and supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam, the flying branch had...

Thailand’s military has inked an agreement with China to purchase tanks from the Asian giant, officials said earlier this week. Thai officials have confirmed that the Royal Thai Army (RTA) has formally signed a pact to buy the MBT-3000 main battle tank produced by China North Industries Corporation (NORINCO). Deliveries are expected to begin before the end of the year and continue within a two-year timespan. If the deal is realized, it would make Thailand the first known export customer of the MBT-3000, also referred to as the V-4. Specifics on the agreement, including the number of tanks to be...

Offending video featured three young players engaging in explicit actsIt was billed as a goodwill trip and a chance to unwind after a heroic relegation escape, instead Leicester City's close-season Thai tour became the turning point in their improbable title charge - all thanks to a racist sex tape. The offending video featured three young players including James Pearson, son of then manager Nigel Pearson, engaging in explicit acts with a group of Thai women in a Bangkok hotel. Filmed by the players in May 2016, the footage of the sniggering men soon ended up in the British tabloid...

An ancient Hindu phallic symbol believed to be more than 1,000 years old has been found at a local temple in Tha Sala district. Anat Bamrungwong, director of 14th Regional Office of the Fine Arts Department in Nakhon Sithammarat, said Thursday the shiva linga or Hindu phallic symbol is believed to be about 1,300-1,400 years old. Hinduism thrived in Surat Thani and Nakhon Si Thammarat around the 10th-12th centuries, Mr Anat said... The shiva linga has a base which is about 47cm wide and 1 metre long. Its base has flowers carved in relief which in the Tawaravadee style, Mr...

Thailand's navy wants to buy a submarine - and China's offer looks tempting. It is not only cheaper than the rest, but reportedly includes technology transfer and training. That, in a nutshell, describes the kind of friendship that China extends to the Thai military government now - a relationship smoothed by appealing deals unattached to the political doctrines championed by much of the Western world. Work on the Sino-Thai railway project that will give the trans-Asian rail network a sea outlet broke ground last December. Chinese and Thai air forces held their first joint exercise last year, shortly after Thailand...

President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday that includes a provision banning U.S. imports of fish caught by slaves in Southeast Asia, gold mined by children in Africa and garments sewn by abused women in Bangladesh, closing a loophole in an 85-year-old tariff law that has failed to keep products of forced and child labor out of America. An expose by The Associated Press last year found Thai companies ship seafood to the U.S. that was caught and processed by trapped and enslaved workers. As a result of the reports, more than 2,000 trapped fishermen have been rescued, more than...

Boston, MA — The Boston Globe is reporting that two more women have come forward to accuse former Planned Parenthood abortionist Roger Ian Hardy of sexually molesting them at a fertility clinic where he once worked. Roger Ian Hardy was forced to surrender his Massachusetts medical license in January 2014, after 18 witnesses came forward in 2004 to testify against him about his inappropriate sexual behavior not only with his patients, but also female members of his staff. This salacious scandal covered in technicolor-detail in a three-part expose published by the Boston Globe. Now the Globe is also reporting that...

Last October, two members of a small exile Chinese opposition political party -- Jiang Yefei and Dong Guangping -- were arrested by Thai police. Several weeks later, despite protests from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the two men were extradited to China and promptly thrown in prison. Since the extradition of Dong, his wife, Gu Shuhua, and daughter fled Thailand for Canada. Speaking from Toronto, she says Dong's capture has devastated her small family. "The Chinese government put pressure on my husband for so long that he ran away [from China]. Why did they still need to chase...

Bangkok-based Buddhist monk Maha Aphichat is among a growing group of Thai monks who feel their religion is under threat from Islam.Anti-Islamic sentiment is brewing in Thailand, spurred-on by Buddhist monks who feel that their religion is under threat from Islam. This fear mongering has been exacerbated by the ongoing political conflict within Thai Buddhism, the 12-year-old armed-insurgency in Thailand’s deep south, and the growing influence of Buddhist radicals in neighboring Myanmar. Bangkok-based Buddhist monk Maha Aphichat is unafraid of speaking his mind. The 30-year-old gained notoriety last October, after he urged Thai Buddhists on social media to burn down...

BANGKOK (AP) - A large chunk of metal that could be from an aircraft washed ashore in southern Thailand, but Malaysian authorities on Sunday cautioned against speculation of a link to a Malaysia Airlines flight missing almost two years.

The separatist violence in the south continues to decline and was lower in 2015 than in any year since the unrest turned nasty in 2004. There were only 674 incidents of separatist violence, which was 14 percent less than in 2014. The number of people killed (246) was down 28 percent from 2014. The average annual deaths down there has been 545. The decline has been the trend for several years as there were 456 deaths in 2013. Opinions differ about why there is less violence down there. The government credits the efforts of 70,000 soldiers and police in the...