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On the evening of Saturday, 5 January, a desperate situation began to unravel on a newly created Twitter account. Fleeing her Saudi family in Kuwait, Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, sent out a series of tweets pleading for help from an airport hotel room in Bangkok. At the time she had 24 followers. "I'm the girl who ran away to Thailand. I'm now in real danger because the Saudi embassy is trying to force me to return," her first-ever tweet in Arabic read. --copyrighted tweet image at link Then she said something that would be hard to ignore: "I'm afraid. My...

Last year brought twin milestones for the Royal Thai Air Force’s fleet of Saab Gripen C/Ds, with the service having marked a decade since ordering the Swedish-built fighter, and completed its first 10,000 flying hours with the single-engined type. In late November, FlightGlobal was among a select group of media invited to make a first-of-its-kind visit to Thailand’s Surat Thani air base since the nation introduced its latest combat additions over seven years earlier. Located a flying distance of approximately 530km (980nm) south of Bangkok, the city of Surat Thani is usually a stopping point on the tourist trail heading...

Bangkok, Thailand (CNN) A Saudi teenager who flew to Thailand to escape her family in Kuwait will be allowed to stay in the country for now, Thai officials said Monday. The 18-year-old, who identified herself as Rahaf Mohammed Mutlaq Al-Qunun on an unverified Twitter account, had barricaded herself in a Bangkok airport hotel room in an effort to prevent officials from sending her back to her family. She posted photographs of herself and her passport, and said she was seeking refugee status from "any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and...

BANGKOK — The head of Thailand’s immigration police said Monday that an 18-year-old Saudi woman who was stopped in Bangkok as she was trying to travel to Australia for asylum to escape alleged abuse by her family will not be sent anywhere against her wishes. The woman, Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, was allowed to temporarily enter Thailand under the protection of the U.N. refugee agency, which was expected to take at least five to seven days to evaluate her case and claims for asylum status. Thai immigration police released photos of Alqunun after she left the room at a Bangkok airport...

Good morning. The latest from President Trump on the border wall funding talks is that there was a "productive meeting" between his representatives led by Vice-President Mike Pence and the representatives of the Congressional Democrats...... An 18-year old Saudi Arabian woman is holed up in a hotel room at the airport in Bangkok, Thailand resisting efforts to force her back to Kuwait where she says she will be forced back to Saudi Arabia..... The Google translation reads: "Macron you're screwed, chicks are in the street" That was part of the banner held by hundreds of women yellow vests protesters on...

LIVE! Pageant starts at 7PM through 10PM ET tonight on FOX. First Trans contestant, Angela Ponce of Spain, expected to be a Semifinalist (ugly as a toad, and she has a d*ck, but Las Vegas bookies have places her odds as winning the whole thing to be quite high). Look also for a lot of "TRUMP BASHING" if any Central or South American contestants make it to the Q&A round. Enjoy!

There are two links for this story. I started linking to the short video which I originally watched. It is from Asia Times. Basically it is almost an advertisement for the article. Runs about a minute and a half, although it mentions the major points from the article. Then there is an actual article in the Asia Times. I will also include a link to that article, for those who want to read the full thing.

A LITTLE NOTICED organizational change in China's maritime patrols is causing increasing anxiety among Western military officials and their allies in the region, who fear Beijing is seeking new leverage to advance its goals and raising the likelihood that an accidental encounter could escalate into conflict. The U.S. confirmed earlier this year that China has reorganized its coast guard to serve as a military branch rather than answer to law enforcement authorities. Militarizing the formerly civilian organization provides China with the firepower to harass and intimidate vessels from other countries who dispute China's claims to waterways. The change, which Beijing...

PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA — For the first time in its 20-year history, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit ended in disarray Sunday when the 21 member countries could not reach consensus on a joint statement because of objections by one member — China. When the summit failed, to the disgust of the other diplomats, Chinese officials broke out in applause. But that was only the final incident in a week during which China’s official delegation staged a series of aggressive, bullying, paranoid and weird stunts to try to exert dominance and pressure the host nation and everyone else into...

Diners at a vegetarian restaurant were left stunned earlier this week after finding chunks of meat in their noodles. Bewildered to find meat in meals at a vegetarian eatery, customers complained to local authorities, and that led to some gruesome discoveries. A study of the meat found it was not beef or pork but in fact human flesh.

Bangkok — Thailand’s capital of Bangkok is a large, bustling, chaotic metropolis. The friendly, informal nation of Thailand draws visitors from around the world. Filling some backstreet neighborhoods are impoverished Pakistani Christians, stranded in the Thai capital while hoping to gain religious asylum elsewhere. They survive with support from my friends at Christian Freedom International, which aids victims of religious persecution, and other humanitarian groups. The problem reflects domestic failures in Pakistan, especially social and legal discrimination and persecution, often violent, against religious minorities. Islamabad is formally an American ally but in practice has constantly challenged U.S. interests. The domestic...

A couple of tourists are in big trouble in Thailand for spraying graffiti on an ancient wall in Chiang Mai. The duo, a British man and Canadian woman were caught on video marking up the Tha Phae Gate. The Brit, 23 year- old Lee Furlong has admitted to committing the crime, spraying the words “Scouser Lee” on the gate. BBC.com says that he “would be charged with vandalizing an archaeological site”. The other artist involved in the crime, Brittney Schneider was arrested and charged with vandalism for spraying the first letter of her name on the gate. BBC reports...

t seems that every other day, a Bridezilla meltdown goes viral. Last month, a bride “vented” on Facebook after her guests declined a $1500 donation towards her special day. And today, another bride has some… warped expectations about her wedding. In a viral Facebook post posted to Reddit, a bride has completely slammed her guests for not RSVPing to her $2000 destination wedding in Hawaii. She began by admitting that a $3000 wedding in Thailand might have been too much. But that a $2000 Hawaii destination wedding is “within everyone’s reach”. Except, erm… It’s not.

Vernon Unsworth, the caver accused by Elon Musk of being a pedophile, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Tesla CEO on Monday.

Elon Musk has escalated his baseless attacks against a British diver, claiming without evidence that the man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand was a “child rapist” in an email to a reporter. The embattled Tesla CEO faced widespread backlash in July when he first called the diver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo” in a tweet – an unfounded claim against a man who was part of the international team that freed 12 young footballers and their coach from the Tham Luang cave complex. Musk, who had unsuccessfully attempted to assist the rescue mission, eventually apologized to Unsworth....

Eleven of the Wild Boars youth football team were ordained novices in memory of a diver who died during their rescue. Their 25-year-old coach, who has received monk's orders, will stay on for three months. One of the boys did not participate as he is a Christian

A British caver who helped rescue 12 boys from a Thailand cave said on Monday he may take legal action against Tesla CEO Elon Musk after the entrepreneur called him a “pedo” on Twitter. Musk has come under fire for launching the extraordinary attack on Vernon Unsworth without providing any justification or explanation, after the cave expert slammed his offer of a miniature submarine to extract the footballers from the Tham Luang cave as a “PR stunt”. The boys and their football coach were rescued from the cave complex by an international team and after a week of intense drama....

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Twitter this morning accused British diver Vern Unsworth of being a pedophile, after Unsworth criticized Musk’s proposal to use a small submarine to rescue a trapped soccer team in Thailand. Unsworth was instrumental in the rescue of the boy’s soccer team, but lambasted Musk’s submarine plan in an interview published by CNN Friday. Among other comments, Unsworth said the submarine “wouldn’t have made the first 50 meters into the cave” and was “just a PR stunt.” Musk, responding to further criticism from professor and New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci, wrote this morning that he...

Of course, the practical skills of engineers, technology experts, divers and military top the list of what enabled this rescue effort. But there’s another story here — one of quiet emotional fortitude, solidarity and spiritual strength. Surely if the boys or their coach had panicked or turned on one another in the darkness, they couldn’t have survived. The boys’ coach, 25-year-old Ekapol Chanthawong, had worked with them — even choosing the name “Wild Boars” (“Moo Ba” in Thai) — to build their self-esteem. Mostly poor children who, in a soccer-obsessed country, had been rejected by their school teams, the boys...

New information suggests the 12 Thai boys trapped in a cave were medicated and carried out on stretchers during the rescue operation... ...told AFP on Wednesday that the boys were “sleeping or partially-conscious as they were passed from diver-to-diver through the cave.”... “boys were wrapped up in stretchers already when they were being transferred” while doctors posted along the 2.5-mile long escape route checked them along the way.