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Keen to beat off competition from American and Swedish aerospace firms, Russia has offered a fleet of helicopters as a sweetener to help secure a contract to sell fighter jets to Thailand. While insisting that a decison had not yet been made over which aircraft to buy, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday said that the Russian firm Irkut was willing to include free MI-17 helicopters if Thailand agreed to purchase 12 of its SU-30 MK fighters. “Russia proposed that, if Thailand agrees to buy SU-30s, it will also include helicopters in the deal,” Thaksin said. “But there is still no...

His Majesty the King gave a speech after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra led his Cabinet and their wives to offer their well wishes to His Majesty on the occasion of his 78th birthday at Chitralada Palace yesterday. A translation of a key portion of the King’s speech, in which he says that he is open to criticism, follows: I thank the prime minister for wishing me well on the occasion of my birthday [today]. I thank you for making people here and outside happy that you spoke well. I have no idea whether there may be some people who disagree...

Countdown is on: Will December 9 bring a wind of political change, or the end of the road for critic’s bandwagon? The countdown is on to the clash of the titans. Come December 9 the series of ongoing rows between two former best friends – Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul – is expected to reach boiling point. With both sides having so much at stake, many believe that the climax may reshape Thai politics. The question is, if the head-on collision is really inevitable, to what extent it will it be reshaped. Sondhi, in his last...

Security officials have detained three male Muslim teenagers for questioning following their arrest at a Bangkok amusement park with a map of the capital with 43 large public gathering spots and the Defence Ministry marked out. However, the three Muslims, whose names were withheld, denied any involvement in subversive activities, military security sources said. The teenagers, who were students at a Muslim ponoh school in the deep South, insisted the marked spots on their map, mostly tourist venues and shopping malls, were places they wanted to visit and they had nothing do with any sabotage plot. The Defence Ministry was...

Criticism has poured in after Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said provinces which did not vote for his Thai Rak Thai party will be the last to receive help from the government. His comments came just hours after his party was crushed in by-elections on Sunday by the Mahachon party in Phichit and by the Chart Thai party in Uthai Thani. Thai Rak Thai won by a narrow margin in Sing Buri. Mr Thaksin told a meeting of grassroots leaders that not all provinces could receive state assistance at the same time and provinces which supported Thai Rak Thai would receive...

The separatist movement currently operating in the deep South is a reorganisation of old groups but its leader is still unknown, army chief Gen Sonthi Boonyaratglin said. The army chief made his comment in a conference with a group of nearly 100 local and foreign reporters at the army auditorium on Thursday night. ''It [the separatist movement] is a reorganisation of old separatist groups, including the Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo) and Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN). The movement has adopted new strategies. Insurgency groups under it are conducting violent attacks but do not reveal the movement's identity or its leader....

Military on Saturday tightened security in Yangon, the capital, demanding all residents carry identity cards and report receiving guests at their homes in the wake of unsolved bomb attacks in the city that left 19 dead. The new security measures were announced Friday night over loudspeakers from military cars driving through the capital's main districts and suburbs. Yangon residents will henceforth be subject to "serious action" if they are caught in public without their national security cards and face two weeks imprisonment if they fail to inform authorities in advance about guests visiting their homes. The new draconian measures come...

BANGKOK, May 16 (TNA) – Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has pledged Thailand’s co-operation with Yangon to find those behind recent bombing attacks in Yangon. But he stressed Thailand's position of non-interference in the domestic affairs of neighbouring countries. “The Thai government does not support anyone who intends to harm our neighbours. Thailand does not harbour terrorists and the Thai government will not allow terrorists to shelter on the Thai soil," Mr. Thaksin said. The Myanmar government said in a statement issued on Sunday that the explosive material found at the scenes of the blasts on 7 May were not manufactured...

CHIANG RAI, May 10 (TNA) - Tension stepped up along the Thai-Myanmar border in Thailand's northern province of Chiang Rai today when officials in the Myanmar town of Thachilek expelled all Thai nationals back onto the Thai soil. According to local reports, Thachilek officials said that they had to expel Thai nationals in order to search for suspected insurgents, following a series of bomb attacks on the Myanmar capital of Yangon last Saturday. All Thai and other foreign nationals have been ordered to leave Thachilek by 18.30hrs today, and have been warned that anyone remaining in the town after that...

BANGKOK, May 10 (TNA) - The fashion among teenagers for injecting their penises with olive oil to boost their size could cause misshaped members and even permanent erections, the Director-General of the Department of Medical Services, Dr. Chatri Banchuin, warned today. Speaking in response to reports that youths in Thailand's central province of Ayutthaya were injecting their penises with olive oil and beta agonists used to redden meat, Dr. Chatri said that the injection of any kind of substance into the penis was extremely dangerous. Rather than expanding penis size, the oil builds up in the penis. As the body...

PRACHUAB KHIRI KHAN, May 8, (TNA) – For years, the sight of mahouts taking their elephants through urban areas in search of food and money has exasperated successive governments. But the solution to this and the illegal trade in elephants, according to the Wildlife Fund Thailand, could lie in new technology: DNA testing. As WFT secretary-general Mr. Suraphol Duangkhae points out, government directives have rarely been translated into action by local officials, who often lack the authority to solve the problem. What the WFT is now calling for is DNA tests on all young elephants in urban areas, particularly the...

Near simultaneous explosions at two busy supermarkets and a convention center in Myanmar's capital on Saturday wounded more than a dozen people, witnesses said. The cause of the blasts was not immediately known. Several people were seen leaving one of the supermarkets, a City Mart in northwestern Yangon, with blood on their faces after the explosion around 3 p.m., a witness said on condition of anonymity. The exterior of that store was severely damaged, with large window panes shattered and appliances from the store's shelves scattered amid debris on the ground floor of the 11-story building. Authorities blocked off the...

About 20,000 people gathered in Yala and Pattani yesterday to show their opposition to the violence in the deep South. Meanwhile, a man was shot dead and a woman critically injured in violence linked to the unrest in the region. The rally organisers said the people of Yala, where about 15,000 people rallied at Municipal Youth Centre at 3pm, wanted to show their disapproval of the violence in line with Her Majesty the Queen's appeal. Her Majesty earlier called on people to show their unity against violence in the restive region. Half an hour later, some 5,000 people gathered at...

BANGKOK, May 4 (TNA) - Most Thai women from Thailand's north-eastern region who enter into marriages with foreign men do so to escape the vicious cycle of poverty, but are keen to distinguish themselves from hired brides or prostitutes, according to research published yesterday. Although it is based on a study in a single north-eastern village, the report by Dr. Rattana Boonmathaya from Mahidol University has wider resonances in a society in which marriage to foreigners is a popular option. The particular village chosen for the study is noticeable for the fact that nearly one in three of the 330...

CHONBURI, Apr 29 (TNA) - A wild elephant whose penis was injured by a tree branch is being treated by His Majesty the King's veterinary surgeon, it emerged today. The veterinarian, Dr. Alongkorn Mahanop, travelled to Sri Racha district in the country's eastern province of Chonburi today to treat Phlai Thong Bai, a 32 year-old elephant whose mahout had taken him to Laemchabang to search for food. The condition of the elephant, whose wound had become infected, was said to be improving after the Royal vet injected him with medicine. (TNA)--E006

BANGKOK, Apr 29 (TNA) - Tourists arriving on Thailand's southern resort island of Pha-ngan are to be issued with stickers stating the island's ban on 'free sex', following government concern over visitors having sexual intercourse in public places. The decision follows pleas by Khon Kaen Senator Rabiabrat Pongpanit to prevent tourists on the island having sex in public after the island's notorious Full Moon parties. Today Mr. Pramoth Supyen, Director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)'s Southern Office Region 5, warned that although it would be difficult to ban the parties, which were an important source of revenue for...

JORDAN, Apr 27 (TNA) – When the architects of Jordan’s ‘Rose-red city’ of Petra first began carving the sandstone around the town, they could scarcely know that two millennia on, their city would have won eternal fame. But eternal fame for Thailand is apparently the goal of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who today mooted the idea of carving Thailand’s mountains in the manner of Petra’s ancient citizens. The prime minister, who earlier this week paid an official visit to Jordan, apparently hopes to marry Thailand’s traditional carving skills – remember those watermelons carved into flowers? – with the desire to...

NARATHIWAT, Apr 26 (TNA) - Last October it was the scene of a bloody riot between police officers and Muslim protestors, in which 85 local residents subsequently died, but today Tak Bai district of Thailand's southern border province of Narathiwat was the scene of a more peaceful demonstration, when nearly 5,000 people gathered to denounce the southern insurgency. They came from 55 villages to meet in a school football stadium where spoke clearly of their intention to fight against all forms of terrorism in the southern border region and to refuse to cooperate with the militants. Significantly for the government,...

BANGKOK, April, 25 (TNA) - Water pipes have been put on a list of materials which are strictly control in Thailand’s three southern border provinces in an attempt to reduce insurgent bomb blasts, the Interior Minister Pol. Gen. Chidchai Vanasatidya told journalists on Monday. The move comes days before the first anniversary of the army crackdown on suspected militants in Krue Se Mosque and fears that the insurgents may step up bomb attacks. Government security forces stormed the mosque in Pattani province on 28 April last year and killed dozens of lightly armed Muslim men who had sought refuge there...

Commercial interests and impracticality may combine to shoot down the government’s plan to regulate the purchase of SIM cards for prepaid phone services. Mobile-phone operators initially said they were willing to collaborate with measures by the government in its efforts to prevent mobile phones from being used to detonate bombs in the restive deep South. Yet some executives seem to have backtracked in the face of concerns over potential abuse by the government. One executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several of his industry peers were now wondering if the government might not have an ulterior motive in proposing...