Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Environment Forum:
Excess baggage in Bangkok: tortoises, lizards, spiders and snakes
What happens when the airport scanner shows shapes that look like live spiders, snakes, lizards and tortoises inside three big suitcases? Last week in Bangkok, it meant the detention of an Indonesian man and the seizure of 259 live creatures that were slotted into compartments in the black traveling bags.
The suspected smuggler reportedly went on a wildlife shopping spree in Bangkok's Chatuchak Market, a hub for rare animal trade, according to conservation group TRAFFIC, which monitors illegal trafficking of species.
The suspect had stuffed 88 Indian Star Tortoises, 33 Elongated Tortoises, seven Radiated Tortoises, six Mata Mata Turtles, four Southeast Asian Narrow-headed Softshell Turtle, three Aldabra Tortoises, one Pig-nosed Turtle and even one Ploughshare Tortoise—the world's rarest tortoise, TRAFFIC said in a statement.
Alongside these, he packed 34 Ball Pythons, two Boa Constrictors, several Milk Snakes, Corn Snakes and King Snakes as well as a Hog-nosed Snake.
The suspect also had 19 Bearded Dragons, four Spiny-tailed Lizards, two Sunda Plated Lizards, six Argentine Horned Frogs.
He also managed to fit in 18 Baboon Spiders, each in its own plastic container, 22 Common Squirrels and one African Grey Parrot into his luggage.
The suspect, from Surabaya in Indonesia, told authorities he bought the animals at Chatuchak Market. He was set to board an Air Asia flight back to Indonesia when the animals were discovered, and he was taken into police custody.
from Andrew Marshall:
Risks to watch in Asia: Country guides
For Reuters analysis of risks to watch in Asian countries, kept updated in real time and with graphics and video, click on the links below.
from Andrew Marshall:
Political risk in Asia: What to watch this week
My regular roundup of key Asian political risk themes to watch in the week ahead, with links to the news stories and analysis produced by Reuters correspondents across the region.
JAPAN GETS A NEW PRIME MINISTER (AGAIN)
Japan has its fifth prime minister in three years -- Naoto Kan, 63, a fiscal conservative with a reformist image.
But while the politicians in charge may change, the key problems facing the country remain the same -- a vast and growing debt burden, years of stagnation and deflation, and a worsening demographic burden with an increasingly elderly population having to be supported by a shrinking workforce.
Many analysts have written off Japan as a worthwhile long-term investment prospect, saying its economic and strategic decline is a virtual certainty. Japan's recent political history has done nothing to dispel that pessimism. It is now up to Kan to show whether he has what it takes to make a difference.
The Fire Next Time in Thailand
(Thai firefighters douse the Central World shopping mall building that was set on fire by anti-government “red shirt” protesters in Bangkok May 19, 2010. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis)
We were walking down Sukhumvit road in downtown Bangkok just after the 9 p.m. curfew – down the MIDDLE of a road that on any other Friday night would have been filled with honking vehicles, hawkers, tourists and touts. We were escorting a colleague home from the temporary newsroom in that Reuters had set up at the Westin Hotel after we were chased out of our office near the red shirt encampment in central Bangkok. Not a creature was stirring. But what was that sound we kept hearing? Squeak, squeak, squeak.Then we saw them. Rats. Thousands of them. Scurrying along in packs on the sidewalks, the streets, the closed-down Skytrain overhead, at the entrances to shuttered shops, around piles of garbage that had mounted in the Thai capital since the May 19th riots. It was like a movie about an urban apocalyptic event where humans are wiped out and the vermin are triumphant.
We walked past darkened Soi Cowboy, whose raucous go-go bars should have been crammed with visitors. “You know, it’s serious when Soi Cowboy is closed,” my colleague said. “Soi Cowboy never closes.”
What happened in Bangkok last week was, indeed, unprecedented. The worst eruption of political violence, rioting, arson and general mayhem in modern Thai history. An initially peaceful, if not festive, protest movement ended up in an orgy of violence that killed 85 people and wounded more than 1,400, according to official figures. Almost 40 buildings were set ablaze, including the stock exchange and Central World, Southeast Asia’s largest shopping mall. The targets of the arson attack – symbols of wealth and privilege – were probably no accident.
Thailand is undergoing, what in some respects, appears to be a 19th century style revolution: peasant and proletariat (the red shirts) versus the aristocrats — family business dynasties, military brass, members of the educated middle class and a royalist establishment (the yellow shirts).
It’s been brewing for decades, and has come to a head at a time when revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the sole unifying father figure in Thailand, has been hospitalized. He has stepped in to defuse previous crises in his 63 years on the throne. But not this time.
Bangkok reopened for business on Monday. The Skytrain thundering overhead. The Tuk-tuk taxis weaving manically through traffic-clogged streets, hawkers shouting above the din, and the rats retreating to their underground nests. The government announced that economic growth for the rest of the year would be around 4.5-5.5 percent – it would have been a point or so higher but for the prolonged protest and riots, but still pretty good in the current climate.
“Thailand’s next eruption seems inevitable.”
now that is the only think i agree with you.
thais don’t fix problem. thais will only blind them self from the problem and keep telling themself that it is going to be ok when it is not ok to keep quite to one another with out really talk to find a common ground.
and most of all, money is god there. people can sell everything from house, land, car, to wife and child for money. that is the real thai culture. don’t believe me? ask those from north and northeast where many parents feel nothing to sell a daughter for money. really ask them why they need money that much and you will see an unthinkable stupid and selfish answer. try it your self.
In line of fire at Bangkok protests
It was 2 a.m. on a Friday morning and we were stuck in the Reuters office on the 35th floor of the U Chu Liang Building. Thai anti-government protesters had begun rioting after their military strategist, a flamboyant major-general known as “Commander Red” was shot in the head as he was being interviewed by the New York Times at the “red shirt” protest encampment that occupies a huge chunk of expensive real estate in the Thai capital.
The protesters had swarmed into our parking lot, troops hot on their heels. One red shirt was shot dead, taking a bullet through his eye, outside our office. Our managers had ordered us to evacuate, but we had to wait until the violence died down outside. I strapped on a 10 kg flak jacket and helmet emblazoned with “press stickers”, took a ride down the cargo elevator in a building under emergency power, and stepped carefully into the parking lot, looking around to see if it was safe for the remaining people in the newsroom to leave. It was quiet, as I crept around the parking lot, dodging from car to car, feeling slightly ridiculous. A taxi was parked just outside. I was beginning to understand what gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson meant when he said in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: ”When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
I was about to enter the taxi, when BOOM! The sound of a grenade maybe 50 metres away, followed by the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire. I jumped into the taxi, and told the driver to take me to my hotel. Quickly please. “Boom!”, he said, and laughed. “Boom, boom,boom,” he added, mimicking the act of firing a gun. And laughing once more we drove off into the terrifying night.
For the past four days, journalists have been moving out of their offices into hotels, and then out of their hotels into ones further from the combat zone, as violence escalated across the city of 15 million people in random urban warfare. The military was firing at groups of protesters setting up barricades of burning tyres, behind which they hurled petrol bombs and projectiles with slingshots. At least five journalists have been among the seven foreigners shot. One journalist took a bullet in the chest, but since he was wearing a heavy flak jacket, he just fell down and hurt his back.
A Canadian journalist working for a French television station was not as well protected. He was shot three times — in the arm, leg and abdomen — while covering the protest on Friday, but was recovering in hospital. The spiralling violence that has turned Bangkok’s bustling business district into a war zone has killed 37 people and injured nearly 270 since Thursday. A Reuters television cameraman, Hiro Muramoto was among those killed in the melee of an April 10 protest that marked the point at which these protests that began rather festively turned violent.
I have moved hotels three times in the past week, as the combat zone widened
I was the last guest to leave the splendid Metropolitan Hotel on Sathorn Road on Saturday. The night before, I had walked back late at night on that road toward a line of soldiers metres away, who were firing on a group of protesters, muzzle flashes punctuating the darkness.
Bill, you’ve been accused of lying by both sides. A great sign of neutrality. Keep on the good works. Keep your crew safe.
There’re always many versions of truth. I don’t always agree with Reuters’ version. Nonetheless it’s the version that I am most often comfortable with. Reuters’ journalistic professionalism has never been in doubt.
Discord in Thai kingdom
Punchai is arranging strings of flowers under the imposing statue of King Rama VI at the entrance of Lumphini Park in Bangkok. The statue overlooks one end of the sprawling “red shirt” encampment that occupies a 3 square-km area of downtown Bangkok.
An altar has been set up at the base of the statue of a king who ruled from 1910 to 1925 and is generally credited with paving the way for democractic reforms in the kingdom. He is also the creator of Lumphini Park.
(Pro-government supporter raises a picture of Thai King bhumibol Adulyadej at a rally in Bangkok on April 27. Reuters/Jerry Lampen)
“We put beautiful flowers here for the king, and the people,” says Punchai, a bicycle rickshaw driver in Bangkok.
It’s sundown and it’s fairly relaxed for a place where guys generally roam about with sharpened bamboo spears and which has a medieval-like barricades made of tyres and bamboo poles.
Children run about in the grass near the statue playing with spears. Women stir curries simmering in big cooking pots for the evening meals. Yesterday, it was tense here. The men stood in rows in front of the barricade, wearing helmets. Women and children were not be seen. Monks wandered amongst the men receiving “merit” from them, bits of food or spare change that can mean a more accommodating place in the afterlife should death suddenly intervene.
Police and army troops are stationed all around the encampment, mostly hunkered down in alleyways or in underground walkways, away from the heat and public eye. Bangkok has been expecting a crackdown on this sit-in for days. And it hasn’t happened. Not likely to, either. Despite bombastic threats and rhetoric from the civilian government, the army has said repeatedly it won’t go in because it would be just too bloody.
Thai red shirts defy crackdown with carnival-like protest
(“Red shirt” protesters dancing in the main shopping district in Bangkok. Reuters/Eric Gaillard )
I saw Chewbacca last night at the red shirts barricades in Bangkok.
The hairy Star Wars character was standing with a couple of red shirt protesters who were directing traffic in front of their wall of truck tyres, chunks of paving stone and bamboo poles at the entrance to the business district, and the Patpong go-go bars. I was in a taxi and didn’t have a chance to ask the guy in the Wookie suit what he was doing at midnight standing between the red shirts and lines of riot police, shield and batons at ready, under a bank of spotlights shedding garish light on an other-wordly scene. The gentle hairy character doesn’t speak in the movies so maybe no explanation would have been forthcoming.
Nothing seems surprising these days in Bangkok. Behind the three-metre high barricades, like some dystopian vision of a future world gone awry — Mad Max set in Thailand — stretches the red shirt encampment, a makeshift village in the middle of Bangkok’s ritzy shopping and tourism area. In front of the barricades are the police lines, where a new group called the “multi-coloured shirts ”have gathered to hurl insults and the occasional glass bottle at the barricades. These are folks fed up with the six-week long sit-in in the capital that has decimated the vital tourism industry with the loss of thousands of jobs. On Thursday night, from somewhere behind the red shirt barricades, somebody fired M-79 grenades from a shoulder-mounted launcher. They fell among the “multi-coloured shirts” and tourists coming out of Patpong, killing one person and injuring scores, including four foreigners.
The red shirt camp was jubilant afterward, sensing the tide of battle had turned in their favour. The army chief on Friday ruled out any attempt to disperse the roughly 15,000-20,000 people in the encampment, including women and children, because it would result in too much bloodshed. A failed attempt to eject protesters from another site killed 25 on April 10.
“There are lots of people here,” said one 23-year-old waitress in the red shirt encampment. ”I don’t think the army can dismiss us.”
Most of the guys inside the camp are toting sharpened bamboo staves, and have stockpiled rocks and paving stones to throw at any soldier coming after them with an M-16.
Remembering Hiro’s gentle smile
As Hiro Muramoto headed out the door of the Tokyo newsroom last week, weighed down with TV equipment on his way to Bangkok to cover demonstrations, he flashed a smile at a Reuters colleague.
It was, she remembers, a “Hiro” smile. It was gentle, rather than a broad grin, and it showed the 43-year-old was pleased once again to take his expertise on the road to do his job telling the world what was going on.
It was doing that job that cost him his life as he was killed, along with 20 others, during a sudden burst of violence during the protests in central Bangkok on Saturday night.
Hiro was not the gung-ho war correspondent of the movies. He was a careful, loving married Dad of two and a gentle mentor for young colleagues and an expert story teller.
He took his concern for those around him beyond the newsroom to complete two 100-km charity walks (with a third planned this month), raising thousands of dollars for Oxfam along with teammates from Thomson Reuters.
At Reuters for more than a decade and a half, Hiro was witness to many of Asia’s biggest stories. His work brought to viewers around the world the sounds and images of events ranging from Asian financial crises to political protests and the 2002 World Cup.
He was trained and experienced in operating in hostile environments, including the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and Philippine military operations against insurgents on Jolo island.
Violence achieve nothing but lost of lives and more anger. It was indeed a privilege meeting him in the Philippines way back and now I sit back and think if all the work and life we give in the profession we chose are all worth it. I hope the stories that we make can be enough to change the world to what it should be.
from Russell Boyce:
The promise of seven blood baths in Bangkok and no violence
With the same ghoulish intrigue that children pull the wings off a fly, the legs off spiders or as motorists slow to look at a scene of a bad accident, I waited to see the pictures from last night's demonstration in Thailand. The "red shirt" wearing supporters of ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra promised the world the sight of a million cubic centimetres of blood being drawn from the arms of his supporters and then thrown over Government House to demand that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva call an immediate election. A million is a bold figure that I tried to picture; a thousand cubic centimetres, one litre, so one thousand litre cartons of milk. A more compact notion of the volume would be to visualise a cubic metre of blood; or in more practical terms in the UK the average bath size is 140 litres, so that is just over seven baths filled with blood.
A supporter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra donates blood during a gathering in Bangkok March 16, 2010. Anti-government protesters will collect one million cubic centimetres of blood to pour outside the Government House in Bangkok, in a symbolic move to denounce the government as part of their demonstration to call for fresh elections. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang
The pictures are amazing. The frenzy of the demonstrators carrying plastic containers full of human blood. The lines of riot police (what was going through their minds?) facing the crowd. And then suddenly the emotional release as the blood is actually poured at the gates of Government House, leaving a growing crimson pool of human blood spreading towards the feet of the police and towards the buildings of government.
Riot soldiers and policemen stand guard as supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra rally outside the Government house in Bangkok March 16, 2010. Thousands of protesters in Thailand donated blood and poured it later outside the premier's office on Tuesday, a "sacrifice for democracy" aimed at energising their movement after the government refused to step down. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom
I think this an informative and interesting article. I think it is very useful and knowledgeable, happy to see some people still have interest in this.
Thai protesters face impasse
By Ambika Ahuja
Anti-government protesters massing in Bangkok face a tricky question: continue with a non-violent strategy that emphasises peaceful protests and risk losing momentum or try a more provocative approach that could lead to a reprise of last April’s riots –Thailand’s worst street violence in 17 years – which discredited them.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who still enjoys strong support from the miltary’s top brass and the country’s establishment, rebuffed on Monday calls to dissolve parliament and hold fresh electsion. Protesters retreated to their main encampment on Bangkok’s streets.
They have no plans to march anywhere else on Tuesday. Instead they came up with a eyebrow-raising symbolic measure, calling on each protesters to donate 10 cc of blood to pour outside Government House nearby on Tuesday morning.
“This looks like a symbolic move to keep protesters looking forward to something new before they come up with something more concrete,” said Karn Yuenyong, director of an independent think tank, Siam Intelligence Unit.
But without a clearer strategy, the movement of mostly rural protesters who have slept on the streets at night and marched under blazing heat during the day, may start losing steam.
“In the short term, the government has an advantage because they can wait this out as long as they make sure there is no casualty as a result of their action,” Karn said.
