A daily wrap of Thailand news, with a Phuket perspective and reports from national and international media.


guardian.co.uk Indonesian authorities were gearing up for a massive rescue operation after thousands of people were trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings and dozens were confirmed dead following a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in the city of Padang, western Sumatra. Vice-president, Jusuf Kalla said at least 75 people had been killed and added: ''Many others are trapped in collapsed shops, building and hotels.''

straitstimes.com Thousands in Singapore and Malaysia had a fright when they felt tremors in the wake of the earthquake. For up to two minutes, people in Singapore reported seeing curtains sway, grilles rattle and chairs shake in buildings from Choa Chu Kang to Changi. [A tsunami alert for Phuket was cancelled at 6.58pm.]


wsj.com Only a few hours apart, a pair of massive undersea earthquakes strike in the Pacific and Indian oceans [and triggered a tsunami alert on Phuket]. Are the two temblors somehow connected? ''It's highly unlikely there's any connection,'' said Stuart Sipkin, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey. ''They occurred as far apart on the Australian plate as you can get.'' Both are in the so-called Ring of Fire, a 40,000-kilometer horse-shoe-shaped area, where about 80 percent of the world's largest earthquakes occur.

thefirstpost.co.uk David Booth, senior seismologist at the British Geological Survey, said: ''There are sound physical reasons for expecting one earthquake to cause another, but that is very unlikely to have happened in this case. The quakes were in different fault zones, and the chance of one earthquake triggering another by seismic waves moving up the fault line are very slight over such a great distance.''


haaretz.com Three tourists have asked Israel's Foreign Ministry to help them leave Samoa after the island was hit by a deadly tsunami. The three are all members of one family. The tsunami is thus far known to have killed over 100 people in Samoa and two other South Pacific islands, Tonga and American Samoa. The toll is expected to rise sharply.

windu.com President Barack Obama declared American Samoa a natural disaster area and ordered FEMA and the Coast Guard to assist in the recovery effort. Nama Neufeldt, a faculty member at Andrews University is still waiting to hear about family and friends. ''Samoans can build a house in one day, a hut, just to have something to live in until things are back in order as they were before.''

bloomberg.com A city in northern Japan ordered the evacuation of about 10,000 residents because of the danger of a tsunami caused by a magnitude-8 earthquake near Samoa. Ofunato advised people in waterfront areas of the city to evacuate. The city is located at the top of Ofunato Bay, an inlet that gradually narrows from a wide mouth, which can magnify the height of a tsunami.

starbulletin.com Hawaii's visitor industry spent most of Wednesday morning prepping for a possible tsunami, but the scare ended with many tourists taking no notice of the commotion. State tourism liaison Marsha Wienert said: ''All island visitor bureaus checked in with Civil Defense and every hotel property in the state was readying their individual plans.''

mercurynews.com California's Samoan community is struggling to get through to American Samoa over jam-packed phone lines as their relatives make their way to higher ground in the wake of a tsunami. Community members have spent hours trying to reach relatives who are leaving coastal villages after the earthquake. About 40 percent of the country's 72,000 Samoans live in California.

foxnews.com Samoa Joe, a professional wrestler with family ties to American Samoa, is using Twitter to lead an effort to send support and donations to the countries. As the news of the disaster spread, Samoa Joe, in Germany for a wrestling tour, posted to his Twitter feed, ''Just read about the earthquake in Samoa ... really have my hands tied trying to find any info in Germany ... updates appreciated. Tons of family.''

sealbeachdaily Lifeguards cleared the sand and a small crowd gathered at the pier to see the waves that had traveled for 10 hours across 4000 miles of ocean from an earthquake off the coast of American Samoa. The tsunami waves were not large by the time they reached the California Coast and Seal Beach. Twelve small tsunami waves rolled in between 9:30pm and 10:35pm.


cnn.com pomp and pageantry aside, China's phenomenal economic growth over the decades has triggered unintended consequences: rising unemployment, growing income gaps, endemic corruption, rising criminality, environmental degradation and social malaise. Millions of Chinese live on less than $1 a day, and social tension sometimes boil over into violent clashes.

chinadaily.com.cn Chinese citizens have become targets of foreign criminals and terrorists as the country's profile on the world stage has been increasing, said vice foreign minister Song Tao. Last year, more than 3400 Chinese tourists were trapped in Thailand due to domestic turbulence in November and Chinese cargo vessels were attacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. The Chinese government rented 12 passenger flights to rescue the trapped citizens in Thailand and sent a convoy of warships to Somalia.


telegraph.co.uk Archaeologists in Rome believe they have found the remains of a legendary rotating dining room the emperor Nero built to entertain his guests. The hall is said to have had a revolving wooden floor, which allowed guests to survey a ceiling painted with stars, and to have been equipped with panels from which flower petals and perfume would shower onto the tables below.


idahostatesman.com The chairman of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has warned the global economic recovery will likely be lethargic, even as the retailing behemoth sees great growth potential in China and India. ''The world recovery is going to be led by Asia although it's going to be very challenging. I think this recovery is going to be a slow one,'' Robson Walton told a global CEO business conference in Kuala Lumpur.


afp.com Tourists may have killed off a rare species of shrimp by relieving themselves on Australia's iconic Uluru, or Ayers Rock. Biologist Brian Timms said his research had showed one species of small inland shrimp living in pools atop the monolith, sacred to Aboriginals, had become extinct while another had thrived.


xinhua Singapore Airlines started a daily A380 super jumbo service to Melbourne on Wednesday. Melbourne is the second Australian city and sixth city in Singapore Airlines' network to receive the A380. Singapore Airlines currently operates 21 weekly flights between Singapore and Melbourne, including the daily A380 service.