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

dailymail.co.uk A pair of British honeymooners have told of their miraculous escape when a train on the Orient Express line in Thailand crashed. Richard Stroud, 43, and his bride Dawn, 34, were thrown from their beds as the Bangkok-bound train flew from the rails and collided with another train on the tracks near Hua Hin. The Thai News Agency said a switching error may have been the cause of the crash.

Bangkok Post Driver carelessness is suspected as a possible cause of a train derailment that has left eight people dead and another 88 injured. Twelve of 14 carriages on the train left the track, with six of them overturning and one slamming into the ground. Four carriages were badly damaged with the first railway staff car being the worst hit.

sciencemag.org When the US Army and its collaborators in Thailand announced that a large clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine had lowered the rate of new HIV infections by about one-third, researchers were surprised and encouraged. Now some researchers who have seen more of the data in confidential briefings are complaining that a fuller analysis undermines even cautious claims of success, and they are raising questions about the way the results were announced.

antara.co.id West Sumatra's tourism industry, crippled by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake last week, does not only need to reconstruct its physical infrastructures but also to rehabilitate its image to restore its normal life. ''Image rehabilitation is not less important than physical reconstruction of damaged hotels and restaurants,'' said Tourism Marketing Director General Sapta Nirwandar. For this reason, hotels in West Sumatra, particularly those that suffered minor damage, are expected to operate immediately.

nytimes.com Want frites with your Mona Lisa? Visitors to the Louvre in Paris soon won't have to travel far to enjoy the works of Leonardo and Delacroix after dining on le Big Mac: a McDonald's restaurant and McCafe are planned to open near the Louvre in November, The Telegraph of London reported.

scmp.com Developers are being urged to undo the damage they have done to residents' quality of life by acting to curb the ''heat island'' effect that has made parts of Hong Kong up to five degrees hotter than people can comfortably tolerate. A government team has drawn up the city's first climatic map - derived from a four-year study commissioned by the Planning Department that highlights a dozen densely populated urban areas as hot spots.

indiatimes.com The poor are the ones who gain most from international migration, but contrary to popular impression, it is the relatively well-to-do who emigrate more often. That's a revealing finding of the UNDP's Human Development Report 2009. In another survey of 46 countries, resistance to immigrants was found to be highest in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, where between 75 percent and 90 percent said immigrations should be controlled or limited. That was a much higher degree of resistance than in most developed countries like the US or Germany.

Canadian Press A state newspaper has reported that landslides triggered by heavy rains in southern Burma have killed three Buddhist monks and damaged monasteries and homes. Myanma Ahlin said the fatalities occurred Saturday in the southernmost town of Kawthaung, which borders Thailand. The report said two young monks and a boy were also injured.

smh.com.au Australia has the second best quality of life in the world and could pip Norway for top spot next year, the author of a UN report on migration and development says. Australia was ranked second among 182 countries on a scale measuring life expectancy, school enrolments and income in the UN Development Program's Human Development Report 2009. The US slipped a spot to 13 and Britain was steady at 21, based on the latest internationally comparable data from 2007. Niger ranked lowest, followed by Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

smh.com.au Australia is the place tourists said they would most like to visit but the US has emerged as the next best thing, a study of travellers says. Germans, Japanese, British and American travellers all nominated Australia as the most desirable place to holiday because of its wildlife, scenery, beaches and the ''adventure experience.'' Few, though, made the trip because of the distance and cost.

Xinhua Indonesia is scheduled to hold a dialogue on the history of Indonesia and Malaysia aimed at reducing tensions between the two countries following Malaysia's claim on aspects of Indonesia's cultural heritage, the Antara news agency reported. The dialogue will be opened by Vice President Jusuf Kalla in Pekanbaru, the capital city of Indonesia's border province to Malaysia, Riau, on Wednesday.

Reuters Palau, a nation of sparsely populated Pacific islands surrounded by turquoise waters teeming with fish and giant clams, is so obscure most people must scour a map to find it. But with a crop of high-end resorts coming up, the islands may soon become a luxury tourist hotspot. Tropical Palau lies east of the Philippines and north of Indonesia, and there are only 21,000 inhabitants.