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

PHUKET'S Tourist Police begin moving to their new headquarters in Phuket City from tomorrow. The new white 12 million baht building will eventually replace rented premises on the bypass road. But Tourist Police Chief Lieutenant Colonel Eakachai Prapormkul told Phuketwan the bypass road office would continue operating until such time as the move is complete. The new Tourist Police HQ will be in Yaowarat Road, Phuket City, within metres of the island's newly-opened Royal Thai Police HQ.

airnewstimes.com Yesterday 268 passengers boarded an Airbus A330-200 for the first non-stop flight from Berlin to Phuket. ''This is a giant leap forward for Air Berlin,'' said a spokesman. In winter Air Berlin operates one non-stop flight a week from Berlin to Phuket and three non-stop flights a week to Bangkok. Air Berlin is the major provider of flights from Germany to Thailand.

thejakartapost.com Low-fare airline AirAsia has just opened its newest routes connecting Phuket with two Indonesian cities, Medan and Jakarta. ''We know that Phuket is full with foreign tourists,'' a spokesman said. ''By opening this route, we are also targeting such tourists in addition to Thai people themselves, to come to Indonesia,'' he told The Jakarta Post. Phuket is the ninth foreign city to be connected to Indonesia by AirAsia after Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Perth, and Bangkok.

Phuketwan Update Phuket's Public Health office is likely to begin heat-scan screening of arrivals initiating on the American continent if a second-wave outbreak of the H1N1 virus becomes evident, Phuketwan has been told. The second wave, however, is expected to be less severe than the first round. Pre-schoolers aged up to five are expected to be hardest hit by the virus if the second wave comes. An estimated six million people contracted the virus during the peak period of the first wave in Thailand, which ran from April to September.

pr-inside.com Global hotel operator Outrigger has agreed to terminate their relationship with West Sands Resort, on the north west coast of Phuket. The announcement came in the form of a letter from owners at West Sands, Paul Mercer and Sir Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco supermarkets, which said in part: ''Since the financial crisis last year the hotel industry has been hit badly with falling occupancy rates, and it is currently difficult to see how any new hotel can make an acceptable financial return or indeed be financed.''

Associated Press A woman called the ''godmother'' of a mafia-style gang in China's southern city of Chongqing has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for running underground casinos and bribing government officials. The trial of Xie Caiping is part of a long crackdown in the city that has exposed widespread government and police involvement in providing cover to numerous local gangs, or ''black societies''.

4hoteliers.com A conference of budget and economy hotels, sponsored largely by the industry giant in the field, Accor, was kicked off by its Asia Pacific CEO, Michael Issenberg, who highlighted some of the path-breaking trends in the segment such as ''manchising,'' a hybrid of franchising and management. The overwhelming consensus of most speakers and attendees was that the segment, particularly in Asia, had withstood the financial crisis far better than counterparts higher on the totem pole and was poised to reap greater rewards as the world emerges from its deepest economic slump in decades.

philstar.com Tourist arrivals to Asia are expected to shrink as much as five percent this year before rebounding modestly next year, but full recovery will only set in by 2011, a travel group says. The region's performance has been mixed this year with countries such as China and South Korea showing resilience but others like Thailand and Vietnam still in the doldrums, said Greg Duffell, president of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association.

thanhniennews.com Foreign arrivals to Vietnam dropped 16.3 percent to around three million in the first 10 months this year as tourism authorities continued to blame the global recession. Arrivals in October alone reached only 228,000, down 25.1 percent from a month ago, according to the Vietnam National Tourism Administration. There were declines of up to 26.3 percent from key markets including South Korea, China and Thailand.

straitstimes.com Sixteen coach bus companies and the Express Bus Agencies Association have been fined $1.69 million by the Competition Competition Commission of Singapore for fixing the prices of express bus tickets to Malaysia. Two of them, Five Stars and Transtar, got the stiffest fines of $450,207 and $518,167 respectively. The 17 parties fixed prices for tickets from Singapore to various destinations in Malaysia from 2006 to 2008

irrawaddy.org State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. says it has begun construction of a pipeline across neighboring Burma to speed delivery of Middle East oil shipped through the Indian Ocean. Construction of the 771 kilometer pipeline comes as China boosts investment in Burma and tries to gain greater access to foreign oil and gas supplies to fuel its booming economy.

watoday.com.au Australia has rejected claims that oil from a massive spill in the Timor Sea has reached Indonesia's coastal waters. Oil has now been spilling from the Montara wellhead for 10 weeks. Indonesian conservationists say villagers and fishermen in the country's east have complained that oil from the spill is affecting their health and killing fish. But the Australian Embassy in Jakarta said only small patches of non-hazardous ''weathered oil'' had crossed into Indonesia's exclusive economic zone.

AFP An Indonesian maid has been sentenced to six years in jail for attempting to murder her elderly Malaysian employer by putting weedkiller in her coffee and soup, reports said Tuesday. Nurhayati Ahmad, 22, from Lombok in Indonesia pleased guilty to poisoning 77-year-old Jaharah Daud in July last year, state news agency Bernama said. It said that Jaharah detected a bitter taste in coffee prepared by the maid.

antara.co.id The Business Competition Supervisory Commission has ruled that PT Carrefour Indonesia committed a monopolising act and unhealthy competition by acquiring another supermarket chain early in 2008. Based on evidence collected during investigation the upstream market share of Carrefour rose to 57.99 percent in 2008 following the acquisition of shares, from 46.30 percent in 2007. The dominant position of Carrefour is considered as having been misused to cut prices of goods from suppliers through trading terms.

theage.com.au Asylum seekers in Indonesia are routinely beaten and denied clean water and medical care in detention centres paid for in part by Australian taxpayers, a report handed today to Government says. As the stand-off on the Oceanic Viking wears on, the report, Behind Australian Doors, sheds light on the detention conditions potentially faced by 78 Sri Lankans refusing to get off the Australian custom vessels docked off the island of Bintan.

earthtimes.org Body odor, boring pyjamas and lacklustre sex have been blamed for the high divorce rate in Malaysia's north-eastern state of Terengganu. Couples who had been married for less than five years and were on the verge of separation told marriage counsellors that predictable sex and body odor were some of the main reasons for their break up. ''I know of one case where a separation was triggered just because the spouse smelled of fish crackers,'' said Muhammad Ramli Nuh, the deputy chairman of the state religious and information committee.

thestar.com.my Letter writer Hamdan Inrahim says: As a man married to the same woman for the past 22 years, I don't think the Government should get involved with people's personal lives in order to reduce the divorce rate among young couples today. Yes marriages are made in heaven but it takes two to tango and couples need to do a lot of adjustments once they are married and should be loyal and open to one another in order to resolve any crisis before it gets out of hand.

foxnews.com Ohio police charged a convicted sexual predator with five counts aggravated murder hours after two more body bags were reportedly taken from his backyard. Fifty-year-old Anthony Sowell was also charged with rape, felonious assault and kidnapping. Six bodies were previously found at his house.

Dow Jones BMW AG reported that third-quarter net profit slumped 74 percent year-on-year, reflecting a steep fall in demand for luxury cars amid the recession, but confirmed that it expects to remain profitable in 2009 and anticipates a steady market improvement next year. ''We expect that the markets will make a gradual recovery over the coming year,'' BMW Chief Executive Norbert Reithofer said.