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


nytimes.com Sia Figiel writes: ''Just after I'd dropped my three boys at the school gate and was heading to my office, I turned on the radio. The announcer was talking about cars floating like toys in the parking lot of the Pago Plaza shopping center and warned that the tsunami's second and third waves were expected to hit us on Tutuila Island in less than an hour's time. Instinctively, I swung the car back toward the school. I just wanted to get to my children.''


SIA FIGIEL'S moving account of American Samoa in the path of a tsunami is a dramatic reminder of the need for eternal vigilance on Phuket, just in case. While second-strike tsunamis are rare, the danger remains ever-present. You can be sure there will be more Indonesian quakes, and more tsunami alerts. Make sure you know what you must do. The warning system in the Pacific, the best in the world, probably saved thousands of lives. Yet it also failed hundreds. The important point for the residents of Phuket and the Andaman coast is this: Do not imagine it cannot happen again here. Best not to live in a fool's paradise. Ask what is being done to warn Thailand of another tsunami, especially at 3am when we are all asleep. Who will wake you up? Remember, there is no such thing as a foolish question, only foolish answers. Ask again and again. Keep asking. The lesson of the Pacific tsunami is that there is also no such thing as a foolproof warning system. We remember the pain and the suffering and our hearts go out to all those affected, near and far.

associated press The UN put the death toll from the quake in Indonesia at 1100 and said it was likely to rise. Unicef said tens of thousands of people had been made homeless, one third of them children. ''The needs of thousands of children are vast and urgent. They must have access to clean water, shelter,'' Angela Kearney, the UN body's Indonesian chief, said in a statement.

bbc.co.uk The UK Department for International Development is sending a search and rescue team to Indonesia to join aid efforts. The specially trained personnel will fly to Padang with plastic sheeting, medical and water purifying equipment.

bernama Malaysia sent three military transport aircraft to fly home some 300 students from the area devastated by Wednesday evening's 7.6-magnitude earthquake. The aircraft were expected to return about 5am Friday.

reuters.com The confirmed Pacific tsunami death toll stood at 149 in Samoa, 31 on American Samoa and nine on neighboring Tonga, but officials feared that whole towns had been destroyed on outlying islands and hundreds of people remained missing. Some 20 villages were destroyed in Samoa and scores flattened in nearby American Samoa.

zap2it.com The September 2009 earthquake and tsunami that affected Samoa and other nearby regions thankfully did not harm anyone on the set of 'Survivor,' which shot back-to-back seasons there and is currently airing 'Survivor: Samoa' on CBS.


auto123.com Nissan has revealed a sketch of its global compact car. This model will be first launched in Thailand in March 2010 and will be available in more than 150 countries. The model will qualify as Thailand's first ''Eco-car'' and help promote the development of energy-efficient vehicles.

afp.com President Toru Hasegawa of Nissan Motor (Thailand) said: ''I am very confident that the eco-car will succeed because it is the right car, the right time in the right place." Mr Hasegawa said Nissan will produce its first 30,000 units over 12 months from March next year, and will meet a target of 100,000 by 2012. Two-thirds will be exported.


scmp.com China celebrated its ascendance with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in the nation's capital on Thursday, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism. Central Tiananmen Square was turned into a high-tech stage to display the ruling Communist Party's achievements before invited guests.


businessweek.com Google's competition has recently gone from pitiful to plentiful: Microsoft's new Bing search engine picked up 1.5 percentage points of market share in August to hit 9.5 percent, according to market researcher Hitwise, while Google's share fell. But longer term, Twitter, Facebook, and related services may pose a more fundamental threat to Google: a new center of the Internet universe outside of search.


worldpoliticsreview If timing matters in the art of diplomacy, then those responsible for the death of Noordin Mohammad Top did the foreign services of Indonesia and Malaysia a big favor. The killing of Southeast Asia's most wanted terrorist came as neighborly relations were sliding rapidly into a political abyss amid declarations of a ''cultural war'' over a traditional dance. The general attitude in Indonesia was that not only did Malaysians steal Indonesian culture, they exported terrorism too.

antara.co.id The family of dead terror mastermind Noordin M Top will take his body to Malaysia on Friday, a police spokesman said. His wife Siti Rahmah and brother Yahya arrived in Jakarta on Thursday.


timesonline.co.uk Ferrari driver Felipe Massa has called for the result of 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to be expunged from the records, claiming that Nelson Piquet Jr's deliberate act of crashing his Renault had ''robbed'' him of glory. Fernando Alonso subsequently won the race after pitting before the crash and profiting when all his rivals subsequently went into the pits after Piquet had deliberately, under pre-determined team orders, driven into a wall.