AP Thailand is facing bans on new international flights and increased inspections after the International Civil Aviation Organisation said there are significant concerns about the country's aviation safety. The ICAO's designation of Thailand as a ''significant safety concern'' has not been announced publicly by the UN agency but governments were informed last week.

bloomberg A review by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a United Nations body, raised questions about Thailand's air-safety procedures that prompted Japan to restrict some Thai airline operations.

independent.co.uk A woman who flew with Germanwings the day after 150 people were killed has spoken of the captain's emotional speech to passengers.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germanwings-plane-crash-passenger-describes-captains-emotional-speech-to-passengers-day-after-disaster-10139428.html


PHUKET: The daily wrap of Thailand news, with a Phuket perspective, plus relevant reports from national and international media. Beware of inconsistent imitations.



bangkokpost.com PM Prayuth says he is preparing to lift martial law - he won't say when - but he will still have sweeping authority to do almost anything under the interim constitution.

scmp.com China's southern seaboard has replaced the mountainous and tightly guarded western frontier as the preferred route for Islamic extremists to slip recruits out of the country, according to a leading expert on terrorism.



independent.co.uk Wearing a trendy striped scarf, bronzed and posing nonchalantly in front of the Golden Gate bridge, Andreas Lubitz looks more like a male model in a Lufthansa ''Fly with us to San Francisco'' advert than the aviation company's first ever mass-murdering co-pilot.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germanwings-plane-crash-the-facebook-images-that-hid-thesecrets-of-andreas-lubitz-10140230.html

telegraph.co.uk Andreas Lubitz went on a spending spree and bought a pair of performance sports cars in the days before he caused one of the worst air disasters in living memory, it has been claimed.



AP Major leaders in the US seafood and retail industries sent a letter to the ambassadors of Thailand and Indonesia this week, demanding to know what will be done to free slaves in the seafood industry. Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, also urged Thai authorities to tackle the scourge.

bangkokpost.com Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has vowed to put fishing operators out of business if they are found to violate laws and abuse workers in ways that jeopardise Thai exports worth hundreds of billions of baht a year.



theguardian.com The trial of Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito for the killing of British student Meredith Kercher has ended in a stunning acquittal after Italy's highest court decided to annul their murder convictions.

nationmultimedia.com Concerns have arisen about the impact on CENTEL's hotel operations, mainly at Pattaya and Phuket, of the drop in Russian tourists, who accounted for -11 percent of CENTEL's total guests in 2014. CENTEL reports a high - 85 percent - occupancy rate in Jan-Feb, evidence of its ability to surmount this.

bangkokpost.com The Collective Action Coalition against Corruption (CAC) is urging private companies to join forces to battle graft in the government sector. One proposal is to encourage trading partners to have clear anti-corruption policies and guidelines, possibly making it a condition of doing business.

theguardian.com The American astronaut Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko have blasted off to begin a year away from Earth. The trip is Nasa's first stab at a one-year spaceflight, will feature experiments necessary to plan for a manned mission to Mars that would last two to three years.

abc.net.au Italian police have recovered a painting by Spanish master Pablo Picasso that a retired frame maker in Rome said he had been given nearly 40 years ago. The 1912 oil painting, titled Violin and Bottle of Bass, portrays a cubist image of a violin and a beer bottle and has an estimated value of $21.1 million.

scmp.com Uygur students in Guangzhou have been warned to stay away from ''outsiders'' after several were recruited by a suspected religious extremist and had been missing since last year, various sources told the South China Morning Post.

watoday.com.au The modern white American is so screwed up with guilt, so tortured by his race's slaving past, that he forgets that there's more to the world than a simple matter of black and white. That, just maybe, not every country was founded on the broad backs of African slaves.



April 11-19 Phuket Bike Week

April 13-15 Songkran Festival

May 4 Additional public holiday scheduled

June 20-21 Baba wedding at Old Phuket Town

July 15-19 Cape Panwa Hotel Phuket Raceweek