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

bangkokpost.com Eight police and soldiers have been killed and 15 others injured in two bomb attacks in Pattani and Yala provinces, while a former local leader has been shot dead in nearby Narathiwat province.

Associated Press Police Lieutenant General Kong-att Suwannakham says militants detonated a homemade bomb Saturday near a football field in Pattani province, killing four policemen and wounding a dozen others who had come to play a friendly match with villagers.

afp A summit of Southeast Asian leaders focusing on economic integration took a dramatic turn when Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen blasted his Thai counterpart over a bloody border dispute.

afp Indonesia warned fellow Southeast Asian states that rising food and energy prices could drive more people into poverty and urged coordinated action to fight inflation. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the start of the annual Asean summit that the regional bloc must take steps to ease the surge in consumer prices.

nytimes.com Up to 27 people were believed to be dead after a passenger plane crashed into the sea in eastern Indonesia, the latest in a long line of transportation accidents in the archipelago nation.

cnn.com Fifteen bodies were recovered from the wreckage of an airplane that crashed into the ocean while preparing to land in the Indonesian province of West Papua, officials said.

xinhuanet.com The ruling People's Action Party won 81 of the 87 seats in the Singapore parliamentary election, remaining by far the strongest party in Singapore despite losing a group representation constituency to the opposition for the first time since it was introduced in 1988.

bangkokpost.com Thailand is likely to face further political turmoil from ''outside parliament'' movements no matter which party - the Democrats or Pheu Thai - forms the next government, Thammasat University rector Somkid Lertpaitoon warned. Mr Somkid said that despite the promises they are now making to woo voters in what he believed would be a heated election, no party would be able to put a permanent end to the long-running political conflict, even with a full mandate after the vote.

theage.com.au In a dramatic bid to shut down people smuggling, the next 800 asylum seekers to arrive in Australia by boat will be sent to Malaysia under a controversial deal announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. In return for Malaysia taking the asylum seekers, Australia will resettle 4000 refugees, mostly Burmese.

voanews.com Asean is considering giving military-led Burma the chairmanship of Asean in 2014, despite grave concerns about human rights abuses and lack of real democratic development. Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, issued a strong objection to Burma's request to chair Asean in 2014.

4hoteliers.com Latest Insiders' Select Expedia list reveals 25 Southeast Asia hotels in the top 500 based on value, service and customer rating. International travellers have ranked hotels in Southeast Asia among some of the world's best.

theage.com.au Paul McCartney and his girlfriend Nancy Shevell are engaged, his publicist says, nearly four years after they were first spotted together. McCartney, 68, started dating the 51-year-old New York socialite and businesswoman following his bitter split from second wife Heather Mills.

bloomberg Europe's most successful golfer Severiano Ballesteros has died after a three-year battle with brain cancer. He was 54. Known as Seve, the Spaniard won three British Opens and two US Masters.

Associated Press A California proposal to outlaw the title ingredient in shark fin soup has turned into a recipe for controversy in San Francisco, a city that is nearly one-third Asian and home to the oldest Chinatown in the US.


JUDGING by the equally large piles of last week's unread newspapers at Tesco-Lotus on Friday afternoon, the Phuket Gazette and the Phuket News are putting a lot of copies out there in pursuit of being the island's top English-language print product. If a reader's objective is to learn a little about what was happening on Phuket not long ago, both new weekend issues represent reasonable value. Compared with what's available online, though, print remains costly and stale. A quick browse shows little in either product is really ''news.'' That said, Phuket ''newspaper'' readers have never had it so good. Relatively few places around the world are blessed with a print resurgence the way that Phuket is right now. How long it lasts is anyone's guess. What's certain is that the first masthead to offer something truly refreshing and innovative will win this struggle, even though it's already shaping, inevitably, as a Pyrrhic* victory. How long this 20th century print stoush can be sustained depends on which publishing group has the deepest pockets. The truth is that while old habits may die hard, history tells us that they do die. May the best newspaper win.

*from Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who defeated Roman armies at Asculum, but at such cost to his own troops that he was unable to follow up and attack Rome itself, and is said to have remarked, ''one more such victory and we are lost.''

After 10 weeks at the paper battlefront, Phuketwan is going back online.


IBAP meets at IndoChine on May 13 to hear Robert Mather on 'Phang Nga bay ecology, mangroves & sustainability.' Starting in 2011 he is responsible for developing the International Union for Conservation of Nature's presence and program in Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore, as well as managing a new project on Building Coastal Resilience to Climate Change in eight provinces of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.


May 13 Royal Ploughing Day public holiday
May 31 New PPAO Hospital to open, Phuket City
May 17 Visakha Bucha Day public holiday
June 12 Laguna Phuket International Marathon
June 17 Phuket Property Dot Com Pro Am Invitational, Laguna
June 23-26 Phuket Fun Fly paragliding, Nai Harn
July 3 Phuket Navy League US Independence Day fair at Headstart International School
July 15 Asarnha Bucha Day public holiday
July 20-24 Six Senses Phuket Raceweek
August 12 HM The Queen's Birthday public holiday
October Vegetarian Festival, Phuket
November 26-27 9th Phuket International Soccer 7s
November 27 Laguna Phuket Triathlon
December 3-4 6th Andaman International Soccer 7s
December 4 Ironman 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship, Laguna


March 18-28 National Youth Games, Phuket

November 14-21 Fourth Asia Beach Games, Phuket