trizone.com.au Christie Sym is going to be pushing it to get to Sunday's Ironman 70.3 start after crashing off a motorbike on Phuket. ''I had a motorbike accident out getting some groceries and ended up in quite a bad way. I got medical attention and all seemed OK other than looking like I'd been in a cage fight - I hit my head hard (lucky for the helmet!). Fingers crossed.''


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

telegraph.co.uk England will withdraw from a friendly against Thailand, agreed as part of the failed 2018 World Cup bid, in protest at the broken promises that undermined the campaign, Telegraph Sport understands. The controversial game, scheduled to take place in Bangkok next June, was agreed to try to secure the support of Thailand's executive committee member, Worawi Makudi.

dailytelegraph.co.uk Alastair Campbell writes: Of the 11 countries involved in the [World Cup] bidding process, nine came in the top 42 in the Press Freedom Index. Qatar is placed at 121, Russia at 140. If Fifa were a country, it would be closer to Qatar and Russia than Holland (3) or England (19).

bangkokpost.com More Japanese tourists are expected to visit Thailand next year as charter flights will resume at the end of this month. Japanese visitor numbers fell 7.1 percent from a year earlier in April when Thailand's political unrest began to intensify, despite having risen 14.8 percent in March.

Phuket Update A man is facing a charge he did not expect over the theft of batteries from Phuket businesses and construction sites. Sanhanut Srimueang, 28, confessed to stealing scores of batteries for resale when he was caught behaving suspiciously near the Ussa construction site in Chalong after stealing batteries from another site. The batteries were resold, Chalong police said.

thephuketinsider.com Thailand as it struggles to recover its tourism momentum is also faced with the likelihood that a mass model has to be adopted in order to tap into new demand and increase volumes. It's a tricky issue as growth for growth's sake can even be sustained for long periods of time.

dailymail.com.au A British diving instructor is missing, presumed drowned, after failing to return to the surface following a deep-sea dive with a party of tourists on a Thai island. Peter McCarthy, 47, disappeared following a dive to a depth of 80 metres at a submerged volcano on the island of Koh Tao. Mr McCarthy, described by friends as a very experienced technical diver, practiced a specialised type of scuba diving that uses a mix of gases to allow divers to go deeper and longer.

todayonline.com Pilots of a crippled Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo struggled with more than a dozen system errors after an engine blew apart on November 4, and landed the plane in Singapore with barely runway to spare, an Australian investigation revealed.

theaustralian.com.au "The aircraft would not have arrived safely in Singapore without the effective action of the flight crew," chief commissioner Martin Dolan said.

property-report.com The proposed 100-storey Warisan Merdeka tower in Kuala Lumpur will only be built if it is commercially viable, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said this week. If constructed, the Warisan Merdeka tower would surpass the Petronas Twin Towers as the tallest building in Malaysia.

wsj.com The deadly stampede in Cambodia's capital last week is drawing new attention to problems arising from the city's dramatic but pell-mell growth. A real-estate and economic boom is transforming Phnom Penh from one of the least developed major cities in Asia - it began seeing its first skyscrapers over the past several years - into the unlikely site for plans to build Asia's tallest building.

presstv.ir Despite increased revenue from tourism, Cambodia with an annual GDP of a mere 300 US dollars per capita has one of the worst social indicators in the region. In Siem Reap at least 60 percent of the local population lives below the poverty line.

bbc.co.uk Soul singer Aretha Franklin has thanked her fans for their prayers after undergoing "highly successful" surgery. Fans of the singer, 68, who has not said what she is being treated for, gathered in Detroit on Wednesday, a day before the operation, to say prayers.

bizjournals.com Outrigger Enterprises Group is deepening its footprint in the Asia-Pacific region after years of successfully cultivating a niche of managing hotels rather than owning them on home soil. The Honolulu-based, family-owned hotel chain has spent the past five years expanding in Australia, Guam, Fiji, Bali, China, Vietnam and Phuket in Thailand.

nationmultimedia.com The eyes of the sailing world will be on Phuket for the 2010 Phuket King's Cup Regatta as the event attracts participants from all around the world, and media from all corners of the globe report on the international sailing event.



PHUKET'S 91.5 FM is planning on broadcasting the Laguna Phuket Ironman 70.3 LIVE on Sunday from 9am through to lunch, not only to Phuket but via the internet. Organisers expect to attract listeners from Australia, NZ, and the US.

Until December 11 Phuket King's Cup Regatta
December 5 Laguna Ironman 70.3 title
Until December 5 North Phuket Culinary Arts Festival, Mai Khao resorts
December 6 Long weekend King's Birthday holiday
December 15-20 Patong Carnival
December 16-18 2010 Asia Superyacht Rendezvous
December 17-19 Phuket Street Show Festival, Old Phuket Town
December 17 US Consular outreach service on Phuket
December 30-January 9 Phuket Red Cross fair, Saphan Hin park, Phuket City
2011
January 6-9 PIMEX boat show, Royal Phuket Marina
January 22 QSI International fun run day at Bang Wad Dam, Kathu
January 23 The Great Phuket Rubber Duck Race Day, Laguna Phuket
February 9-13 The Bay Regatta - Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi