bbc.com The Queen may have to move out of Buckingham Palace to allow maintenance work to be carried out. It is one option being considered by the royal household, which says the palace needs new plumbing and wiring and has not been decorated since 1952.

smh.com.au Australian spies got to listen in on the telephone calls of French Presidents, but not those US intelligence agencies thought were particularly sensitive and important, according to leaked intelligence reports published by WikiLeaks.


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 Thirteen former leaders of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) face bankruptcy after the Appeals Court ordered them to pay around 600 million baht in compensation to Airports of Thailand for the damage they caused in 2008, according to former activist Maleerat Kaewka.

abc.net.au Dozens of migrants have taken advantage of a blockade caused by striking French ferry workers to jump aboard trucks heading across to the United Kingdom. The workers set fire to tyres, stopping traffic on the highway leading to the Channel Tunnel near the port of Calais.



voanews.com Thailand police say they have concluded the largest investigation into human trafficking in the country's history with the arrests of 56 suspects and warrants for more than 60 people.

thediplomat.com Smuggling rings have been disrupted, but the demand for forced labor remains and trafficking networks will soon adapt and restart operations with the tacit cooperation of some state actors if international pressure is removed. The trafficking issue itself has only become a priority for the central authorities of the military regime because of longstanding American political pressure and short-term bad press.



theguardian.com A court in Thailand has ordered that DNA and other physical evidence allegedly linking two Burmese migrant workers to the murder of two British tourists should be independently checked, a move the suspects' lawyers said could help ensure a fair trial.

Phuket Update A 10-year-old girl survived an electric shock after she accidentally stepped on an exposed wire on Phuket City's Khao Rang viewpoint. Nisreen Klongsamuth was rushed to Vachira Phuket Hospital then released the following day when doctors confirmed she was in good health.

ft.com US intelligence services tapped the phones of French president Francois Hollande and his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac for at least six years, according to reports in the French press.

Phuket Update Construction on a beach at Racha island off Phuket alarmed visitors until Rawai officials were able to confirm that the buildings were part of the set for the French film ''Les Naufrages'' (The Shipwrecks) and will be removed when shooting ends next month.

aap A well-respected far north Queensland tourism operator who died last month in a car crash has been unveiled as an American drug fugitive who faked his own death more than 40 years ago.

latimes.com Gmail is formalising a solution to your email nightmares: the ''Undo Send'' button. Gmail users will soon be able to retrieve their ''oops'' emails by putting a delay on all outgoing messages by at least five seconds. The truly paranoid can add a 30-second lag.

nationmultimedia.com The Federation of Thai Industries (FTI) has called for the government to set up a tripartite committee to consider changes in the minimum wage on a provincial basis. Most enterprises want to delay a wage hike amidst uncertainty about recovering growth and concern over the impact of drought.

9news.com.au A drunk Scotsman has forced a flight to make an emergency landing in London after sexually assaulting a female member of the cabin crew. Police have released footage overnight of the May 6 incident that caused a flight from Glasgow to Dalaman in Turkey to be diverted, the BBC reports.

telegraph.co.uk A commercial flight was forced to make an unscheduled landing in Northern Ireland at a cost of up to $715,000 because an unruly passenger was demanding some nuts. The United Airlines plane, which was en route from Rome to Chicago, landed in Belfast when the pilot grew alarmed at the passenger's behavior.

theguardian.com A senior Pakistani health official says the death toll in the country's southern Sindh province, which has been struck by a heatwave, has reached almost 700. Senior provincial health official Saeed Mangnejo told the Associated Press that he expected the number of fatalities to climb further.

bangkokpost.com The Tourism and Sports Ministry is asking six major tour operators to introduce preventive measures to stop the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) when they take more than 16,000 Thai Muslim pilgrims to Saudi Arabia for the Haj and Umrah pilgrimages.

reuters Major US retail chains Wal-Mart and Sears as well as big online retailers Amazon and eBay, said they would stop selling products bearing the Confederate flag, a week after a white gunman shot nine dead at a historically black South Carolina church.

watoday.com.au A former Rio Tinto worker who was sacked after saying ''f--k you'' to a supervisor who confronted him about alleged unsafe conduct has had his unfair dismissal claim rejected.

aljazeera.com Unequal opportunities have left 600 million children living in extreme poverty, according to UNICEF. These children are chronically malnourished, twice as likely to die from preventable causes before the age of five, and are far less likely to achieve minimum reading standards.

nationmultimedia.com At present, 42 Thai MICE entrepreneurs with 114 meeting rooms have achieved TMVS certification. This year, the project has been expanded across five MICE cities, namely Bangkok, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Phuket and Khon Kaen.



afp Manila's decrepit train network will start issuing certificates of delay to tens of thousands who are late for work because of daily breakdowns, the government said.

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bbc.com In an entertaining contest that provided a fitting finale to New Zealand's thrilling tour, a re-energised England that won a record-breaking one-day series 3-2 earned victory in their final match before the Ashes begin onJuly 8.



MORE THAN 1.5 billion Muslims around the world mark the start of Ramadan, a month of intense prayer, dawn-to-dusk fasting and nightly feasts.

July 14-16 Trial of Phuketwan journalists at Phuket Provincial Court

July 15-19 Cape Panwa Hotel Phuket Raceweek