voanews.com China has lodged an official protest with Myanmar (Burma) and called for an investigation after a Myanmar military aircraft dropped a bomb in Chinese territory, killing four and injuring nine others.

afp A passenger ferry sank off the coast of western Myanmar leaving at least 21 people dead and 26 missing on a voyage between Kyaukphyu to Sittwe, police said. More than 160 had been rescued.

bbc.com Cyclone Pam has slammed into the south Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu leaving ''complete devastation'' in its wake, aid agencies say.

independent.co.uk A blanket ban should be introduced on so-called designer vagina surgery on under-18s to meet concerns that the law which prohibits female genital mutilation is ambiguous and promotes ''double standards,'' an influential group of MPs has found.


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 Police now say the bomb attacks at the Criminal Court and Siam Paragon were linked and they have a total of 10 suspects, some of whom were involved in the political unrest of 2010.

dpa Six Asian airports have made the list of the top 10 airports in the world, with Singapore's Changi Airport retaining the title of world's best airport for the third year running.

Phuket Update A Bryde's whale believed to be nine metres long was spotted in the sea near Koh Lanta earlier this week, bringing huge excitement to tourists and divers in the area. Tourism officials are concerned for its safety.



scmp.com The authorities on the islands of Phi Phi in Thailand are to put up signs in public toilets telling Chinese tourists not to clean their feet in the wash basins, according to a local news website.

abc3340.com In September 2007, Kelly Miller pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide for her role in a 2004 DUI crash in Hoover that claimed the life of Donald Goodwin, a truck driver from Florida. She was sentenced the following month but bonded out of jail. Miller eventually disappeared from the state and her bond was revoked in March of 2010, making her an official fugitive.

myfoxal.com Kevin Miller, Kelly Miller's brother, said his sister is being portrayed as someone who wasn't remorseful and he said that's not the case. He said his sister ran because she was scared, and that after she left she realised it was a mistake.

dailymail.co.uk Goodwin's younger sister Faye Dees spoke out to the Daily Mail Online, saying she wasn't at all surprised by Miller's nonchalant behavior in Thailand based on how she reacted to her brother's death and interacted with the family at trial nearly a decade ago.

news.com.au South African doctors have performed the world's first successful penis transplant, three months after the groundbreaking operation. The 21-year-old patient had his penis amputated three years ago after a botched circumcision at a traditional initiation ceremony.

bloomberg Macau's economy shrank 17.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year as casino revenues slumped and visitors cut spending.

telegraph.co.uk Bring back Clarkson! Yes, he's a fool and an oaf and a boor, a massively over-grown schoolboy who can't keep his motor-mouth under control. He's a trouble-maker, a wind-up merchant, unbelievably smug and arrogant. Cock of the walk, you might say. And he's way more pleased with himself than any fat 54-year-old man in a leather bomber jacket and a pair of high-waisted jeans deserves to be. But that's precisely why we enjoy him so much.

news.com.au A spokesman for Vladimir Putin has denied rumors swirling in the European media that a baby had been born to the Russian leader.

standard.co.uk A household Cavalry guard who escorted the newly-wed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Buckingham Palace threatened to leave his girlfriend in a ''pool of blood'' in a row over cold toast: ''He had his underwear on and my dressing-gown and I said: 'Put your clothes on and leave the house.'''

heraldsun.com.au Hundreds of Aboriginal rights activists have shut down Melbourne's CBD in a protest against the planned closure of remote indigenous communities in Western Australia. The demonstrators brought Swanston St to a standstill during the evening peak, disrupting traffic and almost a dozen tram routes for about an hour and a half from 6pm.

nytimes.com The Canadian Parliament is debating the country's most significant national security reform in over a decade. The proposed act, known as Bill C-51, would supplement antiterror laws enacted following 9/11. Responding to United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the criminalization of terrorism, that legislation modified Canada's criminal code, creating a host of new terror offenses.

theguardian.com Australians are ditching cigarettes at record levels, with the latest quarterly figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showing a fall of nearly three percent in tobacco consumption.



theage.com.au Stumbling from a discussion of careers in prostitution with a group of 15-year-old girls to a ceremony marking religious circumcision suggests unanswerable questions about the sacred and the profane, and why, in this pocket of West Java, both seem so concerned with the sexuality of little girls.
http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/girls-for-sale-indramayus-prostitution-production-line-20150313-13m8o9.html

Try Phuketwan's Asean Today daily:
http://phuketwan.com/tourism/asean-today-botched-raid-killed-refugee-deal-nears-wife-comes-house-sale-isis-recruits-held-22038/



Until March 15 Heroines Festival

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