UPDATING All Day, Every Day
afp Luis Suarez and Neymar scored second half goals to give Barcelona a 3-1 Champions League final victory over Juventus as the Spaniards became the first team to twice win the European treble.
AP Officials say another person has died of the MERS virus in South Korea, putting the total number of deaths at five.
Phuket Update Tourist Police and Phuket City Police have arrested 33-year-old South African Laurie Viljoen Botha after he confessed to filing a false police report that personal items had been stolen from his Phuket City hotel room. He told police he intended to make a false insurance claim.
reuters Yemen's dominant Houthi group and its army allies fired a Scud missile at Saudi Arabia which the kingdom says it shot down in a major escalation of two months of war.
PhuketWATCH Daily Media Wrap
PHUKET: The daily wrap of Thailand news, with a Phuket perspective, plus relevant reports from national and international media. Beware of inconsistent imitations.
Today's Top Stories
bangkokpost.com A 9.9-megawatt biomass power plant planned for the Ao Leuk tourist district in Krabi may not eventuate after most residents who attended the third public hearing for the plant voted against it.
news.com.au Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan said the earthquake with its 13 deaths was a result of the action of Western tourists who had stripped naked near Mount Kinabalu's summit last month, The Straits Times reported.
bangkokpost.com The 300-baht national daily minimum wage will be scrapped next year, to be replaced by the old system where wages vary by each province based on the cost of living. [Phuket had the highest cost of living in Thailand when the old system was scrapped.]
Human Trafficking in Thailand
nationmultimedia.com Police will wrap up their investigation into the trafficking of Rohingya and other migrants within two weeks and seek an indictment by public prosecutors of the suspects, according to a senior police officer.
bangkokpost.com A joint aerial operation between Thailand and the US to search for "boat people", including Rohingya, in the Andaman Sea will end next Thursday as no migrants have been found so far.
Phuket World of People
Phuket Update A South African man aged 55 has died on the way to hospital after visiting a health clinic in Karon to complain of chest pains. His name is being withheld until relatives are notified.
news.com.au/aap Young Australian Jack Hansen-Bartel, who was preparing to give evidence against two students who allegedly beat him brutally at a Samui nightclub last year, instead found himself in a police cell and asked to post bail. Jack The 21-year-old was at court for the first day of a hearing against two Asian-American students accused of the attack on June 10 last year.
Phuket UpdateThirty-year-old Phuket food delivery man Pongsak Kaidchan died after his pickup failed to take a curve, collided with a truck and crashed into a tree in Srisoonthon Road, Cherng Talay.
bangkokpost.com No Thai passports? No problem if you're Thaksin Shinawatra. The former prime minister was in Montenegro to renew his passport as it was running out of pages, his daughter Paetongtran wrote on her Instagram account, @ingshin21.
khaosodenglish.com Phuket province's waterworks agency has confirmed that a local resident will have to pay the entirety of his 16,800 baht monthly water bill despite a water pipe leak in his home. Pornsak Saengsri usually pays about 200 baht.
bbc.com European warships and coast guard vessels have rescued more than 2000 migrants off the coast of Libya. The Malta-based, Migrant Offshore Aid Station, said it coordinated the operation along with Italian, Irish and German ships.
news.sky.com A senior naval officer says that up to half a million migrants are gathering on Libya's border to try and make the dangerous journey to mainland Europe.
bangkokpost.com On May 27, the Ministry of Public Health announced the IQ survey results, indicating that the IQ of Grade 1 students has dropped from 94 in 2011 to 93. The international standard is 100.
belfasttelegraph.co.uk UK holidaymakers heading to the resort of Magaluf have been told to ''respect the local culture'' amid new regulations. Those who urinate in public or swim naked in the sea can expect to be fined.
nypost.com The first inductees into the new World Video Game Hall of Fame include ''Pong,'' the game that introduced millions to electronic play, ''Doom'' which triggered a debate over the role of games and violence in society, and ''Super Mario Bros.,'' whose mustachioed hero has migrated to everything from fruit snacks to sneakers.
littlehamptongazette.co.uk Bribery allegations at Fifa should act as a spur for the international community to target the ''cancer'' of corruption in organisations, businesses and governments around the globe, British PM David Cameron is to tell world leaders at a major summit.
haaretz.com Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at foreign media, saying ''Jewish capital'' was behind the New York Times and that the British Guardian should ''know its limits.'' Erdogan's statements were made during a campaign rally for his AK Party, one day before the Turkish national elections, which could pave the way for the expansion of Erdogan's executive powers.
theatlantic.com The New York Times and Washington Post will soon make web-traffic data available to their own reporters. [Suicide rates in New York and Washington are expected to rise.]
the onion.com [Possibly satire] This week's most frequently e-mailed story, titled ''In Manhattan, Even Felines Have Therapists,'' which detailed the growing phenomenon of clinical depression among indoor urban cats, provoked a fresh round of envy and dismay among reporters still stinging from last week's top article, ''Do You Really Have Time For Your Time-Share?''.
Around the Region
bangkokpost.com Editorial: ''Australia is basically paying blood money to a much poorer, less developed state with a shoddy record of refugee protection to take people that Canberra doesn't want,'' Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia Phil Robertson told AP. ''When they get [to Cambodia], the refugees will find huge hurdles to integrate, jobs that are few and far between, and a resentful local population.''
Try Phuketwan's Asean Today daily:
http://phuketwan.com/tourism/asean-today-suu-kyi-head-china-toll-rises-quake-aussies-blasted-cambodia-ploy-22610/
Phuket World of Sport
afp Reigning 200m breaststroke champion Nuttapong Ketin has withdrawn from the SEA Games following a positive test for a banned substance he insists he never took.
afp Tiger Woods carded the worst round of his career, closing with a quadruple bogey eight on 18 for an 85 at the Memorial tournament. It's just the third time in his pro career that he's shot in the 80s.
news.com.au Novak Djokovic has dismissed accusations he bent grand slam rules by taking an eight-minute time-out when beating Andy Murray in the French Open semi-finals.
Coming Events on Phuket 2015
June 20-21 Baba wedding at Old Phuket Town
July 14-16 Trial of Phuketwan journalists at Phuket Provincial Court
July 15-19 Cape Panwa Hotel Phuket Raceweek
Dear Ed
A drop in the IQ of Thai students from 94 to 93 might be of concern to some people but there are worse things that happen to citizens in the Land of Smiles.
There is anecdotal evidence that suggests that when a Thai person becomes angry they drop about 50 IQ points and start doing irrational things like charging reporters - preferably the wrong reporters - with defamation and breaches of the Computer Crimes Act.
It's true, Ed! To make matters worse the anger seems to have a semi-permanent effect as they are unable to understand or acknowledge that they did a foolish thing in the heat of the moment. They are unable to correct past mistakes.
Another interesting phenomenon concerns the explanations given by high ranking Army officers when they are caught with transfers of 14 million baht from suspected human traffickers.
There is one such lieutenant general, let's call him "Einstein", who dreamt up an explanation that the funds were proceeds from gambling on bullfights.
Curious thing was that when advised that the suspected traffickers who paid the funds were not involved in bullfights, Einstein struggled but failed to come up with with any other words to convince even the most gullible that his bullfight story was true.
Posted by Ian Yarwood on June 7, 2015 08:51
Editor Comment:
It really is time police looked at anyone with a close connection to human trafficking detection who has unexplained wealth, Ian. I wonder how serious the investigators intend to be. Such a check would also quickly establish the innocence of those who have not been involved.