Updating All Day, Every Day
Paris Update Paris is on the highest possible level of alert after two hooded terrorists shot dead 12 people at a satirical magazine. The attack was described as ''very targetted and very professional.''
ynetnews.com Twelve people have been killed in a shooting at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper firebombed in the past after publishing cartoons in 2011 joking about Muslim leaders. Ten people are wounded, five critically.
theguardian.com First reports suggest two hooded gunmen walked into the offices of Charlie Hebdo about midday and began firing. The death toll includes at least five journalists and one police officer.
bbc.com Witnesses quoted by French Europe 1 radio say that one of the attackers shouted ''The prophet was avenged'' while carrying out the assault.
AP Poland has been asked to extradite filmmaker Roman Polanski to the US, where he is wanted on 1977 charges of sex with a minor, an official said.
AP Divers and an unmanned underwater vehicle spotted the tail of the AirAsia plane that crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people on board, an important finding because the jet's black boxes are located in that part of the aircraft, an official said.
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 News Items
bangkokpost.com Road fatalities during the New Year's holiday fell seven percent from a year ago, with 341 killed in the ''seven dangerous days,'' Interior permanent secretary Wiboon Sanguanpong said. [There were two deaths and 45 injuries on Phuket, down from five deaths last year.]
nationmultimedia.com Bangkok's Don Mueang International Airport will become the best in the region for connectivity for low-cost carriers when it resumes full operations this year, according to Tony Fernandes of AirAsia.
Human Trafficking in Thailand
kaladanpress Bangladeshi authorities are considering building a barbed wire fence along the border with Burma to prevent Yaba smuggling and Rohingya from illegally entering the country, according to a Bengali newspaper. The border between Bangladesh and Burma is 193 miles long, 68 km runs along the middle of the Naf River.
The Lost AirAsia Flight
rt.com The crash of flight QZ-8501 en route from Surabaya was the latest incident in a series of Indonesian air disasters over the last decade. The country has one of the highest air accident rates anywhere in the world, exceeding those in many war-torn countries.
news.com.au Qantas has been named the world's safest airline after a year when fatal air accidents soared above the 10-year average.
Phuket World of People
bbc.com An online appeal has been launched to pay the medical costs of a British man who fell seriously ill in Thailand on New Year's Day, after bills reached more than 20,000 pounds. Craig Lindley, 35, from Barnsley, collapsed while in Samui to celebrate a friend's wedding. He has a rare illness of the nervous system, but does not have travel insurance.
rferl.org A Russian man has been arrested in Thailand after allegedly holding his common-law wife and her year-old son hostage for several hours. Police on the island of Chang said on January 5 that the incident had taken place that day at a hotel. Aleksei Firsov, a 42-year-old from Russia's Sverdlovsk region, held the child at knifepoint for several hours, demanding that he be provided with a car with tinted windows.
bangkokpost.com A Korean man plunged to death from the 26th floor of a 29-storey luxury condominium in Bangkok, reportedly while posing for pictures on his balcony, police said.
dnaindia.com India's CBI may send a team to get Jagtar Singh Tara, an accused in the assassination of the then Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh in 1995, from Thailand where he has been arrested in Pattaya. Tara, 37, purchased the car which was used to kill Beant Singh in the Chandigarh secretariat using a human bomb.
nationmultimedia.com He and three others tunnelled out of an Indian high-security jail in 2004. He entered Thailand in October, police said, and was arrested in Pattaya on Monday.
9news.com.au A Queensland woman apparently dumped by her husband just weeks before a surprise luxury getaway to Bali has begun an online auction for a new partner to take his place. Sarah-Jane Bell, 24, tells bidders in her advertisement on eBay that she came home from work recently to find her husband had left a note on their bed ending their relationship.
http://www.9news.com.au/technology/2015/01/07/03/22/dumped-wife-auctions-ex-husband-half-of-bali-trip
reuters.com Top-selling German tabloid Bild and 50 prominent Germans called for an end to what they see as rising xenophobia, a day after thousands of protesters in several German cities rallied against Muslim immigration.
cbsnews.com The search for a planet like ours got a boost when astronomers announced the discovery of eight new planets, including three which exist in a ''habitable zone'' that receives as much sunlight as Earth.
hospitalitynet.org Hilton Worldwide today announced expansion plans in Thailand with the signing of a management agreement with Q Hospitality Development Company Limited to open Hilton Phuket Patong Resort, the thirteenth HiltonWorldwide property in Thailand. The new hotel which is expected to open in the first quarter of 2018 will be the sixth Hilton Hotels & Resorts branded hotel in Thailand.
nationmultimedia.com The opening of the Manathai Khao Lak north of Phuket adds 158 more luxurious rooms to this peaceful beach destination in Thailand's South. Manathai Hotels & Resorts run hotels and properties in Hua Hin, Phuket and Samui. Nestled along the pristine coastline, Manathai Khao Lak is stylish with contemporary Thai design making it an ideal hotel for the beach-lovers.
Around the Asean Region
See Phuketwan's new Asean Today column
http://phuketwan.com/tourism/asean-today-aussies-indon-alert-disaster-tourists-plague-floods-burma-fence-unwanted-21666/
Phuket World of Sport
news.com.au Australia's David Warner is scoring tons more often than any Aussie batsmen in history not named Sir Donald Bradman. Warner has 12 centuries from 67 innings, good for sixth place on the all-time list.
Coming Events on Phuket 2014
Phuket International Boat Show returns to southern Thailand's beach destination from January 8 to 11.
Coming Events on Phuket 2015
January 6-11 Phuket International Boat Show
January 21 Australian embassy outreach to Phuket Call 02-3446300, e: consular.bangkok@dfat.gov.au
February 12-15 Phuket Yacht Show
Alan,
There is something amiss on the the road death figures being reported by authorities.
Thailand has been reported in the list of road deaths by countries as 46 per 100,000 people or about 28,000 pa.
If you divide the annual figure by 52 weeks the average 7 day total is approx 538 deaths.
So the road toll on 'the seven deadly days' is far less than the yearly average.
In figures I saw which dated from 2005 to present a similar situation occurred.
Another issue with the published figures over this period was that the number of accidents decreased as did the number of injuries but the death rates over the comparative period remained fairly constant with no trend in either direction.
Posted by Manowar on January 7, 2015 09:10