bangkokpost.com The Koh Samui Provincial Court on Wednesday approved a police request to detain the Myanmar suspects in the murder of two British tourists for another 12 days before prosecutors seek to indict them.

cbc.ca An avalanche and a blizzard in Nepal's mountainous north have killed 17 people, including four Canadians, officials said.

smh.com.au A 76-year-old British man, linked by the British media to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, will be extradited from Malta to Britain.

theage.com.au The winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize for literature, Richard Flanagan, has criticised the Australian government's environmental policies saying they have made him ''ashamed to be an Australian''.

bangkokpost.com The Social Development and Human Security ministry has begun a drive to help beggars on Bangkok's streets ''solve their problems''. Similar projects will take place elsewhere such as Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Khon Kaen.


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 Tourism and Sports Minister Kobkarn Wattanavrangkul should focus on structural reform and upgrading the entire tourism industry, a leading hotelier has urged.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/437635/hotelier-calls-for-overhaul

nytimes.com Pro-democracy demonstrators battled the police for control of important downtown arteries in Hong Kong into the early hours on Wednesday, with the police pushing protesters out of a park using pepper spray and wrestling some of those who resisted to the ground.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1616671/live-police-clash-occupy-protesters-attempt-clear-lung-wo-road

bangkokpost.com Real estate developer Grand Canal Land unveiled plans for a 125-storey office and hotel tower that would make Bangkok home to the tallest skyscraper in Southeast Asia.

indiatimes.com Union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said he would speak to Air India to extend its Bhubaneswar-Port Blair flight up to Phuket in Thailand to start international operations. International flights are yet to start from the city despite Biju Patnaik Airport being accorded an international tag nearly a year ago.



bangkokpost.com After a three-hour meeting with British ambassador Mark Kent and Myanmar envoy Win Muang, police chief Somyot Pumpanmuang emerged from the foreign ministry with an agreement to allow both countries to be present at judicial proceedings in the Koh Tao murder case.

nytimes.com Hearings began Tuesday in the killings of two British tourists on a Thai resort island, a case plagued by missteps by the Thai police that could further damage a tourism industry that is already suffering a downturn after the May military takeover.

bangkokpost.com Commentary: The public and media should not be blamed for refusing to end speculation about the handling of the case by investigators. The country should have learned a lesson from the Sherry Ann Duncan tragedy.



nytimes.com The World Health Organisation reported sobering new figures about the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa, saying the number of new cases could reach 10,000 per week by December, about 10 times the rate of the past four weeks.

usatoday.com Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg says the Ebola epidemic is at a critical phase and he and his wife Priscilla Chan donated $28.7 million to stop it becoming a long-term global health crisis.

scmp.com The deadly Ebola epidemic is now spreading panic in the US as flight crews are facing increasing numbers of false alarms from worried passengers when people fall ill on board planes.



bangkokpost.com The government is keen to upgrade and promote Pattaya, a popular beach resort, as a world-class sports destination.

bdnews24.com/reuters Thai police found scores of sick and exhausted boat people hiding on a remote island, and all but one of the 79 suspected human-trafficking victims were from Bangladesh, according to local officials.

theguardian.com Oscar Pistorius is a '''broken man''' who should be spared prison and allowed to resume his sporting career, a court heard as the Paralympian's epic trial entered its final chapter.

dpa The European Union's executive decided to ban fish imports from Sri Lanka over its failure to tackle illegal fishing, in a move welcomed by environmentalists.

theguardian.com Energy drinks will become a significant public health problem if their use among young people is not addressed through a cap on caffeine levels and restrictions on their sale and marketing, United Nations researchers have warned.

andrew-drummond.com This Bangkok based internet website www.andrew-drummmond.com topped one million page views in a month. That is great news and shows public confidence in its content and in its investigations. Over the last week we have also received quite open threats.
http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2014/10/andrew-drummond-in-hit-man-shock.html

smh.com.au Thanks to their houses, Australians are the richest people in the world, according to the investment bank Credit Suisse. They are followed by Belgians, Italians, French and British.

eturbonews.com Jet Asia Airways would like to clarify and correct some recent press coverage of a delay experienced on one of our Phuket-Shenyang charter flights during the month of September, 2014.

theguardian.com A man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the streets of the UK may have been targeting Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie Booth, among others, the Old Bailey heard.

travelweeklyweb.com Thailand's tourism industry is becoming increasingly concerned by the negative impact of martial law on the sector.

nationmultimedia.com Key tourism groups - Thai Travel Agents Association (ATTA) and Thai Hotels Association (THA) - voiced their concern over the decline in arrivals despite the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)'s many campaigns to woo visitors in the wake of the coup.

theguardian.com The first Man Booker prize to allow American nominees was on Tuesday night won by an Australian, with Richard Flanagan triumphing for 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North', a ''magnificent novel of love and war'' that tells the harrowing stories of prisoners and captors on the infamous Burma railway.

bangkokpost.com A worker at a Bangkok TV digital station has been arrested after he allegedly posed as a PhD researcher studying the female body to lure women he met on Facebook to send him photos of their genitals.

smh.com.au Headline: Parrot vanishes for four years, returns speaking Spanish



afp In Brisbane on October 14, the Federal Court is considering the fate of a baby born in Australia to asylum-seeker parents from Myanmar's Rohingya minority to determine whether, in the eyes of the law, he arrived in the country by boat.

rappler.com Pizza Hut Singapore has launched an investigation and apologised to a customer described as a ''Pink Fat Lady'' in a handwritten note on her receipt after she ordered pizza for take away.



afp A headed goal in second-half injury time by Cristiano Ronaldo gave Portugal a much-needed 1-0 win over Denmark in their Group I Euro 2016 qualifier.

straitstimes.com Neymar scored four goals as the Barcelona forward starred in Brazil's 4-0 rout of Japan in their international football friendly at the Singapore Sports Hub.

cnn.com Serbia tries to play Albania but the game is called off after a drone flies a political flag and players clash.



nationmultimedia.com Old Town of Phuket is again calling devotees to take part in a second round of the Phuket Vegetarian festival. This happens just once in every 132 years, when there are twice the number of 9th lunar months in the Chinese lunar calendar, thus twice the number of visits from the gods. It runs from October 24 to November 1 so if you missed the first, head South to enjoy the second.

October 23 Chulalongkorn Memorial Day

November 1-3 Patong Carnival

November 6 Loy Kratong

November 14-23 Fourth Asia Beach Games, Phuket

December 5 King's Birthday

December 10 Constitution Day

December 25 Christmas Day

December 26 10th Anniversary, 2004 Tsunami

December 31 New Year's Eve



February 13-15 Phuket Yacht Show