News from Thailand – March 10, 2014
As well as spent yesterday Bangkok Post much of the front page to the missing Malaysian Airways Boeing. No trace of it has yet been found.
It has since become known that two passengers traveled on a false passport that was stolen in Phuket. They slipped through passport control in Kuala Lumpur because the thefts were registered. Authorities are investigating two other cases of suspicious identity.
The Malaysian Air Force says the aircraft may have turned over: that could be concluded from radar images. Air traffic control finds it puzzling: the pilot has not reported a return and no distress signal has been sent.
The sudden disappearance and the stolen passports could indicate an explosion. Al-Qaeda militants have previously traveled on fake passports to hide their identities. But also a sudden failure of the engines, extreme turbulence, human error and even the suicide of the pilot are taken into account.
A total of 22 aircraft and 40 ships are looking for the device. Malaysia Airlines has told family members to expect the worst. According to director Hugh Dunleavy, it could take days or more to find the device. Depending on what happened, debris could be scattered over a large area.
– The police in Phuket have spoken with the Italian, whose passport was used by one of the passengers. The passport was stolen from his bungalow on Patong Beach last July. He got a new passport, returned home and returned to Phuket in early March. The other man, whose passport was used, is an Austrian. He lost his passport in March 2012. Police are investigating whether the thefts were the work of a gang.
– The cleaning of the lead-contaminated Klity Creek in Kanchanaburi has still not started, although the court ordered it last year. The Pollution Control Department (PCD) says it is awaiting the results of a best-practice study by a team from Khon Kaen University. They are expected this month, but due to the current budget problems, the cleaning operation must be postponed until next year, says director Wichien Jungruangruang.
In January last year, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered the PCD to compensate residents suffering from lead poisoning. Wichien says they received their money two months after the verdict. The PCD has also constructed two dikes to hold back sediment contaminated with lead. The water would now be of acceptable quality, but fish and plants still contain lead concentrations well above the safety standard.
– A 16-year-old boy in Thanyaburi (Pathum Thani) is suspected of having shot his parents, but that can no longer be asked of him because he also ended his own life. The older brother told police that the brother had been beaten up because of his poor school results and addiction to smartphone games.
– Six people were killed and four seriously injured when the pickup they were in crashed into the pillar of a bridge in Chon Buri early Sunday morning.
There were also road casualties in Phato (Ranong). Two Myanmar workers were killed and XNUMX others injured. The pickup truck they were in had flipped over.
– A taxi driver says he was shot at by guards of the protest movement, but the protest movement tells a different story.
The driver's version: He drove a drunken passenger from the Rama II to Lumpini on Saturday night. When he stopped at the park, a man (the driver thought a guard) shouted for him to keep going. Then followed the sound of a giant firecracker and his car was fired upon. The left side turned into a cheese with holes, the windows went down, two tires got flat and he himself was injured in the forehead. The passenger took off.
Spokesman Akanat Promphan's version: Someone in the taxi opened fire and someone in the park returned fire. He didn't know who that person was.
– Protest group NSPRT went to Dusit police station yesterday to ask why a guard in possession of a gas mask had been arrested and not only that, but he had even been charged with possession of war material. According to the NSPRT, the seizure was in violation of the decision of the civil court on the emergency ordinance. The head of the bureau says that this was based on a misunderstanding.
– On March 30, 457 candidates will run for one of the 77 Senate seats. The Electoral Council is betting on a turnout of 70 percent in the elections. Half of the Senate is then elected. The other half is appointed, a practice that the government has previously tried in vain to put an end to, because the Constitutional Court put a stop to it. Senators are elected for six years. These elections are expected to go smoothly, in contrast to the elections on 2 February for the House of Representatives.
– If the protest movement wants to organize a forum on political reform, former governing party Pheu Thai starts cooing that the forum is a tactical move to prevent the arrest of action leader Suthep Thaugsuban. My mother would say: how do they get on it? Or: it's never good either.
Pheu Thai spokesperson Prompong Nopparit had even more notes to his song yesterday when he said this. But those notes give me the impression of a childhood fight over who gets to read Donald Duck first. If you are interested, read the article on the website of Bangkok Post, but I'm going to have breakfast first with http://youtu.be/rrVDATvUitA in the background.
- Ask your. The seminar 'Policy on the Reform of English Learning and Teaching' was recently held. What would have been the language?
The seminar was attended by a hundred headmasters, now called school principals. At the seminar, the Ministry of Education launched the plan to introduce the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages in a number of schools in the coming school year.
Seminar Chairman and Minister of Education Chaturon Chaisaeng is confident that the implementation of the CEFR will improve students' English language proficiency and enable them to compete with students from other countries.
Soon the Thai English teachers will have to bare their buttocks, because then they will have to take the CEFR exam. We are curious.
www.dickvanderlugt.nl – Source: Bangkok Post
Editorial notice
Bangkok Shutdown and the elections in images and sound:
www.thailandblog.nl/nieuws/videos-bangkok-shutdown-en-de-keuzeen/