Authorities are preparing to prevent 99 elephants and thousands of villagers from entering Thailand's capital to protest the possible dissolution of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's political party, the military said yesterday.
"The authorities are trying to convince the elephant owners not to bring their animals to Bangkok. We have to use all means to stop the elephants from joining the political rally," said Lieutenant General Prayuth Chanocha, commander of the 1st Army, which is responsible for peacekeeping in Bangkok.
He said the protesters and pachyderms plan to enter Bangkok on Tuesday, a day before the Constitutional Court is due to deliver a verdict that could lead to the disbanding of both Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party and the opposition Democrat Party for allegedly breaking the law during an election in April last year.
The leaders of both parties have publicly promised to accept the court's ruling, but some senior members of Thai Rak Thai are threatening to stage mass protests if their party is disbanded.
Thaksin was ousted in a bloodless military coup last September after months of street protests and flawed elections. Now living abroad, he and his family are under investigation for alleged corruption and other offenses.
Prayuth cited intelligence sources as saying that thousands of villagers from northern and northeastern Thailand, strongholds of the Thai Rak Thai party, were poised to travel to Bangkok with 99 elephants. Nine is an auspicious number in Thailand.
Thai Rak Thai is accused of financing obscure parties to run against it in the election as a way of getting around rules that require a minimum voter turnout in constituencies where single candidates run unopposed.
The Democrat Party, which boycotted the election, is accused of conniving with the small parties to lure Thai Rak Thai into illegally funding them.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS