Fugitive former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced yesterday on his online Twitter page that he would make a week-long trip to visit three Asian countries.
His visit to Cambodia last month, to take up an economic advisory role with the government, caused a diplomatic row after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen refused to extradite Thaksin to Thailand to serve a two-year jail term for graft.
“I have asked permission to visit and exchange views with three leaders in Asia for seven to eight days,” Thaksin said on his Twitter page, giving no further details.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Friday responded to rumors that Thaksin was planning a return to Cambodia and said the government would probably submit another extradition request if he did so.
“If he enters our airspace we will try to arrest him because he is facing a jail term. We are likely to request for his extradition once again,” Abhisit told reporters.
On Friday, Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned Thai national Siwarak Chothipong, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for spying on Thaksin during his visit to Phnom Penh.
The 31-year-old employee at the Cambodia Air Traffic Service will be released from prison on Monday, following his conviction on Tuesday for supplying Thaksin’s flight schedule to the Thai embassy.
The pardon drew immediate praise from the Thai government, which also called the case politically motivated.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS