Thailand’s junta has banned a computer game that allows players to craft their own military dictatorship in a fictional paradise where “sunny beaches and political corruption” coexist, authorities said yesterday.
The simulation game Tropico 5 gives players the chance to build their own forms of government on a remote island.
It is sold under the tagline: “Imagine a place where the people never go hungry, all work has a decent wage and the weather is forever bright and sunny — just make sure you always vote El Presidente.”
“Tropico 5 has been banned, but I cannot give the reason unless you ask permission from our director-general,” said an unnamed official at the Video and Film Office, part of the Thai Ministry of Culture.
Thai game distributor New Era Interactive Media said it received a letter from the ministry on Monday banning its sale in the kingdom.
New Era Interactive Media marketing manager Nonglak Sahavattanapong said late on Monday it was “disappointed” by the move to ban the game, made by Bulgarian game developer Haemimont.
She said it had been blocked “because some parts of stories within the game affect Thailand’s situation.”
She did not give further details of the offending storylines, but said “players can play roles as a leader of a country — they can choose systems of how to run the country.”
The ministry now falls under the remit of the Thai navy chief — a deputy leader of the junta — following the May 22 army coup.
On the Tropico5.com Web site, the game is trailed as giving players a “land of opportunity: a blank slate where any political ideal or mad inspiration can be made possible.”
Since seizing power, Royal Thai Army Commander-in-Chief Prayuth Chan-ocha has suspended democracy, muzzled dissent and imposed sweeping curbs on media freedoms as he bids to end years of bitter political divisions.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.