Thailand goes to the polls on May 14 for the first election since the kingdom was rocked by major student-led pro-democracy protests in 2020 calling for political reform.The election is shaping as a clash between incumbent ruling parties, backed by Thailand’s conservative military and royalist establishment, and more reformist and progressive opposition groups.”Election day is a choice between the dark present and a bright future,” Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the billionaire co-founder of the Move Forward party, told supporters at a rally in Bangkok.The party’s leader, Harvard-educated businessman Pita Limjaroenrat, told the crowd of about 2,000 mostly young voters that “we will…
Author: Mike Harrison
By AFP  April 23, 2023 | 08:15am GMT+7 Japanese minister Yasukazu Hamada ordered a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) interceptor after threats from North Korea. Photo by Reuters Japan ordered its military Saturday to prepare to shoot down a North Korean ballistic missile after Pyongyang said this week it was ready to launch its first military spy satellite. Placing the satellite into orbit would require a long-range projectile, which North Korea is banned from launching because the United Nations views such exercises as tests of ballistic missile technology.On Saturday Japanese minister Yasukazu Hamada told the country’s Self-Defense Forces “there is a…
Russia has 110 official billionaires in the list, up 22 from last year, according to Forbes’ Russian edition, which said their total wealth increased to $505 billion from $353 billion when the 2022 list was announced.The list would have been longer had not five billionaires – DST Global founder Yuri Milner, Revolut founder Nikolay Storonsky, Freedom Finance founder Timur Turlov, and JetBrains co-founders Sergei Dmitriev and Valentin Kipyatkov – renounced their Russian citizenship, Forbes said.”Last year’s rating results were also influenced by apocalyptic predictions about the Russian economy,” Forbes said, adding that the total wealth of Russia’s billionaires was $606…
Nguyen Thi Hoa, 34, from HCMC, went to see a psychologist in a state of confusion and frustration. Her husband is two years older than her and for the past few years, their sex life has not been good. Many times Hoa tried to initiate intimacy, but her husband just turned away. After being rejected many times, she got offended and now sleeps in her own bedroom instead.”I often get frustrated, grumpy and wonder if my husband is having an affair?” Hoa said.Dang Viet Trung, 40, from Hanoi has also been rejected by his wife in bed for a long…
His wife holds his hand and strokes his face, with a nurse in blue scrubs listening to his chest through a stethoscope.Every single breath is an exertion.About 2.4 million people in Thailand have needed treatment for medical problems linked to air pollution since the start of the year, including nearly 200,000 this week alone, according to health officials.Bangkok and the northern city of Chiang Mai were among the top 10 most polluted cities in the world on Friday, according to air quality monitoring firm IQAir.Piamlarp Sangsayunh, a respiratory disease specialist at the Central Chest Institute of Thailand in Nonthaburi, says…
Lieutenant Le Viet Quoc Vu, 29, secretary of the Youth Union of the Fire Prevention and Rescue Department in Thua Thien-Hue Provincial Police and his fiancée Le Thi Thanh Ha, 28, a primary school teacher in Hue are set to marry next month. During the photo shoot, which took place on March 26, Vu received great support from his bosses and colleagues who helped him with the props such as fire trucks, hoses and ladders. People in his unit posed in the background to give the photos an authentic look. “The people who support me are all members of my…
I realized how indifferent and cold he was since we started dating, yet ignored it as he was kind. After getting married, I had to do all of the house chores, from cleaning the house to preparing meals. Things have not changed at all even after we had our first child.He did everything slowly and clumsily, and there were many things that I had to teach him how to do. If I left our child with him, even for only five to 10 minutes, he would eventually wake our child up or make the kid cry.Having a lot of things…
By AFP  April 22, 2023 | 07:31 am GMT+7 A new Google mega-campus in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose was to feature office space, housing units, and public parks. Photo by AFP Google has paused construction of a massive campus in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose as it reins in costs, CNBC reported on Friday. Google’s parent company Alphabet early this year announced it would cut about 12,000 jobs globally, citing a challenging economic reality.Alphabet reported lower revenue and profit than expected in the final three months of last year as harsh economic times cooled its…
“We are working extraordinarily and intensively with the South Koreans to take the necessary steps to buttress both public perception and the reality of our commitments,” the official told Reuters ahead of Yoon’s summit with Biden next Wednesday.The official said it ranked as one of the greatest US achievements that a number of Indo-Pacific countries that could have built nuclear weapons had chosen not to because of the protection of the so-called USnuclear umbrella.”We have been very clear that our commitment to that nuclear deterrent stands, is ironclad for South Korea,” said the official, who did not want to be…
By Reuters  April 22, 2023 | 07:22am GMT+7 Cast members India Ria Amarteifio and Golda Rosheuvel attend the world premiere of the Netflix show “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” in London, Britain, April 21, 2023. Photo by Reuters/Maja Smiejkowska Regency-era London took over the British capital’s Leicester Square on Friday as the “Queen Charlotte” cast premiered the first spin-off from hit Netflix. Operiod drama “Bridgerton” dedicated to the fan favorite character.”Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story” is an origin story of the “Bridgerton” monarch, explaining her rise to power and love life.The six-episode series follows two seasons of Regency-era “Bridgerton”, which…