Author: Desk Team

A Thai Airways International plane takes off at Suvarnabhumi airport. (Bangkok Post file photo) Thai Airways International Plc (THAI) is aiming to resume its position as one of the world's top ten airlines after the completion of its rehabilitation process, the national flag carrier's executives said. The airline has planned to secure strategic partnerships with various private firms, including Thailand's largest energy conglomerate PTT Plc, as part of its business rehabilitation scheme. The carrier will tomorrow ask creditors to approve its revised rehabilitation plan which is a crucial stage for the airline's financial recovery. "There is likely not a problem [for the plan approval]. The plan is the way to rehabilitate the company's financial status and benefit the creditors," said P...

EU and Thailand cap turbulent decade with a partnership agreement Paola Pampaloni (right), the deputy managing director of the European External Action Service, and Chulamanee Chartsuwan, deputy permanent secretary for Thailand's foreign affairs, closed the negotiating process for the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement on Friday. (@MFAThai Twitter account photo) The European Union (EU) has finally sealed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Thailand, its sixth with a Southeast Asian country, as both sides seek to repair relations that frayed following a military coup in Bangkok eight years ago. It may provide the needed momentum to relaunch talks over a full free trade agreement. The PCA, which is still awaiting a formal signing, improves bilateral ties on a range of i...

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Long lines of cars on roads snaking to Russia’s border crossings with Georgia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, and similar queues at airports. Angry demonstrations — not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg — but in the remote far north province of Yakutia and in the southern region of Dagestan, with women chasing a police officer and shouting, “No to war!” A gunman who opened fire in an enlistment office in a Siberian city and gravely wounded the military commandant, saying, “We will all go home now.” Five days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in Ukraine, the move has triggered outraged protests, a fearful exodus and acts of violence across the vast country. “Panic. All the people I kn

'Irregularities' found in passport of outspoken pageant contestant Han Lay on return from trip to Vietnam Han Lay, Miss Grand Myanmar, looks on during an interview with Reuters in Bangkok in April last year. (Reuters Photo) A Myanmar model and beauty pageant contestant who took refuge in Thailand after speaking out against the military coup in her homeland has been denied entry after a trip abroad and detained at Suvarnabhumi airport, immigration authorities said on Thursday. Han Lay, Miss Grand International Myanmar 2020, was returning to Thailand from Da Nang in Vietnam and arrived at the airport on Wednesday afternoon, said Pol Maj Gen Archayon Kraithong, deputy chief of the Immigration Bureau. She was not arrested as reported earlier by some media, he said. However, an immigration...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday ramped up its diplomatic efforts to press China to end provocative actions against Taiwan and warned it about any active support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made both cases in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart on Friday in a meeting on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York, according to U.S. officials. The session was one of the few that Blinken kept on his schedule after the death of his father on Thursday. The officials wouldn’t describe the Chinese response, but said Foreign Minister Wang Yi was receptive to the messages and that the two men discussed the need “to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the U.S.-China relationship, especially

Come Rain or Shine Everyone and their mother are well aware that floods suck, period. But give it to the Thais who manage to make the most of the rains as shown in these pictures, which I hope will lighten up the heavy rain (with no intention to glamourise it). RuPaul's Boat Race This black-and-white photo from 1983 showed bra-and-sarong-wearing men having a boat race on a flooded Bangkok street to the delight of everyone in the 'hood. They could have done just the boat race. Not sure why they decided to do amateur drag. Soaking in a Stream It's not just kids who know how to have fun with the flood. Here are two men in the Bang Rak district of Bangkok, who enjoyed soaking in the overflow from the rising Chao Phraya River around BTS Saphan Taksin. Circa 2001. Hope they took a proper sh...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — China underscored its commitment Saturday to its claim on Taiwan, telling assembled world leaders that anyone who gets in the way of its determination to reunify with the self-governing island would be “crushed by the wheels of history.” The language was forceful but, for Chinese leadership, well within the realm of normal. “Only when China is fully reunified can there be true peace across the Taiwan Strait,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said at the U.N. General Assembly. He said Beijing would “take the most forceful steps to oppose external interference.” China regularly and vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan, which separated from the mainland after a 1949 civil war and now functions with its own government. A visit last month by the speaker of the U.S.

Travelers visit Suvarnabhumi airport in Samut Prakan province on Sept 1. (Photo: Somchai Poomlard) The expansion of facilities to handle an increasing number of air passengers at international and domestic airports nationwide is being sped up, says the government, as part of its plan to promote Thailand as a transport hub in Asean. Government spokesman Anucha Burapachaisri on Sunday said the government is speeding up its airport expansion plan to handle an expected increase of passengers during the upcoming high season in the fourth quarter of this year and beyond. The expansion projects of three international airports -- Don Mueang airport in Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi airport in Samut Prakan and U-tapao airport in Rayong -- and a number of regional airports will be carried out by the Airpo...

BEIJING (AP) — Authorities in southwestern China’s Chengdu have maintained strict COVID-19 lockdown measures on the city of 21 million despite a major earthquake that killed at least 65 people in outlying areas. Footage circulating online Tuesday showed workers wearing top-to-bottom protective gear preventing residents of apartment buildings from exiting through locked lobby doors following Monday’s 6.8 magnitude quake centered in the surrounding province of Sichuan. Buildings in Chengdu and other parts of western China were shaken by the quake. No damage was reported in the city. The quake struck a mountainous area in Luding county, which sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau roughly 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Chengdu, where tectonic plates grind up against each other. Despite o

Shopee inks pact to help empower SMEs Mr Sinit, centre left, and Mrs Maneerut, centre right, at the MoU signing. The Commerce Ministry's International Trade Promotion Department on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Shopee, an e-commerce platform, to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to showcase their quality products and sell their products online. According to Deputy Commerce Minister Sinit Lertkrai, the partnership with the famous e-commerce platform will allow more than 50,000 businesses, mainly SMEs, to sell their products online, with sales of more than 300 million baht expected to be generated over three years. "The latest partnership with Shopee is a part of Commerce Minister Jurin Laksanawisit's policy to speed up the country's international...