Tag Archives: bangkok

Thailand cracks down on elephant begging

A lumbering grey shadow can often catch your eye as you drive along one of Bangkok’s most polluted and congested streets, Sukhumvit. If this were not Bangkok, you would think you’d had one too many beer Singhas, but in this city of contradictions, anything seems, and often is, possible. And so it is that spotting a huge elephant, dodging the tuk-tuk motorcycle rickshaws, the ubiquitous taxis and blizzard of traffic is nothing out of the ordinary.

In Thailand, A New Party Tries to Take Back the Swastika

In early June, the founders of Thailand’s New Politics Party unveiled their logo — usually a routine procedure in a country where new parties seem to come and go with the monsoons. But the yellow-and-green symbol of the NPP has generated controversy not just for its questionable 1970s color scheme but because it resembles a swastika. Asians are rightly miffed that Adolf Hitler hijacked an ancient religious symbol of luck and peace and turned it into the unofficial logo for genocide and racial hatred.

China marks earthquake anniversary

China on Tuesday marked the first anniversary of a devastating earthquake that left nearly 90,000 dead or missing one year ago in mountainous Sichuan province. In the city of Dujiangyan, a moment of silence was held amid the ruins of collapsed buildings and debris. Mourners placed flowers at a memorial to quake rescue efforts, sang the national anthem and a stone carving of a clock that stopped at 2:28, when the temblor hit, with the date underneath

Indians vote in fourth phase of elections

Indians were voting Thursday in the fourth phase of a marathon general election to choose a new federal government. Officials at the meeting are expected to sign a prisoner transfer agreement that would allow Samantha Orobator to serve out a sentence in Britain, if she is convicted at her forthcoming trial, according to an official Laotian source who spoke to CNN.