BANGKOK (AFP) - Thailand joined the fight against piracy in the Indian Ocean on Friday, sending nearly 400 marines on two vessels to help police the lawless waters off Somalia, the navy confirmed.

PARIS (AFP) - A Thai director's Cannes-winning reincarnation movie "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" opened to rave reviews in France but has flopped at the box office, industry data showed Thursday.

MELBOURNE (AFP) - Two "dumb and dumber" alleged pet thieves wrestled a stolen python in a McDonald's restaurant carpark as astonished customers looked on, Australian police said Thursday.

The fire brigade were called out to a vehicle fire on Monday afternoon from which a Thai lady and her son narrowly escaped. The 33-year-old woman and her seven-year-old son were travelling in her Mitsubishi car, fitted with dual LPG and petrol tanks, along Sukhumvit Road near Sattahip when the car began to slow down [...]

The four would-be robbers of a Foreign Exchange Booth in Central Pattaya have now been apprehended as they attempted to flee Thailand from Suvarnabhumi Airport. The four, aged between 28 and 57, previously thought to be from the Middle-East, were actually Peruvians who had come down from Bangkok.  Their apartment in Bangkok, to where they were [...]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Researchers said Wednesday they have identified two new genetic mutations linked to the deadliest types of ovarian cancer, which may play a key role in suppressing tumors.

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A Thai diplomat in a northern Malaysian state has said his countrymen working in Malaysia are funding insurgents in Thailand's restive southern provinces, according to a report Friday.

BANGKOK (AFP) - The Thai baht smashed a 13-year record against the US dollar on Thursday as the country's prime minister predicted continuing strength for the currency, while fears over the impact on exports persist.

An Indian Supreme Court directive that grain that would otherwise rot be distributed to the poor met with a blunt rejection from Prime Minister (and economist) Manmohan Singh. Yet the country has vastly more buffer-stock grain than it needs, and 25% of the world's hungry poor. - Raja Murthy

That two 9/11 bombers attended a terror planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur - which has its own twin towers - a year before smashing a hijacked plane into the Pentagon led the United States to brand Malaysia as a "launch pad" for the attacks, an accusation quickly withdrawn. Most of the men at the gathering are now living in obscurity behind walls of still opaque circumstances. - Derek Henry Flood (Sep 10, '10)

Securing the State by David Omand Written by a senior mandarin of Britain’s security apparatus, this book exposes the global pressures that create a need for intelligence activity, as well as key processes and dynamics such as the often difficult relationship between spy bosses and policymakers. However, the author’s speculation on the emergence of new threats in the years ahead seems to have a hidden agenda. - Mahan Abedin (Sep 10, '10)

United States General David Petraeus claimed this week that increased raids against Taliban units may have "flattened" the incidence of roadside bombs planted by Afghan insurgents in the past year. Pentagon data, however, show the Taliban's improvised explosive devices killed nearly 40% more coalition troops in the first eight months of 2010 than in the same period of 2009. - Gareth Porter (Sep 10, '10)

Google is flouting its ability to give customers what they never knew they wanted by offering "instant" search results, which are predicted even as keywords are being entered. The problem now is what to do with all the resulting 2.5 seconds saved per search. Martin J Young surveys the week's developments in computing, science, gaming and gizmos.

Food price inflation in India has climbed to 11.5%, squeezing most of the population in a country that is increasingly unequal in terms of wealth, but in particular the more than 400 million poor. Meanwhile, the government ignores the realities of a grossly inefficient food network. - Kunal Kumar Kundu

The military agreement Israel and Russia signed this week began a pas de deux that promises to be an absorbing aspect of geopolitics in the Middle East. Anything is possible for a pair untainted by idealism in their foreign policies. The pirouette is already stunning, as shown by Israel seeking to moderate Russia's military ties with Syria and Iran. - M K Bhadrakumar (Sep 10, '10)

Preliminary peace talks between the Taliban and the United States have begun, with the Pakistan military and Saudi Arabia acting as go-betweens. An early concession from the US could be the release of Pakistanis detained at Guantanamo Bay. Much thornier issues include a continued US presence in northern Afghanistan and what to do with al-Qaeda, which is busy extending its reach. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Sep 10, '10)

India showed itself Asia's strongest market this week, while at the other extreme a volatile Shanghai was the only one to lose ground. Singapore, however, is the market to keep an eye on for where the future might lead. R M Cutler runs his eye over the ups and downs in the week's markets.

As the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks approached and the land of the free was still enmeshed in two wars to combat the rising tide of Islamic world dominance, a coalition of Republican politicians, talk show hosts and assorted wackos moved without hindrance throughout the American land, in a reign of intolerance, bigotry and catchy sound bites. This was the American Inquisition ... - Pepe Escobar (Sep 10, '10)

SYDNEY (AFP) - A Russian circus performer who swallows a live fish and then regurgitates it has been forced to cancel the act after cruelty complaints in Australia.

PARIS (AFP) - French energy giant Total has paid a little over 625 million euros for a 20-percent stake in a major liquified natural gas project in Australia, two of the other companies involved announced Thursday.

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - A French garage owner who polished off a bottle of whisky before robbing his local bank in Cambodia at gunpoint was jailed for six years on Wednesday.

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - A Malaysian radio station owned by the top ethnic Chinese political party fired its CEO and a DJ on Wednesday, in the latest of a series of incidents that have stoked fears of media censorship.

The 2010 Population and Housing Census here in Thailand, will take place during the month of September, and will involve the gathering of information from Thai citizens around the Kingdom, and information from long-term foreign residents. This is the 100th Anniversary of the census which takes place every 10 years. Over 70,000 enumerators will gather the [...]

Recently at the Sattahip Community Health Centre, over 250 elderly members of the local community attended a registration meeting to ensure they can take advantage of a new scheme which is being backed by the Bangkok Pattaya Hospital and the Queen Sirigit Hospital. This new scheme ensures the registered elderly can receive free regular chuck-ups, along [...]

US Customs officials have seized more than 50lb of marijuana hidden inside a tombstone destined for Britain. The tombstone was being shipped from Kingston, Jamaica, to the UK via Cincinnati. It has the name of 35-year-old Delroy Senior inscribed on it. Part of the inscription read: “Your place no one can fill.” The marijuana ia thought to have a [...]

American golfer and world number six, Jim Furyk, was kicked out of the first FedEx Cup play-off on Wednesday after missing his tee-off time by oversleeping. Furyk, 40, told the official website of PGA Tour that he set an alarm on his cell phone which ran out of power overnight and failed to wake him up. “The [...]

A German doctor who accidentally killed 70-year-old Cambridgeshire patient David Gray has lost his legal bid to stop his sons talking to the media. Dr Daniel Ubani, who was struck off by the General Medical Council, claimed Rory and Stuart Gray should not be able to call him a “killer” and “charlatan”. A German court rejected his [...]

Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij on Tuesday predicted that the Thai baht will continue strengthening, but the trend will not affect Thailand’s export competitiveness because other currencies in the region are moving in the same direction. “Undeniably, the baht has appreciated for a year and is very likely to continue strengthening,”  he said. What could have an impact [...]

Though most autopsy results on the 89 victims of the redshirt crackdown in May are ready to be made public, “it is still difficult to identify who killed them”, a senior Department of Special Investigation official said yesterday. “The identification process is rather problematic, given the fact that firearms were used by both security officials and [...]

The meeting of the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) on Wednesday decided to raise the repurchase rate (RP) by 0.25%, from 1.50% to 1.75%, reports said. The new policy rate takes effect immediately. The panel said the policy rate is now on an upward trend, in line with economic recovery. Earlier, Federation of Thai Industries chairman Payungsak [...]