SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks in Hawthorne, California on Sept. 17, 2018. Photo: Chris Carlson / Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Elon Musk is asking a California judge to throw out a lawsuit filed against him by a British diver the tech entrepreneur called a pedophile on Twitter, arguing that it was nothing more than a “schoolyard spat on social media” that no reasonable reader took seriously.
Musk’s motion to dismiss, filed in court on Wednesday, argues that “the public knew from the outset that Musk’s insults were not intended to be statements of fact.”
Musk called diver Vernon Unsworth a “pedo” in a tweet to 22.5 million followers after Unsworth criticized Musk on CNN in July, saying his efforts to help rescue young soccer players trapped in a cave in Thailand amounted to “a PR stunt.”
Musk and engineers from his rocket company, SpaceX, built a small submarine and shipped it to Thailand to help with the rescue. The device wasn’t used and Unsworth said on CNN that it wouldn’t have worked to free the boys who were trapped in the flooded cave.
He added: “(Musk) can stick his submarine somewhere where it hurts.”
Musk later deleted his tweets about Unsworth and apologized, tweeting that his words were “spoken in anger” and that the sub was built out of kindness according to specifications from the dive team leader.
But on Aug. 30, Musk emailed a BuzzFeed News reporter, suggesting he investigate Unsworth and “stop defending child rapists,” according to the lawsuit.
“He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years,” Musk wrote, adding that Unsworth moved to Thailand “for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time,” according to the lawsuit.
“Mr. Unsworth is not a pedophile. Mr. Unsworth has never engaged in an act of pedophilia. Mr. Unsworth is not a child rapist,” the lawsuit said, adding that Unsworth has never been married to a minor.
Unsworth lives in Thailand with his “significant other,” a 40-year-old woman, and started going to Thailand in 2011 to explore and map caves, the lawsuit said.
Musk’s motion to dismiss argues that the email to BuzzFeed was supposed to be off the record, but the news outlet reported at the time that its reporters had made no such agreement — a standard practice among journalists before publishing anything without attribution.
“While many readers criticized Musk for lodging what they understood to be groundless accusations, not a single reader seemed to construe Musk’s statements literally,” Musk’s attorneys wrote.
The attorneys are arguing that reasonable readers would not take any of Musk’s statements as objective facts but rather, “nonactionable opinion.”
“Here, the reasonable reader would not have believed that Musk — without having ever met Unsworth, in the midst of a schoolyard spat on social media, and from 8,000 miles afar — was conveying that he was in possession of private knowledge that Unsworth was sexually attracted to children or engaged in sex acts with children,” according to Musk’s filing.
Musk’s statements were simply “imaginative attacks,” and even if they were offensive, such insults are protected by the First Amendment, the filing said.
“(Readers) contemporaneously recognized Musk’s comments for what they were: over-the-top insults not driven by first-hand knowledge,” it said.
Richard Overton, the oldest living U.S. Veteran at the age of 111, sits May 10, 2018, in the east Austin home he owned since 1948 after a renovation provided by Meals on Wheels of Central Texas and the Home Depot Foundation. Photo: Ralph Barrera / Austin American-Statesman
AUSTIN, Texas — Richard Overton, America’s oldest World War II veteran who was also believed to be the oldest living man in the U.S., died Thursday in Texas, a family member said. He was 112.
The Army veteran had been hospitalized with pneumonia but was released on Christmas Eve, said Shirley Overton, whose husband was Richard’s cousin and his longtime caretaker.
“They had done all they could,” she said.
He died Thursday evening at a rehab facility in Austin, Texas, she said.
Richard Overton was in his 30s when he volunteered for the Army and was at Pearl Harbor just after the Japanese attack in 1941. He once said that one secret to his long life was smoking cigars and drinking whiskey, which he often was found doing on the porch of his Austin home.
His recent birthdays drew national attention and strangers would stop by his house to meet him. Even well into his 100s, he would drive widows in his neighborhood to church.
“With his quick wit and kind spirit he touched the lives of so many, and I am deeply honored to have known him,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement Thursday, calling Overton “an American icon and Texas legend.”
“Richard Overton made us proud to be Texans and proud to be Americans,” the governor added. “We can never repay Richard Overton for his service to our nation and for his lasting impact on the Lone Star State.”
Overton was born in 1906 near Austin and served in the all-black 1887th Engineer Aviation Battalion.
In 2013, former President Barack Obama honored Overton at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
“He was there at Pearl Harbor, when the battleships were still smoldering,” Obama said of Overton. “He was there at Okinawa. He was there at Iwo Jima, where he said, ‘I only got out of there by the grace of God.'”
Puppies being treated in December after taken out of the Prawet shelter. Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
BANGKOK — Stuffed inside small cages, they stare and whimper at visitors or lie helplessly still. In every group of big dogs and adult cats, or small puppies and kittens, some are collapsed on the ground, short of breath or even dead.
It’s these scenes inside a City Hall animal shelter in Bangkok’s Prawet district that have motivated a network of animal rights organizations to push for an end to what they call “the strays’ hell,” claiming that about seven-in-10 of the hundreds of dogs and cats rounded up across the capital have died of various diseases contracted there.
But however troubling the situation may appear in photos and videos showing distressed, ill and dead animals; top city officials insist this week that they are receiving adequate care.
Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
“We have enough personnel at the Prawet shelter,” Siwa Maison, director of city’s veterinary unit, said Thursday. “There are five veterinarians. They’re [taking care of] the animals every day.”
He nonetheless acknowledged there have been some issues with disease at the shelter, but said it’s something they have under control.
“The strays normally don’t have very good immune systems to begin with, because they don’t regularly get vaccinated. There are some already sick animals coming and spreading diseases here,” he said. “But the shelter has quarantine measures. We put the sick ones in separate cages.”
It’s the latest unnecessary atrocity to private animal welfare groups, who have battled with city officials since last month after the administration announced it would step up efforts to round up strays, citing historically high levels of complaints. After threatened by litigation, City Hall in late November said it would end the roundups and consult the groups on future policy.
All animals going in there will only die. It’s a shelter without any welfare. It’s a den of diseases.
Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
Watchdog Thailand estimates about 400 dogs and cats had died in just two weeks while they were working inside the shelter in November. They say there were about 700 animals still inside before they pressured City Hall into stopping.
Bhurita Wattanasak, the group’s founder, said Tuesday that it’s the first time they will be able to work alongside the authorities to improve animal welfare, and their urgent goal is to make Bangkok’s sole public shelter sanitary enough and better equipped before more animals are put there.
“The Prawet shelter is not capable of caring for the animals. … When they get sick, they will be left to die without being treated,” she said. “Everyone closely following issues of the Prawet shelter calls it the strays’ hell. All animals going in there will only die. It’s a shelter without any welfare. It’s a den of diseases.”
Bhurita said her newly formed network, including groups called The Hope Thailand and the New Life for Animals Foundation, decided to remove hundreds of the animals, whether sick, healthy or dying.
Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
Most were sent to be evaluated by Watchdog veterinarian Patharanan Sajjarom, who said she had to close her private clinic for almost a month to treat the Prawet shelter animals, all of which were severely dehydrated and festering with diseases in a way she’d never seen in 11 years of practice.
“Dogs and cats from the shelter had distemper, coronavirus, parvovirus and parasites,” she said in an interview Tuesday, the first day her own clinic was able to reopen. “It was already difficult treating one disease, but some tested positive for up to three diseases.”
“If they were human, it would be like having influenza, which is already bad, but then you also have dengue and hepatitis B. We rarely see this kind of combination, whether in pets or strays,” she continued.
Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
Photos and videos inside the shelter provided by Watchdog show sick animals packed inside metal cages, while the more healthy ones roam loose in a shoddy-looking den. Dying kittens and puppies are laid out in rows receiving treatment that likely came too late. The images also show scores of test strips confirming the diseases.
It wasn’t the first time a government animal shelter became a charnel house. In May, a Khaosod reporter unearthed a mass grave at a shelter in Nakhon Phanom province after animal activists leaked disturbing images of the animals inside. They alleged that thousands of animals rounded up due to a rabies scare died there under insufficient care.
And Patharanan said the Bangkok shelter poses more serious health risks to animals if no preventive steps are taken.
“A disease den this huge shouldn’t have existed in Bangkok,” she said. “They can spread, and they can mutate. Like feline coronavirus causing [feline] herpesvirus is something that happened just a few decades ago.”
Dogs at the Prawet shelter. Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
“Diseases accumulate inside the Prawet shelter. If new animals are taken there, they’ll definitely be infected. They can’t be treated because the germs are in there, in the animals,” she said. “It’s like a killing field, as if the animals were rounded up to be killed with biological weapons, letting their bodies killing themselves.”
While Watchdog founder Bhurita said conditions have been poor ever since the Prawet shelter opened decades ago, Deputy Gov. Thaweesak Lertprapan said in an interview yesterday that, despite some health problems, the overall situation was greatly exaggerated by the animal groups.
“I can assure you that we take a very good care of the animals in there. We provide them food, water, and clean their cages and dens every day. They’re regularly vaccinated for rabies and ticks or fleas,” he said. “I had to say that many dogs that are caught or sent there are already not very healthy. … The big problem are those with distemper. They are taken there, die, and spread the disease to the ones already in there.”
Photo: Watchdog Thailand / Courtesy
“I admit that there are some cases that got infected inside the shelter,” he added.
Thaweesak said the animal rights groups happened to visit the shelter at the same time a few “poor-looking” animals were sent there, which outraged them and provoked them to unfairly accuse the shelter of mismanagement.
Both Thaweesak and city vet Siwa said the shelter has been regularly disinfected and sanitized, but Watchdog’s vet Patharanan said their measures may be inadequate.
“Parvovirus can survive [outside a body] up to six months if not being disinfected with a highly concentrated antiseptic, the kind that can even be harmful to humans if inhaled,” she said.
Although he denies the reality described by the animal welfare network, Thaweesak said the administration would set up a special committee to oversee policies regarding stray animals in the capital which would include members from the network.
“We told them that once the committee is set up, we will organize a big cleaning day at the Prawet shelter. We’re ready to open it for everyone to see,” he said. “We also received funds to upgrade the shelter, and we’ll definitely work on that.”
Despite her skepticism about working with the authorities, Bhurita said she was glad they could reach terms. She vowed to keep pushing to improve conditions at all government animal shelters nationwide.
“We’d like to change things in Prawet. When that’s done we’ll move on to another shelter in Thap Than district,” she said, referring to a major animal shelter in Uthai Thani province. “I don’t have a lot of confidence, but as we got in we’ll fight in every way we can.”
Bhurita said her network would meet with city officials on Jan. 8 to discuss future policies. Thaweesak however declined to confirm if they would attend.
A photo posted in January 218 to the CSI LA Facebook page showing what appeared to be another fine watch worn by Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan in October 2016 when he was under fire for an expensive taxpayer-funded flight to Hawaii. Original image: Independent News Network / CSI LA Facebook
BANGKOK — One year after the deputy junta leader became engulfed in scandal over his collection of expensive watches, the National Anti-Corruption Commission on Thursday said it had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
By a vote of 5 to 3, the commission ruled during the year-end holidays that Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, who is also deputy premier, had no intention to conceal the timepieces worth tens of millions of baht that he did no list in mandatory assets disclosures.
The commission said it found that Prawit borrowed the watches from “old school friends” including a telecom tycoon named Pattawat Suksriwong. The majority ruled nothing illegal had occurred.
Noting that it’s “normal” for Pattawat to “take care of his friends,” the commission noted that 21 of the watches are now in his possession, though Pattawat has no record of having purchased them. In fact, it found most of the watches had no record of being purchased in Thailand.
The commission could find no records for one watch – No. 22 – and said a costly diamond ring also being reviewed was actually owned by Prawit’s mother.
The commission’s investigation was faulted from the start by good-government advocates for being headed by officials with close relationships to Prawit.
The scandal erupted one year ago when he was spotted wearing a 3-million-baht Richard Mille watch for a government photo shoot. Subsequent searches by online amateur sleuths turned up dozens of similar watches made by the likes of Patek Philippe and Rolex.
Mongkorn Timkul, left, DJs earlier this month at Wonderfruit.
Top: Mongkorn Timkul, left, DJs earlier this month at Wonderfruit.
Two years ago I was invited to join the Khaosod English team as a contributor. The aim was for me to drop knowledge on Bangkok’s small yet vibrant underground music, arts and club scene.
Since writing my first column in 2016, I’ve interviewed many local DJs, artists, club owners and promoters. In my opinion those folks are the fabric of Bangkok’s scene and meeting them all has left me deeply inspired. So much so, it made me realize that it’s time to put down the pen and focus on producing my own music.
That’s why I’ll be saying “live long and prosper” to my readers in this final column. But before I go, let me give a shout out to a few places and people that I feel have put Bangkok on the map.
Beam
In 2016 I was a bit skeptical about Thonglor nightspot Beam. I wasn’t trying to be mean but – from my experience – the early 2000s saw mega clubs such as Astra and Ministry of Sound go belly-up in a very short time. As ambitious as those clubs were, they just couldn’t survive in what was a small scene.
But Beam came at a time when electronic music was appealing to a younger crowd. On top of that, the venue’s state-of-the-art sound system and A-list DJs such as Derrick May Goldie taking control of the booth on weekends made Beam the jewel in the Thonglor nightlife crown.
De Commune
It wasn’t long after Beam’s opening that another contender – De Commune – opened its doors in November 2017. It has since earned props as a venue that allows other local promoters to organize events. One year later, crews such as Phatfunk and Mela are packing the venue’s dance floor.
De Commune owner Phatompol “New” Chanin says he has many fond memories of the events that took place this year.
“We’ve had a lot of really cool events this year, I think we did okay,” New said. For 2019, New and his six business partners plan on expanding and renovating De Commune. So expect a bigger and better venue by spring.
Highland
In 2017 I interviewed Thai Cannabis activists Rattapon “Guide” Sanrak. He, along with his cannabis activist group “Highland,” has been educating folks and changing attitudes toward medical cannabis in Thailand.
As some may have already heard, Thailand’s parliament on Tuesday legalized medical marijuana. This is a huge step. In a recent telephone interview, I asked Guide if he feels he made a difference with Highland, and what he thinks about the government’s decision to go legal.
“I think [Highland] definitely helped change attitudes” he said, but added that he remains skeptical about the future medical cannabis industry, as it may differ from that in the United States and Canada, as Thailand risks letting big pharmaceutical companies take over the market. “It’s not gonna be as open as people would like it to be,” Guide said.
Wonderfruit
To think that two decades ago organizing festivals of this magnitude was considered a dream. From the workshops, food and music; love it or hate it, Wonderfruit has earned acclaim as one of Asia’s top music festivals.
What’s great about it: There are sound systems and music everywhere and people can explore and experience tunes they wouldn’t normally hear. To top that off, it’s all done in a safe environment where festival-goers are free to enjoy themselves.
In all, I’m just as excited about Bangkok’s evolving music scene now as I was when I started in the early ‘90s.
I’m grateful and thankful for all these experiences and – most of all – I’m glad to share them with you all. I hope the people and places I’ve written about can inspire you as much as they have me.
Special thanks to Todd for taking me under his wing and Lobsang for the editing. Also big ups to Sun and Brady for taking photos for my previous columns.
This combination of synthetic aperture radar images taken by JAXA's ALOS-2 satellite and analyzed by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan shows Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano, center in images, before and after the Dec. 22, 2018, eruption. Image: Associated Press
Top: This combination of synthetic aperture radar images taken by JAXA’s ALOS-2 satellite and analyzed by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan shows Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano, center in images, before and after the Dec. 22, 2018, eruption. Image: Associated Press
JAKARTA — Radar data from satellites, converted into images, shows Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau island volcano is dramatically smaller following a weekend eruption that triggered a deadly tsunami.
Satellite photos aren’t available because of cloud cover but radar images from a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency satellite taken before and after the eruption show the volcano’s southwestern flank has disappeared.
Dave Petley, head of research and innovation at Sheffield University who analyzed similar images from a European Space Agency satellite, said they support the theory that a landslide, most of it undersea, caused the tsunami that killed at least 430 people on Saturday evening.
“The challenge now is to interpret what might be happening on the volcano, and what might happen next,” he wrote in a blog.
Indonesian authorities are warning people to stay away a kilometer (less than a mile) from the Sunda Strait coastline because of the risk of another tsunami.
JAXA’s post-eruption image shows concentric waves radiating from the island, which experts say is caused by ongoing eruptions.
Anak Krakatau, which means child of Krakatau, is the offspring of the infamous Krakatau volcano that affected global climate with a massive eruption in 1883.
Anak Krakatau first rose above sea level in 1929, according to Indonesia’s volcanology agency, and has been increasing its land mass since then.
This Dec. 9, 2018, selfie provided by Colin O'Brady, of Portland., Oregon, shows himself in Antarctica. Photo: Colin O'Brady / Associated Press
An Oregon man became the first person to traverse Antarctica alone without any assistance on Wednesday, trekking across the polar continent in an epic 54-day journey that was previously deemed impossible.
Colin O’Brady, of Portland, finished the bone-chilling, 930-mile (1,500-kilometer) journey as friends, family and fans tracked the endurance athlete’s progress in real time online.
“I did it!” a tearful O’Brady said on a call to his family gathered in Portland for the holidays, according to his wife, Jenna Besaw.
“It was an emotional call,” she said. “He seemed overwhelmed by love and gratitude, and he really wanted to say ‘Thank you’ to all of us.”
O’Brady was sleeping near the finish line in Antarctica late Wednesday and could not immediately be reached for comment.
The 33-year-old O’Brady documented his nearly entirely uphill journey – which he called The Impossible First – on his Instagram page. He wrote Wednesday that he covered the last roughly 80 miles (129 kilometers) in one big, impromptu final push to the finish line that took well over an entire day.
“While the last 32 hours were some of the most challenging hours of my life, they have quite honestly been some of the best moments I have ever experienced,” O’Brady posted.
The day before, he posted that he was “in the zone” and thought he could make it to the end in one go.
“I’m listening to my body and taking care of the details to keep myself safe,” he wrote. “I called home and talked to my mom, sister and wife – I promised them I will stop when I need to.”
Though others have traversed Antarctica, they either had assistance with reinforced supplies or kites that helped propel them forward.
In 2016, British explorer Henry Worsley died attempting an unassisted solo trip across Antarctica, collapsing from exhaustion toward the end of the trek. Worsley’s friend and fellow English adventurer Louis Rudd is currently attempting an unaided solo in Worsley’s honor and was competing against O’Brady to be the first to do it.
Besaw said O’Brady plans to stay on Antarctica until Rudd finishes his trek, hopefully in the next few days.
“It’s a small club,” she joked. “His intention is to wait for Louis and have kind of a celebratory moment with the only other person on the planet to have accomplished this same thing.”
O’Brady described in detail the ups and downs along the way since he began the trek on Nov. 3. He had to haul 375 pounds (170 kilograms) of gear largely uphill and over sastrugi, wave-like ridges created by wind.
“Not only am I pulling my … sled all day, but I’m pulling it up and over thousands of these sastrugi speed bumps created by the violent wind,” he wrote in an Instagram post on Nov. 12. “It’s a frustrating process at times to say the least.”
On Nov. 18, he wrote that he awoke to find his sled completely buried from an all-night blasting of wind and snow. That day he battled a 30 mph (48 kph) headwind for eight hours as he trudged along.
“There were several times I considered stopping, putting my tent back up and calling it a day,” he wrote. “I wanted so badly to quit today as I was feeling exhausted and alone, but remembering all of the positivity that so many people have been sending, I took a deep breath and focused on maintaining forward progress one step at a time and managed to finish a full day.”
On Day 37, or Dec. 9, O’Brady wrote about how much he’s changed, along with a selfie in which he looks almost in pain, snow gathered around his furry hat.
“I’m no longer the same person I was when I left on the journey, can you see it in my face?” he wrote. “I’ve suffered, been deathly afraid, cold and alone. I’ve laughed and danced, cried tears of joy and been awestruck with love and inspiration.”
Though O’Brady had initially thought he’d want a cheeseburger at the end of his nearly impossible journey, Besaw said her husband has been fantasizing about fresh fish and salad because he has mostly been eating freeze-dried foods.
As for what’s next for O’Brady, who also has summited Mount Everest, Besaw said she’s not entirely sure.
“We are just so in the moment celebrating this right now,” she said. “Then we’ll see what’s next on the horizon.”
Inside the box is a pilot who’s crashed in the Sahara, a delicate rose with only four thorns, a wise fox and an elusive sheep. There’s also a little planet-hopping prince in green.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s memorable cast of characters are baked into the world’s culture, millions of minds and now the delicious fare of one Bangkok pastry chef.
Pop culture has been deliciously interpreted by Surat Shikari ever since he quit his job at a Michelin-starred restaurant and started Befor.Tart, an online shop where he combines his years of baking experience and favorite pastime.
Recently, to pay tribute to the 75th anniversary of classic children’s book “The Little Prince,” he whipped up a unique collection of four mini-tarts, or tartlets.
The first is pleasantly sweet and made from sheep’s milk to capture the innocence of the pilot when, in the story, he draws a box-as-sheep. The central object of the prince’s love, a lovely yet haughty rose, is represented by a rose jam-filled raspberry tart. Fox – his moral guide – becomes wheat flakes topped with a green apple cream. Twin dark chocolate tarts filled with mint gel evoke the bittersweet farewell between the young prince and the pilot.
Since late 2016, Surat has woken before dawn to bake pastries – adding buttery, sweet and sour fillings to his own designs – that he will personally put into his customers’ hands before noon.
A geography graduate, the 34-year-old took a leap by chasing a career in cuisine. He apprenticed for one year at The Oriental Hotel before interning for another at a hotel in the United States. He returned to Bangkok and worked as a pastry chef at a few restaurants including Michelin-starred Gaggan and world-renowned L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.
And then he quit.
“I wanted to have something of my own,” Surat said, reasoning that fine dining wasn’t the destination he’d set out for. “After some time, I realized I didn’t want to be a chef at a restaurant because it has other duties such as ordering ingredients and managing colleagues’ work schedules.”
“So I was thinking, ‘What should I do so I can bake all the time?’” Surat said.
A self-confessed cinephile, Surat revisited his own obsession. He brought the idea of the movie handbills he’d collected since his teen years to the kitchen counter. “Each handbill has a unique design dedicated to that a specific movie, so I went, ‘Okay, let’s do that with sweet dishes,’” Surat said.
Surat Shikari
The business scheme was met with frowns from his friends who didn’t see the sense in it. It didn’t help that Surat chose a niche arthouse movie franchise – Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy – as the theme for his first tart collection.
“Some friends told me I was daydreaming. Others encouraged me, but I could see their disbelief,” Surat said, laughing.
So far Surat has created eight collections. They include Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi mindbender “Inception,” the futuristic Siri-alike “Her,” Hong Kong cult classic “Comrades: Almost a Love Story” and the Oscar-winning “La La Land.”
Completing each collection – getting the texture, flavors and presentation just right – requires heavy, detailed research.
“I went to cinemas and watched “La La Land” almost 10 times, sometimes just to see the colors of the costumes the characters wore,” Surat said. “I bought the movie’s soundtrack CD and listened to it in the car over and over.”
The efforts culminated in four pieces of art tarts, each dedicated to a song from the film. “Someone in the Crowd,” heard when Emma Stone’s Mia and her girlfriends sashay in colorful dresses, is represented by a “feminine sweet” blueberry and matched with cream cheese.
Mia and Sebastian’s tap dance routine set to “A Lovely Night” becomes a panna cotta with two flavors: mango for Emma Stone’s yellow dress and coconut for Ryan Gosling’s white shirt. The two fruit jams slope down each side of the tart to meet in the middle. “When you eat it from one side to another, you can feel the change of tastes, just like Mia and Sebastian’s shifting moves back and forth,” said Surat.
“Every story is hidden in each layer. Every single piece of tart is like my own child,” Surat said, smiling.
While one boxed collection is 350 baht, Surat also offers custom, made-to-order desserts he sells for 750 baht.
Photo: before.tart / Facebook
The high prices are matched by the tough tasks he must tackle, such as when customers challenge him with material he is unfamiliar with. One fangirl ordered tarts to portray the life of a K-pop idol Surat had never heard of.
Another time, an art enthusiast asked Surat to incorporate Macbeth-inspired, immersive play “Sleep No More” into the dessert. Surat took about a week to gather information by reading interviews with the producer and watching footage from a New York production. He came up with three sets of tarts containing five flavors to mimic the actual play, which loops three times a day simultaneously on each floor of a five-story hotel.
“I don’t make the most delicious tarts, but I put an experience in them,” he says.
What’s next? Surat will keep making tarts until he can afford to open his own shop. Of course, making that dream complete means also hosting movie screenings for everyone enjoying the tarts.
Photo: Department of Marine and Coastal Resources / Facebook
PHANG NGA — A rare sea turtle laid about 100 eggs on a Thai beach fewer than 10 days after another did so at another beach for the first time in five years.
Marine officials are rejoicing at what they hope is a trend: leatherback sea turtles returning to the beaches of Phang Nga province to lay their eggs. Now they’re moving to safeguard them from egg thieves by setting up a video feed.
“Finding leatherback turtles is a lucky sign that natural resources are recovering,” Jatuporn Burutpat, marine department director, said Thursday. “They are one of the hardest animals to find, and one that we give up hope looking for that has a worrying tendency to go extinct.”
On Dec. 17, a leatherback sea turtle laid 93 eggs on a Thai beach for the first time since 2013. According to Jatuporn, a meter-deep hole containing a second clutch of up to 100 eggs appeared Wednesday morning at Tai Muang Beach, about 30 kilometers from from the first at Khuk Khak Beach.
Marine officials fenced off both to prevent the public – and possible thieves, including other animals – from disturbing the gestating eggs. There are now six CCTVs monitoring the two clutches.
Photo: Department of Marine and Coastal Resources / Facebook
Jatuporn urged people at the beaches to pick up trash, especially plastic bags, which sea turtles mistake for jellyfish. He said that after the 2004 tsunami, leatherback turtle sightings on Thai beaches sharply decreased, though they have not been registered as a protected species yet.
“Leatherback turtles are still waiting in the queue to become a protected animal,” he said. “So I’d like citizens to help keep an eye on the eggs.”
Anyone can watch and help monitor the eggs until they hatch in about two months, at the marine department’s Love Sea Turtles page.
Kasetsart University professor Thon Thamrongnawasawat, who alerted the public to the first clutch 10 days ago, expressed his excitement about the Turtle Cam on Facebook.
“I’ve never seen anywhere set up this kind of viewing for turtle eggs,” Thon wrote. “It’s cool. It’s awesome. The more I watch, the more awesome it gets.”
According to the IUCN Red List, leatherback sea turtles are considered a vulnerable species.
See any mischief on the turtle cam? Contact the Department of Marine and Coastal Resource’s Phuket branch at 076-391-128 to alert them.
Photo: Department of Marine and Coastal Resources / FacebookContact information for the Department of Marine Resources’ research branches in Rayong, Samut Sakhon, Chumphon, Songkhla and Phuket, from top to bottom. Image: Thailand Marine Endangered Species Stranding Network / Facebook
The Golden Mermaid Statue on Samila Beach in Songkhla province. Photo: Ahoerstemeier / Wikimedia Commons
SONGKHLA — A beach in the southern province of Songkhla has been closed to the public after a popular landmark was damaged by one of at least five pipe bombs planted in the area.
At around 10pm last night, police were alerted to two blasts near the Golden Mermaid Statue and Cat and Mouse sculpture on Samila Beach. No one was injured in any of the blasts, according to Lt. Gen. Ronnasilp Poosara, provincial police commander.
One of the bombs which exploded last night damaged the tail of the mermaid statue.
After another bomb exploded near the beach Thursday morning, bomb squad officers located two more improvised explosive devices in the same area.
The Golden Mermaid statue was created by sculptor Jitr Buabus in 1966 to commemorate a famous saga written by Sunthorn Phu, a poet to King Rama II. It is one of several statues and monuments along the beach.
Samila Beach has been temporarily closed since last night. Songkhla Gov. Weeranan Pengchan said security measures in the province, especially in the Hat Yai district, have been increased for the safety of residents and tourists.
