A wastewater treatment plant on Friday at a CP-owned meat processing plant in Bangkok’s Bang Na district.
BANGKOK — The manager of the wastewater treatment pond at a food processing plant turned himself in to police Monday evening and was charged with negligence following the death of five people on the Bang Na district premises.
After being questioned for several hours by police, Preecha Tamporn; head of the wastewater treatment pond inside the Charoen Pokphand Foods, or CPF, plant; was charged with negligence resulting in death. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in jail and a 200,000 baht fine.
The 51-year-old was released on bail, city police chief Lt. Gen. Sanit Mahathavorn said.
According to Sanit, witnesses and the plant’s employees will be further questioned about the Friday incident, in which five people – including a veterinary studies intern from a prominent university and four plant employees – suffocated to death after falling into a wastewater treatment pond.
The Industrial Works Department ordered the plant’s wastewater system shut for 30 days on Monday afternoon until it undergoes improvements and meets required safety standards.
CPF, the company to which the plant belongs, is a subsidiary of multinational conglomerate CP Group.
Police escort activist Rangsiman Rome from the military tribunal to be released at Bangkok Remand Prison on Monday afternoon
Update: Rangsiman Rome filed the petition 30 June.
BANGKOK — Released after being detained overnight, pro-democracy activist Rangsiman Rome said Monday he would continue to demand transparency over a 179-billion baht rail project the Thai military government recently signed with China.
Rangsiman initially planned to submit a petition Monday asking the government to reveal details of the controversial Sino-Thai railway construction but was arrested by police a day prior. The 25-year-old activist, freed on bail by the military court yesterday, said his group would file the request soon.
“I would like to announce the date on our Facebook page. We will make a formal announcement,” Rangsiman, who leads activist network Democracy Restoration Group, said by phone. “I think we will find out the date soon.”
A spokesman for the junta said Rangsiman is free to do so.
“To file a complaint or request to the government is a normal thing to do,” Col. Winthai Suvaree said Tuesday. “Any citizen can do that.”
He said he’s not aware of any attempt by security officers to deter Rangsiman from submitting his transparency request.
Police on Sunday arrested Rangsiman on the allegation that he ignored an August 2016 appointment with the prosecutor for a charge related to his campaign against the junta-backed charter draft two months earlier.
But Rangsiman said he never received any summon and accused authorities of fabricating the allegation to stop him from submitting his petition. The chief of Bang Sao Thong Police Station, which was responsible for the warrant, said Tuesday he was in a meeting and could not comment.
The activist was detained for a night at a police station holding cell before the military tribunal freed him on bail Monday night. The bail also came with the condition that he could not “incite unrest.” He was also barred from traveling abroad without permission.
Rangsiman said he believes his transparency campaign would not violate those conditions.
“I think requesting information does not fit that definition,” the activist said. “We only want facts about the agreement between the Thai and Chinese governments – which by principle, the public is entitled to know.”
Junta spokesman Winthai said whether security officers would take any action depended on Rangsiman’s action on the day he files the request.
“It’s not about who he is, it’s about what his behavior might be,” the colonel said.
Rangsiman’s group announced last week they will petition the government to publicly disclose details of the high-speed railway project the Thai government awarded to Chinese firms earlier this year.
Critics oppose the deal on grounds that it lacks accountability and may give the Chinese counterpart the upper hand over Thailand , an allegation the junta denied.
Kon Rak Mime Festival 2016. Photo: Konnakhao Mime Academy / Facebook
BANGKOK — Dive into excitement, laughter and smiles as an event of nonverbal, visual shows takes place for three days next month.
Dedicated to high-profile mime performances, the Kon Rak Mime Festival returns this year with mimics from Germany, Japan, Italy and Thailand.
Germany’s Taro Sladek will perform a solo act in four parts including Japanese folklore “Fox and the City” and famous ballet “Swan Lake” while Matteo Cionini from Italy will tell fantasy stories through his talented techniques.
Some of Japan’s best mime performers, Kita Kyoichi and Hiromi Hosokawa, will take to the stage along with Bangkok’s artists Wasu Wanlayangkoon, Paitoon Laisakul and Chalisa Donmon.
One-half of the event’s revenues will go to the Mime for Deaf Children – a performing arts project which hosts mime workshops in schools for deaf children in Bangkok.
Kon Rak Mime fest will take place July 21 through July 23 at the Thailand Cultural Centre. Tickets are 600 baht for the general public and 300 baht for students. They will be available at Happening Shop at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Nong Taprachan and Syrup the Space.
While many Bangkok university students take internships at companies or summer classes, Wanladar Kantaponjaruntorn, 21, instead opted to work as a security guard at Future Park Rangsit.
PATHUM THANI— While many Bangkok university students take internships at companies or summer classes, one young woman instead opted to work as a security guard.
Wanladar “June” Kantaponjaruntorn, 21, has been working since the beginning of June at the Future Park Rangsit shopping mall to make a little extra pocket money and learn about how other people live.
“I see the security guard at malls, and I want to go up to him and ask how much money he gets. I want to know if his job is hard and if I could take it,” Wanladar said. “I want to see different sides of society.”
Wanladar poses next to the door of her post Sunday at Future Park Rangsit.
The third-year economics Bangkok University student, who often takes part-time jobs, said she wanted to challenge herself to see if she could handle the security guard job.
She said her job, and the security guard job in general, is an honorable profession.
“I think it’s an important job. We have to take care of the safety of the mall. It’s not degrading or embarrassing like some people might think because we put our physical effort into it. I feel good when I help out people and give them directions.”
Wanladar says her shift is from 10am to 10pm everyday, and that she had to be trained in the mall’s map and how to use the walkie talkie. She gets paid 465 baht per day.
“I want to be able to say that once, I did this job, and tell stories about it,” Wanladar said, who plans on becoming a broker. She’ll be working as a guard for her entire summer break, until the end of August.
Bangkok University’s Facebook page commented on her live interview video.
“Congratulations, we’re so happy and proud of you. One can’t have only academic knowledge…but also life and career skills,” it wrote.
See her interview in Thai with a Khaosod newspaper reporter below.
Wanladar salutes in her security guard uniform.Wanladar opens a door for people at Future Park Rangsit.
A man wearing a balaclava conceals a rifle in a bag bearing the printed logo of a popcorn company Feb. 1 2014 in Lak Si district.
BANGKOK — The Court of Appeals on Tuesday overturned the conviction of a man convicted of opening fire during the 2014 political unrest, wounding four people.
Despite his confession and conviction in a lower court, the appeals court acquitted Vivat Yodprasit due to a lack of witnesses who could identify him as the man captured in security camera footage wearing a balaclava and shooting at rival protesters in the northern Bangkok district of Lak Si.
The shooter concealed his rifle inside a large bag bearing the logo of a popcorn company, earning him the pseudonym “Popcorn Gunman.”
Vivat’s lawyer said in 2014 he was tortured by police into giving a false confession.
The shooting wounded four people, among them a 72-year-old man who was left permanently paralyzed. He died seven months after the incident.
Vivat was serving a 37-year jail term after the Criminal Court had found him guilty of murder, attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons in March last year.
The shooting took place as members of People’s Committee for Absolute Democracy With the King as Head of State, or PCAD, marched to besiege the Lak Si District Office to prevent officials from distributing ballots in the area in February 2014.
It was one of many confrontations between groups who sought to block the election called by the government of then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and pro-election supporters.
The PCAD successfully obstructed the election, the results of which were later voided, paving the way for military coup which ousted Yingluck in May 2014.
Vivat garnered support from the PCAD. Some of its members – sporting popcorn logo T-shirts – staged a rally outside his prison cell as a show of solidarity after he was convicted and jailed last year.
The court said Vivat will remain in prison as the case will next go before the Supreme Court.
Brazil's President Michel Temer waves as he exits after attending a ceremony Monday at the Planalto Presidential Palace, in Brasilia. Photo: Eraldo Peres / Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s attorney general formally accused President Michel Temer of corruption on Monday, making him the first sitting president in Latin America’s largest nation to face criminal charges.
Attorney General Rodrigo Janot’s accusation is the latest salvo in an intensifying showdown between Temer and justice officials who are building a corruption case that reaches to the highest levels.
The case now goes to the lower Chamber of Deputies in Congress, which must decide whether it has merit. If two-thirds of the legislature decides that it does, then the president will be suspended for up to 180 days while a trial is conducted. House Speaker Rodrigo Maia, an ally of Temer, would be president in the interim.
In his decision, Janot said that Temer at some point between March and April of this year took a bribe of around $150,000 offered by Joesly Batista, former chairman of meat-packing giant JBS.
Janot opened an investigation last month into Temer for corruption, obstruction of justice and being part of a criminal organization. A recording emerged that apparently captured Temer, in a late-night conversation with Batista earlier this year, endorsing hush money to former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, a former Temer ally who is serving a 15-year sentence for corruption. Batista reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
Temer has denied wrongdoing and said he refuses to resign despite numerous calls for him to do so and plunging popularity. The office of the presidency said it would not have comment Monday night.
Janot’s decision to put forward only the corruption allegation may be a strategy to force the lower Chamber of Deputies to first deal with it before having to consider the other allegations.
Allies of Temer have been torn between whether to continue supporting the beleaguered leader or bail on him because of fears that association could be toxic during elections next year.
Janot’s 64-page decision was a blistering assessment of Temer and his actions as Brazil’s top leader. Janot said bribes to Temer could have reached about USD $12 million over nine months, and that in general Temer showed a total disregard for the office.
“The circumstances of this meeting (with Batista) – at night and without any register in the official schedule of the president of the Republic – reveal the intent of not leaving traces of the criminal actions already taken,” wrote Janot.
Earlier Monday, Temer sought to show his government conducting business as usual, defiantly saying he wasn’t going anywhere in his first comments since returning from a trip to Russia and Norway last week that was filled with gaffes and mounting bad news.
“Nothing will destroy us. Not me and not our ministers,” he said during the ceremonial signing of a bill in the capital of Brasilia.
Despite the optimism, Temer is facing risks to his mandate on several fronts, from tanking popularity to numerous calls, including from heavyweight politicians, for him to step down.
His trip last week to Russia and Norway ended up underscoring the president’s problems and Brazil’s diminished stature overseas thanks to a steady stream of corruption scandals the last three years.
Few people showed up at the reception at Brazil’s embassy in Moscow, no top Norwegian officials welcomed Temer at Oslo’s airport and the country’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, gave Temer a public lecture about the colossal “Car Wash” investigation that has upended Brazilian politics and could even jail Temer and several of his Cabinet ministers.
Launched in March 2014, the investigation into billions of dollars in inflated construction contracts and kickbacks to politicians has landed dozens of the country’s elite in jail and threatens many more.
“We are very concerned about the ‘Car Wash’ probe,” said Solberg, adding that it was important for Brazil to “clean up” corruption.
To top it off, during Temer’s visit, Norway announced a 50 percent cut in funds it pays into Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fund because of increased deforestation. The increased deforestation began before Temer took power last year, but environmentalists argue his policies are aggravating the situation.
“It was a trip to distract people from the problems in politics,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “It ended up being a disaster.”
Temer, who took over in May of last year after President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and later removed from office, now also has the dubious distinction of having the lowest approval rating of a president since 1989.
The Datafolha polling institute showed over the weekend that just 7 percent of those questioned approved of Temer’s administration, the worst since the country was embroiled in a crisis of hyper-inflation on the watch of President Jose Sarney.
Even stalwart allies have begun to bail on Temer.
Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who initially supported Temer and is a key leader of the junior coalition party, said in an article published by daily Folha de S.Paulo on Monday that the president could end the crisis by ushering in new elections sooner than the end of his mandate, which goes through 2018.
“I plead with the president to meditate over the opportunity of such a gesture of greatness,” said Cardoso.
Speaker of Parliament and Mongolian People's Party presidential candidate Miyegombo Enkhbold, left, casts his vote at a polling station Monday at a school in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Photo: Chadraabal Baramsai / Associated Press
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia — Mongolia’s presidential election appeared headed for a runoff with the latest vote count early Tuesday showing a business tycoon leading the ruling party’s candidate and a nationalist wanting the country to benefit more from its mineral wealth.
Khaltmaa Battulga of the Democratic Party had a clear lead but less than the required 50 percent of the 1.3 million votes cast Monday to avoid a runoff, the General Election Commission said.
The Mongolian People’s Party’s Miyegombo Enkhbold, speaker of the parliament and a horse dealer, had looked to be shut out of the runoff in the early results but pulled into second place as votes from more remote areas of the landlocked Asian country were counted.
Enkhbold was around 1,700 votes ahead of nationalist Sainkhuu Ganbaatar of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, a vocal critic of mining giant Rio Tinto’s operations in the country, according to the latest data from the election commission.
Ganbaatar’s party protested the overnight turn in preliminary results that put their candidate, who had earlier been leading Enkhbold by 15,000 votes, in third place, accusing the election commission of fraud. The commission could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
While the nation of 3 million had been an oasis of democratic stability since the end of communist rule nearly three decades ago, its politics have grown increasingly fractious amid an economic crisis and accusations of corruption among the ruling class.
The candidates were seeking to succeed Tsakhia Elbegdorj of the Democratic Party, who has served the maximum of two four-year terms. The winner will become Mongolia’s fifth president since 1990.
Enkhbold, whose party won parliamentary elections last year by a landslide, had been widely seen as representing stability at a time when Mongolia is showing tentative signs of recovery from an economic crisis brought about by a dramatic drop in global commodity prices.
Battulga campaigned on a “Mongolia First” policy, borrowing the language of President Donald Trump. He promised to be “a patriotic president” seeking “equal cooperation” with neighbors like China, which he has criticized in the past.
Battulga’s company, Genco, is one of Mongolia’s largest, with businesses including hotels, media, banking, alcohol, horsemeat and a Genghis Khan-themed complex. He was agriculture minister between 2012 and 2014 and is a former member of parliament, as well as president of the Mongolian Judo Association.
Ganbaatar, a self-described feng shui master and “Robin Hood” for the masses, has claimed Mongolia should get a better deal with Rio Tinto and its copper and gold mine, Oyu Tolgoi.
Around two-thirds of nearly 2 million registered voters cast ballots, the election commission said.
Sandwiched between Russia and China, resource-rich Mongolia has been roiled by financial upheaval and the increasing draw of China’s economic and political influence that competes with its ties with the democratic West, especially the United States.
Foreign investment in Mongolia has slumped in recent years following weaker commodity prices and high-profile disputes between the government and large investors including Rio Tinto. Mongolia’s economy grew just 1 percent last year, down from 17.5 percent in 2011, when it was the world’s fastest-growing. It now has USD $23 billion in debt, more than double the size of its economy. Unemployment is roughly 9 percent, with about one in five Mongolians living in poverty.
The country recently secured a USD $5.5 billion International Monetary Fund-led bailout to stem its financial crisis, with a USD $500 million bond repayment due in January 2018. Enkhbold’s party pledges to continue the IMF’s program, including higher taxes and spending cuts, while Ganbaatar has criticized the IMF.
For 30-year old district government office worker and mother Tserendejid Bayanbaatar, restoring the economy and creating jobs for young people were top concerns in the election.
“I want the future president to support young people and young families, support their work environment and create conditions for stable incomes,” Bayanbaatar said.
Avirmed Dangaa, an accountant and former municipal official, said creating stability was important.
“Trust of foreign investors is restored if the government is stable,” said Dangaa, who favored Enkhbold.
Battulga has a large following among urban entrepreneurs and youth.
“I don’t like corruption and favoritism, which is prevalent everywhere in all levels of Mongolian government. I voted against these corrupt officials,” said Enkhmaa, a 28-year-old entrepreneur who gave only her first name.
President Donald Trump speaks about the U.S. role in the Paris climate change accord June 1 in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. Photo: Andrew Harnik / Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The reviews from around the globe are in and they show scant confidence outside the United States in President Donald Trump’s ability to do the right thing on international affairs, with fewer than 3 in 10 respondents expressing confidence, according to a Pew Research Center survey of attitudes toward Trump in more than three dozen countries.
Most of those surveyed also disapprove of Trump’s major policies, including his promise to erect a physical wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and temporarily halting travel from six mostly Muslim countries.
In terms of personal traits, more than half see the U.S. president as a strong leader, but that positive view is outweighed by larger majorities who describe the real estate developer and former reality TV star as arrogant, intolerant or dangerous.
Among the 37 countries Pew surveyed, Trump scored higher marks than his predecessor, President Barack Obama, in two: Russia and Israel.
Pew has produced this survey annually since 2002, starting with the first term of George W. Bush. The edition released late Monday is the first conducted since Trump took office in January.
According to the survey, a median of 22 percent across all the countries surveyed expressed confidence that Trump will do the right thing when it comes to international affairs. That means that if the results from each country are ranked in order, 22 percent is the midpoint, with the percentage expressing confidence in Trump falling above or below that point in equal numbers of countries.
The 22 percent rating marks a steep drop from the closing years of Obama’s presidency, when a median of 64 percent expressed confidence in Obama’ ability to direct America’s role in the world.
Trump’s largest base of support comes from Filipinos, 69 percent of whom say they have confidence in him. Nations in which more than half of the public offers positive opinions of Trump include Nigeria and Vietnam, 58 percent each; Israel, 56 percent and Russia, 53 percent.
The results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted among 40,447 respondents in 37 countries in all regions of the world between Feb. 16 and May 8.
Bush’s ratings fell after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and never fully recovered in some countries. Across 26 nations that Pew surveyed near the end of Bush’s term, a median of only 27 percent had confidence in Bush’s ability to handle international affairs.
Ratings for America’s president rose in 2009 after Obama took office. There was a dip in confidence in some countries that coincided with Obama’s increased use of drone strikes and a National Security Agency spying scandal, but Obama enjoyed a median confidence rating of 64 percent across 37 countries surveyed near the end of his second term.
The survey found widespread disapproval of some of Trump’s major policies. The promised U.S.-Mexico border wall is opposed by a median of 76 percent across the 37 countries, rising to 94 percent in Mexico.
More than 7 in 10 disagree with Trump’s proposals to pull the U.S. out of a landmark climate change agreement and withdraw from multinational trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Trump has pulled the U.S. out of both agreements, although the survey was conducted before his June 2 announcement on exiting the Paris climate accord.
More than 60 percent disapprove of Trump’s proposal for a temporary ban on people entering the U.S. from certain majority Muslim countries. More than half the respondents in four countries – Hungary, Israel, Poland and Russia – support the proposal. Opposition was strong in several largely Muslim countries, including Jordan, Lebanon and Senegal.
U.S. courts had blocked two versions of Trump’s travel ban, but he won a partial victory Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the administration to go forward with a limited version of the ban. The high court also agreed to hear arguments in the case in October. The ban applies to visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The Pew survey also found opposition to Trump’s proposal to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which he has yet to act on.
While 55 percent see Trump as a strong leader, larger majorities of those surveyed said they see him as arrogant, 75 percent; intolerant, 65 percent; and dangerous, 62 percent.
Amid federal and congressional investigations into possible election-year coordination between Trump and Russian government officials, Russia is one of two countries to give Trump higher marks than it did Obama. Israel also scored Trump higher than Obama. Obama fell out of favor with Israel after negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran, an enemy of the Jewish state.
Two men wearing Bitcoin shirts stroll through the Commart expo in Bangkok on Thursday
BANGKOK — Thousands flocked to a computer expo over the weekend to snatch up components to mine online money.
The craze, which led to a nationwide shortage of key computer hardware followed a spike of interest in cryptocurrency – digital money unregulated by any central bank or federal reserve. The most famous among them is Bitcoin, which currently trades at about 92,000 baht per unit, nearly three times its value just three months ago.
Veerachai Morprapaipan, whose store sold components for mining such money at the expo, said he lost count of the customers and people who visited his booth at Queen Sirikit Convention Center to inquire about Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrency.
“There were so many customers. I still get questions even today,” Veerachai, who runs TH Miner, said by phone on Monday.
Held every three to four months, Commart expo usually attracts gamers and computer geeks who look to buy or upgrade their rigs at a discounted price. But at the latest Commart, which ran Thursday to Sunday, many of those geeks turned into prospectors who clamored to buy digital “shovels” for a digital gold mine.
Veerachai Morprapaipan poses for a photo Thursday with a set of computer components designed to “mine” cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.
Said “shovel” is a component called a Graphic Processing Unit, or GPU. It’s the part that powers video cards which make videogames run with such spectacular graphics and texture details. It can also be used to increase computers’ capacities to generate cryptocurrency.
To sum it up in the simplest of terms, the more GPUs a computer has, the faster it can mine the cryptocurrency – and the more money a user can make – which led to the GPU buying rampage at Commart.
“I’m buying as many pieces as I can get my hands on,” Niratcha Sukyu said as she waited in line to buy GPUs with scores of other modern-day prospectors.
Another man in the line, who only gave his name as Nont, said he was hoping to buy GPUs to experiment with cryptocurrency mining, having heard about it from a friend.
“A friend I know told me about it so I came today to buy equipment and give it a try,” said Nont, 27.
One miner, who identified himself only as Karat, said he first got into the business of mining cryptocurrency in 2014, when one Bitcoin traded for 15,000 baht. He said he eventually quit because of the low return and sold what he had mined. At its peak in May, one Bitcoin was valued at about 99,000 to 100,000 baht.
“The best kind of insight is hindsight,” Karat said with a laugh. He said he’s back in the game, and he visited Commart to buy more GPUs for his operation.
Bitcoin and Blockchain
To “mine” cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin involves being part of a blockchain, a network of individuals who process and store information on financial transactions, a sort of distributed ledger.
It’s similar to banking without a bank: instead of going through the bank, investors send and receive money online via blockchains, and instead of bank clerks making sure the amount in one’s accounts and transactions are correct, thousands of users do that for the investor.
Blockchains also reward information processors in Bitcoin or other types of cryptocurrency. So the colloquial “mining” is really about a race to beat other peers in the blockchain. The information is encrypted as a mathematical question that only fast, efficient computers can crack – increasing the need to equip as many GPUs as possible.
Crowd of shoppers at Commart expo in Bangkok on Thursday
“You have to compete with the whole world,” said GPU vendor Veerachai.
Bitcoin remains the household name of cryptocurrency, but it’s not the only one. Others are also popular among currency miners, such as Ethereum, Litecoin, Zcash and Ripple. In fact, nearly every Thai cryptocurrency enthusiast interviewed for this story said they don’t mine Bitcoin anymore because of its extremely low yield.
However, many who mine those other types of cryptocurrency – known collectively as “altcoins” or alternative coins – usually trade them for Bitcoin anyway due to its tendency to rapidly rise in value.
Some geeks have been mining cryptocurrency for years now, but computer vendors and buyers at Commart said it appeared to become notably more popular over the past two or three months – one person suspected the trend went mainstream because of the WannaCry ransomware attack in May, which required Bitcoin as payment to unlock infected computers.
Currency Unstable, Buyers Unfazed
And supply simply can’t keep up with the surge in demand according to a number of vendors, including Somyot Chaowalit, owner of a major computer hardware distributor Jib. He said nearly all the high-grade GPUs are sold out.
“The trend is going very strong,” Somyot said as he visited his booth at Commart. “We only ship in 10,000 units of GPUs per month … but people who mine Bitcoin need about six GPUs per computer.”
To cope with the demand, Jib resorted to selling only 30 GPUs per day during the Commart expo. Demand was such that buyers were randomly drawn in a lotto. Other vendors, such as Advice, only sell GPUs if buyers agree to purchase the whole computer rig – and not just the processing device.
Veerachai’s booth is perhaps the most drastic, selling a set of GPUs and other devices designed for mining cryptocurrency by an auction. One rig sold for 109,000 baht on Thursday.
Promotional models, or “pretties,” pose with GPUs at Thursday’s Commart expo in Bangkok.
But even the very people who profit from the cryptocurrency fad can’t help feeling worried.
In spite of huge demand, Somyot said his firm is not increasing the quota of GPUs for sale because he feared the bubble might burst and disappointed miners would flood the market by selling their devices.
“If there was a crash, there would be big problems,” Somyot said. “This is why manufacturers are holding back.”
Cryptocurrency is indeed a fluctuating business. Bitcoin value hovered between 94,000 and 92,000 baht in recent days. Another popular currency, Ethereum, peaked at 13,000 baht mid-June but its value has been steadily tumbling throughout last week, down to about 9,100 baht as of Monday evening.
Yet many prospectors are unfazed. Those interviewed for this story said they could always switch to other currencies if major ones such as Bitcoin and Ethereum somehow crashed.
“I’m going to keep mining until a new currency emerges,” said Janin Kijrithee, who brought his mother to the Thursday’s event just to add her name in the draw and increase his odds of buying GPUs. It worked.
“I’m not worried that it could come down. I will keep going forward,” added the 37-year-old IT professional.
Bombing suspect, Adem Karadag, is escorted to perform a police re-enactment Sept. 26, 2015 at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok.
BANGKOK — The trial of two Uighur men accused of staging a 2015 terror attack that killed 20 people could last until 2022, a defense lawyer said Monday.
Nearly two years after a bomb struck Erawan Shrine in the heart of Bangkok, police investigator Lt. Col. Somkiat Ploytubtim – the first out of 400 witnesses from the prosecutor’s side – was cross-examined by the defense today.
Defense lawyer Schoochart Kanpai said that in the worst-case scenario, the trial could extend until 2022.
“But it might end as soon as 2019, as they said they might cut some witnesses out,” he said Monday.
Schoochart today disputed Somkiat’s testimony, who had told the court that both suspects confessed under questioning to planting the bomb. The defense lawyer said that his client, Karadag, only confessed to illegally entering the kingdom.
Somkiat only testified before the military court for the first time last month after the case was prolonged due to problems obtaining an interpreter. A previous one remains on the run from drug charges.
In November, the court settled on an interpreter appointed by the Chinese Embassy after judges rejectedone offered by a Munich-based Uighur group.
The two Uighur suspects, Adem Karadag and Yusufu Mieraili, were accused of planting bombs at the popular tourist spot which killed 20 people and injured dozens. They have been held at a special prison inside a military base since September 2015.
They were the only two suspects arrested from a total of 17 arrest warrants issued after the attack.
