Worker Dies When Building Crashes Down in Bang Kapi

By

-

21 September 2016, 12:51

201609202030093-20150928153929 — A rescue worker searches the ruins of a building that collapsed Tuesday in Bangkok’s Bang Kapi district.

BANGKOK — A building collapsed Tuesday in the capital’s Bang Kapi district, killing one construction worker and injuring three others.

The three-story concrete residence on Yothin Patthana Road collapsed at about 6pm as construction workers were working on its fourth floor. According to crane operator Singto Kosila, he was moving a 3.3-ton concrete slab to the fourth floor when he saw the building’s floors and beams completely collapse.

One worker, a Myanmar national, was crushed and died. Three other workers were taken to a hospital with leg and head injuries and were expected to survive. A fourth worker managed to escape unscathed.

Officers from the Ladprao Police Station rushed to the scene, along with local and public works officials.

Police Col. Suksit Meesawad, who was at the scene, said the cause of the building’s collapse was being investigated by the relevant officials.

“It could be that the building was planned incorrectly, or the construction workers were building it improperly,” he said. “On the other hand, the quality of the metal and concrete used in construction could also be faulty.”

Suksit said some of the workers were from Myanmar and some from Thailand.

Update: Suksit originally said all five workers were Thai, and this story has been updated to reflect his Sept. 22 statement that in fact several, including the man killed, were from Myanmar.

Thou Shalt Sing: Killers Out for Murder on Stage

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

-

21 September 2016, 12:02

Photo: Splashin Theatre Company / Courtesy

Update Oct 25, 2016: The event was canceled

BANGKOK — Murder is the game in a stage play mixing American film noir, Japanese Yakuza and anime timed thematically with violent happenings of the past.

“Thou Shalt Sing: A Secondary Killer’s Guide to Pull the Trigger” is set in a gangster society where the No. 2 killer wants to be No. 1.

The noir crime drama is written and directed by Thanaphon Accawatanyu and casts five actors, four men and a femme fatale.

Thanaphon’s previous works include “The Disappearance of the Boy on a Sunday Afternoon,” a provocative production on the theme of forced disappearance, and “The Art of Being Right,” which won for best script at the annual Bangkok Theatre Festival.

“Thou Shalt Sing” will be performed in Thai with English surtitles from Nov. 9 through Nov. 13 and Nov. 16 until Nov. 20 at Crescent Moon Space. Tickets are 450 baht and 300 baht if purchased online by the end of September.

The politically active theatre venue is located inside the Pridi Banomyong Institute, a few minutes walk from BTS Thong Lo exit No. 3.

Angelina Jolie Files for Divorce From Brad Pitt

By

Associated Press

-

21 September 2016, 11:35

American actress and UNHCR Ambassador Angelina Jolie, left, with her daughter Zahara, and Brad Pitt, right, with Jolie's son Maddox, walk near the Gateway of India in 2006 in Mumbai, India. Photo: Associated Press

NEW YORK — Angelina Jolie Pitt has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, bringing an end to what began as the world’s most tabloid headline-generating romance before morphing into a glamorous engine of family and philanthropy.

Jolie Pitt, 41, cited “irreconcilable difference” in divorce papers filed Monday in Los Angeles. She is seeking physical custody of their six children, with visitation rights for Pitt.

An attorney for Jolie Pitt, Robert Offer, said Tuesday that her decision to divorce was made “for the health of the family.” The filing dated the couple’s separation to last Thursday.

“I am very saddened by this, but what matters most now is the wellbeing of our kids. I kindly ask the press to give them the space they deserve during this challenging time,” Pitt said in a statement to People.

Mark Vincent Kaplan, a veteran divorce attorney who was Kevin Federline’s attorney in his divorce from Britney Spears and has handled several high-profile cases, reviewed the filing at the AP’s request.

“There is no indication on the face of the petition filed by Ms. Jolie that there is a prenuptial agreement, or that if there is a prenup, she is asking the court to consider whether or not to invalidate it,” said Kaplan.

Though together for 12 years, Pitt and Jolie Pitt — known as “Brangelina” — only wed in August 2014. They married privately at their French chateau in the Provence hamlet of Correns with their children serving as ring bearers and throwing flower petals. They announced the ceremony days later.

Their children are: 15-year-old Maddox, 12-year-old Pax, 11-year-old Zahara, 10-year-old Shiloh, and 8-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

This is the second marriage for Pitt, 52, who previously wed Jennifer Aniston. It’s the third for Jolie Pitt, who was previously married to Billy Bob Thornton and Jonny Lee Miller.

Their initial romance sparked a tabloid avalanche unlike any in recent memory. Pitt and Jolie became close while filming 2005’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” prompting widespread speculation — consistently denied by the couple — that Jolie prompted Pitt’s divorce from Aniston. Pitt and Aniston announced their separation in January 2005.

But after the media upheaval, Jolie Pitt and Pitt eventually settled into their own unique kind of globe-trotting domesticity. They were seldom-seen Hollywood royalty, their image predicated more on parenting than partying.

The pair adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. In 2006, they formed the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, to which they funneled many of the millions they made selling personal pictures to celebrity magazines.

Jolie Pitt, who became special envoy for the United Nations in 2012, became an outspoken voice for refugees, as well as for breast cancer treatment after undergoing a double mastectomy herself. Pitt built homes in New Orleans for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Jolie Pitt also launched herself as a film director. Last year, the couple starred together in her “By the Sea,” playing a glamorous couple vacationing together in France while their marriage was on the rocks. It made a mere $538,000 at the box office domestically.

In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press, Jolie Pitt said playing a couple with marital problems was cathartic.

“It almost makes you get past those issues because you can laugh at them,” Jolie Pitt said. “You do a film about bad marriage and you witness that behavior. You study it, you let it out, you attack each other and then you just want to hold each other and make sure you never behave that way.”

Jolie Pitt earlier this year finished shooting her fourth feature as director, “First They Killed My Father.” The film, about the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, was shot in Cambodia.

The pair was seen publicly together as recently as July, when they were spotted taking their twins to breakfast in Los Angeles.

Pitt stars with Marion Cotillard in Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming spy thriller “Allied” and narrates Terrence Malick’s IMAX documentary “Voyage of Time.”

In recent years, Pitt’s production company, Plan B, has been behind a growing number of acclaimed releases, including the Academy Award best-picture winner “12 Years a Slave,” last year’s “The Big Short” and the recently debuted festival hit “Moonlight.”

Story: Jake Coyle, Anthony McCartney

28 Deaths As Chao Phraya Search Called Off

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

-

21 September 2016, 11:09

Officers salvage a partially submerged boat Tuesday afternoon from the Chao Phraya River in Ayutthaya province.

AYUTTHAYA — A search for missing passengers was called off Tuesday afternoon after the last body was pulled from the water. The final death toll stood at 28.

The body of an 89-year-old woman was discovered at about 5pm, one kilometer away from the boat sank two days earlier. Seven men and 21 women were killed in the accident.

The search was called off when rescuers realized a 2-year-old boy had been reported missing due to misinformation.

Ferry Captain Charged As More Bodies Pulled From Chao Phraya

Death Toll in River Ferry Accident Rises to 18, Search Goes On

13 Dead, 39 Injured When Boat Goes Down in Chao Phraya

1 Dead, 1 Injured as U-2 Spy Plane Crashes in California

By

Associated Press

-

21 September 2016, 10:47

Smoke rises from the wreckage of a U.S. Air Force U-2 spy plane that crashed Tuesday in the Sutter Butte mountains, near Yuba City, California. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press

SUTTER, California — One American pilot was killed and another injured when they ejected from a U-2 spy plane shortly before it crashed in Northern California on Tuesday morning, the U.S. Air Force said.

The plane crashed shortly after taking off from Beale Air Force Base on a training mission around 9 a.m., military officials said. They did not release the pilots’ names or any information about the condition of the surviving airman.

The aircraft, assigned to the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, crashed in the Sutter Buttes, a mountain range about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of Sacramento.

Col. Larry Broadwell, the base commander, said the flight, including its flight path was routine before the crash. He pledged to support the family of the deceased pilot and said surveillance pilots will mourn the loss.

“These incidents, while extremely tragic and hard for us to overcome, they’re incidents that we do overcome,” Broadwell said. “I am confident that the U-2 squadrons here and the U-2 squadrons around the world are going to come off the mat stronger than they were before.”

The U-2 “Dragon Lady” is a surveillance and reconnaissance plane capable of flying above 70,000 feet (21,336 meters), an extremely high altitude that’s twice as high as a typical commercial airliner flies. The U-2 is known as one of the most difficult aircraft to fly at low altitudes due to the characteristics that allow it to travel near space, according to an Air Force fact sheet.

Beale Air Force Base is home to the Air Force’s fleet of single-seat U-2s and a double-seat variant used for training pilots to fly the specialized aircraft. It also is the base for the T-38 Talon, a training aircraft, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance drone. It houses 4,500 military personnel.

“We are saddened by our Airman’s death & offer condolences to the family & all who are mourning this tremendous loss,” Gen. Dave Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, said on Twitter.

Ejection seats allow military pilots to get out of a stricken plane and parachute safely to the ground. After the death in this instance, military investigators will look into whether the chute properly deployed and whether the pilot hit debris after ejecting, said Michael Barr, an aviation safety instructor at University of Southern California who flew fighter missions in Vietnam.

“If the chute didn’t properly deploy, that would be fatal,” Barr said.

The U-2 is slated for retirement in 2019 as the military relies increasingly on unmanned aircraft for intelligence gathering, though senior U.S. lawmakers from California are pressuring the Air Force to delay the retirement.

A U-2 based at Beale crashed in 1996 and slammed into the parking lot of a newspaper in Oroville, California. The pilot and a woman who had just renewed her newspaper subscription were killed.

Story: Jonathan Cooper

Soldiers to Monitor Abstract Play Recognizing 1976 Massacre

By

Chayanit Itthipongmaetee, Staff Reporter

-

20 September 2016, 18:30

B-Floor’s ‘Fundamental’ performance. Photo: Wipat Lertpureewong / Courtesy

BANGKOK — A provocative theatre troupe is again under scrutiny from the junta, saying it was told Tuesday that soldiers will be dispatched to watch their play tomorrow evening.

Director Teerawat “Ka-ge” Mulvilai of B-Floor’s production “Fundamental” said he was notified by staff at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre this morning that when the play is staged Wednesday, representatives from the military would be there to watch.

Khaosod English wrote Sunday about B-Floor and the play, an abstract physical performance without narrative or dialogue.

“I don’t know what they’re worried about,” Ka-ge said Tuesday afternoon. “Our play talks about violence done by humans to one another and does not criticize society’s structure or any authority specifically.”

B-Floor member Ornanong “Golf” Thaisriwong said that soldiers arrived Tuesday to watch the show, unaware it was not performed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

This won’t be the first time B-Floor has been visited by the junta. Last year, Golf’s one-woman show “Bang La Merd” at Thong Lor Art Space was attended by two army officers who filmed all but the final two shows.

Teerawat ‘Ka-ge’ Mulvilai at a rehearsal for ‘Fundamental’ in July.

Army Names 2 ‘Royal Impostors’ Behind Fake Royal Guard

By

Teeranai Charuvastra, News Chief

-

20 September 2016, 18:17

A photo taken on Sunday night shows the ID cards of a bogus royal bodyguard unit handed out to applicants by the two suspects.

NAKHON SI THAMMARAT — Two men accused of scamming recruits into a fake royal guard were being held on an army base Tuesday in Nakhon Si Thammarat province, the army announced.

Soldiers arrested Kraisri Chantarapanya, 47, and Pitsanu Amwongsa, 65, in the southern province Sunday night. They are the latest suspects in a series of crackdowns on “royal impostors,” what the authorities have termed people exploiting or claiming false ties to the Royal Family for personal gain.

An army report released Monday said that Kraisri claimed to be of royal bloodline, while Pitsanu recruited men to serve as “royal bodyguards.” They were at a resort and in the process of taking 2,500 baht per applicant when soldiers arrived to arrest them, the report issued by the 41st Army Circle said.

Nineteen job applicants were with the pair when soldiers showed up, but they were released after questioning, the report said.

Someone answering the phone for base commander Teenanat Chinda-ngoen said the major general was not ready to give further details to the press.

A search for Kraisri’s name online turned up many news articles over a period of several years detailing his visits to mosques and local government offices in the south. In those stories, he was identified as a royal secretary for a distant relative of His Majesty the King, a woman holding the title mom chao named Praphaphan Kornkosiyakart.

It was not clear when Kraisri and Pitsanu would be transferred to police custody.

Actions or remarks deemed defamatory toward the Royal Family are punishable by up to 15 years in prison under Section 112 of the Penal Code, a law also known as lese majeste.

In recent years, the law has been more broadly interpreted and also applied to those who exploited royal ties, whether real or false, to enrich themselves.

Former Palace Employee Arrested in Connection With Alleged Royal Impostors

Kingsguard Named ‘Royal Impostor,’ Stripped of Decorations

Army Colonel Accused of Insulting Monarchy as ‘Royal Impostor’

Trump Skips Cities, Seeks Support in Rural Towns

By

Associated Press

-

20 September 2016, 17:12

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in July during a news conference at Trump National Doral in Doral, Florida. Photo: Evan Vucci

KENANSVILLE, North Carolina — Donald Trump is spending a good bit of time in this critical presidential swing state, but he’s spending Tuesday evening far from cities like Charlotte and Raleigh where many candidates have courted moderate voters in recent years.

Instead, he’s zeroing in on this tiny, rural town of about 850 people to make his pitch to the disaffected, working-class white voters who have propelled his campaign. The strategy appears to be less about swaying undecideds and more about making sure supporters don’t stay home on Election Day.

Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1 in Duplin County, but voters here have chosen the GOP presidential candidate the past two elections by a wide margin. Among those lifelong Democrats is James Teachey, a 78-year-old retired farmer, who said this year was the first he donated to a presidential campaign: $40 to Trump.

“People are sick and tired of the way things are going in Washington and the way people are running it,” he said. “I was born coming out of the Depression. We know what a dollar means, what leaving your door unlocked means. And all those things are gone.”

Trump’s business background is a big draw for his supporters here in Kenansville, where beyond the small downtown area’s handful of restaurants, gas stations and a couple of grocery stores lie farms that are the area’s major economic driver. Pork and poultry growers and processing plants employ thousands in Duplin County and have drawn thousands of Latinos who now account for more than 20 percent of the county’s population.

Trump’s rally is scheduled for the Duplin County Events Center, a building that can hold 4,000 spectators on the outskirts of Kenansville. Earlier in the day, he’ll make a stop through High Point, a hub of the declining furniture industry that was hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs but brings billions to the state each year by hosting a world-renowned furniture market and trade show.

Not many political candidates have come through over the years. Asked if he could remember any other presidential campaign visits, Teachey laughed and said he thought Eleanor Roosevelt came decades ago.

While Kenansville may seem like an unusual campaign stop, Trump’s decision to veer farther away from population centers shows that North Carolina is a state he has to win, said Thomas Eamon, a political science professor at East Carolina University.

“Campaigns do generally go to bigger cities, and going to a rural area, there’s a certain psychology in going to a small town like Kenansville. I think that symbolically could be good,” Eamon said, adding that the site’s location near an interstate highway can funnel in conservative spectators from nearby counties.

While North Carolina is dotted with left-leaning urban areas such as Raleigh and Charlotte, it also has one of the country’s largest rural populations. A 2012 analysis by the Census found that North Carolina ranked second only to Texas with 3.2 million rural residents.

Duplin County’s Latino farmworkers are upset by Trump’s comments about Mexicans and his stance on immigration, but many can’t vote because they are either guest workers or immigrants not legally in the U.S., said Justin Flores, a vice president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

“The ironic thing is that Donald Trump is coming to talk to a county that owes its entire economy to the work of immigrant workers, some undocumented, almost entirely from Mexico and Central America – the countries that Trump has spoken about with so much disrespect,” said Flores, who is based in neighboring Wayne County.

State voter registration figures show that the county has about 1,200 registered Hispanic voters; About 18,000 are white, while 9,000 are black.

Arthur Best, a black voter from Kenansville and U.S. Army veteran, is frustrated like many others by the lack of job opportunities, particularly for minorities. But for him, Trump is not the answer.

“I lost my father in Vietnam. He didn’t die for the foolishness we’re looking at today,” said Best, a Democrat who has been offended by Trump’s insults toward U.S. Sen. John McCain and the parents of a Muslim soldier killed while serving in Iraq.

Still, more than a quarter of Duplin County’s roughly 60,000 residents live in poverty, and only a fraction have college degrees, according to 2014 Census estimate. For voters like Bill Link, a retired U.S. Marine officer from nearby Beulaville, Trump’s promises to improve the economy are what really matter.

“The majority of people right now are leaning for Trump,” said Link, who drives trucks and owns a carnival equipment rental business. “Because we’re all working people. We all work for a living. We’re blue-collar, and we believe that the country has gone the wrong way.”

Story: Jonathan Drew

Saving Face on The World Stage: Obama’s Last UN Speech

By

Associated Press

-

20 September 2016, 16:42

President Barack Obama speaks during a bilateral meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi Monday at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in New York. Photo: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — Standing before the United Nations for the last time as president, Barack Obama will reassure foreign leaders that the world is better equipped to tackle its challenges than at almost any point in history despite a cascade of harrowing crises that seem devoid of viable solutions.

Obama’s speech is always a focal point of the annual U.N. General Assembly, but his address Tuesday also marks Obama’s swan song on the international stage. He stepped into his role eight years ago with sky-high expectations and has struggled to deliver when it comes to solving global problems partially beyond America’s control.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said the president was cognizant of the fact that bright spots such as economic growth and climate change cooperation are offset by the “great deal of unease” in the world, including Syria’s civil war and concerns about Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine.

“The way the president will approach this is trying to apply what we have done that’s worked in the last eight years as a template for how we deal with other crises,” Rhodes said.

He cited diplomatic achievements on Iran and global warming and outreach to former U.S adversaries Cuba and Myanmar as illustrative of the approach Obama hoped would continue after he leaves office.

Yet it will be hard for world leaders to look beyond the pressing problems that are shadowing this year’s U.N. confab.

Just as Obama and fellow heads of state were gathering Monday, Syria’s military declared the week-old cease-fire over following numerous breaches and airstrikes hitting an aid convoy to a distressed part of Syria, which the U.S. blamed on Syria or Russia. The setbacks were fresh indicators that even the most hard-fought diplomatic gambles have failed to lessen the violence in Syria for any lasting stretch of time.

And hanging over the U.N. gathering was a weekend bombing a short subway ride away that New York’s mayor has declared an act of terror. Security in Manhattan, already high in light of the U.N. summit, was further tightened.

Despite these concerns, the White House has cast Obama’s address as one of his final opportunities to define how his leadership has made the planet safer and more prosperous. Obama’s aides have focused on how the U.S. has a fraction of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than it had when Obama took office and how nations are finally poised to act in concert to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Obama’s other major priority at the U.N. this year is to force more aggressive action to mitigate the worst refugee crisis since World War II, stemming in large part from the Syria war. In addition to his speech, Obama on Tuesday planned to host a summit on refugees. The idea is for nations to show up with concrete commitments to accept and support more refugees, and Obama’s U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, said the U.S. told several nations that their initial offers were insufficient.

The Obama administration has emphasized that a half-dozen other countries including Germany and Jordan are co-hosting the summit, but it’s largely been a U.S.-driven endeavor.

Story: Josh Lederman

2-Faced Calf Born in Kentucky

By

Associated Press

-

20 September 2016, 16:17

A 2-faced calf is born Friday at a farm in Campbellsville, Kentucky. Image: WDRB

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Kentucky — Visitors to a central Kentucky farm may do a double-take when they see the newest addition: a two-faced calf.

Stan McCubbin of Campbellsville told WDRB-TV that he thought he had twins when he first saw the calf on Friday, but quickly realized he had something far more unusual.

The female calf has two noses, two mouths and four eyes, though the middle two eyes don’t function. Although she can walk, the McCubbins say she ends up going in circles and falling over.

The family says most calves with such a genetic mutation are stillborn, but so far this one is eating and seems healthy.

McCubbin’s wife, Brandy, said their 5-year-old daughter, Kenley, named the calf Lucky because she’s lucky to be alive.

Hot News

LATEST NEWS