Bangkok - Thailand plans to spend 1.4 trillion baht (38.9 billion dollars) to stimulate the economy over the next three years, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced Tuesday.

Abhisit said the money, to be raised with foreign loans, would be spent on investments in small infrastructure projects in education, transportation, and public health, the Thai News Agency said.

Bangkok - Thailand on Monday allocated 6.9 billion baht (191 million dollars) for short-term occupational training this year when 1 million people are expected to lose their jobs.

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Kobsak Sabhavasu said the training initiative aims at providing short-term occupational courses for the unemployed and new graduates.

"The programme is set to continue for two years and is expected to help some 500,000 people find jobs," Kobsak told the state-run Thai New Agency.

Bangkok  - Police killed an accused associate of a fugitive Thai Muslim drug lord after an all-night gunbattle in central Thailand, news reports said Saturday.

Four police officers were injured in the attempt to apprehend Bares Meesri in his rented home in Pathum Thani province just north of Bangkok.

When officers were finally able to enter the house Saturday morning, they found guns and heavy weapons next to the body of the accused drug trafficker, the Bangkok Post reported, adding that 100 officers were involved in the operation.

Bangkok  - Frogmen on Thursday retrieved the bodies of five foreigners from a boat that sank in a sudden storm over the weekend after a diving tour to Thailand's Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea.

"We found the bodies of three foreign men and two women who had been trapped inside the boat when it sank," Marine Police Lieutenant Colonel Wanlop Phuangbaka said.

On Tuesday, authorities found the body of a Caucasian woman floating near the area where the boat sank Sunday. One Thai national, a member of the dive boat's staff, was still missing.

Bangkok  - Coup-ousted former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra Thursday thanked the military for freezing his fortune in Thai banks, thus saving it from unwise investments in stocks.

"I don't know whether I should condemn or thank the military junta when they froze my assets in Thailand, otherwise I probably would have invested a lot in the stock exchange and lost it," Thaksin said, in a live televised speech to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong that was relayed on to Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

Bangkok  - The Thai government on Thursday changed the venue for the upcoming summit between South-East Asia and Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea from the resort island of Phuket to the beach resort of Pattaya.

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya confirmed the venue switch for the summit, scheduled for April 11 to 12, at a press conference Thursday.