Bangkok - Thai shares jumped 2.89 per cent Monday on the election of opposition Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva as prime minister, analysts said.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand index ended at 437.06, up 12.27 points.

"Investors think the political picture is clearer now," said Mongkol Phuangphaetha, an analyst at Adkinson Securities.

An extraordinary session of Parliament on Monday selected Abhisit as Thailand's 27th prime minister in a 235-198 vote.

The vote ended weeks of political jockeying to head the next coalition government.

Bangkok  - Thailand's Parliament on Monday selected Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva as the next prime minister, giving the 44-year-old Oxford-educated politician a slim majority to form the next government.

An extraordinary session of the lower house gave Abhisit a thin victory by a 235-198 vote over his rival, police General Pracha Promnok, the Puea Paendin Party leader. Three members abstained.

Bangkok  - There's an old saying among economists: "When the US catches a cold, the rest of the world catches pneumonia."

"But nobody says what happens when the US catches pneumonia," said Ammar Siamwalla, a respected Thai economist. "You don't catch a cold, but I don't know what happens."

That indeed is the billion-dollar question for Asia in 2009.

Most of Asia's dynamic emerging economies have been using exports as their engines of growth for the past decade or more.

If anything, the region became even more export-dependent in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Asia's version of the meltdown that is now shaking the advanced economies.

Bangkok  - Thailand's Parliament opened an extraordinary session Monday to vote in a new prime minister after the last premier and much of the cabinet lost their posts in a court ruling.

The vote was expected to be close between the two nominated candidates, Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and the Puea Paendin Party's leader, police General Pracha Promnok.

"It will be a close call," said Kraisak Choonhavan, a senior Democrat Party member.

Bangkok - Thousands of Thais sporting red shirts gathered Saturday at the Suphachalasai Stadium in Bangkok to show their support for fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who planned to address the rally by teleconference.

About 10,000 Thaksin followers gathered at the stadium by Saturday afternoon and more were pouring in for the event, the highlight of which would be a phone-in from their beloved leader, from "a country close by," according to organizers.

Thaksin, who has been living in self exile since August and faces a two-year jail term in Thailand for abuse of power when he was premier in 2003, addressed a similar audience on November 13 of an estimated 60,000 followers.

Bangkok- Thailand's foreign ministry has issued a protest letter to the Economist magazine about two articles that appeared in its December 6-12 issue on the sensitive topic of the Thai monarchy, officials said Friday.

"The letter will appear in the next issue of the Economist," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Tharit Charungvat, who penned the letter.

Although the magazine was not officially banned, Thai distributors of last week's Economist did not import the issue which contained two articles on the monarchy under the titled "A right royal mess" and "The King and them."