Bangkok - Marine police launched a sea surface search Tuesday near the Similan Islands for six missing foreign tourists and a Thai national whose scuba diving boat sank after being hit by a sudden storm.
"We are conducting a surface search in the area today," Marine Police Lieutenant Colonel Wanlop Phuangbaka said. "If the bodies are not in the boat they should float to the surface within 24 hours," he said in a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Bangkok - Thai marine police on Monday were searching for six foreigners and one Thai who went missing after their speed boat sunk near the Similan Islands, a popular scuba-diving destination in the Andaman Sea.
"We're still searching for the missing," Marine Police Lieutenant Colonel Wanlop Phuangbaka said.
Among the missing were two Australians, two Swiss, one German, one Japanese and one Thai, Wanlop said in a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Bangkok - Susanne Neumayer-Haindinger, the daughter of famed Austrian singer Peter Alexander, died in an automobile accident over the weekend on Thailand's resort island of Samui, police confirmed Monday.
Neumayer-Haindinger, 51, died about 3 am Saturday (2000 GMT Friday), probably of a head injury sustained after her husband failed to navigate a curve, overturning their car into a ditch, Police Lieutenant Colonel Thanongsak Aksonsom said.
"We think she died of an injury sustained when her head hit the windshield," Thanongsak said in a telephone interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "She wasn't wearing her seat belt."
Neumayer-Haindinger's husband, who was wearing his seat belt, wasn't injured in the accident.
Bangkok - Thai police on Monday arrested a 64-year-old German man on charges of setting fire to 11 public phone booths after allegedly losing all his money to Thai bar girls.
Heinz-Dieter Beckers, 64, confessed to the charges of setting fire to the phone booths and at least three billboards at public bus stops, Police Lieutenant Colonel Noppasin Poonsawat said.
Beckers, a frequent visitor to Thailand who had overstayed his tourist visa, told police that bar girls at Pattaya beach resort had taken all his money and he had recently lost his ATM card when a cash machine failed to eject it, leaving him penniless.
Bangkok - The Thai military blocked food supplies over the weekend to a Hmong refugee camp in an apparent effort to force the 5,400 "illegal immigrants" to return to Laos, media reports and aid agencies said Monday.
On Friday the military prevented Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) from delivering food supplies to Ban Huay Nam Khao camp in Phetchabun province, 250 kilometres north-east of Bangkok.
Bangkok - Marine police launched a sea surface search Tuesday near the Similan Islands for six missing foreign tourists and a Thai national whose scuba diving boat sank after being hit by a sudden storm.
Bangkok - Thai shares were down nearly 2 per cent Monday on Hong Kong jitters and global worries, analysts said.
Bangkok - Thai marine police on Monday were searching for six foreigners and one Thai who went missing after their speed boat sunk near the Similan Islands, a popular scuba-diving destination in the Andaman Sea.
