Bangkok  - In one of the first blows to be felt from the "Hamburger Crisis" in Thailand, General Motors Thursday announced plans to close its Thailand plant for two months, paying employees 75 per cent of their wages.

"If we don't close down we will have an oversupply," said GM spokesman Chartchai Suwannasevok, confirming the US giant's plan to close its plant in Rayong province for the months of December and January.

Bangkok  - An early-morning explosion killed one protestor and injured 24 others at Government House, which has been occupied by anti-government demonstrators for the last three months, police said.

A bomb was lobbed into the compound of Government House, landing near the stage where the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) holds its daily rallies, at about 3:30 am, said Police Major Chuttipong Trakulthonmg of Dusit Police Station.

"We still don't have all the details because the PAD won't allow us in," said Chuttipong.

Bangkok, Nov. 19 : Ajay Chhibber, the head of the U. N. Development Program''s regional bureau for Asia and the Pacific, has warned of the prospect of social unrest in Asia because of the global meltdown.

He told the Washington Post in an interview here that the slowdown in major markets such as the United States and Europe poses fundamental problems for Asian economies that have used exports to fuel their extraordinary growth.

Chhibber said there are still 900 million Asians living below the World Bank poverty line, defined as an income of less than 1.25 dollars a day, Chhibber said, adding, "There are another 300 million who just came out of that group, so they are literally on the margin."

Kuala Lumpur - Pirates have hijacked a Thai fishing boat with 16 crew members off the coast of Somalia, bringing the number of pirate attacks in the troubled region to 95 this year, a maritime watchdog said Wednesday.

The vessel, which was seized Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden, had made a distress call late Monday as it was being chased by pirates in two speedboats, said Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.

However, the phone line got cut.

The Thai boat was heading for the Middle East, said Choong. He said the fate of the crew members remains unknown.

Choong said piracy activities continued to increase in the area due to a lack of security.

Bangkok - It's been hard times for Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the man who dominated the country's politics between 2001 to 2006 and continues to be the central character in the kingdom's on-going political drama.

Even with his brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, in place as prime minister and the current cabinet packed with his cronies and nominees, Thaksin has been unable to prevent a series of legal setbacks that have seen him reduced from Thailand's most powerful politician to a homeless, wifeless, fugitive from the law.

Predictably, Thaksin has not taken his new status lying down.