Nephi subdues his rebellious brothers

BANGKOK: Vocational student Kamonwich Suwanthat was interning at a multinational logistics company and was a few months away from graduation. His parents were certain his education would change the family’s fortunes. Until then, the 24-year-old was also helping his mother to make ends meet by selling noodles at her roadside market stall on most nights. That was where, on Oct 12, a stranger shot him four times, point-blank, and fled. The fourth-year student bled to death in front of a crowd and his mother. She did not realise it then, but his place of study was the reason he was targeted — by a school gang. The three students arrested a month later told the police they had no personal dispute with him, and gave this statement: “He was chosen simply because he can be killed in the same way his schoolmates killed our senior.” They were from the Pathumwan Institute of Technology, located just one kilometre from the victim’s school, the Rajamangala University of Technology … [Read more...] about In a shopping haven in Bangkok, one of Thailand’s deadliest school rivalries

Who loves you, baby? Who watches for your every smile, every throwaway line that drops from your finely shaped mouth and each elegant wave of your hand? Draws parallels of you with your famous grandmother, Indira Gandhi, gushes at the cotton saris that add another feature of resemblance to the woman some called Empress of India? Who cannot wait for the day you decide that you too will fully enter the political swirl that has been the vocation of four generations of your family? The thousand television cameras of India's sound-bite-hungry media. So too a widening section of Congress party men desperately looking for a charismatic figure to lift them out of their looming electoral misery. Will Ms Priyanka Gandhi Vadra oblige? Should she? It is by no means an easy decision. Certainly, there is a national constituency beyond her door: A study put out by New Delhi's Centre for Media Studies showed that on her forays to defend the parliamentary constituencies of her brother, Rahul, … [Read more...] about The demons that dog Priyanka

MOSCOW: A Moscow court was on Tuesday (Feb 2) due to begin hearing whether jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose arrest has triggered mass protests, should face up to 2.5 years in prison. Navalny, 44, was detained on Jan 17 when he returned to Moscow from Berlin, where he had spent months recovering from a poisoning attack in August he blamed on President Vladimir Putin. The anti-corruption crusader is charged with violating a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement by skipping out on check-ins with Russia's prison service while in Germany. The case saw Navalny spend one year under house arrest as part of a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence and his brother Oleg serve the entire time in jail. Navalny and his allies believe the embezzlement case was retribution by the authorities for his political activities. They say the Kremlin is now repurposing it to muzzle him. The arch Kremlin critic's lawyers told AFP he faces up to two years and six months … [Read more...] about Moscow court to decide on lengthy sentence for Navalny