The Thai king has endorsed a Cabinet reshuffle, a statement said yesterday after the country’s protest-hit coalition government moved to stem the fallout from a healthcare corruption scandal.
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s fragile administration, which has ridden out widespread demonstrations since coming to power in December 2008, has recently suffered two resignations over alleged graft.
Thai Public Health minister Witthaya Keawparadai and his deputy, Manit Nopamornbodi, quit earlier this month over claims of negligence linked to plans for a ministry budget worth more than US$2 billion.
A report by a government committee found prices for medical equipment to be purchased by the ministry — such as heart monitoring systems and cancer treatment machinery — had been dramatically inflated.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej signed a royal warrant reshuffling five ministers, three of them from Abhisit’s coalition-leading Democrat Party and two from their key allies in the Bhumjaithai party, the statement said.
In the major appointments announced late on Friday, Democrat member Trairong Suwankhiri was appointed deputy prime minister and Jurin Laksanawisit was switched from education minister to public health minister.
Former public health minister Wittaya was named as government chief whip, although it is not a ministerial position.
The five new ministers will be sworn in by the king tomorrow at a Bangkok hospital, where he has been since September for medical treatment.
Abhisit’s shaky coalition faces renewed pressure from upcoming protests by supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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