Prayut arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) at 3 p.m. and was welcomed by government officials. He will be meeting Duterte and other Asean leaders on Saturday for the 30th Asean Summit.

Duterte recently visited Thailand and discussed defense and terrorism with Prayut. The two heads of state signed three bilateral agreements on science and technology, tourism and agriculture.

Among the things that Duterte and Prayut agreed on was the need to complete the framework for the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, one of the expected results of the Asean Summit later this year.

A number of Asean member states, including the Philippines, have overlapping claims with China on parts of South China Asean.

Thailand is not a claimant state but during Duterte’s visit to Thailand, Prayut said international laws must be observed in disputed territories.

“We both also stressed the need to maintain peace and stability in the region, including the South China Sea,” Duterte said during his visit to Thailand in March. “We recognized both that respect for freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea is in the interest of all countries within or outside the region.”

The Philippines is the chairman and host of this year’s Asean Summit.

The Muslim-majority border region has seethed with violence for over a decade as ethnic Malay insurgents battle the Buddhist-majority state for more autonomy.

Near-daily shooting and bomb attacks have claimed more than 6,800 lives since 2004, with both sides accused of rights abuses and atrocities.

In the latest violence Thursday an army patrol team was gunned down in Narathiwat province after their pickup truck was struck by a roadside explosive.

“After the car tipped over the road four (rangers) were shot dead at the scene,” said provincial police commander Manas Suksamas.

Two other rangers died at the hospital, he added.

The three provinces that make up the ‘Deep South’ were colonised by Buddhist-majority Thailand over a century ago.

Thursday’s attack comes a day before the anniversary of a bloody 2004 army raid on a mosque in neighbouring Pattani province that left 32 insurgents dead and stoked the rebellion in the region.

Militants often time their attacks to strike around anniversaries and other symbolic events.

Earlier this month the most active insurgent group rejected peace talks organised by the ruling junta in a rare press statement.

The shadowy Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) is believed to be behind most of the violence in the region, although it never claims attacks and shuns publicity.

Experts have long said the faction is not loyal to a group of rebel negotiators who have been meeting with the Thai junta, which seized power in 2014.

The BRN called for international involvement in the army-led talks, which have so far borne little fruit.

But the Thai government has consistently refused to talk to the group.

The excitement began at 6pm when the truck driver failed to stop for a checkpoint on Phitsanulok-Uttaradit Road in the Wat Bote district village of Ban Tha Ngam.

The truck sped through the checkpoint, prompting suspicions it was carrying contraband. Police radioed ahead to other checkpoints and gave chase.

The speeding truck was observed veering left and right as it overtook other vehicles. At one point its trailer struck a pursuing police car.

The fleeing driver raced through Mueang district into Wang Thong district, where police had set up a roadblock. The truck still failed to stop, made a right turn onto Wang Thong-Sak Lek Road and then onto Tha Muenram-None Mapang Road.

There the driver swerved to one side trying to head off a pursuing highway patrol car, lost control and entered a ditch, but managed to get back on the road again.

The chase came to an end only when the driver turned into a dead-end soi in a village designated Moo 10 in Tambon Tha Muenram.

The arrested driver was identified as Prasert Sengdonprai, 43, a resident of Phetchabun. Police found no illegal items in the truck and the driver passed tests for intoxicants.

Prasert had his wife, Wan Khongboon, and daughter, Cha-em Sengdonprai, with him in the truck. He told police he’d been headed to Phrae to load corn, but had an argument with his wife, and in his fury decided to ignore the initial police checkpoint.

He was charged with blowing through traffic lights, reckless driving endangering people and property, and refusing to obey police orders to stop.

“I’ve come to Mae Hong Son to investigate the matter,” Prayoon told reporters on Thursday.

A woman has accused Suebsak of paying her daughter, a minor at the time, for sex after she was coerced into the flesh trade.

The ministry has given an investigating committee, which includes Prayoon, 30 days to verify or dismiss the allegations against Suebsak. As of press time it had already spoken to several people possibly involved in the matter.

On Monday, a 20-year-old Thai man broadcast live video on the world’s most popular social media platform, showing him killing his baby daughter before his own suicide.

[Editorial: Live streaming may be too big a risk]

The previous week, a US man dubbed the “Facebook Killer” fatally shot himself after three days of a frantic nationwide manhunt.

Steve Stephens, 37, had posted a video on Easter Sunday, saying he intended to kill. He followed up two minutes later with video showing the fatal shooting of an elderly grandfather whom he had seemingly chosen at random in Cleveland, Ohio.

In a third video 11 minutes later, streamed live from Stephens’ car, he said he intended to kill others.

Facebook denounced the “horrific crime,” saying it had “no place” on its platform. But the video of the shooting wasn’t taken down by Facebook for more than two hours after it was posted. The Thai murder video remained on Facebook for close to 24 hours.

Critics say the social media giant has been too slow to react, and questioned whether Facebook Live — a strategic area of development for the company — should be disabled.

After the Cleveland killing, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg pledged to “keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening.”

But he conceded: “There is a lot of work to do here.”

Vulnerable

Facebook’s video functions have also been used to broadcast rapes. This week, three men in Sweden were sentenced to prison for gang-raping a woman and live-streaming the attack.

Other shocking content includes the suicides of young people who broadcast their deaths on Facebook Live or competing applications like Twitter’s Periscope and Live.me.

Any online platform that lets users freely publish content will face these problems, but Facebook is particularly vulnerable given its huge user base, said Lou Kerner, a partner at Flight VC and a social media specialist. Facebook had 1.86 billion users as of the end of December.

There are no “easy answers,” he said. “They’re going to struggle to stop it from occurring. The question is how fast they can take it down.”

Most social networks ban violent and shocking content, but given the volume of postings, they mostly rely on users to identify and report them.

Facebook said it has “thousands” of people combing through the “millions” of items posted weekly in more than 40 languages, adding that it was trying to speed up the process.

However, it’s unlikely the network will impose a delay of a few seconds to verify content before broadcast, the way some television channels do for live events, said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates.

“When you have more than a billion people connected to each other,” you are “well beyond the scope of what a human can do,” he said.

Artificial intelligence technology is improving but still not good enough and would create too many “false positives.”

“I don’t know if there’s a real human or technical solution. You can punish the breach, but some people don’t care,” Kay said, giving as examples the Islamic State jihadist group which has been posting violent and inflammatory content online for years, or those who just want their 15 minutes of fame.

‘Social responsibility’

Kerner said even if Facebook is not legally responsible for the actions of users, it has a “social responsibility to address it in an appropriate manner.”

But Kay pointed out that any restrictions on content require “moral judgment” on what should be permitted.

“I’m pretty sure Facebook doesn’t want that role,” he said.

The social media network has a difficult balancing act, risking criticism if seen as too lax toward content, but also facing heat for being too restrictive.

It has been accused of censorship in the past, such as last year when it blocked the iconic 1972 image of a Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack, because she was naked. Facebook later reinstated the photo, citing its historical importance.

Facebook also found itself embroiled in controversy last summer when it blocked a video showing the death of an American black man who had been shot by police, which was broadcast live by his girlfriend.

Zuckerberg later reversed the decision, saying the video, while shocking, shines “a light on the fear that millions of members of our community live with every day.”