China’s relationship with the outside world has not been exclusively confrontational. Then-US president Richard Nixon had himself decided to visit the Chinese leader Mao Xedong in Beijing (or Peking as it was still known to foreigners) in 1972, a decision so sudden even America’s top diplomats had not known about it.

Thailand, the US’s oldest Asian ally, undoubtedly had to rebalance itself amid fears, domestically and internationally, of spreading communism.

Building Sino-US relationships took a great effort, most famously involving exchanges of table tennis players known as “Ping-Pong diplomacy”, and also centred on discreet backstage talks among envoys.

Formal diplomatic ties between Thailand and China Thai-Chinese relations were eventually penned in an agreement on July 1, 1975, with media among the witnesses in attendance. Among them was Suthichai Yoon, a journalist and a co-founder of the Nation Multimedia Group.

Starting on September 7, Suthichai will tell stories behind this long diplomatic journey in the TV documentary series “The Wind of the East: Tracing Relations between Thailand and China”.

The series will be packed with prominent guests, including two-time former prime minister Anand Panyarachun, former foreign minister Tej Bunnag, CP Group’s executive vice president Sarasin Viraphol, former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai’s adopted Thai children Wanwai and Sirin Phathanothai, table tennis magnate Santipap Techawanit and China’s beloved Thai national singer Suthep Wongkamheang.

At the documentary launch yesterday, Anand recalled his time as the former envoy to the US. “Thailand was striving to become a United Nations member,” he said. “With China being a major UN actor, establishing diplomatic ties with her was a must.”

Nothing came without a price, he noted. It was not only about dealing with a war of information and a dominant Western media putting the public in fear of communism. It also meant that Thailand had to tone down its ties with Taiwan.

“When it comes to diplomacy, we can’t proceed in an extreme way,” the former premier said. “It is an art of balance and vision, combined with a long-term strategy.”

Tej, then-second secretary at the Foreign Ministry’s political department, said that Nixon’s gesture visiting China hinted that Thailand should also reconsider its stance.

The establishment of ties with China also helped with Thailand’s survival soon after, Tej said. By the end of the third Indochina war, the Vietnamese army was stationed close to the Thai border but with China providing arms support to Thailand, those troops were later withdrawn.

The 10-episode series will be aired every Thursday and Friday at 7.20pm on Nation TV 22.

“There was concrete information from the Spanish police that an attack would be committed on that date, at this place and against this rock band,” the port city’s police chief Frank Paauw told reporters.

Spain was rocked last week by twin vehicle attacks which killed 15 people and wounded 120, but it remained unclear whether the tip-off to the Dutch came before or after Spanish police began investigating the incidents.

After cancelling a planned concert by the Californian band Allah-Las in Rotterdam, Dutch police swooped on a house in the southern Brabant region before dawn Thursday “and arrested a 22-year-old man regarding the terror threat Wednesday evening in Rotterdam”.

They also carried out “an extensive search” of the premises, police said in a statement.

But there were growing doubts that another man, arrested late Wednesday in the port driving a van with Spanish licence plates and carrying gas canisters close to the Maassilo concert hall, was linked to the terror threat.

The van driver, a mechanic who “appeared to be under the influence of an alcoholic substance, was detained and transferred to a police facility” on Wednesday, police said, adding officers had found a “couple of gas canisters” in his van.

“His house was searched last night and no link with the terror threat was found. The man is still detained and will be questioned when sober,” police said in an English statement.

While Spanish police appeared to rule the man out of the inquiry, Paauw said his team were still investigating but it seemed likely “the man had had the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

– Concert attacks –

The news follows a suicide bombing of a concert by US singer Ariana Grande in the English city of Manchester in May which killed 22 people.

And in November 2015, 130 people were killed in Paris when as part of a series of attacks jihadists hit the Bataclan concert hall where US rock band Eagles of Death Metal were playing.

“After what happened in Barcelona, I think the police really took the situation seriously and didn’t want to take any risks in Rotterdam,” witness Usama Mohamed told AFP.

Spanish police said Thursday they had identified the remains of the last suspected member of the cell believed to have carried out the August 17 attacks in northeastern Spain.

Youssef Aalla died in an accidental blast at the jihadists’ bomb factory on the eve of the assault.

The blast forced the group to use vehicles instead as weapons, ploughing into pedestrians on Barcelona’s busy Las Ramblas boulevard and a promenade in the resort of Cambrils.

 – ‘Holy’ name –

On Wednesday Dutch authorities decided to cancel the Allah-Las concert after the tip-off from Spanish police around 5:30 pm (1530 GMT).

The four-piece band, from Los Angeles, was escorted from the concert hall by police wearing bullet-proof vests.

In a statement sent to AFP, they said they were “unharmed and are very grateful to the Rotterdam police and other responsible agencies for detecting the potential threat before anyone was hurt”.

The eclectic band refused to comment further. In an interview with the British daily The Guardian last year, they said they receive emails from Muslims offended by their name, but “that absolutely wasn’t our intention”.

They said they chose to use Allah — Arabic for god — because they wanted something “holy sounding”.

The Netherlands has so far been spared from the slew of terror strikes which have rocked its European neighbours recently.

But concerned top Dutch security and intelligence officials have been keeping a wary eye on events.

In June, a Dutch man — known to authorities as being possibly radicalised — was arrested filming outside one of the country’s largest stadiums during a concert. He was later freed, but the incident is still under investigation.

The new route will meet increasing demand for travel between the two countries and boost regional trade and integration.

The HCM City-Jakarta route, a three-hour journey, will operate daily starting on December 20.

It will depart from HCMC at 8.40pm and arrive in Jakarta at 11.40 local time. The return flight is 1.40pm local time, reaching HCMC at 4.40.

“Since its inception, Vietjet has been developing friendly and professional flight services in operating key international routes, helping connect Vietnam’s main business and tourism hubs with foreign destinations, including Jakarta,” Vietjet vice president Dinh Viet Phuong said.

“With its mission of making air travel approachable and possible for everyone and building a future in the air, Vietjet’s new route from HCMC to Jakarta will boost ties between these two economic, cultural and financial hubs, thus help boost regional trading and integration.”

Thousands of soldiers and emergency personnel have been deployed across India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where authorities say a total of 1,013 bodies have been recovered since August 10 when intense rainfall started falling.

All three countries suffer frequent flooding during the monsoon rains, but the Red Cross has termed the latest disaster the worst in decades in some parts of South Asia.

It says entire communities have been cut off and many are short of food and clean water.

“It has been a difficult year,” said Anil Shekhawat, spokesman for India’s national disaster response force.

“In the last few months there have been floods in western, eastern and northern parts of the country,” Shekhawat told AFP.

Twenty-six bodies were found Wednesday in Bihar, a hard-hit state in India’s east, taking the death toll there to 367, said Anirudh Kumar, a top state disaster management official.

“We still have nearly 11 million people affected in 19 districts of the state,” he told AFP, adding nearly 450,000 flood evacuees had taken shelter in government refuges.

In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, floods have swamped nearly half the vast state of 220 million, India’s most populous.

Disaster management agency spokesman T.P. Gupta said 86 people had died and more than two million were affected by the disaster there.

The state borders Nepal, where 146 people have died and 80,000 homes destroyed in what the United Nations is calling the worst flooding in 15 years.

Nepal’s home ministry warned the death toll could rise as relief teams reach more remote parts of the impoverished country.

– Widespread destruction –

In India’s northwest, landslides caused by heavy rain have claimed 54 lives, the vast majority in one huge avalanche of mud that swept two buses off a mountainside.

The situation was slowly easing in West Bengal and Assam, two states in India’s east and northeast where 223 people have died.

Floods in Assam — the second wave to hit the state in less than four months — have wrought widespread destruction, killing 71 people and forcing animals in a local wildlife sanctuary to seek higher ground.

One Bengal tiger and 15 rare one-horned rhinos were found dead and conservationists feared there could be further loss of life as poachers sought to capitalise on the exodus.

In the low-lying state of West Bengal, where 152 people have died, hundreds of thousands have escaped submerged villages by boats and makeshift rafts to reach government aid stations.

Across the border in Bangladesh, water levels were slowly returning to normal in the main Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers.

The government’s disaster response body said Thursday the death toll stood at 137, with more than 7.5 million affected since flooding hit the riverine nation.

Every year hundreds die in landslides and floods during the monsoon season that hits India’s southern tip in early June and sweeps across the South Asia region for four months.

Last year nearly 1,500 people died and half a million homes were destroyed in floods across the country, according to India’s home ministry.

“The flawed communication about the fipronil-contaminated eggs is not an isolated case,” the German branch of Foodwatch said in a report.

“Consumers routinely don’t know about important food warnings. Often the companies and authorities decide on recalls too late, or sometimes not at all.”

Foodwatch said the failings in the food alert system “were once again on display with the lack of information from authorities in the recent scandal over the fipronil-contaminated eggs.”

Millions of eggs have been pulled from supermarket shelves and destroyed. The scare has spread to 18 European countries and even reached Hong Kong.

Officials in Germany, as in several other countries, have come under fire for not going public early enough with their concerns.

In its report, “Calling for a recall”, Foodwatch said a study of 92 recalls in Germany over a year showed that just 53 per cent were flagged on time on a government-run food safety website (lebensmittelwarnung.de).

In one case, a warning over possible listeria-tainted mushrooms only went online three days after the authorities were notified. It had come in over the New Year’s break, when no-one was working, Foodwatch said.

Foodwatch said current food safety regulations were too vague and left “too much room for interpretation” as to when a recall is needed.

It urged the government to take a more active role, as producers had a clear “conflict of interest” when it came to taking unsafe products off the market.

It also said more efforts had to be made to tell consumers about recalls, using all possible means including social media, press releases and signs in supermarkets.

“Food producers almost never use all the communication tools available to warn about unsafe products,” Foodwatch said.

In the case of the eggs scare, Belgium became the first country to officially notify the EU’s food safety alert system on July 20, followed by the Netherlands and Germany.

Geneva – Eight people, including German, Austrian and Swiss citizens, are missing following a landslide that forced the evacuation of a village in the Swiss Alps, police said Thursday.

“In the region of Val Bondasca, eight people who were there at the time of the landslide have not been found,” the Graubunden cantonal police said in a statement.

The Wednesday morning landslide sent mud, rocks and dirt flooding into the village of Bondo, near the Italian border, and forced the evacuation of around 100 people, some of whom were airlifted out with helicopters.

Six of the eight were reported missing by their relatives, the police said, adding that the search for them had intensified overnight, with a Swiss army helicopter taking part.

“The missing persons are nationals from Germany, Austria and Switzerland,” the police said.

Images showed a broad swathe of farmland covered in a grey, moving mass, with mud partially engulfing some buildings.

Police said 12 farm buildings, including barns and stables, had been destroyed by the flow of debris.//AFP

Around 2,400 soldiers, as well as tanks, field guns and helicopters were deployed at training grounds in the foothills of the iconic mountain, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Tokyo.

Airborne troops parachuted from planes, anti-aircraft cannon were fired and F2 fighter jets whizzed overhead in a display of force by one of the world’s best-equipped militaries.

Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces armoured vehicles move during an annual live-fire exercise at the Higashi-Fuji firing range in Gotemba, at the foot of Mount Fuji in Shizuoka prefecture on August 24, 2017. // AFP PHOTO

The drills are meant to prepare Japan’s Self-Defence Forces to repel an attack on its remote islands.

But North Korea’s recent threat to fire missiles at the US Pacific territory of Guam and territorial disputes with China and Russia are also concerning Tokyo.

“There are various issues and uncertain factors such as China’s forceful attempt to change the status quo in the East and South China Sea areas, North Korea’s promotion of ballistic missile development and nuclear weapons and Russia’s display of its presence in the Far East,” GSDF Chief of Staff General Koji Yamazaki said in a statement.

“The severity of the security situation surrounding our country… is increasing,” he added.

Japan has deployed its Patriot missile defence system after North Korea threatened to fire ballistic missiles over the country towards Guam.

Japan has in the past vowed to shoot down North Korean missiles or rockets that threaten to hit its territory.

Separately, Japanese and US military personnel are currently conducting live-fire artillery training in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

 Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF)’s members descend from a Chinook helicopter during a live-firing drill at Higashi Fuji training grounds in Gotenba, central Japan, 24 August 2017. // EPA PHOTO

Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) armored vehicles fire flares to make a smoke screen during a live-firing drill at Higashi Fuji training grounds in Gotenba, central Japan, 24 August 2017.// AFP PHOTO

A Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF)’s vehicle fires during a live-firing drill at Higashi Fuji training grounds in Gotenba, central Japan, 24 August 2017. // EPA PHOTO

“Vietnamese Contemporary Art Exhibition in Thailand 2017” is showcasing 97 works by 47 artists selected by Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism.

As well as offering Thai aesthetes an encounter with Vietnam’s creative cutting edge, the exhibition aims to spur a new era of artistic exchange between the two countries.

On display are artworks in five mediums – enamel, lacquer-ware, silk-paintings, graphic arts and sculpture – with subjects and styles ranging from impressionist landscapes and figurative portraits to socialist realism and surrealistic fantasy.

After taking in the Vietnamese contemporary art scene on the ground floor, visitors can learn more about Asean at the first Asean Cultural Centre in South Asia, located on the third floor.