A senior administration official said Trump would make the announcement — ignoring frantic warnings from US allies in the region and around the world — at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT) from the White House.

“He will say that the United States government recognizes that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“He views this as a recognition of reality, both historic reality,” the source added, “and modern reality.”

Plunging further into a decades-long dispute over a city considered holy by Jews, Muslims and Christians, Trump will also order to begin planning to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“It will take some time to find a site, to address security concerns, design a new facility, fund a new facility and build it,” the official said, indicating that the move would not be immediate.

“It will be a matter of some years, it won’t be months, it’s going to take time.”

The status of Jerusalem is a critical issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with both sides claiming the city as their capital.

In a frantic series of calls, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the European Union, France, Germany and Turkey all warned Trump against the move.

Anticipating protests, US government officials and their families have been ordered to avoid Jerusalem’s Old City and the West Bank.

Trump’s move comes close to fulfilling a campaign promise, and will delight his political donors and the conservative and evangelical base so vital for the embattled president.

– ‘Red line’ –

Most of the international community does not formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, insisting the issue can only be resolved in final status negotiations.

US officials talk of “threading the needle” — fulfilling Trump’s campaign pledge, while keeping the peace process on the rails.

The White House argues that such a move would not prejudge final talks and would represent the reality that west Jerusalem is and will continue to be part of Israel under any settlement.

“President Trump remains committed to achieving a lasting peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians and is optimistic that peace can be achieved,” a second official said.

Trump “is prepared to support a two State solution… If agreed to by the two parties.”

Critics say Trump’s approach is more like “splitting the baby” and could also extinguish his own much-vaunted efforts to broker Middle East peace while igniting the flames of conflict in a region already reeling from crises in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Qatar.

The armed Islamist Hamas movement has threatened to launch a new “intifada” or uprising.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman warned his close ally that moving the US embassy was a “dangerous step” that could rile Muslims around the world.

“Mr Trump! Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims,” Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a raucous televised speech on Tuesday, echoing alarm expressed by Palestinian and Arab leaders.

The move already impacted the stock market in far away Japan, which closed down nearly two percent Wednesday in part over concerns on the fate of Jerusalem.

The issue could be “an unsettling factor to the global order,” said Makoto Sengoku, market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Centre.

– ‘Embassy Act’ –

Israel seized the largely-Arab eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it, claiming both sides of the city as its “eternal and undivided capital.”

But the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state and fiercely oppose any Israeli attempt to extend sovereignty there.

Trump was pushed to act on the embassy as a result of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which stated that the city “should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel” and that the US embassy should be moved there.

An inbuilt waiver has been repeatedly invoked by successive US presidents, postponing the move on grounds of “national security” once every six months, meaning the law has never taken effect.

Several peace plans have unravelled in the past decades over the issue of how to divide sovereignty or oversee sites in Jerusalem, with questions over the status of the city repeatedly sparking anger on both sides of the conflict.//AFP

Emma Bennett, a PhD candidate at Monash University in Melbourne, is working with environmentally-conscious dog owners who have volunteered their pets in a rainforest region of Victoria state to track the scats, or droppings, of the endangered tiger quoll, a small marsupial.

“Scats contain DNA, so you can identify the individual animal,” Bennett told AFP on Wednesday.

“They also contain information about diet distribution.”

The dogs — of varying breeds, including border collies and german shepherds — have been found to have “very high” early detection rates of 50-70 percent accuracy in discovering the samples.

“They are working just as efficiently as you would expect a full time working dog to do,” Bennett said.

Using canines to obtain the faeces sample is a “non-invasive” alternative to traps, reducing the risk of injury or stress, the researcher added.

“When you collect scats you’re not impacting the threatened species at all, but you’re still able to collect its DNA and a whole range of other information about it, so you don’t have to trap the animal” she said.

The tiger quoll, a spotted carnivorous cat-like marsupial, is threatened in the southeastern Otway rainforest region by land clearing, as well as foxes and cats.

Bennett said the animal was thought to have died out in the area until a rediscovery in 2012.

She expects her study will be expanded to track other threatened species, with the use of volunteer dogs opening up the research techniques to smaller community groups as a cheaper way alternative to other methods.

“There is potential for finding someone in the community who is really passionate and into dog training to step up and go: ‘I can help find that rare orchid or that burrowing frog’,” Bennett said.//AFP

The hiring fees for Singapore’s first large-scale electric car-sharing scheme, which starts next Tuesday (Dec 12), will be comparable with taxi fares.

BlueSG, part of a group that operates a similar scheme in Paris, announced yesterday (Dec 4) that there will be two plans.

One charges a monthly subscription of S$15 (US$11), and 33 cents for each minute of use. The other has no monthly fee, but will charge 50 cents a minute.

The first plan works out to S$10.65 for a half-hour slot for a driver who uses the car 20 times a month, while it is S$15 in the second plan.

Depending on the time of day, the rates are comparable with taxi fares. For instance, for a cab hailed on the streets, the off-peak fare is around S$12 for a 20-minute ride.

The scheme will start with 80 cars that will be rolled out islandwide for users to rent via a BlueSG mobile application, which can be downloaded today (Dec 5) from the App Store and Google Play.

Users will be charged according to the duration of use instead of the distance travelled.

In all, there will be 30 BlueSG stations with 120 charging points across the island by the year end.

Of the 30 stations, 18 are in public housing estates such as Tampines, Bishan and Punggol, while 10 will be in the city centre. The remaining two are in the one-north business park and the Singapore Science Park.

The launch by BlueSG, a subsidiary of French conglomerate Bollore Group, comes after years of planning and a number of delays.

BlueSGaims to expand its fleet to 1,000 electric vehicles and install 2,000 charging points by 2020.

The move will put this on course to become the world’s second-biggest electric car-sharing scheme after the one in Paris, which has more than 4,000 cars.

Singapore University of Social Sciences transport researcher Park Byung Joon said the rates “seem quite high”.

Socar, the top car-sharing operator in South Korea, charges around S$20 an hour, he added.

He noted that unlike other transport options such as Uber and Grab “in which the car comes to you, you have to go to the car” in the new scheme.

Lai Meng, president of the Car-Sharing Association of Singapore, said the rates were “slightly higher” than expected, but noted the higher cost of electric cars.

Unlike some tax-exempt electric taxis with research plates plying Singapore roads, the BlueSG cars will have normal car plates and attract full taxes. They are estimated to cost around S$100,000 each.

Lai said surveys indicate that users, who prefer driving a car instead of being driven to their destinations, are prepared to pay a premium of up to 20 per cent above taxi and private-hire car rates.

Occasional cab commuter Manoj Kumar, 48, said “the fees look very reasonable to me”.

The business owner, who drives and takes public transport as well, added: “It will be better if they can increase the number of spots to pick up and drop off the car.”

BlueSG’s two-door, four-seater hatchbacks can travel up to 250km on one full charge of their lithium-metal-polymer batteries.

“In pursuance of the memorandum of cooperation to establish the India-Japan Act East Forum signed on September 14 during the visit of Prime Minister Abe to India, Ministry of External Affairs and Embassy of Japan held the first joint meeting of the Forum on December 5,” the External Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu co-chaired the meeting.

“The Act East Forum aims to provide a platform for India-Japan collaboration under the rubric of India’s Act East Policy and Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” the statement said.

“The Forum will identify specific projects for economic modernisation of India’s Northeast region including those pertaining to connectivity, developmental infrastructure, industrial linkages as well as people-to-people contacts through tourism, culture and sports-related activities.”

According to a joint statement issued following the bilateral summit in September, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Abe appreciated the cooperation between Japan and northeastern India, ranging from key infrastructure projects such as road connectivity, electricity, water supply and sewage, to social and environmental sustainability such as afforestation and community empowerment, as well as people-to-people exchanges, including inviting youth from the Northeast to Japan.

“We agreed to work in a much more focused and substantive way in the Northeast,” Jaishankar said after the summit.

“To that end, we agreed on an India-Japan Act East Forum which will essentially explore the possibilities of involving Japan in northeastern infrastructure,” Jaishankar said.

He said that development of infrastructure in the northeastern region would help India open out much more to Myanmar, Bangladesh and beyond.

“So it would in a practical way it really give legs to our Act East Policy,” the Foreign Secretary said.

He said that though Japan has been assisting northeastern India in road infrastructure, the intent this time was to take it to a much higher level.

Apart from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Japanese Embassy, Tuesday’s meeting was attended by representatives of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Home Affairs and the northeastern states from the Indian side, and Japan International Cooperation Agency, Japan External Trade Organisation, Japan Foundation and Japan National Tourism Organization from the Japanese side.

The Look East Policy enunciated in the early 1990s for India’s enhanced engagements with Southeast Asia for boosting economic ties, was turned into the Act Policy after the present NDA government assumed power giving a strategic dimension to it.

More than 50 dancers and musicians from Cambodia’s Royal University of Fine Arts and Thailand’s Bunditpatanasilpa Institute shared the same stage at Chaktomuk Hall in Phnom Penh on Monday night.

Vira Rojpojchanarat, Thailand’s culture minister, discusses with Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister Men Sam An. Photo courtesy of Culture Ministry of Thailand.

Vira Rojpojchanarat, Thailand’s culture minister, said: “The cultural exchange aims to expand cooperation between Asean countries. Besides these performances, Thailand has also called for cooperation on religion, especially Buddhism. Following Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, we persuaded Buddhist monks in Cambodia to join our religious campaign by praying on New Year’s Eve to welcome the New Year with a peaceful spirit and mind.”

Vira visits Samdech Preah Sanghareach Bour Kry, the current Supreme Patriarch of the Thammayut order. Photo courtesy of Culture Ministry of Thailand.

During his two-day visit recently, Vira met Men Sam An, Deputy Prime Minister, Him Chhem, Minister of Culture and Religion, Samdech Preah Sanghareach Bour Kry, the current Supreme Patriarch of the Thammayut order and venerable monk Sumedhadhipati Non Nget.

“Thank you for the cultural cooperation. Culture is the spirit of all countries. If culture is rich, the country will be successful,” Men Sam An said she would pass on the successful co-operation effort to the prime minister.

She added that Cambodia also thanks Thailand on the recent return of Khmer artifacts which were found in Thailand, and hopes to strengthen bilateral relationships on business and culture.

“Cambodia and Thailand are brothers. This performance is also evidence of cultural cooperation and the promotion of people-to-people connectivity between the two countries,” said Phoeurng Sackona, Cambodia’s minister of culture and fine arts.

The performance featured 11 pieces on stage, accompanied by live piphat, or traditional orchestras, from both countries.

Both countries presented their own classical dances alongside collaborated shows based on the similar cultures and the way of life involving rice farming and fishing.

Thai and Cambodian dancers stages the “Farmers’ Dance”. Photo courtesy of Culture Ministry of Thailand.

Among the highlights was the Farmers’ Dance. Thailand has been performing this work since 1979 when the first cultural exchange took place in China. The cheerful song was composed by the late Thai national artist Montri Tramod.

Cambodian performers also shared the cheerful Khmer Scarf Krama Dance inspired by the multi-functional cloth called Krama. With less than a week of rehearsal, Thais and Cambodians performed on stage together.

Darm Boontham, minister and the Royal Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, said: “As we share similar cultures, the soft power will help facilitate everything and strengthen our relationship.”

​​​​​​​

As reported by kompas.com, the announcement came on Monday during 25^thanniversary celebrations of Mattel Indonesia, which is a branch of the company’s headquarters based in California, United States.

At the event in Cikarang, West Java, a Barbie clad in batik was gifted to Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto.

The doll was dressed in pink-and-purple batik with signature motifs of parang(tongue of fire) and megamendung (blue-and-white cloud). The outfit was completed with a scarf and accessories that included shoes, earrings and a golden-colored necklace.

“Today, the batik Barbie was launched, which shows that Mattel is geared toward the branding of local Indonesian products,” Airlangga said at the Mattel Indonesia factory in Cikarang, West Java, on Monday as quoted by kompas.com.

It is not yet known when the Barbie in batik will be available in stores or what motif the doll will wear. According to Mattel, the company is set to explore further development before officially launching the product in the market.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been named The Straits Times‘ Asian of the Year, the first time that a newsmaker has won the award twice.

Xi, 64, was chosen by a panel of editors for “having been a crucial source of stability at a time of great uncertainty for the region and the world”.

The award is given out every December in recognition of an Asian or Asians who have made a significant impact to their societies or the wider region over the past 12 months.

This year, the newspaper is also paying a special tribute to veteran Singapore diplomat Tommy Koh, a stout defender of a rules-based international order.

The editors noted that in a year of disruption and change, marked by a power transfer in the United States with the election of a new president, China’s President has been a picture of calm and sobriety. He also offered a vision that went beyond his country of 1.38 billion people to encompass Asia and the world.

Xi, the editors added, demonstrated leadership throughout the year – from his stout defence of free trade and endorsement of efforts to combat climate change, to articulating a vision for a connected world in hosting the inaugural Belt and Road Summit.

He also succeeded in consolidating and enhancing his power at the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th national congress. The meeting takes place once every five years.

This year, China also declared its intentions to start negotiations with Asean on a Code of Conduct to manage disputes in the contested South China Sea, and brokered an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar on how to deal with the 600,000 Rohingya who had fled harsh treatment in Myanmar to Bangladesh in recent months.

In selecting Xi for the award, the editors hoped “he will be able to draw on the wisdom of China’s rich civilisation and long history to present the world with a China that while pursuing self-interest, does so with patience, empathy, generosity and, above all, respect for the rule of law and fair play in international relations”.

“If he succeeds in achieving half of what he speaks about, Asia, and the world, will be transformed, and for the better. The China Dream could well be an Asia Dream,” they said.

Warren Fernandez, Editor-in-chief of Singapore Press Holdings’ English/Malay/Tamil Media Group and Editor of The Straits Times, who chaired the panel that deliberated on the award, said: “President Xi has stood out this year for the impact he has made both at home and abroad. At a time of great disruption in the world, he has projected good sense and calm. He has helped steer the world forward in its push for globalisation and trade, as well as supporting efforts to tackle climate change and foster closer regional ties in Asia.”

Xi first won the award in 2013, together with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. New leaders of their countries then, they were acknowledged for the promise they held out for the rest of Asia.

The inaugural award, in 2012, went to then Myanmar President Thein Sein and the 2014 award went to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew was given the 2015 award posthumously.

Last year, a group of technological and business leaders won the award for their path-breaking initiatives that unleashed changes in the communities around Asia and the world.

This year, Professor Koh receives a special tribute “for the way he has brought the best of humanity to his country, even as he took the best of Singapore to the world”, said the editors.

The veteran diplomat “has stood up for a rules-based order in a chaotic world”, displaying a tireless readiness to work towards compromise in the most difficult diplomatic situations, they said.

Prof Koh, who turned 80 last month, is also a champion of the arts, the environment and civic engagement. He has not been short of accolades at home and abroad and in October received Indonesia’s inaugural Mochtar Kusumaatmadja award, which acknowledges prominent academics and practitioners who have contributed significantly in international law.

But on the occasion of his 80th birthday, The Straits Times editors found “it is befitting to pay special tribute to him for his outstanding lifetime contributions to Singapore, Asia and the world”.

The Straits Times’ Citation for Xi Jinping 

2017 has been a year of major disruption and change, as events from previous years continued to play out. A major changing of the guard in the American presidency left many nations feeling cut loose from their traditional strategic moorings. The leading capitalist nation that once stood as a beacon for free trade and globalisation turned inwards with an America First policy.

Throughout the world, wracked also by seismic changes in technology and the way we live and work, the crucial underpinnings of international society, and the cherished stability this has engendered, seemed to be under severe stress and strain.

Xi Jinping, China’s President, and principal custodian of the world’s second-largest economy and military power, has emerged as a crucial source of stability in a time of great uncertainty.

He has been a picture of calm common sense, refined sobriety and steely determination, as well as an architect of a vision that soars beyond his nation of 1.3 billion people to encompass the Asian region and the wider world.

In January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Xi made a landmark speech defending free trade and warning against protectionism. The very next day, in Geneva, he stoutly endorsed the Paris Climate Change Accord, with the stirring idea that “mankind has only one homeland”. His summit meeting with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in April set the stage for a mature relationship between the superpowers.

The Belt and Road Initiative laid out his vision for a connected world, much of it underwritten by Chinese capital.

In October, his success at consolidating and enhancing his power, evidenced in the conclusions of the 19th Party Congress in October, makes plain his role in contributing to stability and progress at home as well as abroad.

The following month, China reiterated that it would like to negotiate a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea.

The recent success in brokering an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar on the complicated question of the Muslim Rohingya bespeaks the influence China wields under his stewardship.

If he succeeds in achieving half of what he speaks about, Asia, and the world, will be transformed, and for the better.

The China Dream could well be an Asia Dream.

Few Asian leaders have placed such a stamp on the nation, neighbourhood or beyond, as Mr Xi has done this year. The editors of The Straits Times are unanimous in naming him the paper’s Asian of the Year 2017.

In all this, Xi has outlined a vision not just for his nation, but all Asia. It is a vision that, while grounded in domestic self-interest, can perhaps, with due care and consideration, be also used to benefit all in Asia and beyond.

The editors of The Straits Times, in selecting Xi for this award, do so with the hope that he will be able to draw on the wisdom of China’s rich civilisation and long history to present the world with a China that, while pursuing its self-interest, does so with patience, empathy, generosity and, above all, respect for the rule of law and fair play in international relations.

It is this that has prevented major conflicts since the end of World War II.

On the contrary, a mercantilist, aggressive and self-centred China would not only do injury to the rich tapestry of its heritage, but possibly, also hold back its future promise of Asia, and the wider world.

The Asian of the Year Award, hence, is as much a recognition of the distance covered by Xi thus far, as also the promise of taller peaks that remain to be ascended.

On Easter Sunday in 1967, Jim Thompson went for an afternoon walk in the Cameron Highlands’ jungle-clad hills. The American, known as the “king of Thai silk”, was on vacation in Malaysia with friends at the Moonlight Cottage, a colonial-period villa in the old British hill station north of Kuala Lumpur.

Something happened during his walk. Thompson was never seen again. His disappearance has been a mystery for half a century. A huge search turned up nothing. No ransom or other note was found. Thompson had left his medications behind, which suggested foul play. Several books have been written about him, spawning an array of theories about his fate that range from tiger attack to a CIA plot.

First breakthrough

A breakthrough in the case was made in 2013 by my friend Xuwicha “Noi” Hiranpruek. He called and said, “I think I may have solved the mystery”. Noi recounted a discussion he had with a Singaporean friend, Teo Pin, who told him the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) had killed Thompson during his visit to the Cameron Highlands. This was a new theory. How did Teo Pin know this? It was a deathbed confession of his uncle, Teo Pok Hwa, who had been a senior CPM cadre for decades fighting against the British and, later, the Malaysians.

I met Teo Pin in Singapore. He was a pleasant, soft-spoken fellow, but reticent to speak about Thompson’s demise to a stranger. I told Teo Pin his information could be very important in explaining Thompson’s death and asked for details. He said his uncle Teo Pok Hwa told him that when Thompson arrived in the Cameron Highlands he asked to be put in contact with Chin Peng, the secretary general of the CPM and then the most wanted man in Malaysia.

Teo Pin said asking to contact Chin Peng aroused immediate suspicion in the Camerons, a longtime stronghold of the CPM. The Moonlight Cottage, where Thompson was a guest, had at one time been a local headquarters of the CPM. Staff members were CPM sympathisers at the time he stayed there.

The year 1967 was a bad time for an ageing American with a background in intelligence gathering to seek out the most wanted man in Malaysia. The communist struggle was not over. A second “Emergency” began a year later and did not end until the Malay communists surrendered in 1989. Thompson was put under surveillance while the CPM checked his background. They learned that the American had been an intelligence officer during World War II. He was suspected of being a spy.

At the time, communication was difficult for the CPM. They lacked radios and relied on couriers to carry messages among disparate groups around Malaysia and their border headquarters in Betong, Thailand. Each CPM cell was pretty much on its own and handled security issues themselves. A decision was likely made locally, and Thompson killed during his Easter Day walk in 1967. The CPM made sure that no physical evidence was found.

I told Teo Pin his information needed corroboration. Was there anyone who could confirm Teo Pok Hwa’s story? He said no. His uncle abandoned his wife and five children to fight for the CPM and had been away for decades. I thanked Teo Pin and said we would continue to look for confirmation.

More than a silk tycoon

So, who was Jim Thompson? Much more than a silk merchant, for sure. He was a Princeton graduate from a prominent Delaware family who had served with distinction as an officer in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War Two.

When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, a number of OSS “stars” were shifted to the China-Burma-India theatre of operations. Jim Thompson, now a major, was one of the officers selected.

Journey to meet Pridi

In Thailand, Thompson became friends with the liberal post-war prime minister Pridi Banomyong, who had served as a leader of the anti-Japanese resistance. Unlike some OSS colleagues who shifted to the CIA when it was founded in 1947, Thompson left government service and disagreed with American foreign policy after the war. He opposed the return of Western powers to their colonies in the region. But it did not affect his friendship with people with whom he had served. One example is Willis Bird Sr, a top OSS officer who had known Mao in China during the war, and who set up businesses in Thailand, including airlines and selling weapons to the Thai government. Thompson was loyal to old friends including Pridi, who was forced from office by a coup d’้tat by his old nemesis Plaek Phibunsongkhram.

The search for Thompson’s killers suddenly came to life in spring this year, when Noi called me again. “I have a second source,” he said.

Noi had approached his old friend Willis Bird Jr, known to his friends as Billy, for information on what happened to Thompson.

Noi recalled, “Billy was quiet for two or three minutes… and said ‘Can I tell you something that I have never spoken to anyone about for 50 years?’ He then told me about a conversation between his father and Jim Thompson.” Both Willis Bird Sr and his friend Thompson were close to Pridi when he was prime minister in 1946. Willis told Thompson in 1966 that Pridi – who was then in exile in China – wanted Willis to come to see him. Willis thought it a bad idea. The US and Thailand were heavily involved in the Vietnam War and Laos, and Willis wanted nothing to do with Pridi, who was seen as a communist sympathiser. Thompson was loyal to the deposed Thai leader and said he would make the hazardous journey instead.

The first leg of the journey would be the Easter trip to the Cameron Highlands. Willis Sr said the Communist Party of Malaya must have killed Thompson, possibly at the behest of the Communist Party of China.

Noi saw Teo Pin come to the same conclusion, because of the deathbed conversation with his uncle.

Willis Bird Sr had told his son the CPM had killed Thompson while he was in Malaysia where Willis thought Thompson was trying to arrange further transport to meet Pridi.

My next move was to contact Neil Hollander, my partner at Adventure Film Productions. Neil and I have made about a dozen films in Thailand and Myanmar, including four for the Jim Thompson Foundation (he was director, me producer). With editor Adam J Goldstein from New York, we shot and edited a 43-minute film in Thailand and Malaysia – interviewing Xuwicha, Teo Pin and Willis Bird Jr.

Jim Thompson was an unwilling participant and an unlucky victim of the power struggle that gripped Southeast Asia after WWII. Xuwicha Hiranpruek found two sources of information which provided key pieces that helped solve the mystery of Jim’s untimely death. Teo Pin identified the group that killed Jim and Billy Bird provided the reason why Jim tried to visit Pridi Banomyong via the Cameron Highlands.

But questions still remain. Why did Thompson ask to see Chin Peng, the CPM leader? The move was bound to arouse suspicion and put his life in danger. It is ironic that Thompson, a man who had forsaken a life of clandestine adventure and turned his back on politics should be lured back into “the game” to help an old friend. His past called him back and on Easter Sunday 1967 on a jungle path not far from the Moonlight Cottage, now known as Jim Thompson Cottage, he paid the ultimate price.

The film will be shown in Bangkok for the first time at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand on Wednesday, December 6.

The North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of hitting the US mainland last Wednesday. A statement from Cathay said a flight crew had that day sighted “what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK test missile”.

Cathay did not give the location of the flight at the time of the sighting, but said the crew of the CX893 flight between San Francisco and Hong Kong had notified Japanese air traffic control “according to procedures”. Operations had continued as normal, the statement added.

Pyongyang said the missile reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometres (2,800 miles) and splashed down 950 kilometres from its launch site.

It also claimed the Hwasong-15 missile fired Wednesday can be tipped with a “super-large heavy warhead” capable of striking the whole US mainland.

Cathay said there was no current plan to change air routes, describing the flight as being “far from the event location”.

“We remain alert and review the situation as it evolves,” the statement said.

In a message shared with staff, Cathay general manager Mark Hoey said the crew had described seeing the missile “blow up and fall apart”, the South China Morning Post reported.

Hoey said that another plane, CX096 which is a freight service between Hong Kong and Mexico, was only a few hundred miles away and could have been closer than the San Francisco flight, according to the report.

Cathay’s management also tried to reassure staff in a memo which described the incident as rare and cited experts who said the chances of a missile striking a plane that it was not targeting were very low, Apple Daily reported.

Local media said crews flying between Hong Kong and Seoul were being issued with satellite phones.

Analysts remain unconvinced that North Korea has mastered the advanced technology to allow the rocket to survive re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.

The months-long nuclear standoff between North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un and US president Donald Trump has fuelled concerns of another conflict, after the 1950-53 Korean War left much of the peninsula in ruin.

Air France in August said it was extending its no-fly zone around North Korea as a precaution after another missile launched from the country fell into the sea 100 kilometres (60 miles) from one its plane’s trajectories.

Its caution came after the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines’ MH17 flight by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing 298 people.

Dutch-led investigators concluded that plane was downed by a Russian-made BUK missile transported from Russia into areas held by pro-Moscow rebels.//AFP

Excluding inflation, the increase is 9.5 per cent, reaching the highest rate this year, against the growth rate at 6.2 per cent in the first quarter, 8.4 per cent in the first half , 9.2 per cent in the first nine months and 9.4 per cent in the first 10 months of the year, the GSO said.

The increase in people’s purchasing power has been attributed to the high consumer demand, as the consumer price index grew slowly in 11 months, only by half of the growth rate against the same period last year, Vu Manh Ha, an expert at the GSO’s internal economics department, said.

During the first 11 months, the total retail sales of goods accounted for 75 per cent of the total to reach $120 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.8 per cent. Retail sales of cars were up by 17.8 per cent, wooden products and building materials went up 12.5 per cent, all kinds of gasoline increased by 11.8 per cent, and food was up by 10.4 per cent.

Notably, the sales of construction materials rose sharply, especially materials used for repairing houses damaged by floods and storms in the central region of Vietnam. Car sales also increased due to many automotive companies offering discounts. Gasoline prices increased several times in the reviewed period.

Retail sales of accommodation, restaurant and catering services ranked second with an 11.2 per cent increase to touch nearly $20 billion.

Travel services also accounted for an increase of 16.2 per cent in spite having low value. The sales of other services accounted for 11.8 per cent of the total retail sales and services, posting a year-on-year rise of 9.6 per cent.