The protest leader was released from the prison on Monday but Chanasongkram police said that he was ordered to travel to Bangkok while being accompanied by two human rights lawyers early on Tuesday.
Arnon Nampa, a pro-democratic protest leader and human rights lawyer, has been transported to Chanasongkram Police Station after being released from Chiang Mai Central Prison.
He was reportedly rested after the trip and there was no confirmation whether he would be questioned and later jailed or sent to a detention camp with other protesters.
Arnon has denied the charges while his lawyers are trying to oppose the court’s order to further keep him in jail. But if they fail, they will try to get him out on bail.
The pro-democratic activist travelled to Chiang Mai to acknowledge his charges due to a protest on August 9 and was later detained by Chanasongkram police after the end of his political gathering at Thammasat University’s Tha Phra Chan Campus on September 19-20.
A woman was killed in a car crash in Ubon Ratchathani province early on Tuesday while her three-year-old son miraculously escaped death.
At 2.10am, police went to rescue the victims after being notified of the incident. They found Sukanya Tawarom, 26, trapped inside the vehicle.
The officers spent 10 minutes trying to pull her out of the car but by the time paramedics came to give her first aid, she was already dead.
Meanwhile, her three-year-old son was found outside the car in the middle of the road. He reportedly flew out of the car during the accident. The boy only had a minor injury.
Police said the car was being driven at high speed and crashed into an electric post.
Sukanya had reportedly left her boyfriend as she had posted a message five hours prior to the accident. Police will call him for questioning
The baht opened at 31.27 to the US dollar on Tuesday, unchanged from Monday’s close.
The Thai currency is likely to move between 31.20 and 31.40 on Tuesday, said Jitipol Puksamatanan, senior director of the chief investment office at SCB Securities.
On Monday night, the S&P 500 index fell by 1.9 per cent due to investors’ concerns about the US economic stimulus policies. The Stoxx 600 was down by 1.8 per cent due to concerns about Covid-19.
The risk-off market pressured the Ten-Year Treasury yield to decrease by 5 basis points to 0.8 per cent. Moreover, the dollar strengthened by 0.4 per cent, compared to other main currencies.
However, the gold price at $1,902 per ounce pointed to investors’ belief that the dollar would weaken in the future.
In Thailand, political concerns have made investors and entrepreneurs cautious about expanding their transactions, despite the country’s exports showing recovery.
In the short-term, the senior director advised the investors to monitor the direction of the dollar and capital market. He predicted that US stocks would fall before the election next month.
Three of six suspects who allegedly engaged in extortion by impersonating Immigration Police in Rayong have been arrested.
Immigration Police chief Pol Lt-General Sompong Chingduang on Monday announced the arrests in a case that took place on September 15. Six men wearing Immigration Police uniforms visited business owners in Rayong province who hired migrant labourers and asked them for money.
“We have checked the CCTV footage in nearby areas and found that the six suspects had gathered at 8.18am on September 15 at a petrol station on Khao Lam Road in Chonburi’s Sriracha district,” he said. “Then they got on three cars and drove to Rayong’s Pluak Daeng district to visit business owners. Later at 3.30pm, they again met at the petrol station.”
“From the footage we have managed to track down and arrest three suspects, namely Wisanu or Saneh (45), Ekachai or Dum (36) and Ratchanon or Bank (32). We also found a Toyota pickup truck and the police uniforms that they used on that day.”
The three were sent to Pluak Daeng Police Station and were charged with impersonating police officers and extortion, while police have issued arrest warrants for the other three suspects.
“If you witness any crimes involving Immigration Police or migrants staying in Thailand, please contact Immigration Police hotline at 1178 or visit: www.immigration.go.th,” added Sompong.
NationalOct 27. 2020In Milwaukee, a field hospital has been set up at the state fairgrounds to treat covid-19 patients. (Wisconsin Department of Administration/ Reuters)
By The Washington Post Joel Achenbach, Karin Brulliard, Brittany Shammas, Jacqueline Dupree
Hospitals in almost every region of the country – the Upper Midwest, the Mountain West, the Southwest and the heart of Appalachia – are seeing record levels of patients suffering from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
More than 42,000 people were hospitalized nationally with the virus Monday, a figure that is steadily climbing toward the midsummer peak caused by massive outbreaks in the Sun Belt. In the hardest-hit places, this is nudging hospitals toward the nightmare scenario of rationing care.
The country is not there yet, but the recent rise in confirmed coronavirus infections – which set a single-day record Saturday of more than 83,000 – is an ominous leading indicator of an imminent surge of patients into hospitals. The pattern of this pandemic has been clear: Infections go up, hospitalization rates follow in a few weeks, and then deaths spike.
The medical community vividly remembers the crisis in New York hospitals in the spring and the catastrophe in northern Italy, when the oldest patients were left untreated so that doctors could try to save younger patients. In Utah, the president of that state’s hospital association, Greg Bell, has warned that within two weeks, the hospitals may have to start rationing care among the most seriously ill patients in intensive care units.
El Paso reached 100% hospital capacity Sunday and is setting up field hospitals to handle the overflow of patients. University Medical Center in the Texas city has established a mobile unit in its parking lot to hold covid-19 patients who are almost ready to go home. Officials are hoping to transfer non-covid-19 patients to Children’s Hospital next door. The hospital has 198 covid-19 patients; during the July surge, the maximum was 64.
State officials have dispatched 100 nurses and five doctors to the hospital to help, but the hospital has asked for 45 more nurses, said Joel Hendryx, the chief medical officer.
“Our doctors and nurses have been doing this for over seven months, so talk about covid fatigue,” he said.
The border city, which has seen an explosive outbreak in the past few weeks, reported 1,443 new infections Monday – more than double the cases reported Sunday in more-populous New York. County Judge Ricardo Samaniego on Sunday imposed a 10 p.m. curfew, with exceptions for work or emergencies. Violators will face a fine of $500.
Forty-one states and Puerto Rico have more hospitalized covid-19 patients now than at the end of September, and 22 of those states have seen increases in excess of 50%, according to health data analyzed by The Washington Post.
“The data is just going up on hospitalizations, and we are going to run into trouble – it looks like almost inevitably,” Ross McKinney, chief scientific officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said Monday.
Rural America is particularly vulnerable. In the entire state of North Dakota, only 25 intensive care unit beds remained staffed and available Monday in the 11 hospitals that have ICUs, according to state data.
Even hospital officials in places not yet in a full-blown crisis are looking with concern at the national trends, worried about a potential drain of experienced nurses who may be lured to other parts of the country to help combat outbreaks.
“WE’RE HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION,” declared a two-page advertisement Sunday in the Tulsa World newspaper, placed by Saint Francis Health System, which operates seven hospitals across Oklahoma. The ad featured a graph that showed the number of coronavirus patients soaring in recent weeks. “We were doing better when we were in this together,” the ad said.
The goal was to prod the public to follow practices such as mask-wearing to limit viral spread, according to Jake Henry Jr., president and chief executive of Saint Francis.
“What we’re seeing is not sustainable,” Henry said Monday.
He said exhausted medical workers get discouraged when they see people in public who are not wearing masks. The city of Tulsa has a mask ordinance – signs are posted outside businesses reminding customers – but suburban jurisdictions do not, nor does the state.
“We’d just like to get everybody going in the same direction,” Henry said.
The pandemic, and President Trump’s handling of it, have emerged as the defining issues of the presidential race, and polling suggests that the crisis is a major drag on the president’s prospects for a second term. Hospitalizations are rising sharply in three electoral battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, a field hospital has been established at the state fairgrounds to treat overflow covid-19 patients.
Ohio, a traditional bellwether state in presidential elections, joins the other three battlegrounds on a list of the 10 states with the greatest increases in covid-19 hospitalizations since Sept. 30, according to The Post’s data.
Ohio set a new high Monday for hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. Seven other states Monday also set records: Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Montana tied its record.
In West Virginia, Clay Marsh, an intensive-care physician who serves as the state’s coronavirus czar, said many people who postponed elective surgeries in the spring, during the initial outbreak, are now taking up some of the hospital capacity. Officials are closely watching the high rate of new infections and know that at some point it might be necessary to stop doing elective surgeries and other procedures that are not urgent, Marsh said.
A midsummer spike in infections affected mainly younger adults, but much of the recent surge has been in older people, Marsh said. He said he believes there has been a gradual spread from younger people to their elders, including community spread in houses of worship and in nursing homes.
“We’re seeing that covid positivity is moving toward an older population, and we have a very vulnerable older population,” Marsh said. “That’s the population we’ve always been very nervous about.”
In Michigan, hospitalizations have jumped 80% in recent weeks, causing particular concern in the more rural parts of the state, where some hospitals “are being inundated with patients,” said Gary Roth, chief medical officer for the Michigan Health and Hospital Association.
“Are we getting concerned regarding the increasing numbers, the surging of patients coming into the hospitals? Absolutely,” he said.
At hospitals across the state, the greatest worry is about health-care workers who have only just begun to recover from the stress of the first coronavirus surge.
“One thing that we’ve noticed, particularly in the areas that got hit hard by covid, is it caused a lot of scar tissue for our health-care workers,” said David Wood, chief medical officer at Beaumont Health in southeast Michigan, where hospitals neared capacity during the spring. “Seeing the amount of death in such a short period of time, by what seemed like an entity that we had no defenses against, has made it more difficult to get the health-care workers necessary to want to come back and be back in that same position.”
At University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City, the hospital had about 20 covid patients at the end of August. The numbers started rising three to four weeks ago, with 52 covid patients Monday, said Russell Vinik, chief medical operations officer.
The hospital is mostly using existing staffing, and the workers are overtaxed, Vinik said. Nurses are on mandatory on call, and a third team has been added to staff a surge intensive care unit that opened two weeks ago.
“This is doable for a short period of time, but for a long period of time, it really wears down our staff,” Vinik said. “They are physically and emotionally exhausted.”
He lamented that mask-wearing “is still not as compliant as we’d like, particularly outside Salt Lake County. We have big families in Utah, and big family gatherings, and what we’ve seen is the majority of the transmission comes from household gatherings. That’s a culture that needs to change, to make some sacrifices.”
The fall surge nationally has been propelled by colder weather, the reopening of schools and colleges, the broad migration indoors, patchy-at-best adherence to mask-wearing and other public health guidelines, and the general chaos and confusion of the national response.
A motorcycle taxi rider was killed in an accident after reportedly colliding with a pickup truck early on Tuesday in Bangkok’s Bangbon district.
Bang Khun Tian Police Station was alerted at 2.30am on Tuesday to the road accident on Kanchanaphisek Road leading to Rama II Road.
They found the body of Phanudet Mongkholkhlee, aged 27 years, lying on the road with a broken neck. The deceased was wearing a taxi bike driver’s jacket, while a smashed helmet and damaged Honda Wave motorcycle were found nearby.
Saneh Suphachan, 60, driver of the other vehicle, an Isuzu D-Max pickup truck, was awaiting police officers at the scene to give his statement. He reportedly told officials that he was driving along the road from Amnat Charoen province heading to Soi Ekachai 109 when the deceased rode on the wrong side of the road and allegedly hit his pickup head-on. The impact caused the truck to swerve and scraped into a concrete barrier until the front bumper came off.
The deceased’s body was sent to the Siriraj Hospital for autopsy, while police are reviewing CCTV footage and interviewing witnesses to determine the cause of the accident.
The Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry has increased surveillance on government websites after receiving threats from a hacking group, Minister Buddhipongse Punnakanta said on Monday.
Buddhipongse said he had received reports that a hacker group, who called themselves “Cyber Three Fingers”, had announced their intention to attack the government’s websites.
“In response, I have ordered the Thailand Computer Emergency Response Team and Electronic Transactions Development Agency to closely monitor government websites and deploy preventive measures against the attacks,” he said.
“We found that on Monday afternoon, there were several attempts to enter the ministry’s website at an unusual rate, which is one of the methods attackers use to disrupt normal service of a website by overwhelming its server with a flood of Internet traffic,” he said.
Buddhipongse added that the website of the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission also faced similar attempts and went down for a few minutes on Monday. Both websites are now running as normal.
“We will continue to monitor government websites and use preventive measures against attackers during this period,” he added.
“Threats to government infrastructure are expected during political turmoil, and it could be either a bluff or a real attack. The ministry has been preparing both personnel and measures in case of an attack by hackers or any severe situation.”
The Thailand Meteorological Department said on Tuesday that the high-pressure cell from China still covers upper Thailand, bringing cool weather in the morning and strong winds, as well as isolated light rain.
The monsoon trough lies across the middle South while the moderate southwest winds prevail across the Andaman Sea, the South and the lower Gulf.
Isolated heavy rains are likely in the South. The wind and waves in the upper portion of the Andaman Sea and the Gulf will likely rise two metres high and more than two metres high during thundershowers. All ships should proceed with caution, the department said.
The category 5 typhoon “Molave” over the middle South China Sea is expected to make landfall over middle Vietnam by October 28 before downgrading. As a result, the southwest winds across the Andaman Sea, the South and the Gulf will strengthen with isolated heavy rain and strong winds for the Northeast, the East, the Central and the lower North.
The weather forecast for the next 24 hours:
Northern region: Cool weather with isolated light rain; minimum temperature 18-22 degrees Celsius, maximum 33-35°C.
Northeast: Cool weather and strong winds with light rain in 20 per cent of the areas; minimum temperature 19-21°C, maximum 32-33°C.
Central: Mostly cloudy with isolated light rain; minimum temperature 22-24°C, maximum 32-34°C.
East: Cool weather and strong winds with isolated light rain; minimum temperature 22-24°C, maximum 31-34°C; waves a metre high and 1-2 metres during thundershowers.
South (east coast): Thundershowers in 60 per cent of the areas and isolated heavy rain; minimum temperature 23-25°C, maximum 30-33°C; waves a metre high and 1-2 metres during thundershowers.
South (west coast): Thundershowers in 70 per cent of the areas and isolated heavy rains; minimum temperature 23-24°C, maximum 29-31°C; waves 1-2 metres high and two metres during thundershowers.
Bangkok and surrounding areas: Partly cloudy; minimum temperature 23-25°C, maximum 32-34°C.
By Syndication The Washington Post, Bloomberg · Siddharth Philip
The resurgent covid-19 pandemic is pushing back the recovery in air travel, turning winter into a survival test for carriers now pinning hopes on a spring rebound.
Airlines are urging governments to introduce more testing and travel bubbles to help spur demand. The industry is on track to burn through an estimated $77 billion in cash the second half. The International Air Transport Association has called for fresh government support, while stressing the safety of flying.
The pain is evident across the globe, where airlines have rescinded earlier forecasts that called for traffic to gradually increase toward normal levels during the fourth quarter. Instead, carriers are retrenching and shoring up their finances.
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways will slash more than 5,000 jobs and close a regional carrier to reduce its cash burn. British Airways parent IAG no longer expects to break even during the last three months of the year and has slashed capacity. American Airlines Group authorized the sale of $1 billion in shares as it burns up to $30 million a day this quarter.
One exception is in China, where the pandemic is in check and domestic flights have surged past where they were a year ago. In the U.S., airlines carried 1 million passengers on a single day for the first time since March. Still, air travel is at about the level it was more than three decades ago.
“It is still very unclear as to whether China is a model for what recovery will look like in other short- to medium-haul markets such as the U.S. or Europe, or whether aspects of its geography and culture make it different,” Nick Cunningham, an analyst at Agency Partners, wrote in an Oct. 23 note.
There are some signs of progress toward standards that would unlock long-distance travel, which has lagged behind domestic and regional flying. An international protocol will be ready in the next four weeks, said Gloria Manzo, the chief executive officer of the World Travel & Tourism Council.
“We can’t wait for a vaccine,” Manzo said at the Future Hospitality Summit on Monday. Travel corridors between London and Dubai, as well as London and Newark, New Jersey, are ready but hinge on government signoffs, she said.
The pace of a reopening will factor into production plans for planemakers Airbus and Boeing. Airbus is preparing to ramp up output next year of its most important jet, the A320neo, in a sign of growing confidence that jetliner demand is poised to recover. The European planemaker stressed that the plans are tentative and no decisions have been made.
Boeing is getting ready to unground its workhorse 737 Max jet, which has been sidelined for 17 months after two fatal crashes. U.S. and European regulators are in the final phases of approving the plane’s re-entry into service. Chinese authorities say the plane is a priority, but have no clear timetable for its return.
Police said that both royalists and pro-democracy demonstrators were breaking the law on Monday by rallying at the German embassy on Sathorn Road in Bangkok.
Deputy Metropolitan Police chief Piya Tawichai said two teams were policing the demonstrations. Metropolitan Police Division 6 officers were taking care of the pro-democracy march from Sam Yan, while Division 5 officers were deployed outside the embassy.
The police chief said that the royalist group and the student-led pro-democracy demonstrators had not requested permission for their gatherings, both of which were illegal under emergency law to control the spread of Covid-19.
File Photo: Arnon Nampa 
In Milwaukee, a field hospital has been set up at the state fairgrounds to treat covid-19 patients. (Wisconsin Department of Administration/ Reuters) 
