Thailand

After a 20-month delay, Electronic Systems Group finally nailed down a $180 million contract to design and build an air defense system for Thailand, the Westinghouse Electric Corp. division announced yesterday.The contract is to develop a radar program to protect the Southeast Asian country from invading craft as well as direct its commercial airline traffic.The Linthicum-based division won the contract in Septembe 1993. But the signing of the contract became bogged down.Most of the delays resulted from questions about funding, said ++ Lane Letsch, department manager for Westinghouse's air defense operations in Linthicum.

In this week's "Amazing Race", the teams travel to Thailand and I appoint heroes and a villain. I'll also sort various forms of preparation into Useful, Not Useful and Other. So last week, the Snowboarders and Navigational Experts Laurence and Zac teamed up and finished in first and second place. Laurence and Zac, who will be called Dad & Zac for now, maintain that strategy and take the same flight to Jakarta as the Snowboarders. Unfortunately, not booking all the way through to Thailand means that they miss the flight that everyone else gets on, and they arrive an hour later than the pack.

Some jottings from a critic's notebook regarding "The Beach": "It's `Lord of the Flies' meets `The Love Boat!' " ... "It's `Lord of the Flies' meets `The Farm!' " ... "It's `Lord of the Flies' meets a Phish concert!" "The Beach" is all of that and not much more, but filmgoers who crave escapist adventure in exotic climes can do worse. Adapted from Alex Garland's popular first novel by ultra-hip director Danny Boyle ("Trainspotting," "Shallow Grave"), "The Beach" is already famous for starring a post-"Titanic" Leonardo DiCaprio.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai authorities shut down Bangkok's second airport today after it was overrun by anti-government protesters, completely cutting off the capital from air traffic as the prime minister rejected their demands to resign, deepening the country's crisis. Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat says his government will keep functioning despite demands by the army chief and demonstrators that he call new elections to resolve the political crisis. "I reassure the people that this government, which is legitimate and came from elections, will keep functioning until the end," Somchai said in a nationally televised speech yesterday.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai authorities shut down Bangkok's second airport today after it was overrun by anti-government protesters, completely cutting off the capital from air traffic as the prime minister rejected their demands to resign, deepening the country's crisis. Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat says his government will keep functioning despite demands by the army chief and demonstrators that he call new elections to resolve the political crisis. "I reassure the people that this government, which is legitimate and came from elections, will keep functioning until the end," Somchai said in a nationally televised speech yesterday.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The long, tense border between Thailand and Myanmar has erupted in fighting in recent days, with repeated cross-border attacks in Thailand by former Burmese rebels now backed by the junta that runs Myanmar.The result has been the death of three Thai policemen and the uprooting of thousands of ethnic Burmese living in Thai refugee camps, with many of them forcibly marched back across the border to Myanmar.While Thailand has issued stern diplomatic protests and deployed reinforcements along the border, the Thai military is not threatening a counterattack against the army of Myanmar, despite allegations that Burmese soldiers have joined in the attacks on Thai soil.

Bangkok, Thailand - Here at the epicenter of the world's fastest-growing economy, the visibility is not always very good.In the sporadic moments when the glut of buses, cars and motorcycles moves on the perpetually traffic-jammed streets of this capital, the first effect usually is huge clouds of blue-gray motorcycle exhaust.Breezes stirred by the traffic carry the clouds, rolling them across sidewalks and puffing them into gigantic cumulus-like towers that rise higher than most of the buildings in what is still largely a low-rise city.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Western security officials surveyed the wreckage yesterday of an Austrian airliner that crashed in northern Thailand and said they were nearly certain that the plane was downed by a bomb explosion."

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Political parties aligned with Thailand's junta won more than half the parliamentary seats at stake yesterday in general elections, the first since the military toppled a democratically elected government in a bloodless coup 13 months ago.While the results should allow the pro-military parties to dominate the new government, their victory was slim enough that it could -- hopes within the junta that one of the leaders of the coup will...

Are there any countries where the dollar is doing well and travel is still a good value? Despite the dollar's loss in value, especially against the euro and the British pound, there are a few places where our currency still has muscle. Experts at hot wire.com and orbitz.com agree on these two destinations, where exchange rates are favorable and prices are low: Thailand and Argentina. Barbara Messing, Hotwire's travel expert, says you can still get a $12 steak dinner and an $8 bottle of wine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a cosmopolitan city that often reminds visitors of Paris - there are long boulevards, scenic parks and great shopping.

HOLLYWOOD - Nicolas Cage didn't wind up in Bangkok, Thailand, by accident. As the Oscar-winning actor explains it, there were reasons both personal and professional that compelled him to change gears after the mega-dollar success of the family-friendly action-adventure National Treasure: Book of Secrets and travel across the globe in pursuit of a new career iteration. Not least was the impulse to shake up his image by appearing in a foreign-made film. "On my path of film acting, I've been trying to think more and more internationally, trying to have a global mind," Cage said.

On April 14, 2008, DANIEL L. JACKSON; died suddenly in Phuket, Thailand, where he lived the last six years. Mr. Jackson wasraised in Baltimore. Beloved son of Mae L. Jackson; loving husband of Kesorn Jackson and father of Nikki Jackson. Services were held in Phuket, Thailand on April 18.

Documenting a subculture rarely seen by Westerners, local photographer Betty Rosen has returned from her recent trip to Thailand with more than 100 striking portraits of transgendered exotic dancers. Rosen's empathy and compassion for her subjects whom she met at a nightclub in the southeastern city of Phuket is clear in the large-scale ink-jet photographs on view at C. Grimaldis Gallery. But as a spectator, Rosenberg did not participate in the way of life her pictures describe. Consequently, they do not have quite the moral authority of, say, Nan Goldin's impassioned visual diaries of New York's East Village scene during the 1970s, or Larry Clark's spaced-out narratives of dysfunctional Midwestern youth.

Are there any countries where the dollar is doing well and travel is still a good value? Despite the dollar's loss in value, especially against the euro and the British pound, there are a few places where our currency still has muscle. Experts at hot wire.com and orbitz.com agree on these two destinations, where exchange rates are favorable and prices are low: Thailand and Argentina. Barbara Messing, Hotwire's travel expert, says you can still get a $12 steak dinner and an $8 bottle of wine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a cosmopolitan city that often reminds visitors of Paris - there are long boulevards, scenic parks and great shopping.

Emily Biondi will not be slowed down. Certainly not by near-fatal kidney failure. Four years after Biondi received her father's donated kidney in a life-saving transplant, she returned to Ellicott City last week from the World Transplant Games - a celebration of transplant survivors from around the globe - held in Bangkok, Thailand. Biondi, a 2001 Mount Hebron graduate, took part in the National Transplant Games in Louisville, Ky., last year and won four track-and-field medals despite receiving no previous training.

While many of his friends were attending classes this year at Clarksville Middle School, Kevin McDuffie was roaming an elephant sanctuary in the mountains of Thailand. The 13-year-old's adventures were documented on the Nickelodeon television show Nick News Adventure: If I Could Talk To The Elephants, which aired July 22. Kevin, who lives in Clarksville, joined five other youngsters and veteran broadcast journalist Linda Ellerbee for a week in the sanctuary, where the youths learned to feed, bathe, ride, clean up after and, most important, to communicate with the animals.

KANCHANABURI, Thailand -- The train to Nam Tok rumbles over the Bridge on the River Kwai, still in use all these years after Alec Guinness blew it up at the end of the movie.It didn't really happen that way, of course. It was actually the Americans who bombed the bridge toward the end of World War II.The real story is an epic in its own right, and the real bridge, a black steel expanse repaired after the war, remains an enduring monument to the Allied prisoners of war and Asian laborers who died building it at the hands of the Japanese.

THAILAND, once a festering sore of people infected with HIV/AIDS because of illicit drugs and a notorious sex trade, has made remarkable headway in beating back that deadly scourge. And it has been the Royal Thai Army that has led the charge as the Thais forged a consensus that HIV/AIDS was not just a medical issue but one of national security. "This perception of HIV/AIDS as a national threat was the turning point in our fight," Maj. Gen. Suebpong Sangkharomya, a senior medical officer, told a recent conference here.

By defiantly licensing generic versions of patented medicines, Thailand late last year and Brazil a few weeks ago have severely tested global health policy and the global trade system itself. A functional system would strike a judicious balance between the interests of drug companies, whose patents compensate them for the large investments required to develop lifesaving medicines, and the imperative to make them available to the world's poor. Instead, today we have a dysfunctional battle between pharmaceutical giants and governments of developing countries, each side claiming to champion the world's health needs and accusing the other of exploitation.

Imagine that you are an inventor and the government steals your highly lucrative idea. The next day, you are informed that the government plans to mass-produce your invention and give it away for free. If you're lucky, they'll give you a pittance for your efforts. This is what happens, with increasing regularity, to the manufacturers of lifesaving medicines. The most recent example occurred in Thailand when the military-appointed government issued "compulsory licenses" to obtain two drugs.