Thailand

Paul Chambers is an American academic who lived in Thailand for over 30 years while researching Southeast Asian militaries and politics. After being arrested in April of this year on charges of insulting the Thai monarchy, the charges have been dropped, and he has returned to the United States.

Paetongtarn has faced growing dissatisfaction over her handling of the latest border dispute with Cambodia, involving an armed confrontation on May 28 in which one Cambodian soldier was killed.

An academic from Norman who has lived and worked in Thailand for over three decades is accused of insulting the Thai monarchy. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake killed over 1,000 people near the epicenter in Myanmar. In neighboring Thailand, several were killed when a high-rise tower collapsed.

A bus carrying young students and their teachers on a school trip caught fire in suburban Bangkok, leaving more than 20 feared dead, officials and rescuers said.

The Constitutional Court ordered dissolution of the party, which won elections last year, saying it violated the constitution by proposing to amend the law against defaming the country’s royal family.

Thailand has taken some steps toward democracy. But a flurry of court challenges has raised the specter of another crisis — with the lèse-majesté law on royal defamation front and center.

Police say one killed the rest but did not say which of the six was the suspect. A husband and wife among the dead had invested with two of the others, suggesting that money could be a motive.

Thailand’s Senate voted overwhelmingly for a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage, clearing the last legislative hurdle for the country to become the first in Southeast Asia to enact such a law.

Thaksin's return coincides with a vote in Parliament Tuesday on the formation of a new government his Pheu Thai party looks set to head.