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Richard S. Ehrlich - Latest News [Page 3]
Russia Woos Southeast Asia To Buffer Sanctions
Tuesday, 19 April 2022, 3:26 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Moscow is trying to profit by offering weapons, investment, tourism and diplomatic support to Thailand and other best friends in Southeast Asia, to buffer Russia's international losses caused by U.S.-led sanctions against its ... More >>
Saudi Arabia Agrees To Stop Punishing Thailand
Tuesday, 8 March 2022, 1:10 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- More than 30 years after a Thai janitor stole a blue diamond from Saudi royals and the murder of four Saudi diplomats, Riyadh has agreed to stop punishing Bangkok with financial sanctions which cost billions of dollars in lost ... More >>
West Point & China Influences Cambodia
Thursday, 24 February 2022, 1:20 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Hun Manet, trained by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, may become Cambodia's next leader after his pro-China father Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen recently anointed him, prompting scrutiny about how the heir apparent would ... More >>
U.S.-China Rivalry For Thailand
Tuesday, 8 February 2022, 3:51 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
NONG KHAI, Thailand -- You can see China's inexorable southern thrust along the Mekong River where tall, fanciful, Chinese buildings sprout nearby on the Laos side of this sleepy northern border, sparking hopes and fears about Beijing's influence ... More >>
Silk Road Train Encircles China's Dreaded Desert
Wednesday, 10 November 2021, 4:17 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Ancient Silk Road travelers cursed China's largest desert as "Takla Makan," an ominous Persian-Turkic expression which translates as "enter and you may never return." Undeterred by its sandstorms and merciless terrain in the oblong ... More >>
River-Rich Laos Invites Bitcoin Miners
Tuesday, 12 October 2021, 3:07 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- After China's recent cryptocurrency crackdown, impoverished Laos is now allowing Bitcoin mining, fueled by abundant hydroelectric power from the Mekong River and shrugging off U.S. warnings of disastrous environmental problems. ... More >>
Police Suffocation
Friday, 10 September 2021, 12:59 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's prime minister and public appeared horrified after watching provincial police chief "Joe Ferrari" allegedly torture and kill a drug suspect by wrapping his head with layers of plastic bags until he suffocated. ... More >>
Al Qaeda in Afghanistan Zapping Foreign Lands
Tuesday, 24 August 2021, 2:37 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- During the first days of America's bombardment and invasion of Afghanistan 20 years ago, the Taliban government collapsed in panic, abandoning Kabul in November 2001. More >>
U.S. Embassy In Laos: Facebook & "A Terrorist"
Tuesday, 3 August 2021, 12:47 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Embassy in Laos has publicly apologized and blamed Facebook's auto-translation for describing an ethnic Hmong-American Olympic Games teenage gymnast as "a terrorist" on the American Embassy's official site, ... More >>
U.S. Sees "Threat" In The Golden Triangle
Friday, 30 July 2021, 1:48 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- In Southeast Asia's crime-infested Golden Triangle, Chinese entrepreneur Zhao Wei is constructing a sprawling casino resort and airstrip despite being sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a "threat to the United ... More >>
U.S. Ghosts Of War Haunt Afghanistan
Thursday, 22 July 2021, 11:22 am | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- When the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan secured Bagram Air Base in January 2002, a Special Operations officer said he motivated newly arrived 82nd Airborne Division troops with a human skull, because the young Americans became enthusiastic ... More >>
U.S. Expats Demand Washington Provide Vaccines
Wednesday, 2 June 2021, 4:02 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Some of Biden's and Trump's most active boosters here in Southeast Asia have joined forces, demanding the State Department vaccinate all American expats in Thailand, as a model for international distribution, instead of discriminating ... More >>
Pentagon & Beijing In Pacific's Liquid Heart
Tuesday, 25 May 2021, 4:04 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
Tiny Palau invited the Pentagon to build ports, bases and airfields on its Pacific islands, after Chinese President Xi Jinping bullied Palau by destabilizing its fragile economy, according to defiant President Surangel Whipps. "President Whipps' ... More >>
U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan: 1989 Vs. 2021
Tuesday, 4 May 2021, 12:36 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- President Biden's announced withdrawal from Afghanistan will be the second time since 1989 that the U.S. retreats from that country -- and twice after years of boosting war but losing control over Islamist insurgents. When previously ... More >>
Cambodia's Hun Sen Feels Politically Vaccinated
Thursday, 1 April 2021, 4:11 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- When Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen received his AstraZeneca vaccination shot, he suddenly felt invulnerable and vowed to rule indefinitely. Hun Sen is already one of the world's longest ruling prime ministers, confident his successor ... More >>
Homeland Security, Babies & Surrogate Mothers
Wednesday, 24 March 2021, 4:28 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
U.S. Homeland Security helped Thailand confiscate "numerous infants," including Caucasian and Chinese, and arrest an American woman and others who allegedly paid Thai females to be artificially inseminated for customers in foreign countries. ... More >>
Revolutionary Years: 2020-2021
Wednesday, 17 February 2021, 2:04 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's 68-year-old king and his loyal, testy prime minister suffered a dangerous 2020, relentlessly exposed to loud, satirical, young revolutionaries in the streets demanding democracy and limits to the monarch's wealth and security ... More >>
Lucky Coup Among Authoritarian Regimes
Friday, 12 February 2021, 11:03 am | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Myanmar's coup leader may be lucky his Southeast Asian country is wedged among authoritarian regimes which are interested in making money by accessing its natural resources and strategic geography, instead of condemning the destruction ... More >>
Coup Leader Grabs Absolute Power At Dawn
Tuesday, 9 February 2021, 6:59 am | Richard S. Ehrlich
By Richard S. Ehrlich BANGKOK, Thailand -- By seizing power, Myanmar's new coup leader Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has protected his murky financial investments and the military's domination, but some of his incoming international ... More >>
A Military Coup Zaps Burma, Aka Myanmar
Thursday, 4 February 2021, 3:19 pm | Richard S. Ehrlich
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Myanmar's military seized power in a coup on February 1, detained internationally disgraced civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other recently elected officials, and declared a one-year State of Emergency because voting was marred by ... More >>
