A British man and his Thai wife have been robbed and beaten to death at a resort in southern Thailand.

Police say disgruntled residents have set off a loud blast near a flood dike on Bangkok's border, apparently to highlight frustrations over their continued misery.

Advancing pools of filthy water threatened the Thai capital's underground system today and surrounded the emergency headquarters set up to deal with flooding that has claimed more than 500 lives nationwide.

The Prime Minister has extended a night-time curfew in the capital and said he will consider early elections only after the violence that has wracked the nation for the past two months is completely over.

Lawrence Osborne is in "headlong flight". Bangkok, he discovers, is the perfect asylum for one such as himself: broke, with no career and no prospects. What he does have is an "inquisitive loitering", useful since the "streets are cul-de-sacs so there is no point in having a direction".

Memories led veteran back to Thailand, reports Ethan Casey in Bangkok

Western materialism has invaded a devout Buddhist nation. Tim McGirk reports on the murder of a tourist in search of spirituality

The people of Thailand have chosen Banharn Sipla-archa, the man they call Khun ATM, or Mr Cash Dispenser, as their next Prime Minister.

THE best I could hope for was to be only gently fleeced by a con-artist and to contract merely a mild dose of the runs; the worst case was to fall victim to armed thugs, and to catch some or all of cholera, hepatitis and rabies.