Ayutthaya, Thailand – Divers pulled at least two bodies from the bowels of a submerged river boat Monday after the overcrowded vessel carrying Muslim pilgrims sank on Thailand’s Chao Phraya river, leaving 18 people dead.

The accident happened on Sunday afternoon near the ancient city of Ayutthaya, a popular tourist attraction, when a boat packed with pilgrims returning from a mosque hit a concrete bank in strong currents.

Scores of people lined the bank Monday as divers plunged into the swollen, brown waters for the grim task of searching the partially-submerged pleasure boat for the missing.

Distraught relatives wept as the body of an eight-year-old boy was pulled from the wreckage and laid in a white plastic sheet, an AFP team on site reported.

The boy was later followed by the corpse of a woman who had been found downstream and was brought to shore on the back of a jet ski.

Rescuers used a white board to keep track of those still missing including six children.

Ayutthaya deputy governor Rewat Prasong later said the confirmed death toll stood at 18 with 12 missing and 14 hospitalised. The dead were not thought to include any foreigners.

The boat’s captain is in custody and faces a negligence charge after allowing the double-decked vessel to become overcrowded, police told AFP.

“The boat has permission to carry about 50 people but it was carrying more than 100 people,” said Ayutthaya police chief Sudhi Puengpikul.

Disaster struck as the boat returned from a memorial for a Muslim scholar at an Ayutthaya mosque.

Television footage showed the boat stopping abruptly as it appeared to hit the concrete bank, and sinking in seconds.

Thai broadcasters showed desperate scenes of the aftermath of the accident as passengers were pulled from the water while rescuers attempted to resuscitate stricken people.

Many of the dead were trapped on the lower deck of the boat, which ran into trouble agonisingly close to safety.

Officials said its proximity to the bank may have prevented the toll from being even higher.

Despite its wealth compared to regional neighbours and huge tourism sector, accidents are common on Thailand’s public transport network.

Safety regulations are often weakly enforced, including on boats, with overcrowding, sinkings and crashes common – particularly in busy tourist areas.

According to the World Health Organization, Thailand has the world’s second highest road fatality rate after Libya.

The Thai junta has got tough on breaches of many laws, but has so far failed to fix the chronic safety lapses in the country’s transport system.

The Chao Phraya, the main river that flows through Bangkok, is a key commuting artery, filled with often packed boats plying the waterways at breakneck speed.

It runs through Ayutthaya, the ancient Thai capital whose riverside is studded with the remains of Buddhist temples.

Thailand’s reputation as the “Land of Smiles” has suffered in recent years amid accidents, crimes against foreigners and political unrest.

But visitors keep coming.

A record high of nearly 30 million travelled to the kingdom in 2015, a number boosted by a surge in mainland Chinese tourists, with some 33 million expected this year.

The junta government this week said they expected tourism to account for as much as 17 percent of GDP this year.

Bali security authorities arrested a Singaporean national for allegedly trying to pick up mail packages containing methamphetamine and cocaine sent through a post office and are in pursuit of a Briton allegedly related to the case.

Muhammad Faliq Bin Nordin, 32, was arrested on Sept. 10 by a joint team of the Denpasar Customs Office, Bali and Nusa Tenggara Customs and Bali Police.

The suspect was arrested at Renon Post Office in Denpasar where he allegedly wanted to take two mail packages sent from the Netherlands containing 100.2 grams of methamphetamine, locally know as sabu-sabu, and 30.3 grams of cocaine, Bali and Nusa Tenggara Customs Office head Syarif Hidayat said in press conference on Monday.

As a trick, the drugs were placed in ceramic pottery covered in candle wax, Syarif explained, adding that both mail packages were sent to the same address in the Sanur area. Both the name, Koba Raum, and the address were written on the packages.

Faliq allegedly came to the post office by himself while bringing a letter showing that Kobu Raum had given him the authority to take the packages, Syarif said.

Narcotics division director of Bali Police Sr. Comr. Franky H. Parapat said from further investigations that police found Kobu Raum to be a British citizen and they are still looking for his whereabouts.

“We suspect that he is the owner of the drugs,” he said.

Hundreds mourn Australian executed in Indonesia

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Reuters, AFP

JAKARTA – Indonesia plans to pursue Alphabet Inc’s Google for five years of back taxes, and the search giant could face a bill of more than US$400 million (S$545 million) for 2015 alone if it is found to have avoided payments, a senior tax official said.

Muhammad Hanif, head of the tax office’s special cases branch, told Reuters its investigators went to Google’s local office in Indonesia on Monday.

The tax office alleges PT Google Indonesia paid less than 0.1 percent of the total income and value-added taxes it owed last year.

Asked to respond to Hanif’s comments, Google Indonesia reiterated a statement made last week in which it said it continues to cooperate with local authorities and has paid all applicable taxes.

If found guilty, Google could have to pay fines of up to four times the amount it owed, bringing the maximum tax bill to 5.5 trillion rupiah (S$570 million) for 2015, Hanif said. He declined to provide an estimate for the five-year period.

Most of the revenue generated in the country is booked at Google’s Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore. Google Asia Pacific declined to be audited in June, prompting the tax office to escalate the case into a criminal one, Hanif said. “Google’s argument is that they just did tax planning,”Hanif said. “Tax planning is legal, but aggressive tax planning – to the extent that the country where the revenue is made does not get anything – is not legal.”

The tax office will summon directors from Google Indonesia who also hold positions at Google Asia Pacific, Hanif said, adding that it is working with the Indonesian police.

Globally, it is rare for a state investigation of corporate tax structures to be escalated into a criminal case.

It normally takes at least three years for an Indonesian court to make a decision on a tax criminal case, said Yustinus Prastowo, executive director of the Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis.

The tax office is planning to chase back taxes from other companies that deliver content through the internet (over-the-top service providers) in Indonesia, Hanif said.

The Indonesian communication and information ministry is working on a new regulation for OTT providers, and the tax office has proposed that a company with a “network presence” in Indonesia should also be subject to taxation.

Total advertising revenue for the industry is estimated at US$830 million a year, with Google and Facebook Inc accounting for around 70 percent of that, according to Hanif.

A joint study by Google and Singapore state investor Temasek released earlier this year, however, estimated the size of Indonesia’s digital advertising market at US$300 million for 2015.

TOKYO – Japanese bachelors looking for love can now learn child-rearing skills to boost their chances of finding a partner.

The new, all-male ‘ikumen’ course teaches men how to bathe and dress a baby and also helps them understand a woman’s perspective on child-rearing, says Ikumen University, the Osaka-based company behind the course.

Participants in one session on Sunday in the Japanese capital wore a 7-kg (15-pound) pregnancy jacket, were taught how to improve communication with a potential spouse and filled out a worksheet stating traits women were deemed to dislike in men.

“I wanted to create a form of certification proving a man’s child-rearing skills and support for married life,” course instructor Takeshi Akiyama told Reuters.

“Matchmaking agencies can advertise such men as having’extra value,’ by letting potential partners know he will support the marriage.”