BANGKOK – A draft military-backed constitution in Thailand won the approval of 61.35 percent of those who voted in a referendum on the weekend, the Election Commission said on Wednesday as it released final results of the vote.

The results confirmed a convincing win for Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in Sunday’s referendum, the biggest test of public opinion since he, as army chief, seized power in a 2014 coup.

The draft was rejected by 38.65 percent of voters, the commission said, adding that turnout was just over 59 percent.

Seeking to allay concern his military government might delay plans for a return to democracy, Prayuth said on Tuesday a general election would be held in 2017.

The United States and European Union have urged a quick return to democracy, calling on authorities to lift restrictions on freedom of expression that have been in place since the coup.

The government said the constitution will promote stable, clean government.

But politicians from both sides of the divide and rights groups were united in opposition to the draft, which includes clauses for a fully appointed Senate that would be picked by the junta, with seats reserved for chiefs of the armed forces.

Other provisions would make it difficult for a single party to win a majority in the 500-member lower house, likely meaning weak coalitions, and allowing the appointed Senate to play a critical role in parliament.

Human Rights Watch said the constitution facilitated”unaccountable military power”. “Instead of the long-promised return to democratic civilian rule, the new constitution facilitates unaccountable military power and a deepening dictatorship,” said Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director.

A second referendum question on whether the Senate should be allowed to elect a prime minister with the lower house won the approval of 58.07 percent of voters, with 41.93 percent against.

The charter is due to be enacted by November.

Few countries have had more constitutions, with 19 in the 84 years since it became a constitutional monarchy.

Some analysts say the vote reflected a desire for stability after more than a decade of political division in Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy, including several rounds of violent demonstrations and two military takeovers.

Criticism of the charter was banned before the vote and authorities detained dozens for trying to campaign against it.

Members of the anti-junta opposition said they accepted the referendum result and would bide their time until the election when, if a party they back were to take power, they could try to overturn the constitution.

TOKYO – When Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito proposed to a reluctant Masako Owada, he promised to protect her with all his might, a vow that may get tougher to keep if, as expected, his father Emperor Akihito abdicates, and the woman who has struggled to adjust to royal life becomes empress.

The 82-year-old Akihito, who with Empress Michiko has won hearts at home by championing the disadvantaged and worked to heal the wounds of World War Two abroad, hinted in a televised address on Monday that he could give up the Chrysanthemum Throne due to advancing age.

While the earnest Naruhito, 56, is seen as ready for the succession and has taken on more official duties, Masako, 52, who turned down his first two proposals during a long courtship beginning nearly 30 years ago, has struggled as Crown Princess.

Harvard-educated Masako, who reluctantly abandoned a diplomatic career to marry, has for more than a decade battled depression, as she grappled with the prescriptions and proscriptions of palace life and pressure to produce a son.

Their daughter, 14-year-old Aiko, cannot take the throne under male-only inheritance laws.

In 2012, Masako, who spent large parts of her early life overseas and speaks several languages, acknowledged that she had been battling a stress-related illness for a long time. Her public appearances are still sporadic.

“Imperial popularity tends to be earned through carrying out public duties over the course of the reign,” said Kenneth Ruoff, a professor at Portland State University and author of “The People’s Emperor.”

“If Naruhito does that, there is no reason to think he would be any less respected than his father. The case of Masako is more difficult to foresee.” Naruhito’s interests in medieval transport and environmental causes seem safely worthy, if dull, though royal watchers say he has broken new ground, like advocating hands-on fathering, uncommon in a country where there is still a strong gender-based division of labour both at work and home.

He is also unusual, for a Japanese royal, in having studied abroad, and describes his two years at Oxford University as some of the happiest days of his life.

Emperor Akihito celebrates 82nd birthday with peace message

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Reuters, AFP

ADJUSTMENT DISORDER

Naruhito has made clear he will carry on his father’s work of reminding people about the importance of peace, even as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moves to recast wartime history with a less apologetic tone.

But he is best known for his passionate defence of Masako, who disappeared from public view in 2003 with shingles and what was later described as an “adjustment disorder”.

In 2004 he set off an unusually public feud with the Imperial Household, an agency responsible for organising the activities of the royal family, by saying that Masako, who had hoped to use her diplomatic experience as crown princess, had”totally exhausted herself” trying to adapt to palace life. “It is true there were moves to negate Masako’s career and her personality, which was influenced by that career,” he said.

Naruhito’s defence continued through the years, during which tabloids occasionally criticised his wife for slacking off. In 2008 he pleaded for understanding, saying: “Masako is continuing to make utmost efforts with the help of those around her.” An emperor’s duties include religious ceremonies and opening parliament, but social welfare work has taken centre stage.

Images of Akihito and Michiko, informally dressed and kneeling to talk to disaster victims in evacuation centres are imprinted in public memory, and they have also visited centres for the disabled and elderly.

In rural areas and among the older generation, where support for the emperor runs highest, the presence of the royals as a couple is especially valued, said Midori Watanabe, a journalist and visiting professor at Bunka Gakuen University. “What’s important is that the two of them are together,”Watanabe said. “He (Naruhito) promised he’d protect her all their lives,” she added. “I think she’ll make efforts for him.” Miiko Kodama, professor emeritus at Musashi University, said Masako’s ultimate elevation to empress could, however, prove a boon to the unhappy princess, as it did to her mother-in-law.

Michiko, the first commoner to marry a royal heir, grew gaunt and visibly unhappy in her younger days due to stress, but became the most visible and widely travelled imperial consort in Japanese history.

“When Masako becomes empress, her higher status will mean more people will listen to her,” Kodama said. “With fewer people putting unnecessary pressure on her, I think you can expect many of her symptoms will improve.”

BEIJING – Tesla said on Wednesday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in ‘autopilot’mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as ‘self-driving’, overplaying its actual capabilities.

Tesla said it had reviewed data to confirm the car was in autopilot mode, a system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions.

The company, which is investigating the crash in China’s capital last week, also said it was the driver’s responsibility to maintain control of the vehicle. In this case, it said, the driver’s hands were not detected on the steering wheel.

The crash, Tesla’s first known such incident in China, comes months after a fatal accident in Florida, which turned up pressure on auto industry executives and regulators to tighten rules on automated driving technology.

A 33-year-old programmer at a tech firm, Luo Zhen was driving to work and engaged the autopilot function as he often does on Beijing’s highways, he told Reuters in his first interview with international media.

Crowd queues up for Tesla Model 3

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AFP

Luo, who filmed the incident with a dashboard camera, said his car hit a vehicle parked half off the road. The accident sheered off the parked vehicle’s side mirror and scraped both cars, but caused no injuries.

“The driver of the Tesla, whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel, did not steer to avoid the parked car and instead scraped against its side,” a Tesla spokeswoman said in an emailed response to Reuters.

“As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time.”

Luo, however, blamed the crash on a fault in the autopilot system and said Tesla’s sales staff strongly promoted the system as ‘self-driving’. “The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn’t assisted driving,” he said.

Interviews with four other unconnected Tesla drivers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou also indicated the message conveyed by front-line sales staff did not match up with Tesla’s more clear cut statements that the system is not “self-driving”but an advance driver assistance system (ADAS).

These Tesla owners all said salespeople described the cars’function in Chinese as “self-driving”, a term the company generally avoids using in English, and took their hands off the wheel while demonstrating it. “They all described it as being able to drive itself,” said Shanghai resident Mao Mao, who bought a Tesla Model S last year.

The term “zidong jiashi” appears several times on Tesla’s Chinese portal, which is most literally translated to mean “self-driving”. It is also the term for airplane autopilot, leaving room for confusion among consumers.

“We have never described autopilot as an autonomous technology or a ‘self-driving car,’ and any third-party descriptions to this effect are not accurate,” the Tesla spokeswoman said.

CHINA WOES

Tesla does not regularly announce its sales data for China, where it has faced tough local competition, and it is not clear how many cars in the country have autopilot, an add-on feature that costs more than 27,000 yuan (S$5,400) extra.

The company struggled to sell its high-tech electric cars in China at first due to distribution issues and widespread concerns about charging vehicles.

There is no clear regulation on self-driving cars in China as the country is in the midst of drafting its policy toward the technology. Under current Chinese law, drivers must keep two hands on the wheel at all times.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to faxed questions asking about the legality of self-driving cars, including Tesla’s autopilot function. The Ministry of Transportation did not reply to a request for comment.

Unsatisfied with Tesla’s initial response to his crash, Luo posted pictures and a video of the crash on Chinese social media platform Weibo describing the incident and criticizing the company.

The pictures show damages to his blue Tesla Model S and a parked Volkswagen, while the dashboard camera video captures the lead up to the crash and the car subsequently stopping.

Luo, who said he had used autopilot for more than a month, said he was looking at his phone or the in-car navigation at the time of the accident, only looking up every several seconds – but blamed Tesla’s hard sell. “They use this immature technology as a sales and promotion tactic…but they don’t take responsibility for the safety of the function,” he said.

Tesla does provide safeguards. If a driver has not touched the wheel in a certain amount of time, the autopilot system will remind drivers to place their hands on the wheel and will automatically come to a stop if drivers do not heed the warning.

Chennai, India – A gang of robbers cut a hole in the roof of a train travelling through southern India and stole more than US$750,000 (S$1 million) in cash, police said on Wednesday.

The daring heist occurred somewhere along the more than 300-kilometre (186-mile) long journey, but the missing loot was only discovered hours after the express train arrived in the city of Chennai.

The train’s mail carriage was carrying 3.4 billion rupees (S$68.3 million) belonging to India’s central bank and was being escorted by armed police seated in the next compartment.

Police suspect about six to eight robbers made a four-foot square hole in the carriage roof using a cutting torch before escaping undetected with some of the cash.

“We are inquiring with the train guard and the police personnel if they heard any unusual noises on the roof,” said police superintendent P Vijayakumar.

Police said the robbers may have jumped off the train roof and were combing the tracks along the route in search of any of the missing notes.

“They created a manhole and then they sneaked one after the other and lifted the bundles to the roof before taking them away,” inspector general of police M. Ramasubramani, who is heading the investigation, told AFP.

Another police officer was quoted in the Hindu newspaper as saying the gang might have hidden themselves in the carriage before it was locked for the journey on Monday night, before escaping through the roof.

Reserve Bank of India officials discovered the theft on Tuesday morning when they came to collect the cash from the carriage for disposal. The cash, although still usable, was soiled and was transported from the city of Salem to Chennai for destruction.

The audacious crime has echoes of the “Great Train Robbery” of 1963 when a gang of criminals in Britain stopped a night mail train and made off with 2.6 million pounds (S$4.54 million).