MILESTONES

Prepared: By the Department of Special Investigations (DSI), an indictment of Panthongtae “Oak” Shinawatra. He now is likely to be charged (convicted, etc) for involvement in the Krungthai Bank loan scandal when his true father, Lord Voldemort, was prime minister. It’s the latest but probably not the last move in the military-led, ammart- supported campaign to rid the nation of the pestilent clan and its Pheu Thai spawn and spoor.

Discovered: By researchers tracking the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter, a small “lake” of liquid water on the red planet. Photo analysis indicates the lake is at least a metre deep. It’s the first confirmed time that actual water exists on Mars, and inches ahead the idea that man could migrate to, and live on, our closest planet.

Hanged: In a Tokyo prison, two more members of the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult that killed 13 people with sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995. Cult guru Shoko Asahara was hanged along with six other members on July 6, and four others have dates with the hangman. Unlike when Thailand executed one person, there’s been no mass outcry against Japan’s use of capital punishment.

Promised: By President Rodrigo “The Punisher” Duterte, to continue to kill drug dealers and suspected drug dealers and bystanders in the greatest number possible. There were fears in the Philippines he might slow the slaughter, currently about 7,500 per annum. But in his state of the union address, he vowed he’d barely just begun.

Busted: By a joint police-military team, an attempt to move 300kg of crystal methamphetamine southward from the Golden Triangle. The patrol was tipped off, and only had to sit and wait for a lorry carrying the drugs on the main road through Chiang Rai province’s Chiang Khong district towards Chiang Mai. The ice is worth about one million baht per kilo on the street — so 300 million baht in all.