Thailand's best weekend columnist awakens to the un-mellifluous Caw-Caw of corvus macrorhynchos

Go-o-o-o-od Morning Thailand and adjacent lands and towns.
 The last Sunday of February 2024 is or soon will be history, delightful or deplorable but never mind
 This is, officially, the first-delivered edition of Fishwrap for the final Monday of the month, February 26.
  

If you think eggplant is good, you should try any other food; it's much better.

Today's holiday marks Makha Bucha, first of the three major, annual festivals of Thailand's minimalist Mahayana Buddhist sect -- which is also the dominant religion of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
This evening, most of the observant Thai Buddhists will go to their temple and light a candle for the impressive wien thian -- a walk, one circle around the wat.
No liquor can be legally sold or consumed today. Most bars and pubs will be closed and supermarket sales will be banned all day.
[NOTE: Today's holiday is actually a makeup of Makha Bucha on the calendar -- which was Saturday.]
https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/thailand/makha-bucha

Today is also the start of the dopey first Tourism Authority of Thailand Elephant Pants Smackdown.
Competitors have put on as many elephant pants as they can in one (1) minute
which promises to be even less exciting than it sounds.

THAILAND CRIME NUCLEAR IRAN

(Above) Yakuza criminal boss Takeshi Ebisawa. (Archive photo courtesy Denmark)
Bombshell. Almost literally.

Caught in Thailand: Japanese Yakuza boss trying to sell uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.
An undercover DEA agent snagged 60-year-old Takeshi Ebisawa trying to smuggle the goods from a gang in Myanmar to Iran -- through Thailand.
"They thought that Iran would use it to make nuclear weapons," U.S. prosecutors now allege. Not to mention that they believed they'd get a massive cash payment and a load of thanks from Tehran.
The DEA agent posed as a drugs-and-weapons trafficker who had access to an Iranian general. Instead all that Ebisawa and friends heard was "You're under arrest. Get on the floor. Hands on your heads."
Timemag.com https://t.ly/hG6zo

From a well-edited report of all that is currently known [https://shorturl.at/gxCT7]:
The nuclear material came from the leader of an "ethnic insurgent group" in Myanmar -- so far unidentified.
The group has [allegedly] been mining uranium in Myanmar. The yakuza man Ebisawa proposed to the Burmese that he could arrange a profitable weapons deal, through his pet Iranian general.
Ebisawa and 'friends' will appear at a courtroom in Manhattan (New York City) on Tuesday.
(Below) DEA bossette Anne Milgram:

 As alleged, the defendants in this case trafficked in drugs, weapons, and nuclear material, going so far as to offer uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, fully expecting that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.

Thailand of the future... Maybe
Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has declared a vision, that the country will be both
the Aviation Hub of the entire world and
the Electric Vehicle (EV) hub of the same area.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2747858/
First, there's a lot of work to be done.

Related:
PM to court EV investors in Germany
https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/motoring/2747853/pm-to-court-ev-investors-in-germany

Skytrain (BTS) rail link from downtown Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi airport shut down for 2½ hours
Automated trains linking the main and satellite terminals at Suvarnabhumi airport were out of service for 'a routine check' on the electrical system.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2747324/

POLITICS
Srettha drops by the Shinawatra mansion to wish Good Health on Thaksin
And he reports (although he's not a doctor) that Thaksin seems pretty-okay -- 'Weak but Happy'.
Reuters: https://t.ly/VRKJO

Photo: The Nation
https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/politics/40031244

Fishwrap's Great Links Explorer Robert "Bob" Ressiguie presents a(nother) winner: a dragon fossil.
Actually, the existence of Dinocephalosaurus Orientalis was already known for the past 20 years, but only in small tiny fossil-bits. And this new find, from Guizhou, southern China, is from the Triassic period -- say, 250 maybe 251 million years ago, after Earth's greatest extinction, ever.
The newly discoved marine reptile fossil is remarkably complete -- 16 American feet or 5 metres long.

  AOL.com (above) and BBC both featured this story -- https://t.ly/IyACJ

Gone: ♫ Chirpy chirpy, cheep cheep♫ ♫
Replaced By: Caw, caw caw-caw-caw all day long.
Oh, one more thing...
 In the recent column featuring unusual place names I was remiss in not mentioning a Scottish hamlet near Aberdeen called Lost.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2748023/

AVIATION BOEING FIRED
Boeing ousts executive in charge of 737 Max program following product failures https://t.ly/ZqpHt
Ed Clark, Boeing executive in charge of 737 production, has been replaced with Katie Ringgold, former vice president of 737 delivery operations, effective immediately.
To be fair, they have only killed 346 people. So far. https://shorturl.at/altQ9

Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, underscored the company's unwavering commitment to not just meet, but exceed, the quality and safety standards expected by its global clientele.
 "Our customers deserve nothing less."
Just after a door blew off an in-flight Air Alaska Boeing 737 but didn't actually kill any passengers.

TECHNOLOGY

GOOD. Faster, please.
 New brain stimulation technique shows promise for treating brain disorders.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-brain-technique-disorders.html

Mass mobile phone outage sparks fear of communications, electric grid failure.
Thursday’s (22 February) sporadic interruption of national cellular phone networks has raised new concerns about how a large solar flare event or an atmospheric nuclear attack could shut down a wider network of phones or even the electric grid.
While the number of phone outages was small, they showed up coast to coast, and some media spun the story up into a major crisis.
 "World Is Ending," screamed The Drudge Report in a red headline. (As expected)
Early on we were hearing it was hackers, but whatever. Fishwrap already reported it was a major solar flare.

The most UNSURPRISING story of the month (UPI HEALTH)
 Workplace injuries rise after states legalize recreational marijuana.
https://shorturl.at/nBY17
Oh fergawdsake you people, get a room!