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Автор: Andy Yee, Гонконг

East Asia has long been at the forefront of the hardware digital revolution, boasting some of the world’s most highly connected societies.

And with a second digital revolution under way, the region’s diverse cultures are set to find new ways of combining technology and culture. Previously unimaginable levels of information richness and new ways of engaging with it mean users are not only passive consumers who browse and download information from the internet, but also active creators who upload and share their own material with others.

The scale of production and distribution is staggering. There are now more than 800 exabytes of digital information in the world: every minute, there are 100,000 new tweets, 6 million Facebook views, 30 hours of video uploaded to YouTube, и 3000 photos added to Flickr.

East Asian countries are traditionally strong in hardware-driven innovations: Япония, Южная Корея, Taiwan and China are home to manufacturing powerhouses like Sony, Samsung and Lenovo. Collectively, these countries make close to 90 per cent of the world’s digital gadgets. The other side of the digital economy — the supply of digital content and services — attracts less attention in the region, but is already emerging as a formidable social and economic force, and will continue to grow as technology connects more and more people. The next digital revolution in East Asia will direct entrepreneurial energies toward creating new tools, content and forms of expression.

В 2002, Douglas McGray coined the term ‘Gross National Cool’ to explain how cultural exports such as Hello Kitty, Pokemon and anime fuelled Japan’s emergence as a cultural superpower during its ‘lost decade’. Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi was one of the first to acknowledge the power of ‘Cool Japan’. Former prime minister Taro Aso went a step further and described himself as an otaku, a person who takes a keen interest in anime, video games and manga. And starting in 2008 Japan formally deployed its soft power by dispatching ‘cute ambassadors’ and appointing Doraemon as ‘anime ambassador’.

In her new book on otaku культура, cultural anthropologist Mizuko Ito explores how this participatory fan culture has flourished in the digital age because it enables fans to connect niche to niche and make an international cultural force of otherwise isolated cultural manifestations. Through fan fiction, anime music videos, fansubbing and various other remixes, fans have created rich international networks where they distribute their own content ahead of traditional media and producers.

Following the Asian financial crisis of 1998 South Korea also turned to Hallyu, or Korean wave, as an instrument of soft power. Korean pop culture first gained Asia-wide popularity thanks to the rise of satellite broadcasting. Сегодня, Korean producers are using social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube to attract tech-savvy and culturally curious audiences in North America and Western Europe, with astounding success: в 2011, K-pop established itself as a global trend, with nearly 2.3 billion YouTube views.

Cultural power is subtle, but it may prove effective. Roh Moo-hyun, president of South Korea between 2003 и 2008, once remarked that Hallyu will someday unify the Korean Peninsula. While that may be a long-term prospect, a recent survey conducted by the Korea International Trade Association found that 80 per cent of respondents from Japan, Китай, Taiwan and Vietnam believed that Hallyu has positively influenced the purchase of South Korean products. В 2011, South Korean cultural exports, including films, music and TV shows, hit a record US$4.2 billion.

The increasingly global reach of South Korean culture has given rise to a variety of start-ups that develop creative digital tools to eliminate barriers to content distribution. These include the website viki.com, which relies on millions of volunteer users to translate acquired movies and TV dramas into multiple languages. Another website, flitto.com, aims to create a real-time translation tool for what South Korean movie stars say on social networks, and for globalising South Korean cartoons.

Taiwan is also beginning to turn its attention from hardware manufacturing to software system integration and content development. The government has set an ambitious goal of turning Taiwan into the hub of Chinese language-app creativity, with plans to produce some 20,000 app programs and train 1000 app-software specialists per year. Software innovation requires a very different mindset from hardware research because it aims to enrich people’s social experience or personal organisation, and this cannot be achieved without a deep understanding of people and culture.

This second digital revolution will be one to watch because it sits at the intersection of culture, diplomacy and technology. It will lead to new revenue streams for talented creators, and it will allow ideas and cultures to influence one another; the diversity of East Asian languages, cultures and social experiences underpins the richness of this revolution. Differences can be celebrated and more widely understood.

In the future, competition and innovation will be less about hardware than about people, cultures and social experiences — and about organising a value chain around them. Facilitating the next phase of the digital revolution — one that is based on innovation in social technologies and soft power — will be the challenge for the next generation of government and business leaders in East Asia.

Andy Yee is a policy analyst for Google in Asia Pacific. He has worked at the Political Section of the EU Delegation to China in Beijing and blogs at Global Voices Online и China Geeks.

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For a sense of how the China market upends some of the truisms of the luxury car market, take a look at Jaguar’s backloaded new sedan.

The new model — unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show on Monday by Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India’s Tata Motors — puts an emphasis on the back seat.

Jaguar’s XJ Ultimate, a variant of its XJ line, comes with two iPads embedded in leather-trimmed docks in the backs of the front seat, along with wireless keyboards. The leather-and-wood rear interior also offers an aluminum table between the two seats that lifts to reveal two Champagne flutes, plus a hidden Champagne chiller beside it “to keep the Champagne at the coolest temperature,” said Ian Callum, Jaguar’s director of design.

В то же время, Jaguar is scaling back under the hood. The auto maker unveiled a two-liter, four-cylinder engine as well as a three-liter V6 engine, both at the lower end, “designed with China in mind,” said Bob Grace, Jaguar Land Rover’s China head.

Elsewhere in the world, the luxury auto market is a power game, as auto makers compete to put more powerful engines into high-end vehicles and emphasize the driving and handling experience. But that emphasis doesn’t work as well in China because well-to-do car owners often employ drivers. Analysts criticize other auto makers, such as Ford Motor Co., for being slow to adjust for local tastes.

Jaguar Land Rover has big China ambitions. In recent weeks it struck a deal with China’s Chery Automotive to form a manufacturing joint venture here. That requires government approval, which could be slow in coming.

– Carlos Tejada. Следуйте за ним на Твиттере @CRTejada

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Продержав его валюты тесно связаны с долларом США в течение многих лет, Китай в июле 2005 переоцененной свою валюту 2 % по отношению к доллару США и переехал в системе обменного курса, которая ссылается корзине валют.

Один демографические последствия “один ребенок” политика такова, что Китай в настоящее время одним из самых быстро стареющих стран в мире.

Стране доход на душу населения был в $6,567 (МВФ, 98м) в 2009.

Тем не менее, главных препятствий продолжать сдерживать рост.

Китай является крупнейшим в мире производителем риса и является одним из основных источников пшеницы, кукуруза (хлеб), табака, сои, peanuts (арахис), и хлопок.

Технологического уровня и стандартов качества в отрасли в целом все еще довольно низким, Несмотря на значительные изменения со времени 2000, Вдохновленные в части иностранных инвестиций.

усиление интеграции Китая в мировую экономику и ее растущее стремление использовать рыночные силы, регулирующие внутреннее распределение товаров усугубляют эту проблему.

Рост как исходящие инвестиции, и входящих инвестиций, Китай отражает растущую экономическую стране власть и привлекательность в качестве объекта для инвестиций.

Но “это только начало.

Китай стремится стать крупным новым в мире автомобиль энергетического рынка путем 2020 с 5 млн. автомобилей.

Задача Китая в начале 21-го века будет, чтобы сбалансировать его высоко централизованной политической системы с более децентрализованной экономической системы.

С конца 1970-х, Китай decollectivized сельского хозяйства, приносит огромные успехи в производстве.

С точки зрения товарных культур, Китай занимает первое место в хлопок и табак, и является важным производителем семян масличных культур, шелк, чай, кадр, джут, конопля, сахарный тростник, и сахарной свеклы.

Благодаря усовершенствованной технологии, Рыбная промышленность значительно выросла с конца 1970-х годов.

Уголь является наиболее распространенным минералом (Китай занимает первое место в добыче угля); высокого качества, легко добытого угля находится на территории всей страны, но особенно на севере и северо-востоке.

Китай входит в число четырех мире ведущих производителей сурьмы, магний, верить, вольфрам, и цинка, и занимает второе место (после США) в производство соли, шестое золото, и восьмой в свинцовой руды.

Крупные промышленные продукты текстиля, химических веществ, удобрений, машины (особенно для сельского хозяйства), переработанных продуктов питания, железо и сталь, строительные материалы, пластики, игрушки, и электроники.

Великий внутренних городов в том числе Пекин и речных портах Нанкин, Чунцин, и Ухане.

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Автосалон: Вернулся? Jaguar усилителей на задней для Китая

Автор: Петр Drysdale, Редактор, Восточная Азия форум

The boom in resource prices, подпитывается Бушующие индустриализации Китая и спроса на сталь за последние несколько десятилетий, has lifted Australia’s terms of trade to a 100-year high.

Resource exporters around the world have been enjoying good times.

Australia’s terms of trade are 65 per cent above the average twentieth-century level and 85 per cent above the trend seen in the twentieth century, had that continued. В результате, Australian gross domestic product in nominal terms is about 13 per cent higher than it would have been without these relative price changes.

What goes up, конечно, must also come down. A gigantic global supply response to booming resource prices is already under way.

Take the case of iron ore, Australia’s largest export commodity, the price of which leapt from just over $12.68 per tonne in 2001 к $187.18 per tonne in February 2011. Forecasts for growth of Chinese iron ore demand (and India’s attempt to switch from exporting iron ore to supplying growing domestic demand from its own steel industry) have led to a scramble to expand and capitalise on current high prices. Suppliers all around the world are trying to cash in on these high ore prices. The established suppliers in Australia and Brazil have big expansion plans just to keep up with continuing growth in the demand from China’s steel mills, and new suppliers are now scrambling to enter the market.

The big new entrant in global iron ore supply is Africa. Africa has reserves of high-quality iron ore that are estimated to match those in Australia. О 200 iron ore projects are being contemplated across the African continent.

In the past Africa has not been a significant competitor in the iron ore market. African projects typically require huge infrastructure investments to bring them to market. Western banks have been reluctant to finance these project because of high political and economic risks in most African countries. That, it seems, is all about to change significantly. For one thing, much of Africa has been doing better in economic terms over the past decade. For another, Chinese capital is willing to take the risks in Africa.

In this week’s lead essay Luke Hurst reviews 17 key iron projects across West and Central Africa and provides new estimates of additional iron ore export capacity that are likely to come on stream by 2018.

По 2018, Hurst calculates, China is expected to increase its demand at a steady but slowing rate as its growth becomes less resource intensive. Australia’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) forecasts that Chinese iron ore demand will grow 2.8 per cent per annum through to 2018. Other estimates, from the Raw Materials Group, put growth at 3.8 per cent per annum, a percentage point higher than BREE’s projection. Hurst compares global import demand on the higher Chinese demand forecasts with projected global export capacity, including new African capacity five years out, to assess what the impact of new supplies might be on iron ore prices over this period.

Hurst examines projects according to the risk of their falling over — identifying capacity that is very likely to come on stream according to schedule, capacity that has a fair chance, and capacity that is less likely to be operational in the next five years. Hurst’s analysis suggests that Africa will begin to put pressure on prices in the next three to five years. He reckons that iron ore prices are likely to fall back to around $80 per tonne quickly. If more of the planned African capacity comes on stream prices could tumble to $60 per tonne in the next five years.

A price fall of this magnitude, Hurst points out, would still provide intra-marginal producers with healthy profits but it would have serious knock-on effects for the iron ore exporters and their investments in countries such as Australia and Brazil. For one thing it would dry up internally generated investment capital in the major iron ore firms. Iron ore is expected to represent 2.6 per cent of Australia’s GDP in 2011-12, and a drop in iron prices would affect Australia’s terms of trade, exchange rate and income. The falling price would especially constrain the development of Australia’s budding magnetite industry.

In short, any fall in the price of iron ore such as Hurst foreshadows would have significant knock-on effects for the iron ore-centric economies of Australia and Brazil.

Despite the expectation of strong Chinese demand for iron and other resources for some years, the exceptionally tight commodity markets and high resource prices in the past decade seem very likely to ease over the next half decade as supply responds in global markets to the investment opportunities that high prices have generated.

These outcomes are the result of the response in incredibly tight global markets to bringing on stream new sources of international iron ore supply to service the boom in Chinese demand. They take no account of an unanticipated dip in Chinese demand, which in this analysis is assumed to continue to grow steadily.

Nobody has long-term monopoly in resource markets, neither sellers nor buyers. Discouraged from investment in Australia, there’s no question that Chinese and other investment (including by the majors) has gone to Africa and elsewhere to fill the gap, as the Japanese went to Brazil to fill the Australian gap more than thirty years ago.

Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.

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3. China’s impact on iron ore markets

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This week’s strong earthquake that shook Japan, one of the best prepared Asian countries for natural disasters, was a stark reminder of the value of readiness in a region disproportionately targeted by the forces of nature.

While Japan continues to dig out from last year’s triple disaster, Thailand is scrambling to avert a repeat of last year’s historic floods.

С того времени, Thai authorities have set aside billions of dollars for a long-term water resource management plan that they say will ensure that the disaster will not be repeated.

Bangkok resident Suthi Sun remembered the floods like a bad dream. When the waters reached his residence, he said in an e-mail interview that “this was the first time I found the high level of flooding. The highest level was 1.5 meter[ы]. Meanwhile my ceiling is about 2.2 к 2.5 meters.”

Sun said the Thai government tried to do its best but had no “clear or certain policy.” Ruengrawee Pichaikul, Senior Program Coordinator for the Asia Foundation in Thailand, agreed, saying in an e-mail interview that some believed the scale of the flooding was beyond the government’s capacity.

When responding to similar charges leveled against the government during the flood, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra сказал, “I tell you the truth, we have done everything to the best of our ability.”

“We are facing the most severe flooding ever. We need encouragement, support and cooperation from all sectors and from all the people as well,” сказала она.

Thai authorities have also set up a disaster fund to compensate victims and are struggling to provide affordable insurance to vulnerable citizens. Similar efforts are underway in the Philippines to provide victims of a recent earthquake with insurance and compensation.

USAID’s Principle Regional Advisor William Berger underscored the importance of disaster preparedness, particularly building resilient infrastructure, which can be costly. “It pays to invest in disaster risk reduction. Having…buildings built to a code that meets the threats that the country is facing is absolutely critical.”

Nepal sits on the collision point of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates that created the Himalayas. Cornell University’s Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Larry Douglas Brown said major earthquakes will re-occur there “because the two plates are continuing to come together.”

“The fact that they occur close to the population centers puts them at risk,Сказал он. “And I say that also the complicating factor is that the resources are either not available or have not been applied to protect the infrastructure that exists there against these large earthquakes.

One possibility, сказал Steven Rood, the Asia Foundation Country Representative for the Philippines and the Pacific Island Nations, is to turn historical structures into tourist attractions and use those revenues to retrofit them to withstand seismic activity. That is the approach USAID has used in Nepal since 1995. The U.S. agency has helped build government and community capacity to reduce disaster risk and foster public partnerships to reconstruct old buildings and turn them into tourist attractions.

Япония, Между тем, has invested heavily in being ready for the worst that nature can offer up. Berger was in Tokyo 24 hours after the Марта 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck.

“I sat in those buildings in Japan. And they swayed and they rocked, but they didn’t fall down. A lot of other countries in Asia, if you were in a building, it would have fallen down,” Berger said. “So Japan is invested and understands that these things are important. And … they’re wealthy enough that they can construct buildings in a seismic-resistant fashion.”

But public awareness is also key to limiting casualties. “Part of the reason why the Japanese came through it so often is they all know what to do when an earthquake happens,” Rood said.

Brown added that Japan’s response earthquakes was good, keeping casualties and damage to a minimum. He said its state-of-the-art warning systems worked very well. Until the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Brown said Japan knew there was a tsunami risk, but did not know it was going to be as bad as it was. That information had “simply not worked its way through the system from scientific observations into practice early enough,Сказал он.

That learning process cost thousands of lives in the case of Indonesia, which was the hardest-hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Hawaii’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center sent an early tsunami warning to Indonesia, which was then passed it down the official channels. But the entire region, according to the center, did not have warning systems in place that might have spared some of the more than 200,000 lives lost to the disaster.

“Indonesia is a little more prepared for a repeat because they have set up an early warning system,” said Rood. “Now that early warning system doesn’t work all the time…but other times it has actually produced a good warning so that when the earthquake happens and a tsunami threatens, the people are getting some warning.”

Arshinta, the Director of YAKKUM Emergency Unit in Yogyakarta, Indonesia said in an email interview that the trend shows a decreased casualty rate since 2004. В 2006, о 6,000 people died in a magnitude 6.3 earthquake compared to 704 deaths in a 2009 magnitude 7.6 tremor, сказала она. And according to an Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency report, 1,711people died in 2010 due to natural disasters, по сравнению с 2,620 deaths in 2009.

While much has been done to empower communities, Arshinta said the capacity of Indonesian disaster agencies remains low.

But some problems “require long-term systematic changes to the way society is configured and the way it uses the landscape,” said Brown. “If you don’t build to reduce the casualties, you lose lives. If you do build to reduce the casualties, you lose money because all of that investment and infrastructure is lost to the disaster,Сказал он.

The point, в соответствии с Tom Murphy, Senior Research Fellow at the Urban Land Institute, is “to understand that you need to not act like it’s never going to happen again.”

Murphy, a former Pittsburgh mayor who coordinated rebuilding efforts in U.S. states ravaged by Hurricane Katrina в 2005, said people in parts of New Orleans built 15 feet below sea level. “So you could stand in your front yard and watch a ship go by 15 feet above you in the Industrial Canal.” He said the lesson there is that “countries and regions need to be very careful about how they permit people to develop in the areas that are at risk of disaster.”

This is also true of Bangladesh, a South Asian country typically vulnerable to storms and floods by virtue of being situated on the Ganges Delta and its tributaries.

When a cyclone struck the country in 1991, nearly 139,000 people perished, mostly by drowning. But the next same-size cyclone in 2007 claimed 4,000 lives – a significantly lower number of casualties. В отличие, Burger said Burma lost over 100,000 people to Cyclone Nargis the following year, even though both storms were of the same size.

“A lot of contributions and investments have been made by the international community and the government of Bangladesh in improving their response. And unfortunately, that hadn’t been done in Burma,” said Berger.

Even countries typically in the path of storms are caught unprepared. That was the case with the Philippine’s Mindanao region, an area unaccustomed to typhoons, which recently encountered Typhoon Sendong.

When the storm struck, например, Rood said tree logs that were stacked came down with the flood and battered houses. “And because they were so unprepared, more than a 1,000 people died,Сказал он.

Rood said there is a tendency in disasters – not just in Asia – to respond rather than prepare. But as natural disasters increase in frequency, he said many people are beginning to understand that disaster risk reduction is a long-term concern.  “Even the current levels of…natural disasters leave a terrible human toll,” said Rood. “And as the world gets more crowded with people, that human toll will only increase,” said Rood.

“You can’t put a price on the lives saved when we invest in disaster risk reduction,” Berger said.

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Staying Ahead of Asia’s Next Natural Disaster

Авторы: Мэтью Дорнан и Фрэнк Jotzo, ANU

High oil prices are disproportionately affecting Small Island Developing States (Малые островные развивающиеся государства) в Тихом океане, while renewable energy could replace oil used for power generation and help reduce the risk of cost blowouts.

In Fiji, импорт нефти составил около 14 per cent of GDP in 2010 and is likely to be higher this year, with oil prices again remaining above US$100 a barrel. One in every seven dollars of national income is spent on oil — in a country where one-third of households live below the poverty line.

The comparative impact of high oil prices in Australia has been minimal. This is due to Australia’s low oil intensity of GDP, which measures 0.08 — meaning 0.08 tonnes of oil is consumed for every US$1000 of GDP. Oil intensity of GDP is higher in China and India, measuring 0.23 и 0.20, соответственно. But these figures are still considerably lower than in Fiji, where the oil intensity of GDP is 0.31.

All oil in Fiji and other Pacific island countries is imported. This exposes Pacific island economies to oil price increases, which affect the terms of trade and balance of payments, and lead to inflation and reductions in real household income. В результате, the Asian Development Bank in 2009 estimated that Pacific island economies were among the most vulnerable in the Asia Pacific to oil price volatility; из 10 most vulnerable economies in the Asia Pacific, seven were Pacific island countries.

High oil prices raise the cost of electricity and ‘staple’ fuels such as kerosene, thus compromising access to energy. Power costs rise because of a reliance on diesel and oil-based generators, which produce the majority of power in all Pacific island countries with the exception of Papua New Guinea and Fiji. These two countries are able to generate significant amounts of power from renewable technologies. High oil prices also affect the national budget in countries where cost increases are absorbed by state-owned utilities. In the extreme case of the Marshall Islands in 2008, например, this had major fiscal, economic and social impacts, forcing the government to declare a state of national emergency and requiring a major bailout of the electric utility.

Investments in renewable energy technologies are widely advocated among SIDS in the Pacific and elsewhere as a response to high oil prices. But there has, until now, been no analysis of the risk-mitigation benefits of renewable technologies for SIDS. Many cost-benefit analyses in the electricity sector do not consider financial risk — a significant oversight in the Pacific, considering the widely cited ‘risk-mitigation’ or ‘energy-security’ benefits of renewable technologies.

A recently released discussion paper, Renewable Technologies and Risk Mitigation in Small Island Developing States: Fiji’s Electricity Sector, addresses this gap in knowledge by incorporating financial risk into the economic assessment of electricity sector investments. This provides a measure of both the cost and risk-mitigation impact of investments in renewable technologies in Fiji. These impacts are considered from a system-wide perspective, addressing issues of intermittent power supply from renewable technologies. Например, wind turbines do not produce electricity when there is no wind, and so back-up capacity is needed to prevent shortfalls in power supply.

The analysis shows that there are significant cost-reduction and risk-mitigation benefits associated with investments in renewable technologies in Fiji. Investments that have lower expected average costs generally also have lower cost risks — and these benefits tend to increase in accordance with the extent of renewable energy in the overall portfolio.

But not all investments are equal. The most beneficial investments from a risk/cost perspective are those in low-cost renewable technologies, including geothermal, energy efficient, biomass and bagasse technologies. High-cost renewable technologies such as wind and solar power reduce financial risk but increase generation costs. And investment in hydropower, the Fijian government’s flagship renewable energy program, decreases financial risk but has a minimal impact on generation costs.

The analysis suggests that further investment in low-cost, low-risk renewable technologies in Fiji should be encouraged on energy security grounds and with the goal of lowering generation costs in the electricity grid. Such investments should be prioritised over investment in hydropower generation capacity, according to the study, meaning that the Fijian government’s focus on hydropower projects is mistaken when considered from a system-wide perspective.

More broadly, it is imperative to consider financial risk as well as generation costs when planning investments in electricity generation capacity in Pacific island countries and SIDS. Oil-based power generation currently dominates the electricity sector in the majority of these countries. В результате, this sector is vulnerable to oil price increases and oil price volatility, both of which are predicted in the coming decades by the International Energy Agency. Renewable technologies can reduce financial risk in Fiji and other SIDS where oil-based power generation plays a big role in power supply. These technologies should therefore remain a focus for future development projects in the region.

Matthew Dornan is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University.

Frank Jotzo is Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, and is Director at the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, the Australian National University.

Matthew Dornan and Frank Jotzo recently published a discussion paper, Renewable Technologies and Risk Mitigation in Small Island Developing States (Малые островные развивающиеся государства): Fiji’s Electricity Sector, at the Crawford School of Economics and Government, the Australian National University.

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Private Jets Fly Into Southeast Asia

Authorities in Thailand say an Iranian man detonated explosives in Bangkok, damaging a rented house and severely injuring himself and a few bystanders.  But the government insists there is no evidence suggesting the man was a terrorist or related to last month’s arrest of a suspected Hezbollah operative and a large amount of explosives. 

Authorities say the Iranian national accidentally blew his legs off Tuesday in eastern Bangkok after throwing explosives he was carrying at police.

Government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisang says the man and two other Iranian accomplices had detonated a bomb earlier in their rented house in the Thai capital and were attempting to flee.

“So, one of them was running from the house and called a taxi but taxi did not answer, did not want him to get in.  So, he throws the bomb to the taxi and then he ran away and he met police,” Thitima explained.  “Так, he tried to throw another bomb, the third one, to the police but it did not work.  He bombed himself.  So, he lost his legs.”

A few people nearby were also injured and police are still looking for the accomplices.
Thitima says police believe the Iranian men were making bombs in the house but their intended target was not clear.

Тем не менее, she says Thai intelligence dismissed concerns they might be terrorists.
В январе, Thai police arrested a Lebanese man believed to be linked to the terrorist group Hezbollah.  He led police to a stockpile of four tons of explosives.

His arrest came as the United States and other embassies issued warnings of a possible terrorist attack in Bangkok.

Thai authorities, some worried about the effect on tourism, denied Bangkok was the intended target and insisted the explosives were meant for export.

The Tuesday Bangkok blasts occurred a day after two bomb attacks targeting Israeli diplomats in Georgia and India.

Israel accused Iran and the Iranian-supported Hezbollah of being behind the attacks while Tehran denies it is responsible.

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Thai Government Insists Bangkok Blasts Not Terrorism-Related