"SONGKHLA"

Some 5,000 tourists crossed from Malaysia to Thailand via the Sadao checkpoint on Friday, as border traffic surged fivefold after the Thailand Pass system was scrapped.

The first cat-to-human transmission of Covid-19 was documented in a Prince of Songkla University study and published in the June 6 edition of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal.

Opposition Move Forward Party is calling for the removal of Democrat-member Deputy Interior Minister Niphon Boonyamanee for mismanagement as chief executive of Songkhla Provincial Administrative Office (PAO).

Songkhla marked World Environment Day by launching a project to preserve the southern province’s main water supply.

A roadside beverage stall in southern Songkhla province has dropped a plan to sell iced milk tea in a plastic bag with a long protruding part at the bottom.

Schools across Thailand reopened on Tuesday for the first time in two years, and though most students got to attend class, one 14-year-old girl couldn’t.

Some 2,000 travellers entered Thailand via the Sadao-Malaysia border crossing in Songkhla on the first two days of the Test & Go measure being scrapped.

Tourism and Sports Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn is confident Malaysian visitors will restore southern Thailand’s tourism industry once the Test & Go scheme ends on Sunday, May 1.

The low number of foreign travellers entering Thailand via the Sadao border checkpoint is due to the added expense of Covid-19 restrictions, not the planned tourist entry fee, the tourism minister says.

Songkhla will soon ask the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) to change the colour-based categorisation of the province into a blue zone, or a pilot tourism area, to promote tourism in the province, Governor Jetsada Jittirat said on Wednesday.

Three Vietnamese fishing boats were captured by the Thai Naval Area 2 off Songkhla province for raking sea cumbers in Thai territorial waters.

The Southern Border Provinces Development Strategy Committee has approved nearly THB252 million to connect the Sadao checkpoint in Songkhla province with Malaysia, Deputy Minister of Interior Niphon Bunyamanee said on Thursday.