Pattani, Thailand  - Suspected separatists on Sunday shot dead and beheaded a couple working on a rubber plantation in Yala province, part of Thailand's troubled deep south where an estimated 3,300 people have died violently over the past five years.

Assailants gunned down Khomphet Janyalert, 39, and his wife Yinjai, 38, at 7 am as they were driving their motorcycle to work at a plantation in Raman district of Yala province, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok, police said.

Phuket, Thailand  - Finance ministers from South-east and East Asia met Sunday on the Thai tourist island of Phuket to try to come up with joint measures to tackle the effects on the region of the global economic slide.

Although institutional investors in East Asia generally stayed away from the kind of financial instruments that led to the current economic crisis in the West, the countries of the region have already experienced dramatic falls in volumes of exports to the West, with further drops expected.

Jakarta  - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Saturday his government was conducting a comprehensive review of the way the conflict in the country's south was being handled, and promising a new direction to achieve peace.

A five-year-old conflict in Thailand's southernmost region has resulted in the loss of almost 3,300 lives and cost the state an estimated 109 billion baht (3.1 billion dollars).

Sydney  - Australian Harry Nicolaides is out of prison and on his way home to Melbourne after being pardoned by Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the author's brother said Saturday.

Nicolaides was released from a Bangkok prison on Friday, Forde Nicolaides told Australia's AAP news agency.

He was arrested in August and jailed last month on a conviction for insulting the royal family.

Pattani, Thailand  - Suspected separatists on Friday shot and beheaded two Thai soldiers who were on a motorcycle patrol in the trouble-torn province of Yala in Thailand's majority-Muslim deep South.

The two soldiers, identified as Sergeant Major Samranmit Phicit, 27, and Private Piyasak Chookraithai, 27, were ambushed in the Bannang Sata district, 750 kilometres south of Bangkok, after falling behind in a patrol of five motorcycles, police said.

Bangkok  - Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva departed Bangkok for Jakarta Friday for a two-day official visit that will include talks on the Myanmar-Muslim Rohingya boat people.

The Thai military has been criticized for pushing back about 1,000 Rohingya refugees from Thailand's southern shores in December, dragging them out to sea in boats without engines or sufficient food and water.

Some of the boat people were rescued by the Indonesian Navy off the coast of Aceh.