Bangkok - Protest leaders camping outside Government House in Bangkok vowed Thursday to extend their demonstration until the government is dissolved.

The leaders of the so-called Red Shirts said since none of their demands had been answered they had no choice but to increase pressure on the government.

Bangkok  - Thai police on Wednesday identified a foreigner whose head was found at the weekend hanging by a rope off a Bangkok bridge as an Italian tourist who committed suicide after being evicted from his guesthouse for not paying the rent.

General Jongrak Chuthanont, deputy police commissioner, identified the decapitated man as Maurizio Tosadori, 54, an architect from Verona, Italy.

Bangkok  - Germany on Wednesday launched a "climate initiative" with Thailand, providing 9 million euros (410 million baht) to projects designed to assist the South-East Asian country to combat global warming.

The budget, to be spaced out over the next three years, was being provided by the German Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety to six projects in Thailand that aim to reduce carbon emissions or cope with the effects of climate change.

Deputy Minister Michael Mueller said at a ceremony marking the launch of the German-Thai initiative that Germany funds climate change projects at home and worldwide through the sale of carbon-dioxide certificates through an emissions-trading system in Germany.

Bangkok  - Thousands of protestors surrounded Government House in Bangkok for the second day Wednesday as others demonstrated outside the foreign ministry calling for the resignation of Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya.

The protests organized by the United Front of Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) were designed to embarrass the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva before its hosts the 14th Summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Friday to Sunday in Cha-am, 130 kilometres south-west of Bangkok.

But they did not prevent Abhisit from entering Government House Wednesday morning, although the weekly cabinet meeting was moved to Cha-am Tuesday.

Bangkok  - Thailand's government has decided to return to Cambodia seven artifacts smuggled into the kingdom almost 10 years ago, media reports said Wednesday.

The Thai cabinet approved the diplomatic gesture at its weekly meeting Tuesday, days before Thailand hosts the 14th Summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, which will be attended by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Bangkok - Some 1,307 companies went bankrupt last month in Thailand, up 53.7 per cent from the same period of 2008, the Department of Business Development announced Tuesday.

Most of the bankrupt firms were in the construction sector, real estate and services, while almost half of them were in Bangkok, the department revealed.

Like most export-oriented Asian economies, Thailand has already been hard-hit by the global financial crisis that has reduced demand in major importing countries such as the US, Europe and Japan.