Ousted Thailand Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra indicted for corruption charges

Thailand's anti-graft commission has indicted ousted Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra over charges of dereliction of duty in overseeing a contentious rice subsidy program.
National Anti-Corruption Commission chief Panthep Klanarongran says it voted unanimously that there were enough grounds to indict her.
The decision Thursday came one day after the Constitutional Court ousted Yingluck and nine Cabinet members for abuse of power.
Yingluck faces an impeachment vote by the Senate. If impeached and found guilty, she would be barred from politics for five years.
The rice subsidy program was a flagship policy of Yingluck's administration that helped win the votes of millions of farmers. It accumulated losses of at least $4.4 billion and has been dogged by corruption allegations.

Thailand police fire teargas at protesters in Bangkok

An anti-government protester waves a national flag in front of riot police officers and soldiers guarding the entrance of the National Broadcast Services of Thailand (NBT) television station in Bangkok May 9, 2014. Photo: Reuters

Thai police fired teargas at anti-government protesters trying to force their way into a police compound housing a government security group on Friday, a Reuters witness said.
Police fired about seven teargas canisters at hundreds of protesters massed outside the compound on a main road in the north of Bangkok where the government's Center for the Administration of Peace and Order is based.
Many of the protesters, who are trying to bring down the country's caretaker government, then withdrew.
Thousands of royalist protesters fanned out across Thailand's capital on Friday to try to bring down a caretaker government after a court threw Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra out of office and an anti-graft agency indicted her for negligence.
Yingluck's Puea Thai Party still runs the interim government and is hoping to organise a July 20 election that it would probably win, but the protesters want the government out, the election postponed and reforms to end the influence of Yingluck's brother, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban, speaking to supporters in a city park, urged them to rally outside Parliament, the prime minister's offices and five television stations to prevent them being used by the government.
"We will sweep the debris of the Thaksin regime out of the country," said Suthep, a former deputy premier in a government run by the pro-establishment Democrat Party.