Category: Uncategorized

Tomorrowland, the hugely popular European electronic dance music or EDM festival, will stage its first-ever full-fledged Asia edition in Thailand this December.

Thailand was chosen for its “growing influence on the global stage of music, innovation, and experience-driven tourism”, Tomorrowland said on Tuesday.

Founded 20 years ago by Belgian brothers Manu and Michiel Beers, Tomorrowland has become one of the world’s most iconic celebrations of EDM. Its annual Belgian edition often features ambitious, creative stages and wild parties that draw music lovers from across the world.

Organisers are expecting more than 50,000 attendees each day in the Thai beach town Pattaya from 11 to 13 December.

Pre-registration for tickets begins on 8 January. A “full madness pass” covering all three days of the festival will cost 12,500 baht ($400; £300) while a single-day pass is going at 5,100 baht.

More details on the festival’s theme and line-up will follow soon, organisers said.

Although the Tomorrowland group has held events in some Asian cities, this is the first time it will be holding an entire festival in the continent, and one that is similar to the scale of what it does in Belgium.

Thailand finalised an agreement with Tomorrowland to host the event for five years and expects it to generate 21bn baht ($673m; £497m) over the period, Thai media reported.

“Expanding Tomorrowland to a new continent is a milestone we approach with great respect and excitement… This is the beginning of a long-term story,” said Tomorrowland’s chief executive officer Bruno Vanwelsenaers.

In recent years, Thailand has become a strong contender in the live music scene. Last year, it played host to international music festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival and Creamfields. Bangkok was also a stop on K-pop band Blackpink’s world tour last October.

And the country’s homegrown music and arts festival Wonderfruit is emerging as a hot destination on the festival circuit, drawing tens of thousands of people each year.

At least 13 people have been killed – eight of them children – after a drone strike on a house in the Sudanese city of el-Obeid, says the Sudan Doctors’ Network.

Most of the dead were part of the same family, the medical group added.

Although no group has claimed responsibility, the medics say the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) carried out the attack in an area controlled by the army, and which it has been trying to penetrate for months.

As the civil war between Sudan’s army and RSF rebels approaches its third year, the scale of suffering has seen it described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by the UN and aid agencies.

To date, more than 11 million people have been forced from their homes by the violence, and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Widespread sexual violence is also being used as a weapon of war.

Both the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces are accused of atrocities.

Witnesses say Monday’s drone attack on the house in el-Obeid happened in a residential neighbourhood.

The Sudan Doctors’ Network says it “reflects a dangerous escalation of the policy of indiscriminate killing and systematic bombing of safe residential areas”.

The city of el-Obeid remains under army control despite the RSF’s advance elsewhere in the wider state of North Kordofan.

Analysts say it is a key target for the RSF because of its strategic location between Sudan’s capital city, Khartoum, and the Darfur region where they have established a parallel government and are accused of genocide.

The attack comes days after the RSF hit a power plant in el-Obeid, and also follows what the army claims was an attempted RSF drone attack on the country’s largest hydro-electric dam near the northern town of Merowe.