Thai police fire rubber bullets, tear gas at protesters

BANGKOK (AP) — Police in Thailand’s capital have fired rubber bullets and tear gas to stop hundreds of protesters who were attempting to march to the prime minister’s residence to demand he resign over his handling of the country’s coronavirus crisis. It was the third anti-government protest in Bangkok this week blocked by police with tear gas and rubber bullets. Hundreds of protesters gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument, where they burned a large pile of spoiled fruit to symbolize the economic costs of what they called the government’s failure to properly control the outbreak. Thailand reported more than 23,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, a record. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha’s government has been heavily criticized for failing to procure timely and adequate vaccines.