While the Andaman Coast is most closely associated with Thailand's southwest shore, it actually elongates all the way from southern Myanmar to northern Malaysia.

Along the way are popular beach resorts like Phuket, Krabi and Langkawi, legendary dive spots like the Similan Islands, as well as under the radar treasures such as Myanmar's Mergui Archipelago.

In his public writings, Jamal Khashoggi's criticism of Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was measured. In private, the Washington Post columnist didn't hold back.

In more than 400 WhatsApp messages sent to a fellow Saudi exile in the year before he was killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Khashoggi describes bin Salman -- often referred to as MBS -- as a "beast," a "pac-man" who would devour all in his path, even his supporters.
CNN has been granted exclusive access to the correspondence between Khashoggi and Montreal-based activist Omar Abdulaziz. The messages shared by Abdulaziz, which include voice recordings, photos and videos, paint a picture of a man deeply troubled by what he regarded as the petulance of his kingdom's powerful young prince.
"The more victims he eats, the more he wants," says Khashoggi in one message sent in May, just after a group of Saudi activists had been rounded up. "I will not be surprised if the oppression will reach even those who are cheering him on."

An injured woman sits on the ground as police officers spray yellow vest protesters with tear gas during a protest in Paris.

A burned car is left in the street a day after Saturday's yellow vests demonstration against rising oil prices and living costs in Paris.

Riot police officers stand in position during clashes with demonstrators.

A demonstrator treats a wounded man during a protest where police and demonstrators clashed, injuring dozens.

Demonstrators destroy cars.

The head of Britain's foreign spy service, Alex Younger, spoke out Monday against adversaries planning to threaten British law and values.

Younger, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) -- better known as MI6 -- addressed students at St. Andrews University, in a speech that mentioned enemies who believe in a "state of perpetual confrontation" with the UK.

He spoke about the Salisbury chemical weapons attack, for which two Russian nationals were charged, and the work of MI6 in disrupting planned ISIS terror attacks, before urging "Russia or any other state intent on subverting our way of life not to underestimate our determination and our capabilities, or those of our allies."

Younger's comments follow recent statements from top British security officials condemning Moscow.

Britain's new army chief last month called Russia a "far greater threat" than ISIS. Gen. Mark Carleton-Smith, Chief of the General Staff, told The Telegraph that Britain "cannot be complacent about the threat Russia poses."

"The Russians seek to exploit vulnerability and weakness wherever they detect it," he added.

The MI6 headquarters in London

Younger also emphasized the commitment of MI6 to UK law and values, as well as the evolution of intelligence work as new technologies make for a "blurred line between the cyber and physical worlds."

"The era of the fourth industrial revolution calls for a fourth-generation espionage: fusing our traditional human skills with accelerated innovation, new partnerships and a mindset that mobilizes diversity and empowers the young," he said.

He mentioned the importance of strategic alliances in disrupting terrorist threats and underlined the commitment of MI6 to strengthening security ties in Europe, before encouraging young people from diverse backgrounds to join the service.

"I want to speak to young people who have never seen themselves in MI6 ... it doesn't matter where you are from," he said.

"If you want to make a difference and you think you might have what it takes, then the chances are that you do have what it takes, and we hope you will step forward."

Younger, who is known as C, has only made one other public speech in his four years as head of the SIS.

In December 2016, he spoke out on Russia's role in the Syrian conflict, which he called an "unfolding tragedy."

"I believe the Russian conduct in Syria, allied with that of (Bashar al-Assad's) discredited regime, will, if they do not change course, provide a tragic example of the perils of forfeiting legitimacy," he said.

America may get its most intimate look yet inside Robert Mueller's secretive Russia investigation in the next four days, with a series of disclosures that have the potential to be greatly damaging for President Donald Trump.

Court filings focusing on Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on Tuesday and his ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Friday could offer tantalizing new details of Mueller's deep dive into the 2016 campaign.

If the special counsel lives up to his reputation, his filings will feature surprising revelations and rich texture to color the picture he has already painted in indictments and witness testimony of a culture of endemic dishonesty in Trump's orbit about multiple, so far unexplainable, ties with Russians.

He may also begin to add context and answers to some of the intriguing clues he has dropped in a probe that has so far seen three people sentenced, one convicted at trial and seven guilty pleas and has charged 36 people and entities with a total of 192 criminal counts.

With each twist of the investigation, a fascinating trove is building of hints and implied connections, odd coincidences and apparent shady links between key players that is crying out for explanation. 

It is now clear that Mueller is building a layered narrative, starting at the edge of the drama, by first exposing Russian election interference and fingering the culprits in Moscow's spy agencies. He has bolstered his story with successful swoops against former Trump aides like Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, showing their ties to pro-Russian figures in Ukrainian politics, in a case ostensibly about financial fraud in the dubious trade of international lobbying.

There has been speculation that he is trying to leave a detailed paper trail in public in case Trump manages to fire him in a power play or he is somehow constrained in his writing of a final report.

The continuum running through the investigation showing links between Trump's associates and businesses and Russia has been often subtle.

But it's increasingly hard to miss as Mueller plows into a new phase, one that is making it increasingly difficult for the President's defenders to claim that wrongdoing he has discovered unfolded far from the President's oblivious gaze.

Stepping up the pace of his probe since the midterm elections, Mueller has moved in a direction that appears increasingly threatening to the President, including his crossing of Trump's red line by showing interest in his family real estate empire.

What U.S.-Russian cooperation in space might look like in ten years: a moon base.

Iconic grunge band Temple of the Dog is reuniting for their first ever tour. The band originally consisted of Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron from Soundgarden, with Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Mike McReady from Pearl Jam. Vedder's name is omitted from the press release and video, so he may not be taking part in the reunion.

The band's first and only album was released in 1991 and the band is using the tour to celebrate the 25-year anniversary of the record. Cornell started the band as a tribute to Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone. Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. Cornell enlisted the help of Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament who were Wood's bandmates in Mother Love Bone.

Behind the singles "Hunger Strike" and "Say Hello to Heaven" the album would eventually go platinum in the US and Canada. The record initially sold poorly, but saw a resurgence in popularity following Pearl Jam's sudden rise to fame in 1992.

The fully reformed band will play 5 shows across the US in November. Full list of dates and venues are at templeofthedog.com.

Rare JRR Tolkien poem The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun to be republished

Early version of Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings can be seen in this take on a medieval Breton ballad, out of print for 70 years

A poem “from the darker side of JRR Tolkien’s imagination”, which hints at an early version of the elf queen Galadriel from The Lord of the Rings, is due to be published for the first time in more than 70 years this November.

Tolkien’s The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, which was published in 1945 in literary journal The Welsh Review and has been out of print ever since, is a lengthy poem in the tradition of the medieval lay, inspired by the Celtic legends of Brittany. It tells of a couple who are desperate for a child. Aotrou visits a witch “who span dark spells with spider-craft, / and as she span she softly laughed”. She gives him a potion and his wife bears twins. But riding through the forest, he meets the witch again. Now transformed from a “crone” into a beautiful woman, the Corrigan – a generic Breton term for a person of fairy race – says he must marry her or die.

From the darker side ... Laura Michelle Kelly as Galadriel and James Loye as Frodo in the 2007 adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He refuses and dies three days later. His wife then dies of grief. “And if their children lived yet long, / or played in garden hale and strong, / they saw it not, nor found it sweet / their heart’s desire at last to meet.”

HarperCollins, which will publish the poem along with Tolkien’s other poems about the Corrigan on 3 November, called it “an important non Middle-earth work to set alongside his other retellings of existing myth and legend”. These include The Story of Kullervo, a teenage Tolkien’s retelling of a Finnish epic poem, and his 200-page poem The Fall of Arthur.

According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of the author, the earliest manuscript for The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (Breton for “lord and lady”, explains Carpenter) is dated September 1930.

HarperCollins said: “The sequence shows the Corrigan’s increasingly powerful presence, as she takes an ever more active role in the lives of Aotrou and Itroun … She would finally emerge, changed in motive and character but still recognisable, in The Lord of the Rings as the beautiful and terrible Lady of the Golden Wood, the Elven queen Galadriel.” It added that the poem comes “from the darker side” of Tolkien’s imagination.

In the poem, the Corrigan’s voice is described as “cold / as echo from the world of old, / ere fire was found or iron hewn, / when young was mountain under moon”, echoing the cold beauty of Galadriel.

Tolkien annotated map of Middle-earth acquired by Bodleian library

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Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger, a professor emerita at the University of Maryland, is editing and introducing the new edition, which also includes a new preface from Christopher Tolkien. Flieger called it “dark, powerful, compelling, a significant departure from the Tolkien we think we know”.

It is derived, said Flieger, “from a well-known folkloric tale-type of the human who strays into the Faerie world and who pays the price, such as the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas Rhymer”. Although there are Irish and Welsh versions of the story, she says that Tolkien’s version is closest in subject matter to the Breton ballad Lord Nann and the Corrigan, which the author owned a copy of.

With a flurry of “new” works by Tolkien released over the last decade, from 2007’s Middle-earth story The Children of Hurin, to the 2014 release of his translation of Beowulf, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun “is worthy of publication now for several reasons”, said Flieger. “First, it is a fine example of Tolkien’s poetic power and his ability to handle different verse forms – in this case the octosyllabic rhyming couplets of French romance, which he also used for The Lay of Leithian from his own legendarium.” The Lay of Leithian is a long poem telling the story of Tolkien’s Middle-earth characters Beren and Lúthien.

The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, said Flieger, vividly shows the author’s interest “in paganism and in the dark side of what he called Faerie, the perilous realm or Otherworld of enchantment.” She said it will also give Tolkien’s readers “his most developed example of a folklore archetype I will call The Dark Lady, the beautiful but malevolent fay or fairy who preys upon humans, and thus foreshadows his Guinevere, described as ‘fair as fay-woman in the world walking for the woe of men’.”

In his JRR Tolkien: Author of the Century, Tom Shippey writes that the poem is animated by the question of how far a believing Christian could go “in dealings with pre- or non-Christians”. While the poem is derived from a late Breton ballad, he writes, “what seems original to Tolkien is the poem’s stern morality”, because in Tolkien’s version the death of Aotrou “is deserved, or at least prompted by [his] attempt to sway Providence by supernatural forces”.

“Aotrou’s sin lay not in submitting to the Corrigan,” he writes. “It lay in having any dealings with her at all.”

Santa Claus sits in his chamber at the Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, the provincial capital of Finnish Lapland and situated on the Arctic Circle.

1. Malta

Visiting presepju, or nativity scenes, is an integral part of Christmas in Malta. Every year, residents proudly open their shutters, and sometimes even their garage doors, to display their holy crib confections to the public.

On a grander scale, the Bethlehem f'Ghajnsielem is a life-size nativity spread over 20,0000 square meters of formerly abandoned fields.

Inhabited and animated by more than 150 actors, including entire families, the village takes visitors back in time to Judea of 2,000 years ago, complete with oil lamps, turn mills, grazing animals, crafts areas teaching traditional skills and folklore, a tavern and, of course, a grotto housing baby Jesus.

Downtown Valletta is also home to a lively Christmas spirit, with carolers singing outside the Baroque St. John's Co-Cathedral during Advent, and a dizzying display of Christmas lights on Republic Street.

The Manoel Theater is well known for its annual Christmas pantomime. (Old Theatre Street, Il-Belt Valletta, Malta; +356 2124 6389)

A visit to the privately owned Malta Toy Museum, featuring dolls, soldiers, train sets, and clockwork tin trinkets dating as far back as the 1790s, is a heartwarming homage to childhood. (222 Republic St, Valletta, Malta; +356 2125 1652)

Downtown Valletta, Malta, is filled with Christmas spirit. Visitors can check out carolers singing outside the Baroque St. John's Co-Cathedral during Advent and a dizzying display of Christmas lights on Republic Street. Click through the gallery for 14 more great Christmas vacation destinations

2. Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona's Copa Nadal is a 200-meter swimming competition across the harbor on Christmas Day.

Anyone who can manage to extend their Christmas holiday until Three King's Day (January 6 in 2019), can catch up with Melchior, Gaspar and Balthazar in Barcelona.

On the evening of January 5, they arrive at the city's port on the Santa Eulalia -- their very own ship -- in bearded and velvet-robed splendor. Cannons are fired, fireworks are set off, and as the mayor hands them the keys to the city, the magic of the Magi officially commences.

They parade through the streets in a magnificent cavalcade of floats that includes camels, elephants, giraffes and dazzling costumes.

3. Salzburg and Oberndorf, Austria

Is this Christmas or Halloween in Salzburg? You'll have to go there to find out.

Birthplace of Mozart and filming location for "The Sound of Music," Salzburg is chocolate-box perfect. Think snow-capped mountains, Baroque architecture and traditional Christmas markets.

It's even the home of "Silent Night." The popular hymn was performed for the first time in nearby Oberndorf on Christmas Eve 1918.

The town also plays host to a more unusual Yuletide tradition. Across Austria and Bavaria, in December people dress up as terrifying Alpine beasts known as krampuses and rampage through the streets in search of naughty children in need of punishment.

The Krampus Runs in Salzburg are held on various dates in December.

Over 40s 'have more babies' than under 20s

Women over 40 are having more babies than the under 20s for the first time in nearly 70 years, official figures for England and Wales show.

The Office for National Statistics data showed there were 697,852 live births in 2015.

There were 15.2 births per 1,000 women aged over 40, compared with just 14.5 per 1,000 women in their teens.

The last time the over 40s had the higher fertility rate was in 1947, in the wake of WWII.

The figures show two key trends in who is having children and when in England and Wales.

Yes, you read that correctly -- subterranean. While the idea of a semi-underwater hotel isn't novel -- the recent underwater suite at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island being a notable example -- InterContinental Shanghai Wonderlandis a new concept.

Built into the side of a quarry in the Sheshan Mountain Range, the hotel has 336 rooms on 18 floors.

Shimao Wonderland InterContinental was built inside a quarry.

Sixteen of the floors are underground, with the lowest two submerged inside a 33-foot-deep aquarium.

Guests in those rooms can watch fish swim by -- and they also get 24/7 personal butler service while they do it.

The hotel has been nicknamed the "earthscraper," as it's the opposite of a skyscraper.

A natural wonder

Built by Studio JADE+QA in association with British firm Atkins, behind the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, the "pit hotel" required innovative engineering solutions and more than 5,000 people to complete.

Guests who don't get the aquarium views will all have a room balcony with views of purpose-built waterfalls spilling down the quarry walls. There's also a glass-bottomed walkway for exploring the area further.

For thrillseekers, the hotel makes use of its position inside a craggy pit to provide bungee jumping and rock climbing opportunities.

And if you just need to unwind after all that adventure? There's a bar -- appropriately called The Quarry.

Living landscapes

Set near the Sheshan Mountain Range, Sheshan National Forest Park and Chenshan Botanic Gardens, the 61,000-square-meter resort aims to be a home base for environmentally minded travelers.

The architectural plan was designed to reduce impact on the environment by keeping the majority of construction within the disused pit.

"This is such a unique opportunity that gives me some really interesting ideas of reshaping the relationship between city and nature," the hotel's architect, Martin Jochman, says of the property.

In addition, the hotel plans to generate its own geothermal and solar energy to power everyday functions.

On site, there's also a green rooftop that disappears into the surrounding landscape and doubles as a place where travelers can relax and explore.

An old-fashioned girl-and-her-giant-robot story, "Bumblebee" is unexpectedly appealing, a "Transformers" prequel played at a much more modest pitch. Cleverly set in 1987 (when, incidentally, the toy-driven original animated series ended), this well-tuned vehicle leverages that nostalgia factor for all It's worth, especially in its pop-culture touchstones.

Hailee Steinfeld stars in "Bumblebee."

The film opens on the Autobots' home planet of Cybertron, where they're promptly forced to retreat. One of the soldiers, B-127, is dispatched to Earth, hoping to prepare it for his brethren -- and not incidentally, thwart any evil Decepticons that might follow him there.

In the movie's clunkiest twist, the yellow fellow initially crashes among a group of government operatives, led by the hard-charging Agent Jack Burns (John Cena). It's mostly an excuse for a big action sequence before the movie segues into a lower-key mode, after the Autobot soon to be christened Bumblebee is taken in by Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld), a just-turned-18-year-old desperate for a car, even if it's a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle.

Still grieving over her father's death, Charlie is very much in need of a pal to shake her out of her funk. Like Elliott in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," she must conceal Bumblebee from her mom (Pamela Adlon, odd casting that), while learning to communicate with her new ride, who uses song snippets to respond.

The "E.T." reference is perhaps too charitable, since "Bumblebee" is just as much a mechanized "Mighty Joe Young." The net effect, though, is to set up an us-against-the-world dynamic, creating an excuse for Charlie to bond with the nerdy neighbor (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), who, until this new development, struggles to muster the courage to speak to her.

Notably, director Travis Knight is an animation veteran, whose credits include "Kubo and the Two Strings" and (as a producer) "The Boxtrolls." "Bumblebee" definitely has a more family-friendly feel, which doesn't mean there's not plenty of action involving giant mechanized warriors beating the oil out of each other.

Most happily, the movie (written by Christina Hodson) proves disarmingly witty, working "The Breakfast Club" into its shtick, referencing the Cold War not long before the Berlin Wall comes tumbling down and indulging in teen hijinks -- like toilet-papering a house -- that Bumblebee embraces with a little too much gusto.

Admittedly, some of this praise comes from a place of utter skepticism with a five-film franchise that -- under the stewardship of director Michael Bay -- is a sort-of poster child for empty-headed blockbusters that play well internationally because explosions are a universal language and the dialogue's mostly irrelevant anyway.

The production notes refer to this as a "kinder, gentler" take on "Transformers," which sounds better than a "quieter, less irritating" one.

Even grading on a curve, though, this is a solidly executed story, tapping the familiar theme of a troubled kid whose life is changed by an extraordinary visitor. And it's grounded in reality thanks to Steinfeld, a budding star basically reprising the character she played in the indie film, "The Edge of Seventeen," only with a lot more destruction of property.

Joining a movie series that has consistently added up to less, creatively speaking, than the sum of its parts, for once there really is more to "Bumblebee" than meets the eye.