PHUKETWAN recognises the importance of Asean with the Economic Community approaching and marks what's happening around the region with a new column, Asean Today.

bangkokpost.com China hopes its historic links with Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries will draw the attention of their investors to a new free trade area in Fujian province. Southeast Asia has 12 million people who can trace their origin back to Fujian. In Thailand, most of them live in the southern provinces including Phuket and Songkhla.

straitstimes.com The Philippines had once defined its nationalism in anti-American terms. Today, the target is China. The sentiments in the archipelago underscore how South-east Asia, which had begun to shed its old fears of the mainland, is feeling fresh unease about it.



abc.net.au Philippines police have filed murder charges against the owners and crew of a passenger ferry that capsized and left at least 59 dead, an official said. The charges were filed in the central city of Ormoc over the sinking of the Kim Nirvana vessel, according to regional police chief superintendent Asher Dolina.



bangkokpost.com Thailand and Japan agreed to develop the Dawei special economic zone in Burma (Myanmar) and two train lines in Thailand including a high-speed train linking Bangkok and Chiang Mai.



channelnewsasia.com The Singapore Botanic Gardens is now a Unesco World Heritage Site, after it was inscribed at the 39th session of the World Heritage Committee in Bonn, Germany. The decision was met with cheers from a jubilant Singapore delegation.

afp Prominent Singaporean intellectuals, artists and activists criticised the government's ''harsh'' treatment of a teenage boy behind online attacks on the late former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Amos Yee is due to appear in court Monday following two weeks at the Institute of Mental Health after a judge had ordered psychiatric tests before he was sentenced.



xinhua Indonesia has revised down its growth projection for this year from 6.6 percent to 5.8 percent and now to 5.2 percent, saying that the figure was the most realistic amid the global economy downturn at present.



aa.com.tr Border tensions between Vietnam and Cambodia are set to be investigated by a bilateral body, it was reported Saturday.The body was established in the wake of a skirmish involving a member of parliament, who was visiting the site of a border marker that is in dispute and falls into a plot of land that has yet to be fully demarcated.

techtimes.com Fifteen Gambian pouched rats or African giant pouched rats, as they are also known, are currently being trained in Cambodia for the detection of landmines. The rodents are nocturnal and their ears are sensitive to the sun's rays, requiring sunscreen as a protection from sunburn.



AP The powerful head of Vietnam's Communist party will travel to the US for the first time next week, and said he expects President Barack Obama will visit Vietnam later this year. Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said he hopes to build trust and create more opportunities to improve relations.



straitstimes.com Citizen's arrest team members in Puchong Jaya township in Malaysia's state of Selangor chased down and arrested a man who is believed to have masturbated and ejaculated into a hotel staff member's water bottle in a viral video.



aap Tourism, business and trade between Australia and Laos is expected to strengthen after the federal government signed a new agreement with the southeast Asian country.



theborneopost.com Plans to launch a stock exchange in Brunei Darussalam by 2017 will bolster its capital markets in line with plans for regional market integration as well as aid the broader drive to diversify its economy away from dependence on oil and gas.