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.



aljazeera.com The US Pacific Command has banned its troops in the Philippines from bars and nightclubs, a spokesman said, with the trial underway of a US Marine accused of killing a transgender Filipina he met in a bar. Thousands of American and Filipino soldiers were set to kick off 10 days of annual joint military exercises Monday, according to Capt. Alex Lim, a spokesman for the US forces.



nst.com.my Singapore has released 57 extremists from detention since 2003 after it was ascertained that they were no longer a threat to the country, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as saying. But there was one case of recidivism out of those released, he said at the closing of the two-day East Asia Summit on Religious Rehabilitation and Social Integration.



cnnphilippines.com Since production began five years ago, the television show, It's Not A Dream, has reunited members of 54 Cambodian families shattered by the genocide. More than 1500 have sought its help. The series is just one example of the ways in which Cambodia's traumatised society is beginning to undertake the fraught, painful business of reckoning with their history.



twincities.com In what was described as the first occasion of its kind in the country, a memorial to the Southeast Asian forces who fought as allies of the US during the Vietnam War era was dedicated at Fort Snelling on Saturday. The plaque, in the cemetery's Airborne Circle, memorializes the Hmong, Laotian and Khmer special forces units that served in Cambodia and Laos.



ibtimes.co.uk Saudi Arabia has executed an Indonesian domestic worker just days after beheading another woman from the country. Karni binti Medi Tarsim was convicted of murdering a four-year-old girl in 2012, according to a statement from the Indonesian foreign ministry.



pri.org It's been 47 days since Abdul, a scrawny Rohingya, sent his 14-year-old daughter Dildar away from the Internally Displaced Persons camp in Burma where they'd been living in squalid conditions. Until Dildar's traffickers are paid off, she is being held captive in a secret location, somewhere on the border between Thailand and Malaysia: ''Most people get on the boats thinking they are going directly to Malaysia, but what they find is that they are taken on shore in Thailand and clandestinely transported to what we refer to as 'torture camps.'''
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-18/human-traffickers-find-easy-prey-among-myanmars-minorities



themalaysianinsider.com Malaysia Airlines is withdrawing from Frankfurt in the course of a network rationalisation exercise and as part of the national carrier's recovery plan. ''We regret to announce that Malaysia Airlines is suspending flight operations in Frankfurt. The last flight out will be on May 29,'' Malaysia Airlines Frankfurt director, David Rajkumar Subramaniam, said in a statement.