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.



voanews.com The UN Special Investigator on the situation in Myanmar said she sees worrying signs of backtracking by the government on key human rights issues. In her first report to the UN Human Rights Council, Yanghee Lee documents crackdowns on freedom of expression, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities and other cases of human rights violations and abuse. She said the situation of the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State remains dire.



wsj.com The army said it had killed 126 of the hard-line rebels in the past three weeks. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the region's largest rebel group, which, in a show of good faith has cleared some of its 14,000 fighters so that the army can take on a small splinter group of former Islamic front loyalists.



worldbulletin.net The Cambodia Daily reported that 36-year-old Turkish expatriate Bora Ozturk, who helps run the Koh Rong Dive Centre, had just stepped in to his rented home in Sihanoukville around 3am when the Mercedes-Benz he had been driving went up in flames. According to the report, police are investigating the incident, which comes amid heightened tensions between members of the expatriate community in Sihanoukville.



nbcnews.com Indonesia will end its search for the bodies of 56 people missing from an AirAsia jet that crashed in the Java Sea in December, a national rescue agency official said. AirAsia flight QZ8501 lost contact with air traffic control during bad weather less than halfway into a two-hour flight from Surabaya in Indonesia to Singapore on December 28. All 162 people on board the Airbus A320 died.

abc.net.au Two Australian drug smugglers on death row in Indonesia may not be executed for some months, Indonesia's vice-president Jusuf Kalla says. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were listed for execution last month, but that has been delayed to allow the legal challenges of up to 11 death row inmates to finish.



voanews.com Vietnam and Australia have moved to further strengthen bilateral security ties during the current two-day official visit to Australia by Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Analysts say the closer ties come against a backdrop of China's growing influence in the region and ongoing tensions over rival claims to the South China Sea.



tuoitrenews.vn Vietnam is about to finish building an oil and gas platform to export to Brunei in June in accordance with a US$100 million agreement approved by the former's PTSC Mechanical and Construction Company and the latter's Total E&P Borneo B.V. in February last year.



xinhua A large 7th century artifact described as one of the most significant archaeological items ever found in Laos has been unearthed at a world heritage site in the country's south, local media reported.



cnn.com A top government spokesman dismissed as a hoax Wednesday a report that Singapore's founding father had died. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew is alive, said Farah Rahim, senior director for the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Information. The 91-year-old, who has been in a hospital with pneumonia since February 5, is in critical condition, the government has said.



liverpoolecho.co.uk Liverpool FC are returning to Malaysia this summer as part of their pre-season tour. The Reds will play a game in Kuala Lumpur, their first visit to the city since 2011, against the Malaysian XI at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium on Friday, July 24.