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.



bbc.com The eldest daughter of Malaysia's jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been arrested for alleged sedition. Nurul Izzah Anwar, a vice president of her father's PKR party, was detained for a speech she made in parliament last week where she criticised the judiciary for his conviction.



theguardian.com Buddhist monks have prepared a lawsuit against Burma's interior minister that accuses police of using poisonous chemicals to break up a protest in 2012 and inflicting severe burns on demonstrators. According to the Justice Trust, a human rights group working in Burma, the case will be a test of the government's commitment to political reform.

dvb.no The recent re-sentencing of three prominent Rohingya community leaders in Rakhine (Arakan) state and the ongoing detention of two others points to the uneven application of the rule of law in the restive region, their lawyer claims.

bloomberg Myanmar's air force never entered Chinese territory and an ''ethnic group'' is responsible for a bomb that killed five farmers inside China, a government spokesman said.



AFP Philippine security forces have arrested the head of a small Islamic militant group who was involved in protecting one of the United States' ''most wanted terrorists,'' the military said. Mohammad Ali Tambako was detained along with five accomplices as he was riding a motorised tricycle on a main road near a major southern city.



phnompenhpost.com Cambodia was the only country in the Greater Mekong subregion to have increased its rate of exports following the 2008 global financial crisis, thanks largely to garments accounting for the majority of its manufacturing exports, a new report has found.



independent.co.uk Indonesia's most prominent Islamic clerical body has issued a fatwa proposing a host of punishments for ''homosexual crimes'' - including the death penalty. The fatwa claimed that homosexuality is a disease that needs to be cured and proposed a series of brutal penalties.

cnbc.com Why Indonesia struggles to attract foreign investors: The roadblocks can start with just getting permission to operate, which historically has taken as much as three years.



mintpressnews.com It's been 50 years since the march on Selma and US Marines landing in South Vietnam. Yet little has changed, as domestic issues take a backseat to American-led wars being fought farther and farther from our shores.



engadget.com Austin-based ArchAerial's new drone mission could potentially save lives in war-torn regions that are prone to accidents and fatalities from unexploded bombs. ArchAerial's first minefield-locating mission will be in Laos, a country quite literally scarred from the Vietnam War.



bloomberg Singapore home sales in February slumped 48 percent from a year ago as lending curbs stemmed purchases.