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.



theguardian.com Burma will hold a general election on November 8 in a vote that holds the promise of being the next step towards full democracy for a nation run by a repressive military junta for nearly half a century. The announcement on Wednesday came two weeks after Burma's parliament voted against constitutional amendments that observers said would allow Aung San Suu Kyi - who spent 15 years under house arrest - to run for the presidency.

AP Burma's Parliament is ''playing with fire'' by passing a bill regulating the right of women from the country's Buddhist majority to marry men from outside their religion, an international human rights group said Wednesday. Phil Robertson of New York-based Human Rights Watch linked the bill to a campaign by extremist Buddhist groups that have incited anti-Muslim hatred.

kalandan press A special court in Buthidaung, Arakan State released 62 Rohingya, who were arrested by the army during violence in 2012, from Buthidaung Jail on July 1 said Halim, a Human Rights watchdog from Maungdaw.



channelnewsasia.com Jakarta police have arrested a student from Tangerang, West Java for allegedly making a bomb threat to Singapore Airlines (SIA). Chief of Jakarta Police's economic crime unit Victor Edison Simanjuntak said Ilham had made the threat to Sydney-bound flight SQ221 via an e-mail sent to the airline on July 1.



bbc.com The authorities in Malaysia have raided the office of a state investment fund as part of investigations into claims of corruption involving Prime Minister Najib Razak. Police spent hours checking documents at the 1MDB fund's Kuala Lumpur office.



afp Boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao said he will visit a Filipina on death row in Indonesia on Friday and also plans to raise her case with President Joko Widodo.



voacambodia.com Cambodian and Vietnamese officials are meeting in Phnom Penh over border issues this week, but on the second of three days, no final decisions were made Wednesday.



thehill.com President Obama is coming under criticism for meeting this week with the leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, despite the nation's continued crackdown on human rights. Democrats and Republican lawmakers alike have slammed the White House's historic meeting on Tuesday and urged the Obama administration to focus more on the Asian nation's human rights record.



cnbc.com AirAsia's money-losing Indonesian unit is facing fresh headwinds after the country's transportation ministry took the unusual step of ordering the airline to raise as much as $225 million of funding quickly. Mohshin Aziz, an airline analyst at Maybank-Kim Eng, said: ''No country in the world has ever done this.''



iol.co.za And then there's the Laos tourism boom, with visitors expected to almost triple to 10 million in the next five years. Tourism can bring great benefits, but if not handled carefully, much will be lost.



bizjournals.com Representatives from the United States, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim countries will meet in Hawaii later this month to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a Kyodo news service report in Japan's The Mainichi.