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.



smh.com.au Female military applicants in Indonesia are subjected to virginity tests in order to recruit the "best people'' to the armed forces. Human Rights Watch is lobbying countries attending an international conference on military medicine in Bali next week, to urge Indonesian president Joko Widodo to abolish the ''discriminatory and invasive testing''.



bbc.com At least 31 people have died after a fire gutted a slipper factory in a suburb of the Philippine capital Manila, local officials say. With more than 30 people still unaccounted for, the death toll is expected to rise.



abc.net.au Four refugees have agreed to resettle in Cambodia from Nauru, the ABC understands, amid reports the group has been secretly flown to Australia. Cambodia has agreed to take refugees from Nauru who tried to reach Australia by boat.



theguardian.com Trapped in squalor and surrounded by hostility, tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled Burma (Myanmar) , handing their fate to paid traffickers to take them by sea to Thailand and Malaysia.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/13/rohingya-muslims-malaysia-indonesia-burma-aung-ming-lar



newsweek.com The ongoing search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 still hasn't found the plane that went missing more than a year ago, but it has revealed a shipwreck. The Australian government, which is leading the $90 million search effort, announced it had found a previously uncharted shipwreck nearly 4000 feet beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.



channelnewsasia.com Singapore's education system has come out tops in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) biggest global school rankings to date, reported the BBC. The Republic was placed ahead of Hong Kong and South Korea, which ranked second and third. The US was placed 28th. Thailand sits 47th.



bloomberg Vietnam's military is going shopping.Anxious about a more assertive China on its doorstep and frictions over territory in the South China Sea, officials in Hanoi recently hosted a group of foreign defense contractors looking to sell the Communist nation everything from radar systems to night vision technology and aircraft.



cambodiadaily.com Police in Laos arrested a Cambodian woman along with two Laotians moments after the trio crossed Cambodia's northeastern border carrying 6 kg of crystal methamphetamine on Sunday, anti-drug police said.



malaysia-chronicle.com The Ministry of Health (MoH) has recalled Malaysian-made coffee product Lion Cafe after it was found to contain sildenafil, classified as restricted poisons that can be harmful to an individual s health.