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 Four Western tourists accused of being part of a group who posed nude at the top of Malaysia's Mount Kinabalu have appeared in court in Sabah state. Authorities said the two Canadians, a Briton and a Dutchman may be charged with causing public nuisance.

telegraph.co.uk Eleanor Hawkins, 24, was detained on Tuesday at Tawau airport, as she was flying out from the island of Borneo to the capital, Kuala Lumpur. Three others were also arrested on Tuesday after handing themselves in: 23-year-old Canadian Lindsey Peterson and his sister Danielle, 22, and a 23-year-old Dutch man, Dylan Snel.

thestar.com.my The death toll from the quake stands at 18. Nine Singaporeans (including seven children), six Malaysians and one national each from China, Japan and the Philippines have lost their lives.



bbc.com This summer, the editing labs and sound engineering stations at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in Asia will fall silent for good. The campus, set upon three-acres of prime property in central Singapore, is closing less than 10 years after opening due to millions of dollars of debts.



news.sky.com Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has begun a historic and controversial visit to China. She is meeting both President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang during the visit, but further details of the four-day trip have not been disclosed.



ibtimes.com Mount Sinabung, a volcano in Sumatra in western Indonesia, is again spewing large clouds of gas into the air. Last week, authorities had placed the region on the highest level of alert, and are closely monitoring the volcano.



reuters Chinese warships and aircraft on Wednesday passed through the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines to hold routine planned exercises in the Western Pacific, China's Defense Ministry said.



usatoday.com China's largest claimed island is about half the size of New York City's Central Park. The next-largest island would fit inside Beijing's Forbidden City. Sustaining legitimate settlements on these tiny isles is extremely difficult. Some aren't even visible at high tide. So Vietnam hopes to do the next best thing: keep tourists circulating through the area on swanky cruise ships.



huffingtonpost.com It was 1978, in Talien, Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge soldier came for my mother. An acquaintance had betrayed her, informing the Khmer Rouge leadership about her past as a teacher. Under Pol Pot's savage regime, all educated citizens - teachers, doctors, musicians, artists, intellectuals, were to be interrogated, tortured and killed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sreyram-kuy-md/how-i-survived-cambodias-killing-field_b_7538362.html



rfa.org Laos is planning to ask China for a second multimillion-dollar loan to build a 90-kilometer road in the northern part of the country, after using previously borrowed funds for the same project to host a summit for Asian and European leaders, according to an official with knowledge of the loan request.



xinhua Eight Australian veterans, aged from 89 to 96 years old, came to Brunei-Australia Memorial, Muara Beach, on Wednesday to attend commemorative service to honor the 70th anniversary of Australian troops landing in Brunei in World War II, an important part of Australian campaigns of the war against Japan which ended in victory, freeing the island from the Japanese occupation.