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.



afp The Netherlands, Malaysia and three other countries want a UN tribunal to be set up to try those responsible for the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine last year, a senior diplomat said. Malaysia is expected to present a draft resolution to the Security Council next month on setting up the tribunal.

bernama Malaysia has adopted two strategies to eventually make the entire country a smoking-free zone, said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S Subramaniam. One is to increase, in stages, the smoking-free zones in the country and the other, to reduce the number of places where cigarettes are allowed to be sold, he said.



Vietnam is having condom problems. Hundreds of thousands of condoms sold there are substandard. They tear easily and don't offer reliable protection. More than 170 million condoms imported and sold in Vietnam are defined as ''substandard,'' or likely to rip.



hrw.org Cambodian authorities should immediately release more than 100 people arbitrarily detained in Phnom Penh as part of the city's preparation for major public ceremonies, Human Rights Watch said today.

cambodiadaily.com A woman was arrested in Phnom Penh's Daun Penh district for allegedly pimping out at least seven underage girls to Cambodian and foreign men, police and an NGO said. Police from the municipal anti-human trafficking bureau apprehended Sok Him, 37, as she was leaving the Bolina Palace Hotel on Street 154 in Phsar Thmei III commune, according to bureau chief Keo Thea.



economist.com It comes as no surprise then that, in the most recent World Press Freedom Index, Singapore ranked 153rd of 180 countries, falling three spots from last year's rankings. As Cherian George, a former columnist for Singapore's Straits Times who now teaches journalism in Hong Kong, puts it: the government ''still acts as though it can't win an argument on the merits, nor trust the public to reach wise conclusions through open debate''.



theweek.co.uk After a lifetime spent campaigning for democracy in Burma (now often known as Myanmar), including 15 years under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi is finally on the brink of seeing her work come to fruition. The party she founded in the 1980s, the National League for Democracy (NLD), looks set to win the November general election, the country's first free and fair elections since 1960.



ft.com Construction stocks have suffered a bruising sell-off in recent weeks, in line with the Indonesian stock exchange, which is down 5.4 percent year to date in local currency and 11.98 percent in US dollar terms. A weaker outlook for gross domestic product growth is one reason. But another is slow progress on government spending because of endless budget revisions and lingering political uncertainties.

thejakartapost.com Foreign direct investment inflow to Indonesia has continued to rise, along with direct investment in South-East Asia, despite the slowdown in economic growth, says an UN report.



aa.com.tr At least three people have been killed and 800 evacuated as heavy rains slammed the Philippines' Muslim south, resulting in flooding and landslides.



voacambodia.com The environmental group International Rivers has called on Laos to suspend construction of a major dam on the Mekong River and to continue talks with its concerned neighbors downstream. The Don Sahong Dam, which would spread across the river just above the Cambodian border, is a major concern for many, who say its impacts have not been well studied and who worry its construction could devastate fisheries that millions of people rely on.



ft.com The US Congress put the final stamp on legislation giving President Barack Obama the ''fast-track'' authority to complete the most ambitious regional trade deal in recent history. The Trans-Pacific Partnership would include two of the world's three biggest economies - the US and Japan - and with 10 other countries involved would cover some 40 percent of the global economy. That would make it the biggest trade deal completed since the Uruguay Round in the 1990s which created the World Trade Organisation.