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.



businessinsider.com Over the weekend, Singapore Airlines Flight 836, flying from Singapore to Shanghai, lost power mid-flight on both of its Rolls-Royce engines. The incident, which took place just south of Hong Kong, caused the airliner to descend 13,000 feet before the crew was able to restart the engines. There were 182 passengers and 12 crew members on board the airliner.



theguardian.com At the centre of the camp was a wooden platform that had fallen into disrepair and a crudely built wooden enclosure wrapped in barbed wire, more like pens for wild animals than a place suitable for humans.

nytimes.com The police in Malaysia have said little about the grim discoveries at desolate camps like this one on a hillside near the country's border with Thailand. But what was left behind here suggests that the camps were busy holding stations for migrants under the control of ruthless, sophisticated human trafficking rings.

bbc.com A British student has died in Malaysia, the Foreign Office has confirmed. Jake Samuel Andrews, 21, drowned while snorkelling off the islands of Pulau Perhentian on Monday with a group of friends, according to local reports.



csmonitor.com Three of Ms Nuwara's relatives were killed during inter-religious riots in 2012. Her family's land was part of a large-scale confiscation by the government to relocate people displaced by the violence. In the process, the family was deprived of its livelihood. They ended up in a camp.

onislam.net Rohingya refugees recalled how Buddhists destroyed Muslim houses and businesses, where they did not spare mosques and other Islamic centers.



straitstimes.com A 37-year-old Singaporean has been charged in the Philippines after he allegedly tried to cheat a casino of US$30 million (S$40.3 million) in gambling chips using a fake telegraphic transfer. Dominic Sim is believed to have got $8 million worth of gambling chips from Solaire Resort and Casino in Manila in February last year - $3 million of which the casino has since managed to recover.



afp Ten students are missing after a ferry carrying primary school children sank on a tributary of the Mekong River in Laos. Officials rescued 20 students after the ferry sank at 7:30am (local time) on the Nam Ngum river in the Sinxay region but 10 students are still unaccounted for.



globalresearch.ca Studies have shown that dioxin from Agent orange still remains at alarmingly high concentrations in soil, food, human blood and breast milk in people who live near former US military bases.



theguardian.com The first squad of scuba divers trained to find and help defuse unexploded war time ordnance have started work. Even today unexploded mines and bombs kill hundreds across Cambodia - indeed before now, the extraction of bombs from rivers would have been near impossible.

bbc.com Peter Riley, 25, from Jersey, was found dead in Sihanoukville Province in the south west of Cambodia. His next of kin have been informed but no further details about his death are available, the States of Jersey Police said.