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.



latimes.com Indonesian authorities levied the first punishments stemming from the AirAsia plane crash, suspending officials connected to the airline's alleged flight schedule violation as the search for wreckage continued in the Java Sea.
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-indonesia-airasia-crash-20150105-story.html

cbc.ca Highlighting the depth of Indonesia's air safety problems, the transportation ministry announced harsh measures Monday against everyone who allowed AirAsia Flight 8501 to take off without proper permits - including the suspension of the airport's operator and officials in the control tower.



rawstory.com All Muslims know pork, booze and premarital canoodling violates Islamic teachings. But in Malaysia, home to a rising tide of fundamentalist Islam, senior clerics are warning against more insidious dangers to the faith. Such as death metal. And puppies. And Valentine's Day. The litany of fatwas are creating a siege mentality among conservative Muslims.

theage.com.au Australians should equally condemn the law in Malaysia that would hang a 51-year-old Sydney grandmother by a rope until dead. She is accused of attempting to carry 1.5 kilograms of the drug ice through Kuala Lumpur airport last month.



theguardian.com The south-east Asian city-state has been hailed for its urban policies - and condemned for the authoritarianism that underpins them. So what do Singapore's residents make of life there?
http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/05/the-price-of-life-in-singapore-city-of-rules-its-a-faustian-deal



AP The bodies of two crew members of the Norwegian cargo ship which sank off the coast of southern Vietnam have been identified as the captain and deputy captain, state media reported. Rescuers continue to search for 17 others.



reuters Cambodia's Prince Norodom Ranariddh returned on Monday to lead a party that ditched him eight years ago, in a comeback aimed at reviving royalist support to sway a 2018 election expected to be the country's closest yet.

voanews.com Cambodia's final exam results for 2014 were disastrous, with more than half of the 90,000 students failing. The reason? The authorities stamped out cheating - the first of a series of reforms designed to fix the impoverished country's broken education sector.



irrawaddy.org Former political prisoners have revived a photographic campaign calling for the release of all prisoners incarcerated for political reasons and an end to ongoing politically motivated arrests in Burma.

dvb.no Burma's traffic police chiefs are asking the public to improve safety on the road. At a recent press conference, the department released statistics showing 558 deaths and 4239 injuries on Burma's roads in 2014. That works out to 46.5 deaths and 353 injuries per month - and 80 more deaths over the previous year's total.



ucanews.com Christian activists expressed concerns that Pope Francis would not be allowed to witness the dire poverty that so many in the Philippines must endure. Einstein Recedes, spokesman for the Student Christian Movement, said he hoped the pope would ''diverge from his official itinerary and make surprise visits to urban poor and peripheral communities'' during a papal trip to the country later this month.