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.



themalaymailonline.com Multicultural Malaysia is risking its image as an ''open-minded and easy-going society'' with the recent passage of a new preventive law to combat terrorism, Simon Tisdall, a senior journalist with British newspaper The Guardian, has said.



channelnewsasia.com The lack of career growth opportunities, low salary and lack of recognition are some of the top reasons employees are planning to leave their jobs, with 30 per cent of employees in Singapore saying they are planning to resign this year, according to a survey.



AP The Indonesian government has announced it will form a special team to investigate allegations of slavery in the fishing industry, as officials prepare to return hundreds of foreign crewmen to their homelands.

nytimes.com Hundreds of fishermen in Lombok island in Indonesia's east have best testing a new mobile app that helps them spot the best places to fish - and they've quickly become hooked, say developers.

travelpulse.com Tourism may be getting more attention in the nation of 17,000 islands, where oil production usually rules the economic roost. The Indonesian government's Tourism Master Plan calls for $470 billion in both public and private investments in infrastructure. Hotels are already on board with investments on the luxury front in both resort development in Bali and in business oriented hotels in Jakarta.



insideronline.org Burma's President Thein Sein has proposed four pieces of legislation that threaten the very fiber of Burma's already halting democratic reform process. If passed, the Protection of Race and Religion bills would violate religious liberty and institute potentially severe population control measures. The US should maintain its opposition to them.



stripes.com The US is sending 6000 troops to the Philippines later this month for the annual Balikatan exercise, more than double what it sent to last year's military-to-military training.



bloomberg.com The dispute took its toll on Chinese tourism to Vietnam, which dropped 40 percent in the first quarter of this year from 2014, compared with 49 percent growth in the same period a year earlier, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That's an economic blow because visitors from China, the largest market, were more than the combined total from South Korea and Japan since 2011.



asiaone.com The Ministry of Health (MoH) has banned three health products and nine cosmetic products after these were found adulterated with undeclared, prohibited substances. The three health products are Jamu Surut Ayu and Jamu Flu Tulang Lumbung Sewu from Indonesia and Australian-made Wild Supplement Capsule.



counterpunch.org NY Times reporter Thomas Fuller simply parrots the official US line about the Laos air war, which was kept secret from the American public at the time, writing that the campaign's ''targets were North Vietnamese troops - especially along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a large part of which passed through Laos - as well as North Vietnam's Laotian Communist allies,'' the Pathet Lao. Not once is ''war crime'' mentioned.



cambodiadaily.com A government official rejected calls from a pair of NGOs to do more for Phnom Penh's slums amid what they described as an opaque land-titling system that has routinely failed poor communities. In a joint report, World Vision and the NGO Forum seek to shed light on a titling system that has left many of the city's slums behind.