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.



channelnewsasia.com The Singapore team helping to fight haze-causing fires in Indonesia returned after more than 10 days in Palembang. The return marks the completion of the Republic of Singapore Armed Force's two-week deployment, as requested by Indonesian authorities.



AP A Chinese consular officer and her husband, who allegedly killed two other Chinese diplomats and wounded their consul-general in a Philippines restaurant, have been taken back to China where they will be tried, officials said.



stuff.co.nz A New Zealand expat has been arrested in Cambodia alongside an Australian fugitive. Brett Michael Hastie, 44, was faces violence and robbery charges, Cambodian media reported.



themalaysianinsider.com A Malaysia Chronicle editor confirmed that the news aggregator website was blocked ahead of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's Budget 2016 speech. The website's address at www.malaysia-chronicle.com returns a page with the notice: ''This website is not available in Malaysia as it violates the national law(s)''.



japantimes.co.jp A Japanese man has been arrested in Thailand for possessing more than two kilograms of an illegal stimulant drug and an unauthorised automatic gun, while three others were apprehended for trying to bribe the police into releasing him, Thai police said.



jakartaglobe.com Checking the list of the worst man-made environmental disasters ever, Indonesia's fires are probably the biggest global environmental disaster of the 21st century. And I consider it a crime, not just a disaster, because even though setting fire to land remains perfectly legal in Indonesia, endangering the lives of millions of people, destroying protected forests and their wildlife, and threatening the global environment are criminal acts.

bbc.com The Indonesian authorities have forced the organisers of the country's main literary festival to cancel events linked to mass killings 50 years ago. Officials were threatening to call off the entire Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, due to start in Bali next week, if the organisers did not comply. At least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia after an attempted communist coup in 1965.



reuters US plans to send warships or military aircraft within 12 nautical miles of China's artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, possibly within days, could open a tense new front in Sino-US rivalry.



AP Residents of Hpakant in northern Myanmar's opium country became their own drug investigators out of frustration with authorities' failure to keep heroin and methamphetamine addiction from consuming their villages. Now they say they have an explanation for officials' poor performance, thanks to a woman charged with drug-dealing who kept careful track of her expenses.



AP Late last month, Kim Phuc, 52, the iconic running girl with the napalm war wounds, began a series of laser treatments that her doctor at the Miami Dermatology and Laser Institute says will smooth and soften the pale, thick scar tissue that ripples from her left hand up her arm, up her neck to her hairline and down almost all of her back.



straitstimes.com A leaked report has revealed near epic-scale illegal logging in Laos, with virtually no law enforcement. In 2013 for instance, Laos exported 1.4 million cubic metres of timber to Vietnam and China, or more than 10 times its official harvest.