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.



aa.com.tr Malaysia plans to bring in around 1.5 million workers fromBangladesh over the next three years, according to the country's home minister. Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said that an agreement would be inked between the two governments next month, as testament to the immense demand for employment from various industrial sectors in Malaysia.

thefinancialexpress-bd.com ''However, this initiative only involves fresh workers from Bangladesh. Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants working here are not involved and we will continue to deport them,'' he told a press conference, reports Malaysian official news agency Bernama.



qz.com Cambodia's health ministry announced that it had cracked down on 3000 doctors and 200-plus dentists who have been operating without a license. An HIV outbreak in the Battambang province last year prompted the crackdown. More than 240 villagers were infected in the outbreak caused by Yem Chrin, an unqualified and unlicensed doctor who admitted to regularly reusing syringes.

stuff.co.nz "I really can't stand to see women cry." New Zealander Graham Cleghorn is staunch in his assurances he never committed the rapes of five girls aged 15 to 17, for which he was convicted in Cambodia. The former ambulance paramedic received a suspended sentence and a king's pardon, 11 years into a 20-year sentence, allowing him to return home to Wellington earlier this month.

Full Report
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/69677721/i-was-set-up-says-kiwi-freed-from-cambodian-rape-sentence



bloomberg Malaysia is emerging as an unexpected beneficiary of Indonesia's ban on ore exports as mining companies from its larger Southeast Asian neighbor pump cash into local bauxite deposits to meet demand from China.

theweek.com In a country where abortion is illegal and talking about reproductive health is taboo, women are terminating their pregnancies in unsafe ways, often getting hurt and sometimes dying as a result. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that abortion is about 20 percent more prevalent in Indonesia than in Southeast Asia as a whole.



AP China is pressing ahead with the construction of artificial islands on at least two reefs that are also claimed by the Philippines in the increasingly tense territorial dispute, Filipino officials said Friday, despite Beijing's pronouncement that some work would end soon.



tuoitrenews.vn China has deployed its Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil drilling rig to the East Vietnam Sea again for oil and gas exploration, after removing it from the sea nearly a year ago, the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) announced.



bloomberg.com According to the annual World Drugs Report released Friday by the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime, traffickers are evolving their routes in ways unique to the type of drug being smuggled. Major producers of opiates (or narcotics derived from the poppy plant, such as opium, morphine, and heroine) include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, Mexico, and Colombia.



AP Thailand's military government has forced a human rights group, Human Rights Watch, to cancel the launch of its report on the Vietnamese government's persecution of an ethnic minority, saying it could affect national security and bilateral relations.



rfa.org Human rights abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority group in Myanmar offset progress in other areas of reform during the last year, while China and other one-party authoritarian Asian states kept up a high degree of pressure on dissidents seeking change, the US State Department said in an annual report.

theaustralian.com.au After two decades of house arrest and great personal sacrifice, just as Suu Kyi is on the verge of becoming her country's most powerful politician, her reputation as an unimpeachable defender of democracy and human rights is taking a beating.



theguardian.com In around 10 countries, homosexuality is punishable by death, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Brunei.

ch-aviation.com Royal Brunei Airlines is planning to replace its two A319-100s with a pair ofA320-200s during September and October of this year as it kicks off its fleet renewal program. The aircraft - V8-RBW (cn 6771) and V8-RBX (cn 6816) - are on lease from Irish-based lessor Ansett Worldwide Aviation Services.



sbs.com.au Stronger defence links and new counter terrorism cooperation are set to be the centrepiece of an official visit to Singapore this weekend by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.