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.



business-standard.com The 26th Asean Summit concluded on Monday with the adoption of three declarations, including the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on a People-Oriented, People-Centred Asean, which aims to establish a regional community by the end of this year.

straitstimes.com The MH370 family support centre at Shunyi in the outskirts of Beijing will be closed from Tuesday onwards, after operating for nearly a full year. The centre, staffed by officials from the governments of Malaysia and China and Malaysia Airlines, was set up on May 4 last year for the families of the Chinese nationals onboard the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.



afp The United States voiced alarm over rare clashes between the Myanmar military and insurgents in Rakhine state believed to have caused hundreds of civilians to flee their homes. The state remains deeply troubled after unrelated deadly religious violence in 2012 between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims, mainly from the Rohingya minority.

aljazeera.com The number of political prisoners in Myanmar has soared over the past year, and in addition to student protesters, human rights activists and journalists are increasingly targeted under repressive laws. There are now 172 political prisoners in Myanmar, with an additional 296 activists awaiting trial,according to the watchdog Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (Burma).



time.com It appears that nine drug convicts, eight of them foreigners, will face a firing squad in Indonesia on Wednesday. That's according to an Australian news report that claims a local mortician has been instructed to write the dates of death as ''29.04.2015'' on the crosses that will be placed on the coffins of Christian prisoners.

smh.com A pathetically weak leader, pandering to a national pathology of perceived Indonesian weakness, appears to have decided irrevocably to put humanity and judicial rigor aside and to execute Chan and Sukumaran and the other prisoners. Because only a pathetically weak leader would execute the powerless to prove his strength.



theguardian.com Three refugees who have agreed to travel to Cambodia are being housed in the Nauru detention centre before they are scheduled to fly out. Just four refugees have agreed to take up the Australian government's resettlement offer in Cambodia, despite a large number of Australian immigration department staff on the island who have been promoting the settlement package.



reuters Southeast Asian leaders edged closer to open criticism of China's land reclamation in the disputed South China Sea at a regional summit on Monday, as the Philippines drew the ire of Beijing which called its objections to the work ''unreasonable''.



stripes.com The presence of American war veterans in today's Vietnam - and the warm welcome they usually receive - is yet another sign of how much the US-Vietnamese relationship has evolved since the countries normalized relations in 1995.



rfa.org Lao primary and high school teachers in Savannakhet Province haven't been paid in three months, according to one educator there, who said they are now urging the central government to issue their salaries. The teacher, who declined to be identified, told RFA's Lao Service that he and many other educators in the country's largest province were experiencing financial difficulties because of the salary delays.



asiaone.com The appeal of JI in Singapore has been dented by the efforts of the Religious Rehabilitation Group - Islamic scholars who counsel detainees and educate the community about the dangers of radical ideology, and who stress that the terrorists are misusing Islamic teachings for their own ends.



scientificamerican.com There's still a small chance that a handful of Bornean rhinos remain elsewhere on the island. Borneo is divided into three countries: Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.