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.



washingtonpost.com Between my early life in India and my current life in the US, I spent 14 years in paradise: Singapore. From clean water and crime-free streets to reliable public transportation and easy access to libraries, the state government anticipates all the basic needs to provide its residents a good quality of life and eliminate the stresses that can impede personal progress.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/03/25/critics-call-singapore-an-autocracy-but-i-never-felt-more-free-than-when-i-lived-there/

money.cnn.com ''Instead of having an undeniable father to say 'yes' or 'no,' Singaporeans will now . . . make more consensus-based decisions,'' he said. ''Singapore could gradually move to a political regime where competing parties and leaders argue to convince a nation that their ideas are best.''



thestar.com.my The implementation of PAS' hudud will indicate to the world that Malaysia has abandoned its moderate path, said a group of prominent Malays, dubbed G25. ''The Prime Minister has continued to steer the Government along this path and has launched the Global Movement of Moderates to show to the world that the country is committed to the principle of moderation.''



poynter.org Reporters with The Associated Press found slaves in the Indonesian town of Benjina. During a yearlong investigation, the AP was able to trace fish caught by the slaves to Thai companies, which sold the fish to the US.

wsj.com Curtailing illegal fishing is good policy. But losses from illegal fishing pale in comparison to the billions that could be generated by reducing overfishing in Indonesia, where too many boats chase too few fish, resulting in economic waste and suboptimal marine-biological productivity.



news.com.au The men the AP interviewed on Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma, one of the poorest countries in the world. They were brought to Indonesia through Thailand and forced to fish. Their catch was then shipped back to Thailand, where it entered the global stream of commerce.

huffingtonpost.com ''The big problem,'' a well-known European ambassador tells me, ''is that most foreign observers look at Myanmar with a magnifying glass on a daily basis and they don't look at the overall curve.'' As someone who has traveled to this country every year for more than a decade, it is progress that I see and feel personally. In fact, for the first time, I feel freer in Myanmar (Burma) than in Thailand.



bangkokpost.com Thailand has expressed interest in a joint fisheries venture with Brunei, a government spokesman said. Thailand was seeking new fishing sources for its trawler fleets due to the depleted marine resources in its territorial waters.

thediplomat.com Cambodia presented its human rights report before the United Nations Office in Geneva amid growing allegations that abuses are being systematically committed by state forces. The UN committee acknowledged that Cambodia has introduced some reforms in recent years, in particular land reform and registration of indigenous communal lands. But it also expressed dissatisfaction with the answers given by the Cambodian representatives, especially over the issue of impunity and extrajudicial killings.



democracynow.org Forty-seven years later, journalist Seymour Hersh recently traveled to My Lai for the first time, which he documents in a new article for The New Yorker, 'The Scene of the Crime: A Reporter's Journey to My Lai and the Secrets of the Past.'



reuters The Philippines ordered oil companies, including Petron Corp and local units of Shell and Chevron, to sell only Euro IV-compliant fuels by July 1 in a drive to boost air quality in the Southeast Asian country.



vetnamnet.vn Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang met with Lao Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong, during which they agreed to work hard to raise bilateral trade turnover to 2 billion USD in 2015, up 40 percent from the previous year.