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.



bloomberg Singapore reported its first decline in visitor arrivals since the global financial crisis, as a new Chinese law curbed tourists from the mainland while political turmoil in Thailand and aviation disasters damped travel. Visitors to the tropical island nation fell 3.1 percent to 15.1 million in 2014, the first drop since 2009, the Singapore Tourism Board said.



desertsun.com Seventeen months after a Palm Springs woman was murdered at a Cambodian island resort, Interpol has released the identity of her suspected killer, launching an international hunt for the vanished fugitive. Katherine ''K.G.'' Ann Grgich, 55, a massage therapist who lived at the Palm Springs Country Club, was found dead while vacationing on the island of Koh Rong on October 1, 2013.
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2015/02/11/palm-springs-woman-killed-cambodia/23238741/

cambodiadaily.com An Australian teacher charged with sexually abusing six young boys claimed during the first day of his trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court that an anti-pedophile NGO framed him. George Moussallie, 52, a former English teacher at the American Pacific School in Phnom Penh, was charged in September with molesting and having sex with children under the age of 15.
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/former-teacher-denies-child-sex-abuse-charges-77739/



wsj.com Malaysian authorities arrested well-known cartoonist Zunar for alleged sedition, in a clampdown on criticism after opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim saw his final appeal against a sodomy conviction rejected.

channelnewsasia.com Over the next few days, some 20 Chinese next-of-kin will be flying to Malaysia to seek answers to the mystery of what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared over the South China Sea nearly a year ago.



tuoitrenews.vn Vietnam is projected to become the 22nd largest economy in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms in 2050, British auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report



reuters Indonesian officials have dropped a plan to require female students to pass virginity tests in order to graduate from high school and apologised after sparking a public outcry, human rights campaigners said.

dailymail.co.uk The wife of a Frenchman on death row in Indonesia for drug offences said she will continue to fight for his release despite fears he might be executed soon. Serge Atlaoui, has a ''sword of Damocles hanging over his head,'' his wife Sabine Atlaoui told an anti-death penalty press conference.

9news.com.au Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has called on Indonesia to show the same mercy to the Bali Nine pair awaiting execution that it wants for its own citizens overseas.



irrawaddy.org Hundreds of people have demonstrated in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city, to protest a government decision to allow people without full citizenship, including members of the Rohingya ethnic minority, to vote in an upcoming constitutional referendum.



pinknews.co.uk Britain's Conservative Party held its annual Black and White Ball this week, and auctioned off a stay at a hotel owned by the Sultan of Brunei, despite ongoing boycotts of the chain due to a new law which allows gay people to be stoned to death.



AP A Philippine police chief, holding back tears, says autopsy reports showed some of his anti-terror commandos were wounded but still alive when they were shot to death at close range by Muslim insurgents in a recent clash.