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.



afp Asean will officially call itself a single market by year's end, but ''big things'' like seamless travel within the 10-nation bloc would only come in 2020, Malaysia's trade minister told AFP in an interview. The Southeast Asian bloc, a market of about 600 million people, had set 2015 as a deadline for integrating the region's vast economies into a single European Union-style market, with tariffs abolished and free movement of skilled workers.

arabnews.com ''We don't have complete integration or harmonisation yet, 2015 is laying the stage for bigger things to come,'' he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. ''We're going to get almost there by 2015 but the big things like seamless travel . . . would come in 2020.''

themalaymailonline.com Fearing loss of political clout, Malaysia's Islamic authorities are wielding their narrow interpretation of religion and pitting it against secular rights to maintain their rigid control of power, human rights proponents said.



channelnewsasia Indonesian salvage teams failed to raise the fuselage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 from the sea bed, but recovered four more bodies from the wreckage of the crashed jet.

skynews.com.au Bali's pro-death penalty governor doesn't want Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran executed on his island, believing it may spoil the harmonious climate.

ibtimes.co.uk Australian celebrities have added their voices to a campaign calling on the Indonesian government to halt the imminent execution of the two men for smuggling heroin. Under the Indonesian method of execution, prisoners are asked if they wish to be blindfolded and are tied to a plank with a target over their heart.



irrawaddy.org Burma has been ranked at the bottom of a list of 86 countries in a study on openness of public information available from government, state agencies and private businesses. The Open Data Barometer analysis places Burma in a group of a 10 countries that it describes as capacity-constrained.



worldbulletin.net A woman was being held for questioning in connection with Friday's bomb attack in the Philippines' city of Zamboanga that killed two people and wounded 57 others.



tuoitrenews.vn Vietnamese police have arrested two Chinese men and a local woman belonging to a ring whose members posed as law enforcement officials to con people out of billions of dong (VND1 billion - US$46,600). Police are searching for five others who belonged to the ring.

thanhniennews.com Vietnam deported six South Korean nationals who operated gambling websites that had around 4000 users from their own country.



abcnews.net.au United Nations envoy Surya Subedi paid a final official visit to Cambodia and noted scant progress during his six-year mandate, warning the government its people were no longer afraid to defend their human rights.



mcot More than 90 percent of the land border demarcation between Thailand and neighboring Laos has been completed, said Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Affairs Minister Gen Tanasak Patimapragorn.



afp Applicants can soon enjoy greater ease of application for patents and industrial designs in Cambodia and Singapore by being able to file in either country, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore said.