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.

A STRONG earthquake of magnitude 6.4 struck off western Indonesia on Tuesday, causing some residents to panic, but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage and no tsunami warning was issued, reports AP.



AP Two airplane catastrophes put Malaysia on the map in a bad way in 2014. But they didn't hurt the country's tourism, and the higher visibility may even have helped: visitor numbers had their strongest growth in years.

huffingtonpost.ca Almost one year after the tragedy, a senior Boeing 777 captain, Simon Hardy, has come forward with a new theory about what happened to the missing plane; it is a theory based on emotion, something not really considered before. Australian officials say the theory is ''credible.'' It has also been published in Flight International Magazine and on the Flightglobal website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/03/03/mh370-malaysia-airlines-new-theory_n_6791814.html

skift.com Government ministers from China, Australia and Malaysia will discuss whether to fund another stage of the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 at a meeting being planned for April.

theguardian.com Relatives of those killed when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was downed over Ukraine have visited a Dutch airbase to view the wreckage of the plane. For almost all of them, it was the first chance to see the twisted and charred wreckage that lay for months in the battlefields of eastern Ukraine after the plane plunged to the ground on July 17, most likely after being hit by a missile. All 298 passengers and crew on board the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed.



dw.de Indonesia says it is almost ready to put to death nine foreigners convicted for drug smuggling. A diplomatic campaign by Australia to have two of its nationals spared has so far been to no avail. Other foreign convicts come from Brazil, France, Ghana, Nigeria and the Philippines.



voacambodia.com First Lady Michelle Obama will visit Cambodia as part of a tour later this month to promote a Peace Corps initiative for the education of girls. ''In Cambodia, Mrs. Obama and Peace Corps Director Hessler-Radelet will see up close how community-driven solutions are changing girls??? lives, a key component of the Let Girls Learn Peace Corps program,'' the White House said in a statement.

bgnnews.com A Turkish man arrested in a beachside Cambodian resort town for stabbing another man has been sent to Sihanoukville's provincial prison after trying to flee while still handcuffed. Mehmet Tekoglu, whose Facebook page says he runs the Sea Cambodia boating company, made off after asking permission to use the bathroom.



channelnewsasia.com A flurry of felines - including white tigers, cheetahs and an African lion - have been added to Singapore Zoo's cat collection to maintain genetic diversity with new bloodlines, said the Singapore Zoo in a media release.



ibtimes.co.uk More than 10,000 families were left homeless after a large fire swept through a shanty community in downtown Manila burning down houses made of light materials.

AP The Philippine government has ordered the suspension of all exploration at an offshore oil and gas field because of an ongoing territorial dispute with China, a Filipino-British company said.



nationmultimedia.com Thailand's government targets increasing bilateral trade with Laos by 150 percent in the next three years through closer cooperation between border provinces in the two countries, as well as the plan to develop a special economic zone (SEZ) in Mukdahan.



dvb.no The four bills forming the ''Race Protection'' package are a distraction from Burma's real political and economic challenges, and should never have reached parliament, says Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
https://www.dvb.no/news/race-protection-law-a-distraction-to-real-issues-icj-burma-myanmar/48899

AP Hundreds of police have formed a human chain around student protesters staging a sit-in on a road after being blocked from marching to Burma's biggest city. The demonstrators - who have been rallying for more than a month and gaining public sympathy - want the government to scrap a newly passed education law that they say curbs academic freedom.



bangkokpost.com The number of visitors from China to Vietnam plunged last month. Chinese tourists visiting Vietnam in February dropped 50 percent to 117,560 year-on-year, the Saigon Times reported. The countries are in dispute over the South China Sea.

stripes.com The black and white snapshot of the seven enemy soldiers was left in a box at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with a two-page letter. The writer explained how he had grabbed the picture from the knapsack of a dead North Vietnamese soldier after cursing him, kicking him, and firing into his corpse in a fit of rage.
http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans/stories-of-grief-love-penance-in-mementos-left-at-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial-1.332622



thediplomat.com A report finds the region has some of the world's worst religious restrictions.
http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/asean-has-some-of-worlds-tightest-religious-controls/