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.



reuters Supporters of Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi burst into boisterous celebration on Sunday after the country held its first free nationwide election in 25 years, the biggest step yet in a journey to democracy from dictatorship. Although the outcome of the poll will not be clear for at least 36 hours, a densely packed crowd blocked a busy road beside the headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in Yangon as they cheered and waved red flags.

economist.com The slip is deposited in a plastic basket and the vote recorded on a wall chart by a man with a felt-tip pen who draws one side of a square; as more votes come, he adds the other sides and a diagonal to create five-vote boxes before moving on to a new one. By the end his chart has 62 NLD boxes and just six for the ruling party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

tolerance.ca Myanmar (Burma) has seen a high turnout of about 80 percent - according to election officials - and no reports of significant violence as the partly-democratic nation went to the polls for its first relatively free election in a quarter of a century. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman in Yangon reports the opposition National League for Democracy is expressing confidence of victory after Sunday's balloting.



xinhua Cambodia had freed a tourist from China's Hong Kong who was arrested for flying a remote-controlled miniature aircraft over the Royal Palace, a senior police officer confirmed. The man was identified in a police report as Wong Tiga China, 40.

khmertimeskh.com A teenage girl has confessed to killing an eight-year-old for her gold earrings and ring worth about $32, according to police who said they were still shocked by the crime. The teen choked the child until she fainted, the teen then pushed her face first into the mud of a rice paddy and stepped on her back until she suffocated, police said. This child-on-child killing is the third so far this year, according to a child-protection officer at an NGO.



bloomberg Prayuth Chan-Ocha, the general who runs Bangkok's ruling military junta, is making a big bet: that he can turn former war zones into some of Southeast Asia's most prosperous marketplaces. He's doing it by creating 10 special economic zones that offer tax breaks and other incentives to investors venturing into now-peaceful border areas close to fast-growing Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.



aa.com.tr The family of imprisoned Anwar Ibrahim is demanding that he be allowed to travel overseas for shoulder surgery, claiming that the Malaysian government has denied the former opposition leader even the most basic medical needs.



scoop.co.nz Greenpeace is challenging New Zealand's biggest company, Fonterra, to prove that its massive use of palm products is not fuelling the enormous fires raging across Indonesia. nMillions of people across South East Asia are facing a catastrophic smog problem due to the fires, which are caused by the systematic destruction of rainforests and peatlands by the relentless clearing of land for palm plantations. Described as the biggest environmental crime of the 21st century, the fires are also rapidly destroying the habitat of a third of the world's wild orangutans and other endangered species.



asiaone.com Air quality in Singapore is expected to remain in the moderate range on Monday, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said. Showers over some parts of Singapore on Sunday afternoon helped to alleviate the air quality, with the air quality expected to maintain at the moderate range for the rest of the day.



cphpost.dk The Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien News reported that a Danish citizen was killed when his motorcycle was struck by a car in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in the early hours of Saturday. The deceased is reported to be a 51-year-old Danish businessman who was travelling on a motorbike on Mai Chi Tho Street when hit by a red car at about 1.25 am. The driver of the car fled.



ft.com The Philippines economy has traditionally been propped up by remittances from the country's diaspora, many of whom are employed in menial jobs in the US, Middle East and other parts of Asia. Commentators now await the tipping point, where the $15.3bn revenues generated by the IT services industry overtake the sum from remittances.



earthtouchnews.com In a rare bit of good news for pangolins, officials at a border post between Laos and Thailand confiscated 81 critically endangered Sunda pangolins last week. The rescues were handed over to the Laos Wildlife Rescue Centre (LWRC) to be rehabilitated and released back into the wild.