ASEAN

ACH SEH ISLAND, Cambodia — A 7-inch creature with a head resembling a horse and a monkey-like tail glides gracefully out of a dark coral crevice off the Cambodian coast. Master of camouflage, unrivaled as a hunter and a much-loved figure of ancient myths and legends, the seahorse may be spiraling toward annihilation after surviving beneath the waves for some 40 million years.

LAIZA, Myanmar — Ethnic Kachin rebels long at war with Myanmar troops say the government has only escalated fighting since Aung San Suu Kyi took over as leader, crushing the hopes that had led many ethnic minorities to support her party and leaving them with no confidence in the peace process that Suu Kyi has identified as a priority.

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam's gross domestic product was expected to have grown 6.2 percent this year, driven mostly by industrial expansion and growth in construction and services.

BANGKOK — A U.N. report says that women make up almost 40 percent of migrant construction workers in Thailand, more than almost anywhere else in the world. But the large numbers only serve to magnify their problems, including lower pay and the risk of being fired if they get pregnant.

JAKARTA — Indonesia has strengthened its moratorium on converting peat swamps to plantations in a move a conservation research group says will help prevent annual fires and substantially cut the country's carbon emissions if properly implemented.

BIREUEN, Indonesia — A strong undersea earthquake rocked Indonesia's province of Aceh early Wednesday, causing several deaths and building collapses in districts near the epicenter.

Muslim Rohingya face discrimination and violence from the Buddhist majority in the country, also called Burma. Their plight generally goes unnoticed by the world at large, even though some rights activists say their persecution amounts to ethnic cleansing. Here are several things to know about the group.

BANGKOK — Over the years, there were times Saiful Huq Omi felt documenting Rohingya fleeing persecution from Myanmar was an exercise in futility that he wanted to stop.

BANGKOK — Fishing boats used high-tech systems to find vast schools of fish for decades, depleting stocks of some species and leading to the complete collapse of others. Now more than a dozen apps, devices and monitoring systems aimed at tracking unscrupulous vessels and the seafood they catch are being rolled out — high-tech solutions some say could also help prevent labor abuse at sea.

BANGKOK — Thai Muslims expressed condemnation Friday in the capital and Deep South for the ongoing clashes in western Burma which have killed an estimated 80 ethnic Rohingya.