MANILA - PHILIPPINE President Gloria Arroyo is to pay 180,000 people to plant trees across the archipelago as part of efforts to ease the fallout from the global economic meltdown, the government said on Thursday.

YANGON - MYANMAR'S pro-democracy party launched a name-signing campaign calling for the release of political prisoners, including leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on the 62nd anniversary of Union Day on Thursday.

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA unveiled its first textbook on the 'Killing Fields' genocide on Thursday to raise awareness among those too young to remember the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge era in which 1.7 million people died.