ASEAN Agreed to Admit East Timor as 11th member

ASEAN Agreed to Admit East Timor as 11th member

• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has agreed in principle to admit East Timor as the group’s 11th member, the 10 member-bloc said in a statement, more than a decade after the country requested membership.
• The half-island nation, officially called Timor Leste, will also be granted observer status at high-level ASEAN meetings, the bloc said after regional leaders met in Phnom Penh for a summit. The country would be the first new member of the regional grouping in more than two decades, since Cambodia was admitted in 1999.
• ASEAN was created on 8 August 1967, when the foreign ministers of five countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, signed the ASEAN Declaration.

World Population Reaches 8 billion, U.N. Says

• The United Nations said the world population had reached eight billion, just 11 years after it passed seven billion.
• The growth rate, which is expected to slow globally over the coming decades, has been uneven around the world. Slowing growth rates in populous nations like China and the United States have caused some alarm, threatening to upend their societies. Rising birthrates in poorer nations threaten to strain systems that are already struggling.
• About 70 percent of the growth to eight billion from seven billion happened in low- and lower-middle-income countries, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, the United Nations said. The trend is expected to become even more pronounced in the years ahead.