Brig-Gen Thein Zaw, the minister for communications posts and telegraphs, was scheduled to arrive in Myitkyina, the capital of the Kachin State in northern Burma, on Friday to launch a campaign for the 2010 general election. (more…)
Underground youth activist group Generation Wave distributed leaflets around Rangoon yesterday to mark the one-year anniversary of the group’s founding, witnesses said. (more…)
Residents of cyclone-devastated townships in Rangoon have complained that they are being forced by local authorities to do unpaid reconstruction work, preventing them from earning money. (more…)
Major armed groups that had ceasefire agreements with the Burmese Army are inevitably divided between “doves” and “hawks,” as pressure to surrender arms and contest the 2010 elections mounts, according to sources inside Shan State. (more…)
The unstable political and economic situation in Burma (which was renamed Myanmar by the ruling junta) is driving a section of women in Kachin State into prostitution, sources said. They have been frequenting night clubs. (more…)
Famine in Chin State is causing people to abandon their native homeland, says an ethnic Chin man interviewed as he approached Three Pagodas Pass, on the Thai-Burma border. (more…)
Since the military government announced in July that it will issue licenses to unregistered motorcycles, sources say about 1,000 motorcycles are being smuggled into Burma each day from Thailand and China. (more…)
The Burmese tycoon Tay Za, head of the Htoo Trading Company, accompanied the junta’s number two, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye, on his recent three-day visit to Bangladesh, according to business sources in Rangoon. (more…)
The Burma junta’s second-in-command, vice senior general Maung Aye, has signed a contract in Dhaka leasing 50,000 acres of paddy fields in Arakan state to the Bangladeshi government. (more…)
Myanmar authorities have banned the import and distribution of nine Chinese dairy products found to be contaminated with the toxic industrial chemical melamine, state media reported Friday. (more…)
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the federal government to promote democracy, human rights and religious freedom for people in Kazakhstan and Burma. (more…)
At the height of the bloody suppression by the Burma (Myanmar) regime of protesting monks last year, the heated question was whether the international community should intervene. In response, a well-known Chinese professor told an American newspaper “China has used tanks to kill people on Tiananmen Square. It is Myanmar’s sovereign right to kill their own people, too.” (more…)
A legal representative of Burma’s detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi handed in to the military government in Naypyidaw on Wednesday a formal appeal against the latest extension of her house arrest. (more…)
A soldier deserted recently from Burma’s Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 707, in Taikgyi Township, Rangoon Division, after murdering his commander—the latest sign of rising dissatisfaction among the lower-ranking members of the Burmese armed forces. (more…)
The price of low-quality rice at Bayintnaung rice market in Rangoon has dropped as sales are slow compared to other years, according to rice merchants. (more…)
General Tint Swe, the Arakan State Peace and Development Officer and the Transport Minister has formulated a new ‘protection plan’ to check damage from cyclones for all townships in the State. The plan comes into effect from the first week of October. It entails planting betel nut and coconut plants, according sources. (more…)
The Karen National Union (KNU) is slashing logging restrictions in territory it controls near Three Pagodas Pass on the Thai-Burma border. The change in timber policy comes before the KNU is expected to retreat in the face of an expected offensive by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA). (more…)
Nine trucks transporting Chinese manufactured goods were seized by the police in Momauk Towship, Kachin State on the Lwejie-Bamao trade route along the Sino-Burma border. The truck drivers had not paid customs duty. (more…)
Commerce Adviser Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman Wednesday said Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to raise their bilateral trade volume to US$500 million in the next fiscal year. (more…)
Two presiding Buddhist monks of the Tagontai Monastery in Mandalay were arrested in Mansi (Manje) city in Bhamo District, Kachin State while they were delivering a number of solid-heroin blocks. Acting as carriers they collected the heroin from 105 Miles Border Trade Zone in Muse in northeast Shan State and were proceeding to Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, northern Burma, said a Mansi police source. (more…)