The Burmese junta on Tuesday launched a new journalism course that skeptics in Rangoon’s media say is merely the latest in a steadily increasing propaganda effort designed to counter criticism from abroad. Organized by the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the course aims “to launch counter-offensives in all aspects” against foreign media which it says is “spreading rumors and making false accusations.” The announcement in the state-run New Light of Myanmar said young participants in the scheme would be encouraged in their “adoration of Myanmar [Burmese] society.”

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March 27: Burma’s opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) called for the release of its leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners including Shan leader Htun Oo, and consider its requests in the special statement – for the sake of national reconciliation and unity.
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March 27: The Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) has demand the immediate withdrawal of Daewoo International from Burma as its investments will bring in its wake human rights violations, environmental degradation, and help further entrench the Burmese military regime.
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Burma’s increasingly reclusive and repressive military junta showed off its mysterious new capital, Naypyidaw, to outsiders yesterday for the first time, during a ceremony to mark Armed Forces Day.
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Even by Burma’s bizarre standards it was a mysterious move motivated partly by paranoia, partly by superstition and partly by practicality.
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Yangon: The number two general in army-ruled Myanmar is expected to visit Russia, a key supplier of arms and military training to the former Burma, next month, diplomats said on Tuesday.
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March 27: “When I finish my higher education I will be a teacher,” said Kyaw Win Soe, a Tsunami affected migrant child, who was selected as a scholar student to join computer and English short term school in Pang Nga area.
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Nearly 500 kilometers of border shared with Burma and India in the southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts have remained unprotected for too long, making the remote hill districts a safe haven for gun runners and foreign insurgents, a parliamentary committee of Bangladesh told parliament during its last session recently.
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State-run Gail India (BSE:532155) on Monday said eight shipping firms and consortia, including Mitsui and Marubeni of Japan and Exmar of Belgium have shown interest in transporting CNG from its gas blocks in Myanmar to India.
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The spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and avian flu has become worse in Burma due to draconian restrictions by the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), according to a report published by US medical experts on 27 March.
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Burma’s decision to hold this year’s 61st annual Armed Forces Day at the new administrative capital of Naypyidaw in central Burma came as no surprise.
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After all the anticipation, it seemed like an anti-climax that Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar did not have much to report after his short trip to Myanmar on Thursday and Friday.
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Last December at their annual summit, the heads of Asean governments were concerned enough by Burmese foot-dragging on democratic reform that they appointed Malaysia to send a high-ranking envoy to the increasingly isolated country, to determine just what was going on. The generals who run Burma said they were too busy to receive such an envoy for the following three months, but last week said they would welcome the Asean representative.
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