Burma’s military junta on Wednesday released six members of the opposition party, who had been arrested and detained for two weeks, for staging protests calling for the release of detained Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a party official said. (more…)

Kyi Win, lawyer for detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, has expressed his frustration with the authorities’ slow response to her appeal against her house arrest. (more…)

Military-ruled Burma is set to open a pilot ground training school at Hmawbi Air Force Base in Rangoon Division that-for the first time-will allow non-military applicants to obtain commercial pilots’ licenses, according to sources at the base. (more…)

Thai soldiers are detaining illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Burma and forcing them back out to sea in boats without engines, survivors say. (more…)

The State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) of the Burmese military junta has been increasing army deployment on the Burma-Bangladesh border with heavy guns ahead of the bilateral meeting in January on the maritime boundary in the Bay of Bengal. It is also restricting the movement of the Rohingya community severely, said a close aide of the Nasaka. (more…)

A Burmese schoolteacher in Ranong in southern Thailand was arrested by Burmese police in Kawthaung after he and his family were repatriated by Thai officials on January 11, according to sources at the Thai-Burmese border. (more…)

Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production PCL said on Thursday it would write off 930 million baht in the fourth quarter of 2008 for a dry well in Myanmar’s offshore M3 block. (more…)

Farmers seeking agricultural loans from the Union Solidarity and Development Association are being encouraged to join the organisation and charged fees for application forms. (more…)

Vietnam’s military-run telecoms provider, Viettel, is to open an office in Myanmar and is also looking for business opportunities in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, a state newspaper reported on Thursday. (more…)

The US Senate is investigating allegations that officials in Malaysia were extorting money from foreign migrants and were linked to human trafficking, American officials said. (more…)

A Burmese labor activist in Malaysia describes how he was kidnapped and intimidated for speaking out against human trafficking. (more…)

Indonesia has indicated it is holding discussions to send back nearly 200 Burmese and Bangladeshi boatpeople, stranded off Sabang Island near Aceh province in early January, a Foreign Affairs Ministry official said. (more…)

HBO has nabbed the U.S. TV rights to Anders Ostergaard’s docu “Burma VJ” ahead of its North American preem at Sundance. A chronicle of the 2007 uprising of Burmese monks through underground video journalists, pic won top prizes at Int’l Documentary Festival Amsterdam and CPH: Dox fest. (more…)

ONE of Asia’s longest-running wars gets no less vicious as it gets older. For six decades the Karen National Union (KNU) has resisted the government in Yangon-inaptly known, these days, as the State Peace and Development Council or SPDC, a brutal junta. The biggest of Myanmar’s myriad insurgent groups not to have reached a truce with the SPDC, the KNU’s armed wing is now fighting desperately for survival in the mountainous Thai border region around the town of Umphang. (more…)

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has received reports of a serious crackdown on churches in Rangoon, the former capital of Burma. (more…)

Question: The deteriorating situation within Burma and the potential consequences for regional stability have remained on the agenda of the United Nations in recent years largely because of U.S. leadership. What is your strategy to ensure continued United Nations’ focus on matters related to Burma including its growing relationship with North Korea? (more…)