The legal team of Myanmar’s jailed pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was given access to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Thursday, a day before her trial is to resume for final arguments, her lawyer said. (more…)

A leader of Burma’s opposition party – National League for Democracy (NLD) – said the party’s leadership has reached a ‘critical stage’ as most members of the party’s executive committee are aging and faced with worsening health. (more…)

Internally displaced persons hiding in jungles in eastern Burma are suffering from outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever with almost no medicine or medical facilities, according a Karen aid group. (more…)

US officials urged Myanmar to obey UN sanctions on North Korea and to review its treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi in a rare meeting between the two countries, a US official said Thursday. (more…)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will not consider expelling Burma over the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi because it was unlikely it would solve the problem, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Thursday. (more…)

Members of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) offered yesterday to help Burma promote democracy, human rights and well-being among its people – and avoided mentioning the controversy over pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. (more…)

There is no hard evidence that two of the world’s pariah states are sharing nuclear technology, but one US expert says some of Myanmar’s activities raise suspicions of such links with North Korea. (more…)

JULY 20th marked the 20th anniversary of the day when military rulers first placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. The leader of Myanmar’s democracy movement has since spent more than 13 years detained at home or, as now, in a Yangon prison. She awaits the verdict of a sham trial in which she was charged with breaking the terms of her detention after an uninvited American, a nut, swam across to her lakeside home. Miss Suu Kyi plays a long game. But so does the military. It seized power in 1962. It has used force to put down two extraordinarily brave sets of pro-democracy protests, in 1988 and 2007. And it has ignored the result of free elections in 1990, convincingly won by Miss Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. (more…)

Two years ago a court in Burma sentenced five farmers to four years’ jail for allegedly causing a public disturbance; a sixth man received eight years for two counts of the same offence. Tomorrow, on July 24, the five will have served half of their terms. In all likelihood, they will have to serve the other half before being released. (more…)