“Today, as we mark Aung San Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday, she will be marking this day as yet another day without freedom, cut off from her children and family, under house arrest imposed on her by the military dictatorship that rules Burma.” – The Dalai Lama

Rangoon – One thing is certain about Aung San Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday tomorrow – it will rain. This is the monsoon season in Burma and each day brings a torrential downpour. After years of decline, her dilapidated lakeside villa in Rangoon – where she has spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest – is finally being renovated. (more…)

Yangon, Myanmar — Days of flooding and landslides caused by monsoon downpours have killed 57 people in northwestern Myanmar, state media reported Friday. (more…)

Short on funds and with limited manpower at their disposal, several political parties in Burma are looking to pool their resources ahead of this year’s election. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Burma’s richest business tycoon and close ally of despotic ruler Senior General Than Shwe, went to China early this month to broker a deal enabling the regime to buy 50 multi-role jet bombers for its air force, trusted sources said. (more…)

Burma and Iran vowed to increase their economic and diplomatic cooperation as a high-level delegation led by the Iranian deputy foreign minister concluded a three-day visit to Naypyidaw on Thursday. (more…)

Bangkok – Elections promised for Burma this year have sparked an explosion in drug-trafficking into Thailand as rebel armies, fearful of a pre-poll crackdown by the Burmese junta, trade drugs for guns. The rebels, most notably the Wa State Army, have for decades financed their fight against the junta by running drugs over the border, from where they are trafficked all over the world. A decade ago the Golden Triangle border region of Thailand, Burma and Laos supplied half the world’s heroin. Afghanistan produces more now, but drug lords in Burma have turned to making vast quantities of amphetamines and methamphetamines, which can be produced cheaply in small, hidden laboratories, without the need for hectares of exposed land. (more…)

Lao Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh will pay an official visit to Myanmar soon, according to an official announcement from Nay Pyi Taw Friday with no specific date of the visit disclosed. (more…)

Supporters of Burma’s detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi are set to mark her 65th birthday. (more…)

Australian politicians have sent birthday messages of hope and freedom to imprisoned Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. (more…)

Manila – Democracy activists on Friday rallied outside the embassy of Myanmar in the Philippines to call for the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi ahead of her 65th birthday. (more…)

Chiang Mai – Mizzima has learned that while serving as Korea’s foreign minister, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon promoted and publicly praised Daewoo’s controversial Shwe natural gas pipeline project in Burma, calling it a “win-win situation”.   (more…)

Bangkok – Burmese women activists fear Burma’s military will be entrenched in power after elections later this year and are calling on the international community to reject the outcome.  The activists made the calls as they marked Women of Burma Day and the birthday of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. (more…)

My fellow Elders and I place an empty chair for Aung San Suu Kyi at all of our meetings. We drape the chair in Burmese silk as a reminder not only of her continued suffering, but of that of more than 2,100 other political prisoners in Burma. (more…)

Washington — This is a sensitive moment in relations between the United States and the world’s most corrupt regime: the military junta that has plundered Burma for decades as if it were a private fiefdom. (more…)

United Nations — Building the capacity of governments, even dictatorships and military regimes, is the approach taken the UN Development Program. Thursday Inner City Press asked UNDP Administrator Helen Clark to explain what she meant that because “‘political factors’ restrict what the UNDP can do in Myanmar.. ‘it’s not so easy to make progress there at this time’ on the Millennium Development Goals. (more…)

In recent comments to the media, US senator Jim Webb urged the people of Burma to vote in order to “build the future a step at a time”. Webb is not alone: a number of commentators have adopted the position that an election in Burma is better than nothing. (more…)