Bangkok – The arrest in Burma of Ross Dunkley, the Australian publisher of the Myanmar Times, has raised fears of even tighter control over Burma’s media by the military. (more…)

Additional sentences of up to 10 years have been given to seven people accused of being behind a spate of bombings, and who are already serving decades in prison. (more…)

The Burmese junta has warned Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader, that she and her party “will meet their tragic ends” unless they change their stance on the lifting of western sanctions. (more…)

Bangkok – Myanmar’s media in exile, long a thorn in the side of the ruling generals, are being squeezed by funding cuts that some blame on a change in policy by Western donors in a shifting political landscape. (more…)

Yangon – A Sinopec International Petroleum (SIPC) joint venture has discovered gas deposits in northwest Myanmar with a capacity of 2.1 million cubic feet per day, official Myanmar media reported on Monday. (more…)

The market price for gold and the US dollar rose in Rangoon when a sudden flurry of buy orders were placed after the state-run media announced the list of cabinet ministers in the new government to be led by President-elect Thein Sein, according to market sources. (more…)

Myanmar is expected to cancel profit tax and levy only income tax and commercial tax in the next fiscal year 2011-12 starting on April 1, the local weekly Messenger News reported Sunday. (more…)

British aid to Burma – the poorest country in South-east Asia – is to be sharply increased in an effort to help the country’s most beleaguered and to support the struggle for democracy. (more…)

Washington – Myanmar’s threats against veteran pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi show the military-backed government has not changed despite elections in November that were widely dismissed as a fraud, the United States said on Monday. (more…)

Reports of atrocities committed by Burmese soldiers against ‘convict porters’ destroy any slim hopes that the shift to a ‘civilian political system’ will somehow dilute the military’s absolute power. (more…)

I have presented some analyses of the paper on “Economic sanctions against Myanmar” issued by National League for Democracy on 8 February by writing the article titled “Sanctions, Daw Suu Kyi and NLD”. (more…)

National League for Democracy issued a statement on economic sanctions against Myanmar imposed by the West Bloc on 8 February. The English version statement has four pages and the Myanmar version six pages. Seemingly, the statement was translated English into Myanmar. Because it is found that the syntactic structures of the Myanmar version statement are confused and difficult to understand. But the English version statement is fluent as it was written by an Oxford-trained person like a native speaker. Besides, it is found that some sentences in the English version statement were not included in the Myanmar version statement (For example, the sentence, “The participation of a broad spectrum of political forces is essential to the achievement of national reconciliation in Burma”, shown in the sixth paragraph of the page-3 of the English version statement was not included in the Myanmar version.) (more…)

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar — Myanmar’s new military-dominated parliament on Friday unanimously approved all of the president-elect’s 30 Cabinet nominees. (more…)

The British colonial-era buildings in Yangon are in dire need of repair after years of neglect. Activists seek to preserve the structures, which they fear will be leveled by Chinese property developers. (more…)

Chiang Mai – The Australian founder and co-owner of the Myanmar Times, Ross Dunkley, was arrested at his home in Rangoon on Friday. (more…)

Five large trucks have transported hundreds of inmates out of Insein prison in Rangoon, with one eye-witness saying they may be headed for conflict zones in the country’s border regions. (more…)

Hearings for nearly 30 lawsuits filed by aggrieved candidates in last November’s elections have been delayed due to the conflicting schedules of individuals involved. (more…)

Burma’s new government, led by recently elected President Thein Sein, is to issue strict laws and bylaws on taxation, including punitive measures for those who evade taxes, according to an official source. (more…)

According to a recent dispatch by Wikileaks, two cables from the US embassy in Rangoon accuse Burma’s junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe of ordering troops to crack down on Buddhist monks during the mass demonstrations in September 2007; and refusing to allow the army to respond to the Cyclone Nargis disaster. (more…)

Germany with the assistance of Italy will push to have Burma sanction significantly weakened when the European Union’s Burma sanctions policy comes up for yearly review in April, according to the London-based advocacy organization Burma Campaign UK. (more…)