Yangon, Myanmar – Myanmar’s reformist government granted amnesties for at least 20 political prisoners on Tuesday, but opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi called for the release of hundreds more still behind bars. (more…)

Local Kachin groups have told The Irrawaddy that the Burmese army is preventing UN aid agencies from transporting humanitarian supplies to 30 refugee camps sheltering thousands of Kachins who are now facing severe food shortages. (more…)

Aung San Suu Kyi brushed off the Burmese government’s call for her not to use the word Myanmar for Burma on Tuesday, saying she can call her country whatever she likes. (more…)

China is making a major push to upgrade the tourist infrastructure in the region where China touches Burma and Laos and the Mekong River flows south into the Golden Triangle. The latest venture is to attract 15.5 million tourists to Xishuangbanna, a mountainous tropical region. (more…)

Yangon – A year and a half after it opened to skepticism from the West, Myanmar’s fledgling parliament reconvenes this week for its biggest task yet: debating an ambitious set of laws to reshape an economy that wilted during half a century of military rule. (more…)

Washington – The rare Washington consensus behind Obama administration policy toward Myanmar is showing signs of cracks as American businesses grow impatient to invest there and human rights groups push back. (more…)

IT IS immediately obvious to any visitor to Myanmar that the South-East Asian country has fallen a long way behind the rest of the region, let alone much of the rest of the world. Yangon, the former capital, offers mostly crumbling colonial-era masonry rather than the air-conditioned malls to which other Asians have become accustomed. Indeed, the sad contrast in fortunes between Yangon and, say, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, is one of the main reasons why the generals who mismanaged the country for decades have been obliged to change tack. (more…)

NINE months after the elements in Myanmar’s government determined to steer their country towards thorough-going economic change gained the upper hand in Naypyidaw, President Thein Sein pledged recently to accelerate the ongoing reform process. In partnership with his technocratic advisers and reform-minded allies in Myanmar’s private sector, he will pursue a tripling of the size of the country’s economy within five years. (more…)

Myanmar’s prolonged isolation and economic stagnation left a mark on almost every sector the country needs to prosper _ from energy and transport to agriculture, education and health. So where to begin? (more…)

New York / Yangon – Celebrated actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Jackie Chan arrives in Myanmar this week on a three-day mission to help combat child trafficking. (more…)