Reform of government in exile agreed in principle

Mizzima News - Nay Thwin : The Members of Parliament in exile have agreed to reform the government in exile in principle at its meeting which concluded yesterday.

Members of Parliamentary Union (MPU) which holds its congress every four years concluded its last congress held on Thai-Burma border on Wednesday. In the congress, the MPs in exile agreed in principle to reform and enlarge the ‘National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma’ (NCGUB) led by Prime Minister Dr. Sein Win with MPs, ethnic leaders and other appropriate members. But the date to enlarge and reform the current NCGUB has not yet been fixed.

As Myanmar’s economy crumbles, prostitution lures young women

(AFP) - Mony Chris : Cherry and Kay Kay walk into room Number Two of a Yangon karaoke bar, where a man waits alone for them on a brown leather sofa.

“Come on, girls. Sing, please,” he says, as they flick the karaoke machine to a Myanmar folk song they hope he likes.

Authorities restrict Chin national day celebrations

DVB – Aye Nai : An event to mark Chin national day was held yesterday at the Lion City Hall in Kamaryut township, Rangoon, despite government restrictions.Around 10,000 people reportedly attended the colourful celebration, which began at 1pm and included speeches, music and food.

ဗိုင္းရပ္စ္သတိေပးခ်က္ - ရန္ကုန္မွာ Happy Birthday ဆို႕တဲ့ Virus တစ္မ်ိဳး ဒုကၡေပးေနပါတယ္။ အဓိကကူးတာကေတာ့ Thumb Drive နဲ႕ အျခား Memory Card ေတြက ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အထူးသျဖင့္ ဓါတ္ပံုဆိုင္ေတြက ကူးတယ္လို႕ထင္ပါတယ္။ အခုရန္ကုန္က ဆားဗစ္ဆင္တာေတြမွာ ဒီတစ္ေန႕တည္း အလံုး ၃၀ မွ ၅၀ အၾကားလက္ခံရရွိပါတယ္။ AVG နဲ႕ Bitdefender Anti-virus အသစ္ကို မဖမ္းႏိုင္ေသးပါ။ စက္သံုးေနတံုး Happy Birthday ဆိုတ့ဲ စာတမ္းေလးေပၚလာပါလိမ့္မယ္။

UN to Visit Myanmar in March

The Associated Press : Myanmar will allow UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari to visit the country in early March, Indonesia’s foreign minister said Thursday.Gambari is currently on a tour of Asian nations seeking their support in helping achieve democracy in military-ruled Myanmar.

UN envoy to return to Myanmar in early March

www.earthtimes.org : UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari said Thursday he is planning to return to Myanmar in early March for talks with the military junta, and will raise the issue of whether democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to take part in a planned election. Gambari, who is currently on a tour to Asian nations seeking their support in helping achieve democracy in Myanmar, told reporters that the military authorities in Myanmar have made a significant announcement related to their roadmap to civilian rule.

Myanmar must re-work constitution, says US

Reuters : The United States yesterday called Myanmar’s proposed constitution a failure over a ban on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi running for office and urged the ruling junta to “start from scratch.”

Locals coerced into joining USDA

DVB – Yee May Aung : Residents of Hlaing Tharyar township in Rangoon have complained that the government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Association is forcing locals to join the organisation against their will.

Air Bagan flight overruns runway, no passenger injured

Mizzima News – Maung Dee : A domestic passenger carrier flight broke down at an airport in Northern Burma on Tuesday afternoon after failing to take-off due to engine failure.

The Air Bagan flight, scheduled to take off for Myit Kyi Na to Putao town in Burma’s northern state of Kachin, broke down after overrunning the airport’s runway for nearly three hundred feet as it fail to take-off, a source close to the airline said.

Myanmar-Japan trade up 33 per cent last year

Earth Times UK : Bilateral trade between Myanmar and Japan reached 322 million dollars in fiscal year 2006/07, up 33 per cent on the previous year, media reports said Tuesday. Myanmar’s fiscal year ends on March 31.

Gambari starts Asian tour

Reuters : UN envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari expressed optimism on Monday as he started his latest round of visits to Asian capitals seeking a solution to the former Burma’s political problems.

4 bomb blasts rock Myanmar border town, no casualties

Xinhua : No casualties has been reported in a series of four bomb blasts in Myanmar’s border town of Tachilek in eastern Shan state, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Tuesday.

Weekly business roundup

Irrawaddy-William Boot: Burma uses Singapore banks to dodge sanctions.Burmese businesses are exporting large quantities of rice to neighboring Bangladesh using a payment system through Singapore that seeks to avoid economic sanctions, according to reports.

Hundreds attend Mahn Shah funeral

Irrawaddy – Violet Cho : Hundreds of mourners, including Karen and members of Burma’s other ethnic groups, attended the funeral on Monday of Mahn Sha, the leader of the country’s largest ethnic resistance organization. The funeral was held near the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot.

Myanmar, Russia celebrate 60th anniversary of diplomatic establishment

Xinhua : Top leaders of Myanmar and Russia Monday exchanged messages of felicitation on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, appraising the friendship and cooperation of the two nations over the past six decades, according to the official newspaper New Ligth of Myanmar.