Sustaining Myanmar's Transition: Ten Critical Challenges

June 24th, 2013 by Suzanne DiMaggio  
 

Rush hour traffic moves near by the Sule Pagoda at dusk December 14, 2011 in Yangon, Myanmar. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

This post was co-authored by Asia Society Senior Advisor Priscilla Clapp, a retired minister-counselor in the U.S. Foreign Service and former Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma.

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PEACE PROCESS in Myanmar

If u wanna know about peace process in myanmar, don't miss this website.
it's very interesting website. Cheers, MPM...
http://mmpeacemonitor.org/

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BNI Daily News on June 27, 2013

Burma News International's daily news on the web (June 27, 2013)
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=39cca557b408cc70bf0158b4f&id=d49c692269

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NewsBase Myanmar Special Report

Published: April 2013  

Since the election of a nominally civilian government in March 2011, Myanmar has emerged from political isolation and started attracting the attention of investors hungry for new markets and opportunities.

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Rain for Myanmar's peace parade

Jun 25, '13 
By Bertil Lintner    

MYITKYINA - A grand ceremony is expected to be held next month in the Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw, where a nationwide ceasefire with various ethnic resistance armies will be announced to an audience of United Nations representatives and other foreign dignitaries. Ten of Myanmar's 11 major ethnic rebel groups who have signed individual ceasefire agreements with the government will be highlighted at the high-profile event.

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Myanmar set to benefit from direct Australian aid

By Asia editor Catherine McGrath  




After around two-and-a-half decades of isolation, Myanmar may soon be in a position to receive direct developmental aid funds from Australia.

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Myanmar mystics give supernatural help to Asia leaders, military chiefs

AFP-JIJI, Jun 25, 2013  

YANGON – Frail and barely able to speak, Myanmar’s most famous fortuneteller — known as ET — has for years whispered predictions to Asia’s rich and powerful, from generals to foreign politicians.
ET

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China presses Myanmar on Kachin peace

Published: June 24, 2013 at 11:21 AM  

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar, June 24 (UPI) -- China is keen to see authorities with the central Myanmar government work toward a cease-fire with Kachin rebels, a visiting diplomat said Monday.

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Myanmar Navy starts submarine training in Pakistan

Anthony Davis, Bangkok - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly  
20 June 2013  

A small contingent of Myanmar Navy (MN) personnel has begun submarine warfare training in Pakistan, a move that suggests Myanmar is finally taking concrete steps towards developing a subsurface capability.

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Myanmar speaker sees coalition with Suu Kyi

June 15, 2013  

The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP)--The chief of Myanmar’s pro-military party said he would not rule out a coalition government with the opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi after crucial elections in 2015 if it is in the national interest.

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Ex-general from Myanmar's junta considers Aung San Suu Kyi alliance

Third-ranked member of junta that ruled with iron fist for 50 years considers impressive volte-face as he spies opportunity to retain power

Saturday, 15 June, 2013 [Updated: 1:50AM]
Associated Press in Washington


Shwe Mann. Photo: Xinhua

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Conspicuous trend in Myanmar transition

The Korea Times, 2013-06-17  
By Nehginpao Kipgen   
Nehginpao Kipgen

During his visit to the White House on May 20, Myanmar President Thein Sein talked about the release of political prisoners who remain incarcerated in the country’s jails despite the reforms sweeping over it.

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JAL, Mitsubishi in Myanmar venture

17 June 2013

Japan Airlines and Mitsubishi Logistics Corp have launched a joint cargo business in Myanmar, reported Kyodo News.

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Myanmar monks begin to take a stand

Bangkokpost, 16 Jun 2013 - There was welcome news on Friday that a group of senior monks in Myanmar made an appeal for peace following recent violence there that was divided along religious lines, overwhelmingly instigated by Buddhist...
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/355309/

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Myanmar to take foreign tenders on Yangon development project

June 16, 2013 1:54 pm   

Yangon - Myanmar is to accept tenders from foreign companies for its ambitious "mega city" project in northern Yangon, an official said Sunday. "Tenders from both local and foreign companies will be called soon," said an official at the Yangon City Development Committee’s city planning and land administration department.

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UN Reaches Refugees in Myanmar’s Kachin State

Monday, 17 June 2013, 12:47 pm  
Press Release: UN News   

For the First Time in Nearly a Year, UN Reaches Refugees in Myanmar’s Kachin State

New York, Jun 14 2013 - The United Nations humanitarian relief agency today said it had, for the first time in a year, been able to deliver aid to thousands of displaced persons in Myanmar’s Kachin state.

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Banking on Myanmar

Bangkokpost, 17 June 2013    

A half century of isolation from the global economy has left Myanmar facing many challenges, not least the need to modernise a financial system where cash is still king. It’s not unusual to see people...

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/news/355531/

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UK looks to invest in Myanmar's future

Organisations:

Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and UK Export Finance 
Written on: 6 May 2013Published:13 June 2013
Minister:Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint 
World location:Burma

This will be my first visit and I am looking forward to seeing for myself the country that is on everyone’s lips. The UK has a long relationship with this country and we are committed to playing our part in supporting its peaceful and prosperous future.

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Myanmar Airport gears up for 20% annual growth

13 June 2013  

Yangon International Airport (YIA) in Myanmar is gearing up for projected 20% annual growth with new common-use systems from SITA, as the country welcomes more visitors and international airlines.

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Malaysia: repatriate Myanmar nationals

Published: 13 Jun 2013 at 15.46

Malaysia said Thursday it would work with Myanmar to repatriate thousands of their nationals following clashes in the community that left at least four dead and led to a security sweep.
 

Families wait to be processed at the UNHCR refugee centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Wednesday, May 29, 2013. The U.N. refugee agency estimates 50,000 refugees and asylum seekers remain unregistered in Malaysia. Malaysia said Thursday it would work with Myanmar to repatriate thousands of their nationals following clashes in the community that left at least four dead. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

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NSA chief says data disrupted 'dozens' of plots

13 June 2013  


Gen Alexander said the NSA surveillance programmes kept Americans safe

The US electronic spying chief has said massive surveillance programmes newly revealed by an ex-intelligence worker had disrupted dozens of terror plots.

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Myanmar asked to protect tourists

Published: 13 Jun 2013 at 07.35   

Thailand has asked the Myanmar government to protect Thai tourists who visit the country after the abduction of five Thais in May.

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Indonesia, Myanmar To Increase Trade In 2016

NUSA DUA (Bali) June 13 (Bernama) -- The Indonesia and Myanmar governments have agreed to increase trade value to US$1 billion in 2016, the Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa said.

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Indonesia Builds Three Schools In Myanmar's Rakhine State

NUSA DUA (Bali) June 13 (Bernama) -- Indonesia has extended US$1 million to build three elementary school buildings in Rakhine state, Myanmar following recent communal conflicts in the region, Indonesian news agency ANTARA reported.

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Myanmar satisfied with Malaysia’s handling of clashes

By ZUHRIN AHMAD, Thursday June 13, 2013  

PUTRAJAYA: The Myanmar government is satisfied with the way the Malaysian authorities handled the recent clashes among its citizens and pledged to cooperate fully to help resolve the issue.

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Chinese MA60 planes grounded by Myanmar over safety concerns

Safety checks to be carried out after two incidents involving the aircraft  

Tuesday, 11 June, 2013, 3:34pm, Agence France-Presse in Yangon  

Rescuers and officials inspect the damaged Chinese-made Xian MA60 turboprop that overshot the end of the runway in Monghsat, in Shan State, May 2013. Photo: AFP

Myanmar has grounded its Chinese-made MA60 planes for safety checks following two landing incidents involving the aircraft in the past month, a senior official said on Tuesday.

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NHK makes first drama sales to Myanmar

by Jesse Whittock, June 11, 2013   

Japanese public broadcaster NHK has sold a pair of dramas to a satellite broadcaster in Asian neighbour Myanmar.

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Unilever expands its footprint in Myanmar with new production facility

by Simon Pitman, 11 June 2013 

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever says it wants to build on its recent re-entry into the Myanmar market with the opening of a new production facility in the country’s capital, Yangon.

http://www.cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/Business-Financial/Unilever-expands-its-footprint-in-Myanmar-with-new-production-facility

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SingTel consortium aims to help Myanmar develop its satellite telecoms

By May Wong   
POSTED: 11 Jun 2013 8:08 PM  

SingTel has teamed up with Myanmar's partners KBZ and M-Tel, and the consortium is among 11 contenders bidding for two Myanmar telecom licences.

Singapore Telecom building in Singapore. (AFP/Roslan Rahman)

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Mexico, Myanmar Move to Change Service Provider Market Share

June 11, 2013  
By Gary Kim, Contributing Editor  

Most communication markets are relatively stable over time, and change incrementally based on the abilities of market contestants. But there is another way markets can change, namely by regulatory intent.

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Myanmar wants to get $11bn from tourism

Valere Tjolle, Wednesday 12th June 2013    



Sustainability and social responsibility feature heavily in masterplan which expects to get from $500m to $11bn in 8 years

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Myanmar finally takes a seat at its own oil & gas feast

By Wayne Arnold  
NAYPYITAW, Myanmar, June 12 | Tue Jun 11, 2013 5:00pm EDT   

(Reuters) - In a few months, impoverished Myanmar plans to start pumping roughly $45 million worth of oil and gas a day from the Bay of Bengal to China by pipeline. The vital fuel for China's growing economy will bypass the Malacca Straits and U.S. ally Singapore.

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Speaker Shwe Mann to stand in Myanmar's 2015 presidential poll

Wednesday, 12 June, 2013 [Updated: 12:24AM]   
Agence France-Presse in Yangon   

Myanmar's Speaker of the House of Representatives Shwe Mann. Photo: Xinhua

Myanmar's influential parliamentary speaker, Shwe Mann, has announced he will run for president in 2015 polls, according to a report, joining opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as the only declared candidates so far.

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Myanmar nationals lie low after clashes

By RAHIMY RAHIM and FARIK ZOLKEPLI, Wednesday June 12, 2013  

Holed up: A Myanmar family having lunch at their shelter near the Selayang wholesale market. The recent clashes have forced Myanmar nationals to stay away from the streets. — AZMAN GHANI / The Star

PETALING JAYA: A number of Myanmar nationals are believed to be hiding following sporadic clashes at the Selayang wholesale market.

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Roc Plans to Bid for Myanmar’s ‘Frozen in Time’ Oil Fields

By James Paton - Jun 12, 2013 11:07 AM GMT+0700   

Roc Oil Co. (ROC), an explorer focused on China, Australia and Southeast Asia, is planning to bid for oil and natural gas fields off the coast of Myanmar and is talking with potential local partners to develop the prospects.

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Myanmar Airlines offering half-price tickets for its citizens to return home

By RASHNIVJEET S.BEDI, Wednesday June 12, 2013  

PETALING JAYA: In the face of growing violence, Myanmar's national airline is offering half-price tickets for Myanmar nationals who wish to return home from Malaysia.

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Myanmar Natural Gas Investing An Economic Bounty

By Justin Williams  
Monday, June 10th, 2013  

Myanmar, lodged between India and China, is expected to open up for oil and gas exploration and offer an additional 30 offshore blocks by the end of the year. The deadline to submit a bid is June 14.

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Nishimura reveals ODA figure at WEF

06 Jun 2013 12:19
Written by Justin Heifetz
 

One of Japan's major investments in Myanmar is the huge Thilawa industrial zone project near Yangon. Photo: AFP


A senior Japanese government official announced on Thursday that Japan will have invested US$10 billion within the next 10 years in infrastructure projects in Myanmar alone.

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ASSK pushes for constitutional amendments

Achara Deboonme  
The Nation, Nay Pyi Taw June 6, 2013 1:29 pm   

Aung San Suu Kyi at the WEF on East Asia. On her right is U Soe Thane.

National League for Democracy (NLD) chief Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday reiterated her desire to run for Myanmar's presidency in 2015.

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World Economic Forum on East Asia

LIVE Discussion:


http://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-east-asia-2013

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Reforming Myanmar courts investors at 'Asia's Davos'

By Kelly Macnamara | AFP   

AFP/AFP - People drive past a billboard advertising the 22nd World Economic Forum on East Asia, in Naypyidaw, June 3, 2013.

Myanmar touted its dramatic post-junta reforms Wednesday in a bid to entice foreign investors as hundreds of world leaders and industry chiefs visited the long-isolated nation for Asia's edition of the World Economic Forum.

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Myanmar opening is 'fall of Berlin Wall'

5 Jun 2013, Bangkokpost - Coca-Cola Co Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent marked the return of the world's largest soda maker to Myanmar after 60 years by opening a bottling plant and pledging more investment in the newly opened economy.

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Coca-Cola Opens Bottle Plant in Myanmar

By Agence France-Presse on 1:39 pm June 5, 2013  


Bottles of Coca-Cola soda move along the production line at the Coca-Cola Co. bottling plant in Hmawbi, Myanmar, on Tuesday, June 4, 2013. Coca-Cola Co. Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent marked the return of the world’s largest soda maker to Myanmar after 60 years by opening a bottling plant and pledging more investment in the newly opened economy. (Bloomberg Photo/Dario Pignatelli)

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Myanmar police say 3 Rohingya women killed in confrontation over relocation plan

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, June 5, 3:56 PM   

YANGON, Myanmar — Several women villagers from Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have been shot dead in a confrontation with security officials, police and activists said Wednesday.

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Myanmar urges probe into attack on its workers in Malaysia

(Xinhua) 16:44, June 05, 2013   

YANGON, June 5 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's Foreign Ministry has called on the Malaysian authorities to immediately probe into a case in which Myanmar citizens were attacked in Malaysia and take legal action to responsible persons, a press release of the ministry said here Wednesday.

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ထား၀ယ္ဆိပ္ကမ္းအိပ္မက္ ထုိင္းတို႔စြန္႔လႊတ္သင့္

ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္လအတြင္း ထုိင္း၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ယင္လပ္ခ္ရွင္နာ၀ပ္ ဂ်ပန္ႏုိင္ငံသုိ႔ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့ၿပီး ခ်က္ခ်င္းဆုိ သလုိပင္ ဂ်ပန္၀န္ ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသုိ႔ လာေရာက္ေသာ ေရွ႕ဆင့္ေနာက္ဆင့္ ခရီးစဥ္မ်ားမွေန၍ ထား၀ယ္ဆိပ္ကမ္းစီမံကိန္းအတြက္ ဂ်ပန္ရင္းႏွီးျမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈမ်ား လာေရာက္ေတာ့မည္မဟုတ္ျခင္းကုိ တစ္ႀကိမ္တည္းႏွင့္အၿပီး အခ်က္ျပလုိက္ျခင္းလည္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။

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12 bodies of Myanmar immigrants found in sea off Thailand after boat sinks

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, June 3, 11:15 AM  

BANGKOK — Police say at least 12 bodies of migrant workers from Myanmar were found floating in the sea on Thailand’s west coast after their boat sank during bad weather.

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Myanmar-China Gas Pipeline Ready for Trial

May 30th, 2013    

 

After three years of construction, the Myanmar-China natural gas pipeline is complete and ready for trial operations, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. said Friday in a statement posted on its website. The oil pipeline is 94% complete.

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300 Young Global Leaders Gather In Myanmar For Annual Summit

KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 (Bernama) -- Some 300 Young Global Leaders (YGLs) gathered in Yangon, Myanmar, on Monday for the Annual Summit ahead of the World Economic Forum on East Asia, which will take place in Myanmar's capital, Nay Pyi Taw, from June 5-7.

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How a Myanmar tycoon is profiting from change

By Erika Kinetz | AP - YANGON (Myanmar)   

03rd June 2013 10:36 AM   


Zaw Zaw sits in his office where he meets visitors in Yangon, Myanmar on March 20, 2013. (AP)

Zaw Zaw, one of Myanmar's most successful and notorious businessmen, likes to pick his way at odd hours around the hulking skeleton of his new hotel, rising beside Yangon's main airport road.

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US Rebalance to Asia-Pacific Gaining Steam: Defense Chief

By DAVID ALEXANDER / REUTERS WRITER| Monday, June 3, 2013 |


US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (C) poses with Japan’s Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera (L) and South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin at the 12th International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia Security Summit in Singapore. (Photo: Reuters)

SINGAPORE — The US military will devote more air power, ground troops and high-tech weaponry to the Asia-Pacific region as it moves ahead with a strategic rebalance, the new US defense chief said on Saturday in a speech that accused China of cyber incursions.

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Ethnic News Media network

an ethnic news media network...

www.bnionline.net

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a new Mon news agency

Shwe Hin Thar news....

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/786290.shtml#.UaxPrZwV93w

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Myanmar gov't, rebels strive to bring Kachin IDPs back home

Xinhua | 2013-6-3 10:54:42  
By Agencies  

The Myanmar government and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) have started work on bringing Kachin internal displaced people back home from relief camps following recent talks in Myitgyina, the capital of northernmost Kachin state.

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busy and traveling

busy
busy
busy

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Why the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway matters

by Rajeev Sharma May 31, 2013  

The people of India, Myanmar and Thailand must ask their respective governments why the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway Project has been dragging on for years despite a very strong political will for completing it.

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