Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...millenniums, China hardly touched the mighty Mekong, content to let its raging headwaters flow unimpeded from the Tibetan plateau down through Laos, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But over the past few years, the emergent superpower has begun turning the world's 12th-longest river into a highway for regional commerce and a source of hydroelectric power. For many Indochinese entrepreneurs, increased China trade and investment has allowed a backward region to participate in their upstream neighbor's remarkable economic expansion. Southeast Asian governments hope China will share the electricity it will harness after a series of massive dams...
...Mekong is not so unyielding these days. In 2001, Chinese crews, brought in by Southeast Asian governments eager to increase traffic and trade, began blasting and dredging a stretch of the river running from Burma and Laos to Thailand, clearing away islands, reefs and rapids that once blocked the passage of ships. Since then, sleepy Southeast Asian river ports have morphed into boomtowns, with boats from China disgorging cheap electronics, fruits, vegetables and every kind of plastic gadget imaginable. River traffic runs both ways: in December 2006, the first shipment of refined oil chugged up the Mekong bound for energy...
...Tibetan independence. Outside the Beijing Olympic organizing committee's quarters, officials from Reporters Without Borders called for the release of imprisoned Chinese journalists. As if to dramatize their point, police detained a group of foreign reporters covering the event. Protesting Beijing's support for repressive governments like those of Burma and Sudan, some activists have launched a campaign to boycott the Games if China's policy does not change...
According to the latest U.N. World Drug Report, the production of illegal opiates from poppy plants reached record levels in 2006. Heroin, which accounts for 71% of opiate abuse, continues to be the main problem drug worldwide. While poppy cultivation has fallen sharply in Burma, Afghanistan now supplies 92% of the world's opiates. Top Opium Poppy Cultivators In hectares, 2006 Mexico 3,300 (2005) Columbia 1,000 Afghanistan 165,000 Pakistan 1,545 Burma 21,500 Laos 2,500 Source: UNODC World Drug Report 2007 THE USERS Opiate abusers, 2005 Asia 54% Europe 25% Americas 14% Africa 6% Oceania...
...MYANMAR (BURMA...