Word: burma
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Comedy is no laughing matter in Burma. Just ask Maung Thura, the country's most famous satirist, who performs under the stage name Zarganar, or "tweezers." On the night of June 4, the 47-year-old Burmese was arrested at his Rangoon home, shortly after he led a group of volunteers on an aid-delivery mission to the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated last month by a cyclone that left 134,000 people dead or missing. Before the police took him away, Maung Thura told foreign media outlets that many of the places he visited in the delta...
...Burma's military leaders have deemed the relief and rehabilitation stage of the post-Nargis clean-up "successfully carried out." But the United Nations estimates that roughly half of the storm's victims have still not seen any form of aid more than four weeks after the cyclone. A pledge last month by junta leader Than Shwe to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that the government would no longer impede foreign relief work has still not been fully met. After nearly a month vainly awaiting permission from the junta to deliver relief supplies, four U.S. Navy ships on June...
...solution to problems that have been brewing for years, but have only recently gone critical due to several complex factors: soaring oil prices; massive amounts of farmland diverted into producing biofuels; and crop failures from freak weather, including droughts in Australia and Europe and last month's cyclone in Burma (Myanmar). At the same time, millions of people in China and India can now afford to buy more food and eat more grain-fed meat, causing world food demand to soar...
...Burma's Plight Cyclone Nargis' death toll is astonishing. Over 100,000 people ought not die from such a disaster. In Bangladesh we deal with floods and cyclones every year. But the Burmese junta is blind and deaf and selfish. The generals have sealed themselves off. News from halfway around the world comes to us here in Bangladesh faster than whatever trickles in from across the border with Burma. Let's hope that the horrors of this disaster will lead to the opening up of the country and a respite for its millions of suffering people. Solaiman Palash, Dhaka...
...McCain's problems can be laid at the feet of the incumbent. His penchant for sometimes impulsive action has, in one high-profile case, backfired on his campaign. Reports surfaced in early May that two campaign aides had worked a few years earlier representing the military junta in Burma. When he read the news, he was furious and ordered up a strict new policy against lobbyists on his team. "McCain wasn't happy, and he acted quickly," says an associate of the Senator's. "He said, 'I want the strictest policy against lobbyists we can have, the strictest anybody...