The ruins of a market which was set on fire are seen at a Rohingya village outside Maugndaw in Rakhine state, Myanmar October 27, 2016. Boys search for useful items among the ashes of burnt houses after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe, Myanmar May 3, 2016.
Category: Southeast Asia
ASG leader Hapilon – wounded’ in Butig airstrike
Abu Sayyaf group leader Isnilon Hapilon, said to be the head of the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s elements in Southeast Asia, was seriously wounded in an airstrike in Butig, Lanao del Sur, the Armed Forces of the Philippines announced on Saturday, January 28. “[Hapilon] is still being carried by four men in a makeshift stretcher moving northeast of Butig,” defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters in a briefing in Quezon City. “Troops are in hot pursuit supported by ground artillery and air support.”
NYT: He Is She, Communist Is Capitalist
White House Spokesman Josh Earnest and Secretary of State John Kerry finished President Barack Obama’s final term with fitting acts of propaganda. Had you listened uncritically to Earnest, you would have thought a male soldier imprisoned for leaking classified documents was a “young woman.”
Kerry’s stop in Vietnam is emotional peak of final trip
It could have been 1969 again as Secretary of State John Kerry stood on the bow of the small boat chugging up the Bay Hap River on Saturday, the wind billowing his sleeves and his eyes darting left and right toward banks shrouded in dark foliage. As a young Navy lieutenant,Mr. Kerry commanded a Swift boat along this stretch of churning brown waters in the middle of a free-fire zone.
Kerry visits Vietnam on last trip as US secretary of state
Secretary of State John Kerry met Vietnamese leaders Friday during his last trip as the top diplomat for the United States. Kerry later left for Ho Chi Minh City to meet a group of Vietnamese youth and is scheduled Saturday to tour the Mekong delta province of Ca Mau, where he fought during the Vietnam War almost 50 years ago.
Kerry farewell tour starts in Vietnam in final Asia push
Vietnam has been at the centre of outgoing President Barack Obama’s Asia embrace, marked by the lifting of a wartime-era arms embargo, major growth in trade and the signing of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. US Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc at the Government Office in Hanoi on Jan 13, 2017.
Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims mourn the end of the Obama era – and worry about Trump
Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims have been described as the most friendless people in the world. But for the past four years they had one powerful friend – and he lived in the White House.
Should you say Myanmar or Burma?
“FOLLOW local practice when a country expressly changes its name,” advises “The Economist Style Book”, the Bible of this newspaper. Among the list of examples that follow only two rate authorial interjections: ” Myanmar , not Burma ” and ” Yangon , not Rangoon “.