************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
HEADLINES
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
AFP - Four killed, two injured by lightning strike in Myanmar
AFP - 'No regrets' for Myanmar dissident after record jail sentence
AFP - Rights groups call for action over jailed Myanmar dissidents
Reuters - 18 illegal immigrants killed in crash in Turkey
IHT - Protest yields to lethargy in Myanmar
Xinhua - Brazilian AME, Myanmar ex-selections to play cyclone fund-raising soccer match
Xinhua - FAO to extend cyclone aid project period for Myanmar
China Daily - Villages benefited from water supply project in Myanmar(Xinhua)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Four killed, two injured by lightning strike in Myanmar
Sun Oct 5, 2:15 AM ET

YANGON (AFP) - Four villagers were killed and another two injured when lightning struck a shop in Myanmar's administrative capital Naypyidaw, state media reported Sunday.

Villagers Than Aung, 40, Muang Ko, 35, Zaw Naing Tun, 18 and shopkeeper Tin Wine, 49, were killed while sheltering from a heavy storm on Friday afternoon at 3pm (0830 GMT), newspaper Myanma Ahlin reported.

Two people were taken to hospital in Naypyidaw for treatment, it said.

The paper gave no further details of the accident.

Rainy season runs from June to October in Myanmar. On May 2-3 a cyclone swept the southwest of the country, leaving 138,000 people dead or missing.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
'No regrets' for Myanmar dissident after record jail sentence
by Hla Hla Htay
Sun Oct 5, 2:54 AM ET

YANGON (AFP) - With the colour fading from his hair and lines wrinkling his face, Myanmar's newly freed political prisoner, Win Tin, still manages to defy his 79 years.

Despite suffering numerous serious ailments while locked away for 19 years in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, the former journalist remains spry and said he has never regretted his move into politics.

"I never regret leaving journalism to become a politician," Win Tin told AFP in an interview at his friend's home where he is staying.

"The passion for informing people, for wanting their prosperity and to free them of problems is the same. Both require sacrifice. So I have no sorrow at all," he said with a smile.

Win Tin was Myanmar's longest serving political prisoner when the military junta released more than 9,000 inmates from its jails on September 23 in an amnesty ahead of elections promised for 2010.

He became a newsman in 1949, aged 19, working as a reporter and sub-editor for national and international newspapers, and turned to politics during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising against the ruling military that has governed the country since 1962.

Win Tin was one of the founders of the pro-democracy opposition National League for Democracy party together with Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains detained at her lakeside home.

But he never witnessed the party's landslide victory in 1990 elections -- a win never recognised by the junta -- because he was imprisoned in July 1989 for his role as Aung San Suu Kyi's advisor, and for his letters to the then-United Nations envoy to Myanmar.

Nineteen years locked away have taken their toll on Win Tin's health. He now suffers from heart disease, a hernia, and has lung and eye problems, yet he said he will continue to work for the NLD.

"I have no health problems recently. I have to keep my spirits strong," he said.

He said he was tortured in prison -- hooded during long interrogations, deprived of sleep and subjected to beatings. He had been kept in solitary confinement since 1996, only seeing his family for 15 minutes every fortnight.

On his release last month the NLD welcomed him to their 20th anniversary meeting, chanting "Long Live U Win Tin" as he arrived.

The NLD ruling committee invited him to rejoin the board, and while he has not yet decided to accept, he said he will stay in politics.

"I'm now a politician. I have to continue my duties inevitably," he said. "I have my duty as I founded a political party, I cannot leave it. I had to apply my beliefs and spirit during my 19 years in prison."

Campaigners say around 2,000 dissidents remain in Myanmar's prisons and Win Tin now wants to focus on their release.

"Many people have sacrificed their lives. Many people are still in prisons. I can not tolerate my sorrow for these people," Win Tin said.

"We have to continue our mission. We have to acknowledge their gratitude, sacrifice and fighting," he said.

"I have told the authorities they can re-arrest me if they do not like what I am saying."

But Win Tin believes dialogue between the authorities and the pro-democracy group is the best way to secure the prisoners' release and pursue democratic reforms ahead of
2010 elections.

The junta won a widely-criticized national referendum in May, allowing the government to change the constitution and paving the way for 2010 elections that bar Aung San Suu Kyi from standing. She has been under house arrest for most of the past two decades.

Win Tin said he would seek the help of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in pushing for the prisoners' release and securing talks with the junta, when he visits Myanmar in December.

"Dialogue is the only way forward ahead of 2010 (elections). If the elections go ahead as planned, it cannot be a success," he said.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Rights groups call for action over jailed Myanmar dissidents
Sun Oct 5, 6:47 AM ET

BANGKOK (AFP) - Human rights groups said Sunday that the number of dissidents in Myanmar jails has nearly doubled to more than 2,100 over the past year and called on the United Nations to act to free the prisoners.

A report says there are now at least 2,123 political prisoners in the country -- up 78 percent on the UN's figure of 1,192 in June 2007.

"The Future in the Dark: the Massive Increase in Burma's Political Prisoners," from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) and the United States Campaign for Burma (USCB), comes after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay last week called for the release of Myanmar's political prisoners.

"By nearly doubling the number of political prisoners, the Burmese regime is directly defying the United Nations," said Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner, referring to the country by its former name.

"Yet the UN is paralysed because the Secretary General is still reluctant to call on China to work together with other members of the Security Council to secure the release of all prisoners by the end of December," the Thailand-based AAPP's Bo Kyi said.

China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council, is a close ally and economic partner of Myanmar and opposes interference in its affairs.

The AAPP and the Washington-based USCB sent an open letter Sunday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urging action to secure the prisoners' release.

It called on Ban to take action during his planned December trip to Myanmar.

"It is time for Ban Ki-moon to show effective leadership and moral authority," said Aung Din, a former political prisoner and director of USCB.

The rights groups said up to 900 dissidents had been arrested during the monk-led uprising last year, which led to a crackdown by the military regime in which 31 people were killed.

On September 23 this year the regime announced an amnesty, releasing more than 9,000 prisoners ahead of elections planned for 2010 -- but only ten of them were political prisoners.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
18 illegal immigrants killed in crash in Turkey
Sun Oct 5, 10:46 AM ET

ANKARA (Reuters) - A small truck carrying illegal immigrants plunged into a river after overturning on a Turkish highway near the border with Greece on Sunday, killing 18 people and injuring 25 others, Anatolian state news agency said.

It said most of the dead were from Myanmar and Pakistan. The accident happened in the town of Malkara, west of Istanbul, a local official told Anatolian.

Turkey is a major trafficking route for illegal immigrants trying to enter the European Union from southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. They are often transported in overcrowded vehicles.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Protest yields to lethargy in Myanmar
The International Herald Tribune
By Daniel Pepper
Published: October 5, 2008

NEW DELHI: Myanmar is a country of uncommon beauty, full of dilapidated colonial structures slowly crumbling amid the damp swelter of the tropics, each surface and crevice losing ground to the organic pastels of mosses and molds.

At night, on low stools beneath the crowded umbrellas of Yangon's center-city tea shops, men sit closely and strum loud acoustic folk melodies, their songs filled with tradition rather than protest. Usually, the only things exploding are the stall piles of papayas, pineapples and mangoes in the heat.

One year ago a social upheaval, sparked by a rise in fuel prices, inspired hope that a chapter would be closing on the world's longest-running military regime. But the Buddhist clergy and common citizens were quickly beaten back with batons and bullets, and the world moved on.

Last week was the anniversary. During it, a bomb explosion in central Yangon wounded four; Web sites run by dissenters and exiles were attacked and shut down; and about 100 monks filed silently through the streets of a western fishing town to commemorate the crackdown. But this seems hardly dramatic enough to undo the disillusionment that set in after the defeat of the Saffron Revolution. In some ways, it only underscores it.

Two years ago - 11 months before the monks' rebellion - I sat in one of the few, cramped Internet cafés in Yangon, the former capital, and glanced at my neighbors' screens - all soft-core porn and foreign news Web sites. When I returned this summer, I found the cafés had become diverse and diffuse, packed with young people gabbing away on G-talk, checking out the social-networking sites Orkut, Hi5 and Friendster. Signs posted openly, even in small towns, explained how to circumvent government censors through proxy servers hosted at www.yoyahoo. com and www.bypassany. com.

Myanmar is like that. Change perspectives and its lost-in-time quality suddenly shifts as well, with a lurch forward. As always against the backdrop of the 2,500-year-old golden Swedegon Pagoda, teenagers now post photos on Facebook while Korean soap operas compete with English Premier League soccer for people's attention. Cellphone stores proliferate, despite the cost of new connections - $1,500 - from the single, government-owned provider, Myanma Post and Telecommunications. (Black market connections start at about $2,500.)

But the spirit of protest is almost silent.

In fact, the State Peace and Development Council, as the military government renamed itself in 1997, is stronger now than a year ago, having profited from high global food and fuel prices. A few signs of conspicuous consumption by the small urban middle class - satellite TV dishes, hip-hop music and fashions - are seeping down from the much smaller class of multimillionaire businessmen directly tied to the junta's chairman, Than Shwe.

Meanwhile, the broad mass of 50 million people remain among the poorest in the world. Myanmar ranks 132 out of 177 countries in the 2007 UN Development Program's Human Development Index. Most experts, who doubt the government's statistics, think the reality is worse.

Myanmar is also one of the only countries to be publicly denounced for human rights abuses by the otherwise confidential and neutral International Committee of the Red Cross. According to Amnesty International, more than 2,100 political prisoners languish in Myanmar's jails, about 1,000 having been locked up in the past year.

But more than ever, satellite TV and the Internet are making people aware of their government's glacial pace of progress. One young woman told me that during the uprisings last year she was on the streets one day, shouting anti-government slogans, and the next day stayed in, fearing a stray bullet, as she watched the blood-soaked crackdown live on Al Jazeera television.

Democracy advocates in exile hold out hope that China, which is Myanmar's largest trading partner and its ally on the UN Security Council, could become the linchpin for changes in the regime.

But most Burmese I spoke with on my two-week visit didn't think China would ever yield to Western pleading for it to play such a role. Business with China is booming, in fact, partly because tighter Western sanctions have made the junta more dependent on China for diplomatic support, as well as arms and consumer goods.

Despite being awash in foreign currency, Myanmar's government has yet to invest heavily in manufacturing. Instead, Myanmar's big-ticket industries are based on extracting natural resources. Last year, sales of natural gas brought in about $3 billion, sales of jade an estimated $400 million. But the major enterprises operate in deep secrecy, and recently Transparency International once again listed Myanmar as one of the world's most corrupt countries.

In essence, the country runs like a mafia, from the languid tea shops of Yangon to the remote jungle areas of Kachin state in Upper Burma, where the mining town of Hpakant provides much of the world's jade. There I met Sai Joseph, a gregarious and entrepreneurial family man who manages one midsize jade company. "There are only a few wealthy people in Myanmar," he told me, "those who get in with the political people, the authorities who have power."

Hpakant is connected to the outside world by a single crumbling road, 16 hours through the jungle to the closest transport hub during the rainy season. Along the way abandoned wooden oxcarts litter the road between shuttered towns. Red road signs announce, like a cruel joke, "Government has arranged for road repair from each company in Hpakant."

Hpakant itself is set among denuded hills that are slowly eaten away by the mining town machinery. Green plant life bursts forth where it can among these scars, but most of the landscape is an excavation site, undulating for miles, with perhaps 3,000 separate mines. More than 450 private companies operate there, as well as about 100 joint ventures, most of them owned by Burmese of Chinese heritage.

Like many once-illegal activities, jade mining now enjoys the full support of the junta, which takes a cut of the profits while leaving miners diseased and destitute. As I tried, without success, to confirm reports that jade miners are paid in heroin, I was quickly apprehended, marched back to the regional capital and eventually deported.

In one sense, things have improved in recent years. Once a scene from Dante's hell - the few outsiders who visited sometimes described thousands upon thousands of half-naked men, women and children clawing into the rock in search of jade - the mining is now a largely mechanical process executed by industrial backhoes and dump trucks. A few mines still employ human diggers, and earlier this year one such site collapsed, killing 20 people.

Just before the Beijing Olympics, President George W. Bush signed the Burma Jade Act, adding Myanmar's jade and rubies to the long list of goods that cannot be imported legally to the United States. But jade sellers in Yangon largely shrugged off the ban, citing booming business with China, India, Thailand, Singapore and Arab Gulf states.

Late last month, Earth Rights International, a Thailand-based environmental and human rights organization, issued a report detailing the investments of 69 Chinese multinationals in 90 hydropower, oil, gas and mining projects. "The regime has successfully convinced these companies that nothing will compromise its grip on political power," says Matthew Smith, an Earth Rights project coordinator.

So for now, Myanmar's people struggle with their daily lives, negotiating the labyrinth of power and money. New gadgets and fashions filter through to a few people in the main cities, but even they, like the bulk of Burmese, simply work and wait, patient and passive.

Who, after all, could be expected to choose the immediate prospects of a firing squad over the distant promise of an MP3?

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Brazilian AME, Myanmar ex-selections to play cyclone fund-raising soccer match
www.chinaview. cn  2008-10-05 20:38:38

YANGON, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Associacao Missao Esperanca (AME) soccer team from Brazil and former Myanmar selections soccer team will play a fund-raising soccer match here later this month for the victims of deadly cyclone Nargis which hit five divisions and states in Myanmar in early May, state-run newspaper The Myanma Alin reported on Sunday.

The AME soccer team from Brazil has proposed to the Myanmar Football Federation (MFF) to play charity match for the victims of cyclone Nargis and it will be held at the Thuwunna Youth Training Center football field on Oct. 27, it said.

The AME soccer team, which comprises 17 players including nine famous ex-selections from Brazilian national team -- one each from1994 World Cup winner and 1998 World Cup first runners-up Brazilian teams and seven others not included in the World Cup events -- and eight who are playing in the Brazilian League tournaments, will play the cyclone fund-raising soccer match with the Myanmar ex-selections team which is made up of many talented former selections from the team getting silver medal in the 1993 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games, the paper said.

Players from the Myanmar ex-selections team will make training every weekends this month as a preparation for the charity match, which is the first of its kind to be held in Myanmar, it said.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
FAO to extend cyclone aid project period for Myanmar
www.chinaview. cn  2008-10-05 20:34:56

YANGON, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations will extend the period of its Myanmar cyclone aid project for another six months to run until next year, Flower News reported Sunday.

Some 33.5 million U.S. dollars of fund for the extended project are being sought, the FAO resident representative was quoted as saying.

The extended project is designed to benefit 50,000 lesser-land- owned and 100,000 landless storm-survived households, the sources said, adding that the fund will further help develop agriculture, livestock breeding and forestry undertakings locally until next summer.

In July this year after May storm, the FAO agreed to provide emergency relief aid supplies for an initial six-month period to storm survivors in two cyclone-hard- hit regions of Ayeyawaddy and Yangon for the resumption of their agricultural and fishery production, according to earlier local report quoting the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.

The FAO also donated 600 cattle for four cyclone-hit areas of Kungyankon, Mawlamyinegyun, Ngaputaw and Phyapon to help restart agricultural cultivation there, the Livestock Breeding Department said.

The FAO-donated cattle were purchased from lesser-cyclone- hit region of Bago and cyclone-free northern region of Mandalay, it added.

Deadly tropical cyclone Nargis, which occurred over the Bay of Bengal, hit five divisions and states -- Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago,Mon and Kayin on May 2 and 3, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon inflicted the heaviest casualties and massive infrastructural damage.

The storm has killed 84,537 people, leaving 53,836 missing and 19,359 injured according to official death toll.

Altogether 300,000 cattle died in cyclone-hard- hit Ayeyawaddy and Yangon divisions.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Villages benefited from water supply project in Myanmar(Xinhua)
China Daily - Updated: 2008-10-05 12:24

YANGON-- A total of 20,830 villages out of 23, 225 across Myanmar have been supplied with pure drinking water during the first eight years of a 10-year rural water supply project, according to the Ministry of Progress of Border Areas and National Races and Development Sunday.

Of the 20,830 villages benefited from the project which runs from the fiscal year 2000-01 to 2009-2010, 8,037 are in three arid divisions of Sagaing, Magway and Mandalay which faced water shortage.

A total of 532 water supply projects were implemented in the three dry zones in cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

According to the ministry, it spent 6.491 billion Kyats (US $5.4 million dollars) for the first eight years of the project ( 2000-01 to 2007-08) and 2.15 billion Kyats (over 1.79 million dollars) has been earmarked to spend on the projects in the present 2008-09.

Besides, 236 tube wells were sunk in northern part of Shan State and 35 deep wells drilled in the arid zones in another project undertaken with the cooperation of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), while 97 tube wells and deep wells drilled in two townships in the central part of the country with the cooperation of the Bridge Asia Japan (BAJ), the sources said.

Meanwhile, the Yangon municipal authorities is planning to build water distribution centers in water-scarce areas to boost its water supply to the city, designing a supply of 45 million gallons of water from a major nearby dam called Nga Moe Yeik Dam, the Yangon City Development Committee said.

Myanmar has also worked out a strategic plan to improve water resources management in the country with the cooperation of  United Nations Commission for Asia and the Pacific, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation.

As part of its efforts to improve irrigation water resources, Myanmar has built 209 dams and reservoirs as well as 305 river- water pumping stations, the ministry added.

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***