Myanmar

Tens of thousands joined a demonstration by Buddhist monks through the streets of the city formerly known as Rangoon yesterday, in a stirring show of dissent against the generals' regime that has turned the once placid Burma into the authoritarian nightmare now called Myanmar. Last night, the government issued a warning to the monks' superiors that they must desist from further agitation, but it's unlikely to have much effect. The security forces have been conspicuously absent so far, which may be an ominous sign in a country where the last big demonstrations, in 1988, were brutally suppressed - or it may be a sign of uncertainty at the top. China appears to hold the key. It has been the regime's biggest supporter, and is clearly intent on exploiting Myanmar's significant gas and oil resources.

NEW DELHI -- The street protests roiling military-ruled Myanmar turned deadly yesterday when at least one anti-government demonstrator was killed after security forces cracked down on the growing unrest, according to news and witness accounts trickling out of the closed-off country. Dozens of protesters, many of them Buddhist monks clad in burgundy robes, were said to have been beaten and dragged off by authorities as they rallied in the capital, Yangon, for the ninth straight day. Protests were also reported in Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

KA MAR PA LAW, Myanmar -- Here at the jungle base of God's Army, no one questions the leadership of Luther and Johnny Htoo.No matter that the 12-year-old twins are shorter than the M-16 rifles some of their followers carry. The fighters who have rallied behind them believe the brothers offer divine protection in a children's crusade that blends elements of fundamentalism and "Lord of the Flies."An offshoot of the ethnic Karen guerrilla movement that was nearly crushed in a brutal government offensive two years ago, God's Army is made up of about 100 battled-hardened veteran fighters, former university students and children.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, stepping into a major dispute over global commerce, agreed yesterday to rule on the constitutionality of economic boycotts staged by U.S. states and cities against foreign nations.At issue in a Massachusetts case is the spreading campaign by states and localities to refuse to buy goods or services from any companies that do business with a foreign government as a way of influencing that government's policies.Maryland, 13 other states and a number of cities and counties joined Massachusetts in urging the court to sort out the constitutional roles of national and state governments in the field of international commerce.

A group of Buddhists from the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, formerly Burma, is looking to become the latest religious organization to build a worship center in the rural Baltimore County community of Granite -- and is getting a warmer reception than a megachurch proposed for the area.The Myanmar Buddhist Meditation Society, which meets in a house at 9711 Old Court Road next to the site of a proposed Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church sanctuary, is asking county approval to construct a prayer building and parking lot on its 7-acre parcel.

LAST NOVEMBER, in a palace coup, some generals in Myanmar (formerly Burma) overthrew colleagues and changed the name of their ruling council. Since then, they have tried to clean up the country's image of backwardness, corruption, tyranny and stagnation.The sham of this was shown when the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi tried to travel from her house, where she is theoretically not under arrest, to visit political allies. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, whose party won the 1990 election that was overturned, was stopped at a roadblock.

THE ASSOCIATION of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was encouraged into existence by the United States 30 years ago to create a framework of supportive neighbors for South Vietnam. The six members, by no means democracies, were then developing countries, economically and ideologically linked with the West. ASEAN was separate from the military alliance, SEATO.How different today. The original purpose disappeared with South Vietnam. A united Vietnam is both communist and a member. The members are economic tigers, players in world trade.

Irving Geis,88, an artist who illuminated the wonders of science, from the vastness of space to the intricacies of molecular structures, died of a cerebral hemorrhage July 22 at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New YorkFor much of his career, the Manhattan resident regularly contributed illustrations to Scientific American, helping readers visualize material about astronomy, astrophysics, geophysics, biochemistry and the like.Mr. Geis supplied the journal's first drawings of Sputniks in orbit, continental drift and the double helix of DNA.His innovations in biomolecular art gave him an international reputation, serving as a guide for generations of researchers and science students.

YANGON, Myanmar -- The lesson in democracy begins promptly at 4 each weekend afternoon. Several thousand people gather behind barricades, eyes trained on the fence surrounding a two-story lakeside home. Traffic police, dressed smartly in pressed white coats, keep two lanes open for passing cars.When Aung San Suu Kyi, pink orchids in her brushed-back hair and microphone in hand, appears from behind the fence, the crowd breaks into cheers and applause. For the next hour, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner gamely conducts a forum on democracy in a country run by generals.

DAMINSEIK, Myanmar -- When the big white company helicopter settled onto the sand here on the shore of the Andaman Sea recently, almost the entire fishing village hurried out to watch.This is where a 416-mile natural gas pipeline will rise from deep under the ocean and begin to tunnel through the jungle into Thailand in the most ambitious -- and most disputed -- building project in this country.Jumping from the helicopter, oil company officials led a group of journalists directly to the village's new schoolhouse, part of an economic development program that ensures cooperation of the villagers and thus is as important to the project as the airfield, dock, roads and bridges that have been carved out of the remote jungle.

In keeping with his campaign promise to talk to America's enemies without precondition, President Barack Obama plans to turn his charms on Myanmar's military junta. Slowly, we're beginning to understand what hope and change were all about. Translation: Sure hope this change works. It may be too soon to pass judgment on Mr. Obama's new foreign policy strategy, but early returns on his gamble that talking is the best cure are less than reassuring. Each time Mr. Obama extends a hand to one of the world's anti-American despots, he is rewarded with an insult (Venezuela's Hugo Chavez)

BANGKOK, Thailand - Foreign aid workers have begun reaching remote areas of Myanmar hardest hit by the May 2-3 cyclone, relief agencies said yesterday. These first admissions of foreign workers, issued over the past two days, breach the barrier erected by the government that had delayed delivery of supplies to more than a million people in the remote Irrawaddy River delta. The opening comes more than three weeks after the cyclone, which left 135,000 people dead or missing. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million survivors deep in the Irrawaddy delta have not yet received any aid. The permissions follow an agreement announced Friday by Ban Ki Moon, the U.N. secretary-general, after a meeting in Myanmar with the leader of that nation's junta, Senior General Than Shwe.

Myanmar's ruling junta has sacrificed the lives of its people to selfishly protect its secretive, repressive government. Human life means little to the generals in power, and their restrictions on food, shelter, water and other relief aid for cyclone victims is ample proof of that. Their indifference to the critical needs of survivors will consign so many more of them to death. Myanmar's rulers need only look to its neighbor to see that a military response to a natural disaster is foremost about saving lives, not safeguarding the regime.

For nearly two weeks, we have witnessed the callous indifference of Myanmar's ruling junta to the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The regime's grotesque failure to permit more than a trickle of aid has stimulated calls for the United Nations to compel Myanmar to provide access for international relief efforts. Whether such calls are answered could determine the survival of hundreds of thousands in Myanmar spared from the initial inundation but clinging to life without food, clean water, shelter and access to lifesaving medicines.

KYAIKTAW, Myanmar -- U Maung Saw and his family are in a race against the rain. Cyclone Nargis pounded their house as flat as the mud where the broken pieces now lie. A 5-foot wave, driven by a storm surge that rolled 20 miles upriver from the Andaman Sea, crashed onto his doorstep. It washed away almost everything the family of seven owned - even the fish they were farming in a nearby pond. The flooding and torrential rain May 4 also ruined a fifth of the unmilled rice they had stockpiled since harvesting the paddy from the rich soil of the Irrawaddy River delta, Myanmar's rice bowl, in late March.

YANGON, Myanmar -- In this cyclone-ravaged country where most people have more important things on their minds, such as the daily struggle for fresh water, food and shelter, Myanmar's ruling generals sent their people to the polls yesterday to vote on a constitution that opponents call a cynical attempt to maintain the junta's grip on power. The regime insists that the vote to approve the new constitution, held in parts of the country that weren't affected by last weekend's devastating storm, is part of its road map to "discipline-flourishing genuine multiparty democracy."

As Myanmar's military government has thwarted international efforts to deliver aid to thousands of people affected by last week's cyclone, Baltimore-based organizations are raising money to help victims and waiting to see if partner organizations will be able to gain entry into the devastated country. The political hindrance "adds a level of frustration" for aid workers, said Paul Rebman, director of disaster response for Baltimore-based World Relief. The aid group has partnered with five other organizations, two of which already had staff on the ground in Myanmar - a fact that helped to ease their assistance efforts, Rebman said.

With chaos on the ground in Myanmar and no reliable sources of information, Maryland disaster experts say it's no surprise that casualty counts from the cyclone that struck the country can range from 22,500 to 100,000. The remote nature of the devastated area and government restrictions on Western relief organizations mean that very little reliable news about deaths or the plight of survivors has appeared, said W. Courtland Robinson, deputy director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

BEIJING -- The death toll continued to climb in Myanmar yesterday as state news media reported that more than 22,000 people had died from a weekend cyclone and more than 41,000 were missing. Efforts to reach the victims and help up to 1 million people that United Nations officials believe were left homeless by Tropical Cyclone Nargis remained mired in bureaucracy, logistics problems and the isolation of many areas. The insular Southeast Asian nation, long ruled by a military government, has signaled that it will allow international aid groups to enter the country.

Sunday services at Frederick's Falam Baptist Church took on a solemn tone as Phun Thang led parishioners in a prayer for the people of Myanmar, where officials warn the death toll from a devastating cyclone could reach as high as 10,000. The 50 members of the church's congregation are all from the Southeast Asian nation, formerly Burma, and many of them have come to Frederick within the past couple of years seeking asylum from their country's military dictatorship, which has a record of human rights abuses.