Burma’s military and the rebel Kachin Independence Army vie in control for a semi-underground jade industry in the northern jungles, with the exports going to China.
A Freedom Flotilla carrying indigenous Australian protesters bound for the restive Indonesian territory of West Papua set off from Queensland—despite threats from Jakarta.
Burma’s regime finally allowed commemorations of the 1988 uprising that launched the democracy movement—but there has been no accountability for the bloody repression.
The Philippines high court issued a "temporary environment protection order" against 94 Chinese-owned "small-scale mines" operating on the margins of the law in Luzon region.
The White House is finalizing a deal with the Philippines that will allow the US to deploy more troops—as new fighting is reported from Mindanao despite talks with Islamist rebels.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced a new peace initiative in Burma’s conflicted Shan State aimed at facilitating poppy eradication.
The Burmese port of Sittwe, epicenter of violence against the Muslim Rohingya people, is to be the starting point for the new Shwe pipeline linking Burma’s west coast with China.
Chinese TV broadcast images of a Burmese drug lord and his accomplices on their way to a death chamber in Yunnan, prompting online protests from rights activists in Beijing.
The Sultanate of Sulu claims that 10 members of the royal army were killed in an attack by Malaysian authorities on a village siezed by the Sulu partisans in Sabah state on Borneo.
Security forces in Malaysian Borneo are in a stand-off with some 100 men they say are insurgents from the Philippine island of Sulu raising an ancestral claim to the territory.
The Thai military says Islamist insurgents in the country's south have formed a "Pattani Army" after an audacious raid on a government base near the Malay border.
With fighting escalating after a 17-year ceasefire broke down last year, Burma’s Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has agreed to talks with the government.
