The World Health Organization has validated that the disease has been eliminated from the country: This is extra impressive, because in 2005, trachoma was responsible for 4% of all cases of blindness there. The nation joins Nepal in the WHO South-East Asia Region and 12 countries globally to achieve this feat.
United Nations says staff will visit Rakhine state in first step towards repatriation of 700,000 refugees camped in Bangladesh
The widening acceptance boosted numbers with some 6,000 people coming along on the first day alone, compared with 2-3,000 over the whole festival in previous years.
Burma’s independence arrived at 4:20 a.m. on 4 January 1948, at a moment an astrologer had deemed auspicious for the new republic’s birth. Months earlier, General Aung San had gathered Shan, Kachin, and Chin leaders at Panglong to promise a federation of peoples. He was assassinated at 32, leaving that vision as the country’s enduring, unfinished work.
In 849 C.E., King Pyinbya ordered walls built around a small city along the Irrawaddy River in central Myanmar. That modest act of fortification set the stage for Bagan, which two centuries later grew into the first unified Burmese kingdom and left behind more than 10,000 temples, over 2,000 of which still stand today.
Pyu city-states rose along Myanmar’s Irrawaddy River more than two thousand years ago, with walled settlements like Beikthano, Sri Ksetra, and Halin taking shape from around 200 B.C.E. Roman coins and Indian religious art found at these sites show just how far their trade reached. They’re among Southeast Asia’s earliest known cities — and a reminder that urban life in the region grew from its own roots.
