Myanmar's army says it is investigating a mass grave found in a village in northern Rakhine state, a region where the UN has accused troops of committing atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.Northern Rakhine has been nearly emptied of its Muslim population since late August, when an army crackdown on Rohingya rebels sent more than 655,000 refugees fleeing across the border to Bangladesh.

For decades the Rohingya have been denied recognition in Myanmar but the persecuted minority is close to securing a crucial symbol of their identity – their own unique digital alphabet.The language of the stateless Muslim people has been included in the planned upgrade to the Unicode Standard, the global coding system that turns written script into digital characters and numbers.It would allow the Rohingya to write emails, send texts and post on social media in their own language – a major st

The United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning the systemic human rights violations in Myanmar against the Rohingya Muslims in the northern Rakhine State.

In the shadow of one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, Pope Francis who is in Myanmar for a four-day visit, refrained from mentioning the word “Rohingya” throughout his speech at the capital, Naypyidaw.

As the U.S. and Europe grow increasingly outraged over the Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar, Asian businesses are continuing to invest.Bangkok-based construction company TTCL Pcl is one of the latest examples, targeting the first half of next year to complete a funding plan and shareholder structure for a planned three billion dollar coal-fired power plant in Kayin state bordering Thailand. The U.S.

The fickle environmentThis week, Indonesia stole the spotlight with Mount Agung’s phreatic eruption.

Amidst the Papal visit to Myanmar, one issue still looms – the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the Rakhine State in Myanmar near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.Rohingya refugees who return to Myanmar following a Bangladesh-Myanmar repatriation agreement will initially have to live in temporary shelters or camps, Dhaka said Saturday."Primarily they will be kept at temporary shelters or arrangements for a limited time," Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H.

Pope Francis plunges into a diplomatic minefield next week with visits to under-fire Myanmar and neighbouring Bangladesh amid mounting outrage over the plight of persecuted Rohingya Muslims.Some 620,000 Rohingya, more than half their total number, have fled from Myanmar's Rakhine state to Bangladesh since August as a result of violence that the UN and the United States have described as ethnic cleansing.Most of the refugees, a third of them children, have ended up in squalid refugee camp

Myanmar has agreed to take back hundreds and thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees who’ve been sheltering in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Dhaka said in a statement.Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Myanmar’s Union Minister U Kyaw Tint Swe signed the bilateral agreement in Myanmar on Thursday, just a day after U.S.

Father William's 16-strong flock on Myanmar's eastern border is one of the Catholic Church's tiniest outposts, but next week they will join a tide of 200,000 faithful in Yangon for a historic mass led by Pope Francis.The Pope, renowned for powerful entreaties for peace no matter how highly-charged the issue, arrives on Monday in a country on the defensive over its treatment of the Rohingya Muslim minority.Some 620,000 Rohingya have been driven from western Rakhine state to Bang