Freedom brings new challenges for Myanmar writers

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YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Poet Saw Wai parked himself on the lawn, unfurled a map of Myanmar with a blob of blood-red paint dripping down from a spot up north and invited people to make poetry with him. "He's calling for more trouble," said a passerby. What the message lacked in subtlety it made up for in brazenness. Government forces have been pounding ethnic rebels in Myanmar's northern Kachin state, displacing tens of thousands and testing the country's fast-growing friendship with the...

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Obama to speak at Myanmar campus scarred by past

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YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - The soldiers began to shoot students at Rangoon University at 6:30 p.m. Hla Shwe watched, cowering in a nearby building, as his friends died. "I heard the shouting," he recalled. "They shot whoever they saw." It was July 7, 1962, the day rage at the military's recent coup boiled over and a date now seared into the memory of Hla Shwe, who is 75 years old. "I got the idea that if they used the gun against students, why shouldn't we use guns to fight them?" he said. When President Barack Obama speaks at Hla Shwe's alma mater Monday, he will be treading on ground heavy with political...

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