Free Republic

Excerpt - YANGON, Myanmar - A powerful cyclone killed more than 350 people and destroyed thousands of homes, state-run media said Sunday. Some dissident groups worried that the military junta running Myanmar would be reluctant to ask for international help. Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit at a delicate time for the junta, less than a week ahead of a crucial referendum on a new constitution. Should the junta be seen as failing disaster victims, voters who already blame the regime for ruining the economy and squashing democracy could take out their frustrations at the ballot box. Some in Yangon complained the...

SEOUL, March 3 (Yonhap) -- A Korean-American pastor who went missing earlier this year in Myanmar is presumed dead, a South Korean civic activist claimed Thursday. The pastor, identified as Jeffrey Bahk, was swept away by strong currents while trying to swim across the Mekong River on Jan. 2, said Chun Ki-won, director of Seoul-based Durihana Missionary Foundation. Bahk, 63, appeared to have drowned while attempting to cross the river from Myanmar to Laos with six North Korean defectors he reportedly met in Jilin and Yanji, China, in November. "I saw him enter the river, but that was the...