State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed thanks to the people for their understanding of the incumbent government, pledging that the one-year-old administration would continue to march on the road to establishing a federal union with eternal peace and introducing a new motto: “Together with the people”.

AUNG MYIN THA, Myanmar — For six years, Daw Kaw Bu has waited to return to the village she was forced to leave to make way for a dam that has yet to be built.

“I pray to God to let me work on my own land again,” she said on a recent afternoon, sitting outside the wood-shingled home in Aung Myin Tha, where she was resettled in early 2011.

Let me make a few introductory remarks on our report.

First, we should  accept that the nature of the crisis facing Rakhine state has changed due to the attacks of 9 October and the subsequent security operations.

This has led to investigations and reports by the United Nations and human rights agencies. However, we as the Advisory Commission are guided by our mandate to focus mainly on long-standing obstacles to peace and development in Rakhine State.

YANGON, Myanmar — Honey Mya Win didn’t have to look far to discover the tech potential for Myanmar. A 26-year-old former telecom engineer at Huawei, she was directly involved in configuring mobile phone towers and base station controllers that expanded 3G access to the once reclusive nation.

“My team was actually the one connecting the country,” she said. “That made me think: Maybe I should get in on this internet business.”

That was a few years ago — when mobile penetration was still hovering at single digits in Myanmar.

Today, more than 80 percent of the population is digitally connected through smartphones, according to Hootsuite. For her part, Win has traded in the engineering job to start an online freelancing platform, Chate Sat.

President U Htin Kyaw arrived in Chin State yesterday morning and visited the general hospitals in Tonzang, Tiddim and Falam and spoke with its residents.

Htin Kyaw, the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, arrived in Cambodia at noon on Friday on a four-day state visit and will be received by King Norodom Sihamoni at the Royal Palace in the afternoon. 

The Myanmar-US relationship reached to a higher level with the visits of the Presidents of two countries. President Obama became the first US President to visit Myanmar in November 2012 and he paid a second visit to our country in November 2014 to attend the ASEAN US meeting. President U Thein Sein visited the United States in May 2013.

In its first report, the investigation commission on Rakhine yesterday denied “external” allegations of abuses related to the ongoing counter-insurgency campaign in the restive northern state. The interim report was released on the same day as the Ministry of Home Affairs announced eight police officers have been detained in connection to a video showing brutality against villagers, and just after the State Counsellor’s Office released a notice about retributive killings in Rakhine.

After a “special investigation” that included a field visit, the commission found that the, “Bengali population residing in Maungtaw region, the increasing population of Mawlawi, mosques and religious edifices are proof that there were no cases of genocide and religious persecution in the region [sic].”

It also said there was “insufficient evidence to take legal action” over women’s claims of having been raped.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor, made the opening address at the Myanmar Scout Centenary held at the diamond jubilee hall of Yangon University yesterday.