Early on Saturday morning, Reuters reports, in northern Myanmar, where some of the world’s most desirable jade is produced, a mountain of mining debris gave way, triggering a landslide. More than 100 people were missing on Sunday, and 97 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage.

In an historic moment for the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, the first free election is expected to be won by opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

On Sunday, Malaysian authorities said they had discovered a series of mass graves in abandoned camps, used by human traffickers, along the country’s border with Thailand, the Associated Press reports. Police in Thailand made a similar discovery earlier this month.

Three men who tried to promote their bar on Facebook by uploading a fun picture of a Buddha wearing headphones get to spend the next two-and-a-half years locked in a Burmese prison, all thanks to their marketing plan.

According to governmental officials, "about 50 people" are believed to have died after a crowded ferry capsized off the western coast of Myanmar Friday night. AFP News reports that the bodies of four men and 29 women have been recovered so far, with at least 12 people still missing.

A ship heading for Malaysia was intercepted by the Bangladeshi Navy on Monday, officials said, after it was discovered that the ship was harboring over 600 trafficking victims. It was then directed to the port of Chittagong by Tuesday night.

The head of a newspaper and four of its reporters were sentenced to 10 years of prison and hard labor by a court in Myanmar today following a report the group published exposing a supposedly secret government chemical weapons factory. The Burmese government has denied the existence of such a factory.

Yes: 22, to be exact. But now that the military dictatorship is "liberalizing," they're coming back, baby! Their de-facto leader is a young U.S.-educated entrepreneur named Sammy Samuels:

The global business and economic leaders (and the media) who attend meetings of the World Economic Forum are used to five-star hotels, world-class dining, and understated luxury. And for their current meeting, the WEF has brought them all to... Naypyitaw, Myanmar. What is this shit?

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and icon of resistance against Burma's brutal military dictatorship, was a "V.I.P. guest" of her former captors at a military parade yesterday held in honor of the country's Armed Forces Day—marking the latest in what the Times calls a "fledgling partnership" between Aung San Suu Kyi and the junta that once kept her under house arrest for more than two decades. Her openness to work with the country's president, former general U Sein Thein, may be a shrewd political calculation that recognizes the military's continued hold on power even as the country slowly moves toward democracy, but it leaves many of her former allies troubled, and may end up neutralizing her: "[S]he is essentially making herself irrelevant," Burmese politics expert Josef Silverstein says. Worse, she has largely remained silent as the plight of Burma's ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims worsens. The rise of the 969 group, which exiled dissident Dr. Muang Zarni describes as a "neo-Nazi ‘Buddhist' nationalist movement" has led to brutal violence, genocidal in its intent, against the Rohingya—largely poorer, darker-skinned, and unrecognized by by the state—creating a human rights crisis in the face of which Aung San Suu Kyi's reaction is disappointing at best and infuriating at worst. "When asked if the Rohingyas are Burmese citizens, Aung San Suu Kyi, the moral exemplar of the pro-democracy movement, simply said that she did not know," Min Zin writes at Foreign Policy. "Aung San Suu Kyi has even said that she will refrain from applying any kind of 'moral leadership' by taking sides in the communal unrest. In this respect, her actions reveal quite a bit of continuity with the ruling military." [NYT | Vice | Guardian | FP | image via AFP/Getty]

President Obama announced from Bali on Friday that he's sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the human rights disaster zone known as Myanmar, aka Burma, saying, "After years of darkness we've seen flickers of progress." It will be the first such visit to the country, which has long isolated itself from diplomacy, in over 50 years.

Myanmar's parliament met Monday for the first time in two decades. The military junta "enjoys a crushing majority."

Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—under house arrest for over seven years—was freed today, five days after the country's military junta held parliamentary elections. "We must unite!" she told supporters outside her home.

Scientists have found a new species of monkey in northeast Burma, which they have named the Burmese snub-nosed (Rhinopithecus strykeri). Local hunters provided them with skulls and skin, leading to the find. Scientists estimate the population numbers 260-330 monkeys.

A rare white elephant was captured in the jungles of Myanmar and has been transported to the capital, where the 38-year-old animal will live out its days caged in front of a temple. The country's military leadership named her Bhaddavati.

Former Star editor and Jessica Coen enemy Joe Dolce is apparently knee-deep in some freelance Journalismism, writing a piece in Culture & Travel about a trip to Myanmar. There's not even any dead celebrities there! But there are some dead citizens once in a while, which has Joe "contemplating the ethics of traveling to a country with an oppressive regime." We can think of no one better to judge. [WWD]