Arakan Army Chief Htun Myat Naing’s Interview

(Rajeev Bhattacharyya’s post from the DIPLOMAT on 04 May 2026.)

Arakan Army Chief Twan Mrat Naing on Talks With the Myanmar Government, and Relations With India and Bangladesh: “The military government wants to negotiate from a position of strength but we will not succumb to such pressure.”

Arakan Army (AA) and United League of Arakan (ULA) Chief Twan Mrat Naing gives an interview to Rajeev Bhattacharyya at an undisclosed location somewhere in Myanmar’s Arakan region, on March 2, 2026.

The Arakan Army (AA) and its political wing, the United League of Arakan (ULA), are among the largest revolutionary organizations in Myanmar currently battling the government. Seventeen years after it was formed in 2009, the AA controls almost 90 percent of Arakan, the narrow coastal region on the Bay of Bengal in the western region of Myanmar.

The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies

(Steven Poole’s post from the GUARDIAN UK Book Review on 18 Jan 2019.)

The Demon in the Machine by Paul Davies review – what is life? A new theory, which centres on information, is providing some answers in this lucid but speculative exposition.

In 1943 the great physicist Erwin Schrödinger, of both-dead-and-alive-cat fame, gave a series of lectures at Trinity College Dublin, published the next year as his book What Is Life? He supposed that genes must take the form of a “huge molecule” containing a “miniature code” to direct the subsequent development of the organism.

Francis Crick and James Watson, inspired by Schrödinger’s work, later proved him right when they, along with Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins, discovered the structure of DNA.

But Schrödinger’s central question remains unanswered. There is still no agreed-on definition of what life is, let alone how it started. Maybe, some suggest, there are biology-specific laws of nature that we have yet to identify. Indeed, Schrödinger himself argued that “living matter, while not eluding the ‘laws of physics’ as established up to date, is likely to involve ‘other laws of physics’ hitherto unknown”.

Zhou Qunfei: The Founder of Lens Technology

            (Alvin Huang’s post from the FACEBOOK on 16 May2026.)

Touch your phone screen right now. Feel how smooth it is. There's a decent chance the glass under your fingertip was made by a woman who grew up raising pigs and ducks in a village in Hunan province, dropped out of school at 16, and took a factory job making watch lenses for less than a dollar a day.

Her name is Zhou Qunfei. She's the founder of Lens Technology, the company that makes the cover glass for Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Tesla. She's worth over US$18 billion. She's the world's fourth richest self-made woman. And the entire thing started with a resignation letter.

Zhou was born in 1970 in Xiangxiang, Hunan, the youngest of three children in a family shaped by loss. Before she was born, her father, a former soldier, lost a finger and most of his eyesight in an industrial accident.

He supported the family by weaving bamboo baskets, making chairs, and repairing bicycles. Her mother died when she was five. The girl helped her family raise animals for food and whatever small income they could manage.

Chinese In Australia Will Be Forced Into Citizenship!

     (Kos Samara’s post from the FACEBOOK on 14 May2026.)

(Opposition Leader) Angus Taylor’s Budget in reply. Why has he just turned the blow torch on Chinese Australians? “You cannot access certain government services (such as Age Pension, Dole, and Carer Allowances, etc.) if you are not an Australian citizen, even if you are granted permanent residency.”

The core issue is simple: China does not recognise dual nationality. Under Article 3 of China’s Nationality Law, China does not recognise dual nationality for any Chinese national. Article 9 goes further, any Chinese national who has settled abroad and voluntarily acquires foreign nationality automatically loses their Chinese nationality.

No other major country Australia takes migrants from has this strict a rule. So for a China-born Chinese Australian, taking Australian citizenship is not an administrative step. It is, in legal terms, a severing.

More India-borns Than UK-borns in Australia!

              (Exclusive Minds’ post from the FACEBOOK on 01 May 2026.)

Indians have officially overtaken the English to become Australia’s largest overseas-born migrant group for the first time on record

According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data, 971,020 Australia residents were born in India, narrowly ahead of 970,950 born in England. The shift may look small in numbers, but symbolically, it is huge. For decades, England was Australia’s dominant migrant birthplace outside Australia. Now, India has moved to the top.

The data also shows how fast Australia’s Indian-origin population has grown. In 2015, around 449,000 Australian residents were India-born. By June 2025, that number had more than doubled to 971,020, making India the biggest contributor to Australia’s overseas-born population growth over the past decade.

Is Aung San Suu Kyi Already Dead?

            (Staff post from the MIZZIMA NEWS on 23 December 2025.)

The Myanmar Junta’s Greatest Fear Is Not Aung San Suu Kyi Alive – It Is Her Dead: A question is now being asked openly across international media, diplomatic briefings, and human rights forums: will Aung San Suu Kyi ever be free?

Because the world delayed demanding an answer, another question now carries unavoidable urgency: is she even alive? Aung San Suu Kyi is not a marginal political figure. She is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the democratically elected leader of Myanmar, and one of the most globally recognized symbols of nonviolent resistance of the last half-century. Her party won the country’s last free national election in a landslide. For this, she was erased.

Since the military coup of February 2021, she has been held in windowless solitary confinement, in a prison cell whose location remains undisclosed, cut off from lawyers, family, independent doctors, and the outside world. For nearly three years there has been no verified proof of life – no images, no independent medical confirmation, no credible access by neutral observers. This is not neglect. It is grotesque behavior by a regime that understands precisely what it is doing.

Expansion of Eromanga Refinery in Queensland, Australia

      (Jay Carstens’s post from the ABC NEWS AUS on 11April 2026.)

Expansion on cards at Eromanga refinery as Queensland looks to produce more oil: As Queensland looks for more oil, a small outback refinery has proven critical for the exploration process and now expansion is on the cards.

The Inland Oil Refinery has operated in Eromanga for more than 40 years, creating small amounts of underground mining fuel that is sold to the mining sector. The refinery and its supplier say expansion is a genuine possibility as the Taroom Trough oil field opens up.

In the outback town of Eromanga, about 1,000 kilometres west of Brisbane, lies a small and relatively unknown oil refinery. Inland Oil Refinery (IOR) has operated in the south-west town since 1986, but now could be on the cusp of expansion as the Queensland government pushes to speed up oil projects.

Outback oilfield that could save Australia

          (David Wu’s post from the NEWS.COM.AU on 09 April 2026.)

No gas at the Aussie servos!

A remote Queensland basin could be the answer to our oil supply problems – but environmental laws are preventing it from being fast-tracked. Experts believe a trough in remote Queensland, roughly the size of Singapore, could have enough oil to eliminate Australia’s heavy reliance on crude imports.

The country’s dependence on petrol and diesel imports from our Asian neighbours has been exposed by the Middle East war, with bowsers running empty nationwide. Supply is still a major talking point, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese trying to reassure Australians stock levels currently in and arriving to the country remain strong.

But Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has argued Mr Albanese only needs to look domestically in the Sunshine State’s backyard for Australia’s own future oil source.

Taroom Trough Oilfield in Queensland, Australia

        (Angela Smith’s post from the AFR Australia on 08 April 2026.)

Oil explorers say Queensland’s Taroom could fill nation’s refineries: Queensland’s Taroom Trough could fill the country’s refineries and leave enough oil available for export, according to the chief executive of the largest holder of acreage in what has become a major energy exploration play.

Stuart Nicholls, who leads Elixir Energy, said all the signs pointed to the trough – an area the size of Singapore west of Brisbane – being able to produce enough oil to eliminate the need for refineries to import crude.

The Queensland government is urging the federal government to accelerate the processing of environmental approvals needed to extract oil in the trough to avoid years of delays in production and avert a repeat of the fuel crisis that has developed since the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

“This is an opportunity to deliver liquid gold, and we have no intention of wasting it,” Premier David Crisafulli said after travelling to Shell’s acreage in the trough. “What a golden opportunity in this country to get back to a time when we are prepared to drill, and refine and store our own fuel.”