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Myanmar lifts bans on foreign news websites
Aung Hla Tun
Reuters
15 September 2011

YANGON | Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:34am EDT

(Reuters) - Myanmar lifted bans on prominent news websites on Thursday, including some run by critics of the army-dominated government, and unblocked online video portal YouTube, the latest signs of possible reforms in one of Asia's most reclusive states.

Bans were lifted on websites for several news organizations including Reuters, along with The Bangkok Post, Singapore Straits Times and other regional newspapers, and the Burmese language services of the Voice of America, British Broadcasting Corp and the exiled-run Democratic Voice of Burma.

Reuters and several other news websites were blocked at the peak of an army crackdown on monk-led protests in 2007. Since then, those sites displayed a common message from state telecoms group Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT).

"This website is blocked by the MPT," it said.

That disappeared on Thursday, a day after a U.S. special envoy ended his first trip to the country. It also coincided with the United Nations' "International Day of Democracy," an event celebrated by Nobel laureate and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the commercial capital Yangon.

"Changes are on the horizon in Myanmar," she told supporters outside her party's headquarters.

However, television remains strictly controlled by the government and foreign journalists are still mostly barred from legally reporting in the country. Most expect Western sanctions to remain in place until an estimated 2,100 political prisoners are released.

Every song, book, cartoon and planned piece of art still requires approval by censors rooting out political messages and criticisms of Myanmar's authoritarian system.

One editor of a weekly newspaper described the reopening of the websites as "a big improvement in the media policy of the new government.

"We can have access to these websites, but the connection is still rather slow most of the time," he said, declining to be identified by name. "Let's wait to see how long it will last."

Rare overtures by Myanmar's rulers toward liberalization have stirred speculation of possible reforms in the resource-rich country, blighted by 49 years of military rule and starved of capital.

Myanmar last year held its first elections in two decades after which the military nominally handed power to civilians -- a process widely criticized as a sham by the West.

Other overtures include calls for peace with armed ethnic separatists, presidential meetings with foreign delegations, some tolerance of criticism and more communication with Suu Kyi, who was freed last year from 15 years of house arrest.

In one gesture, Myanmar's state-run newspapers last month dropped back-page banners attacking Western media.

(Writing by Jason Szep; Editing by Ron popeski)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-myanmar-media-idUSTRE78E2QJ20110915

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 Myanmar authorities unblock some banned websites
The Associated Press
15 September 2011

Myanmar's repressive government was allowing access to banned news websites Friday for the first time in years, including several operated by exiled dissidents.

The unannounced move is the latest step taken by the Southeast Asian nation's new leaders to boost hope, however faint, that authoritarian rule here could finally be easing.

Censors this week unblocked the websites of international media outlets including the Voice of America and the British Broadcasting Corp., as well the Democratic Voice of Burma, Radio Free Asia and the video file sharing site YouTube.

Since authorities introduced the Internet here about a decade ago, Myanmar - also known as Burma - has aggressively monitored online activities and routinely blocked websites seen as critical to the government.

It has also punished journalists with harsh jail terms; the Democratic Voice of Burma says around 25 journalists are currently detained in Myanmar, 17 of them its own.

Many news websites have been blocked since 2007, when the military junta launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, but local Internet users have been able to circumvent the ban by using proxy servers.

Wai Phyo, chief editor of a prominent private Weekly Eleven news journal, welcomed the government move, saying it would allow journalists to be of "greater service to the people."

Shawn W. Crispin, Southeast Asia Representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said less that 0.3 percent of the population in Myanmar has access to the media, however. Allowing them full Internet access "is hardly a noteworthy move toward more press freedom," he said.

"There are still regulations on the books that will allow authorities to arrest and charge anyone who dares to access these sites in Burma's highly regulated and strictly policed public Internet cafes," Crispin told The Associated Press on Friday in Bangkok. "These sites may now be available in Burma, but Internet users risk arrest and even prison for accessing them."

"Until Burma's military-backed regime stops pre-censoring the local media and releases all the journalists it holds behind bars," Crispin said, "Burma will remain one of the most restricted media environments in the world."

This week, journalist Sithu Zeya of the Norway-based news broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma was sentenced to a 10-year-prison term for circulating material online that could "damage tranquillity and unity in the government" under the country's Electronic Act, Reporters Without Borders said.

Sithu Zeya had already been sentenced in 2010 to eight years behind bars after he was caught photographing the aftermath of a grenade attack in the country's main city of Yangon.

This week, the new U.S. special representative to Myanmar ended a brief visit to Myanmar, saying America plans to keep its sanctions on the military-dominated country for now, but Washington will respond positively if the new civilian government makes genuine reforms.

President Thein Sein said in his inaugural address in March that the role of the media should be respected. In August, three state-run newspapers stopped running back-page slogans blasting the foreign media for the first time in years.

Associated Press writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report from Bangkok.

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Burma Lifts Ban on International Websites
By SAI ZOM HSENG
Irrawaddy
Friday, September 16, 2011

Burma, a country with some of the most repressive Internet restrictions in the world, has lifted its ban on international news websites, exiled Burmese news websites and YouTube.

An internet café owner from Kyauk Myaung Township in Rangoon said that users have been able to directly access the news websites and YouTube for two weeks.

“Since the websites became directly accessible, the users have enjoyed watching videos, listening to songs, watching movies, etc. But it’s not very strange to them, because the users have previously been using proxy sites to access these sites,” said the café owner, who gave his name as Zaw Zaw (a pseudonym).

Zaw Zaw said that the authorities controlling the Internet have become more flexible. “It seems that the new government is flexible with the use of the Internet. During the past regime, we had to make a list of websites which were accessed by users and submit the list to the SB [Special Branch police department]. But now, no more instructions are coming from them.”

He added that although the users are watching YouTube, the connection speed is still slow. But during the recent visit to Burma by the UN Special Rapporteur, the Internet speed was faster than ever.

In Burma, the internet infrastructure is controlled by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (MPT) and the Yadanapon Teleport. Despite the ban being lifted, direct access to the previously prohibited sites is still sporadic, and some users have speculated that the two providers are not always allowing access at the same time.

Also as a result of the sporadic access, some users wonder whether the lifting of the ban is only temporary.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, a Rangoon-based journalist said, “Some internet cafés are using the MPT server and some are using the Yadanapon server. This means that the users can access the international news websites in some internet cafés but not in others.”

Burma ranked second to last in Internet freedom in a report called “Freedom on the Net 2011,” released by Washington-based information watchdog Freedom House.

The report, issued in April, said, “There has been gradual improvement in access to ICTs [Information and Communication Technologies] over the past three years, but the [Burmese] junta has also aggressively targeted users who are involved in anti-government activities or have contact with foreign news media.”

When the Saffron Revolution broke out in 2007, the international community was made aware of the brutality of the ex-regime through Internet postings by the citizen journalists of Burma. Afterwards, the ex-regime restricted the use of the Internet and access to certain websites.

In its Press Freedom Index 2010, Reporters Without Borders ranked Burma as an “Enemy of the Internet.” on Oct. 20, 2010, it listed Burma as one of the 10 worst countries in the world to work as a journalist.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=22093

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Online gamers crack AIDS enzyme puzzle
AFP News

 Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.

The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where -- exceptionally in scientific publishing -- both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors.

Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV.

Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.

But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that "unfolds" the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.

This is where Foldit comes in.

Developed in 2008 by the University of Washington, it is a fun-for-purpose video game in which gamers, divided into competing groups, compete to unfold chains of amino acids -- the building blocks of proteins -- using a set of online tools.

To the astonishment of the scientists, the gamers produced an accurate model of the enzyme in just three weeks.

Cracking the enzyme "provides new insights for the design of antiretroviral drugs," says the study, referring to the lifeline medication against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

It is believed to be the first time that gamers have resolved a long-standing scientific problem.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Firas Khatib of the university's biochemistry lab said in a press release.

"The ingenuity of game players is a formidable force that, if properly directed, can be used to solve a wide range of scientific problems."

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-175427752.html

One of Foldit's creators, Seth Cooper, explained why gamers had succeeded where computers had failed.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," he said.

"Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week's paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before."