Burma maintains that it shot and killed a guerrilla thought to be a Rohingya militant, but Bangladesh says one of its border guards is missing and wants to identify the body.

Troops clashed at the Burma-Bangladesh border again as tensions boil over while Burmese soldiers were returning the body of a Bangladeshi killed in a skirmish two days before.

In a speech on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama pointed to “American leadership” as a driver of democratic reform in Burma.

The jailing of Zaw Pe, a journalist for the DVB, and the imprisonment of several journalists from Unity journal is a typical example of government doubletalk on press freedom and political reforms. This is the real nature of the still military controlled “civilian” government. It fears transparency.

Following a few months of relative quiet, the defamation case against British researcher Andy Hall is back in motion.

The EU lays out a list of 21 “benchmarks” which it expects the Burmese authorities to fulfill, including: cooperation with the UN; the release of all political prisoners; the strengthening of rule of law; greater media freedom; and “effective measures to combat intolerance, communal violence and hate speech”.