Word: burma
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...centuries, some of the very best jade-a mineral called jadeite-has come from Kachin state in northern Burma. Officially, Burmese President Ne Win's socialist government controls the mining and export of jade; in fact, much of the trade is operated by chieftains of eastern Burma's fiercely independent Shan state, Chinese warlords left over from Kuomintang forces that fled south from China in the late 1940s and various tribesmen in southern Burma who have never acknowledged the rule of Rangoon. All these groups long depended for most of their cash income not on jade...
...those who deal in it, jade is a gamble. What leaves Burma seems mostly to be rocks, occasionally dotted with a tantalizing protrusion of green. When the rocks reach Thailand, after a journey of up to three days by truck, mule, boat and human porter, Chinese buyers guess how much jade, and what kind, may lie hidden beneath the drab surface of each stone. A skillful or lucky buyer can pay perhaps $5 per Ib. for rock that may yield thousands of dollars in jade...
...high on the lists. For India, contenders included Phillips Talbot, president of the Asia Society, and Robert Goheen, former president of Princeton; for Japan, Marshall Green, one of State's foremost Asian experts and a former Ambassador to Indonesia and Australia, and Arthur Hummel, a former Ambassador to Burma and Ethiopia and lately assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific Affairs...
Amin had been the heavyweight boxing champion of the Ugandan army for ten years. More important, he fought with the British in Burma during World War II and in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion (which he described as "the finest physical training a footballer could have"), and for five years he was the chief of staff of Uganda's armed forces...
Like many South American artists and writers, Neruda followed a course throughout his life that included diplomatic duty--first in Ceylon, Burma and other parts of then-very distant Asia, and then in Spain during the days of the Republic. It was in that latter time that he encountered the people--the young, political poets of Spain--and the passions of the Spanish Civil War. Both were poetic milestones that marked a profound change in his writing...