Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · 9h

“As the military attempts to solidify power with a stage-managed election later this year, it is intensifying an already brutal campaign against pockets of resistance," writes Joe Freeman of @amnesty.org
www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Myanmar: ‘Deadly attack’ on festival highlights paraglider threat to civilians

Responding to reports of an aerial attack by the Myanmar military that is said to have killed upwards of 20 civilians, including children, when multiple bombs were dropped from motorized paragliders, ...

www.amnesty.org

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · 9h

Myanmar has faded from global attention, but its people continue to endure excruciating violence on a daily basis. Monday, the military junta conducted another round of deadly airstrikes, targeting a peaceful candlelight vigil on the Buddhist holiday of Thadingyut (1/2)
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Myanmar: At least 24 killed as army paraglider bombs Buddhist festival

Locals tell the BBC the carnage has made it hard to identify victims of the military attack.

www.bbc.com

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Giancarlo Fiorella @giancarlofiorella.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote about how vicarious trauma can find you when you least expect it, through two experiences that I've had while working with images as an open source researcher.

Neither were graphic.

Both had a serious impact on me.

giancarlofiorella.com/2025/10/04/w...

When Trauma Finds You

Sometimes, trauma finds you while you’re waiting for it, when your body is tense anticipating its appearance. Your guard is up. Somehow, you soften its blows. Sometimes, though, trauma finds …

giancarlofiorella.com

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · 10d

...For Pakistan, it’s a chance to claim its mineral narrative and tie it to national pride and legacy. For the US, it’s a strategic move on the global chessboard of resource politics” - former Pakistani army general on a US-Pakistan critical minerals deal
www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/...

‘Strategic handshake’: How Pakistan is wooing Trump with critical minerals

Minerals diplomacy opens doors, but questions linger over Pakistan’s capacity to benefit from the $500m deal.

www.aljazeera.com

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · 10d

“This is a strategic handshake wrapped in economic opportunity, resource diplomacy and symbolic recalibration...
“This isn’t just about rocks in the ground. It is about who controls the future’s building blocks... (2/3)
www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/...

‘Strategic handshake’: How Pakistan is wooing Trump with critical minerals

Minerals diplomacy opens doors, but questions linger over Pakistan’s capacity to benefit from the $500m deal.

www.aljazeera.com

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · 10d

Important piece from Abid Hussain at Al Jazeera on how access to critical minerals including rare earths is impacting diplomacy between the US and Pakistan (1/3).
www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/...

‘Strategic handshake’: How Pakistan is wooing Trump with critical minerals

Minerals diplomacy opens doors, but questions linger over Pakistan’s capacity to benefit from the $500m deal.

www.aljazeera.com

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Edith Mirante @edithmirante.bsky.social · 19d

1. This (recent) History Thread is about Air Attacks in Myanmar (Burma.) Since Feb. 2021 coup, military regime has constantly deployed bombing & strafing by jet & helicopter, routinely against civilian targets. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Reuters @reuters.com · 20d

Scammed into scamming: Across Southeast Asia, a multibillion-dollar fraud industry has emerged, staffed in part by victims of trafficking reut.rs/4mobjPE

They traveled to Thailand. They wound up cyber scam slaves in Myanmar.

A multibillion-dollar fraud industry has taken root across Southeast Asia, fueled partly by trafficking victims. In lawless zones along the Myanmar-Thai border, Chinese-run compounds force thousands t...

reut.rs

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

The New Humanitarian @newhumanitarian.bsky.social · 23d

Our investigation is now public.
It documents how, between Jan 2024 and July 2025, over 2,600 people seeking aid were killed and 14,576 others injured in Gaza.

That’s 4% of all deaths and nearly 10% of all wounded from Israel’s war in Gaza.

EXCLUSIVE: Israel has killed nearly 3,000 Gaza aid seekers

Our interactive database shows nearly 200 attacks, and a sharp uptick since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations on 27 May.

buff.ly

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

CNA @channelnewsasia.bsky.social · 26d

Military airstrike on schools in western Myanmar kills at least 18 people, most of them students

More than 20 others were injured in the night-time attack on the Thayet Thapin village in Kyauktaw township, an area controlled by the ethnic Arakan Army, said an armed group and local media reports.

www.channelnewsasia.com

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Myanmar Now (English Version) @myanmar-now.bsky.social · 26d

A warplane dropped two 500-pound bombs on a Kyauktaw Township high school as students slept, part of a wider campaign of air raids across Rakhine State

Read more:
myanmar-now.org/en/news/junt...

Junta airstrike on Rakhine school kills at least 22, mostly students

A warplane dropped two 500-pound bombs on a Kyauktaw Township high school as students slept, part of a wider campaign of air raids across Rakhine State

myanmar-now.org

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 31

A few days late, sharing this moving rap video to commemmorare Rohingya genocide remembrance day.

8 Years without Justice

Song, lyrics, recording & vocals: Rohel Khan
Cinematography, editing & music management: Khin Maung Thein aka Abdullah Bawshur
youtu.be/nmJvYgT04g0?...

8 Years Without Justice – A Tribute to the Rohingya | English Rap Song | Rohel Khan

YouTube video by Rohel Khan Rapper (Rohingya Music Video )

youtu.be

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 31

And one from the Mizo dancer Moya Fanai in Yangon

Song: Lasi Te Lal
Artist: Nanaute Hmar
Video: Jue Jue Myat Nwe

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 31

Adding to this thread, a video from the Mon dancer Bobby One and Only.

Title: ခေ (Eras)
Piano: Austin B.Chen
Video: ZanLatt
Venue: Maw Yon Cafe

"As a young artist, I’ve always believed in looking back at our cultural roots - not just to remember, but to understand where we come from."

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

The retired Lisu hunter described being flown to Mandalay by helicopter in the 1980s to shoot an elephant for a military colonel.

"He gave me 20,000 kyats...[&] a certificate to hold a gun. At the time, 1 viss of elephant tusks was only 1500 kyats. Since then, I have the permit to own & hold a gun"

Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

In 2022, my teammate Jaw Tu Hkawng interviewed a retired Lisu hunter. He described hunting elephants with poisoned arrows & percussion-lock rifles in Kachin's northern forests and selling their tusks by weight in viss, a Myanmar unit of measurement.

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

"I’m so happy to be with the elephants & they're so happy if I visit them...we have been together for many years."

"Both [of my elephants] are bachelors. One is Awng Mai. It’s the name of an eldest son in Kachin. The 2nd one is Naw Ja, the 2nd son."

- 79-year-old mahout I interviewed in 2019

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

In 2019, I interviewed a 79-year-old man from Tanai, Kachin State who served in the elephant brigade of the Kachin Independence Army from 1964 to 1992 and then became a mahout. He had 2 elephants of his own and provided one for each of his 8 children.

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

Another impressive history thread from Edith Mirante. Over the years, elephants have also come up from time to time in my reporting on Kachin. A few anecdotes here:

Edith Mirante @edithmirante.bsky.social · Aug 27

1. This History Thread is about the elephants of Burma (Myanmar) in war & peace. These highly intelligent, social animals have survived brutal interactions with humans, conflict zones & habitat loss. #WhatsHappeningInMyanmar 🐘🐘🐘 #elephants

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Pulitzer Center @pulitzercenter.org · Jul 30

Brazil is serving shark meat in thousands of schools, hospitals, prisons and other institutions, raising serious concerns.

A report by #ORN Fellow @philjaco.bsky.social, #RIN Fellow @bykarlamendes.bsky.social, and Pulitzer Center's @kuangkeng.bsky.social for @mongabay.com.

👉 bit.ly/40EuQ6E

That ‘Fish’ on the Menu? In Brazil’s Schools and Prisons, It’s Often Shark

Brazil, the world’s top importer of shark meat, is feeding much of it to preschoolers, hospital patients, military staff, public workers and more via government procurements, Mongabay has found. This....

pulitzercenter.org

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

chloelewis.bsky.social @chloelewis.bsky.social · Aug 28

Nurdles: less cute than they sound

WATERSHED Investigations @watershed-i.bsky.social · Aug 28

Their name sounds like a cartoon character, + little balls of plastic seem harmless enough - but the ecological damage nurdles cause when they spill in the ocean can be immense - absorbing contaminants in the water, mistakenly eaten by fish, birds + animals.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Buoyant, the size of a lentil and almost impossible to recover: how nurdles are polluting the oceans

Millions of the tiny plastic pellets are being washed up on the coast of Kerala in India in the latest in a series of global spills, as plastic treaty talks continue in Geneva

www.theguardian.com

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

For more of my collaborative reporting on Myanmar's rare earth mining boom, please visit my Rainforest Investigations Network project page on the @pulitzercenter.org website:

pulitzercenter.org/projects/mya...

Myanmar Unearthed: The Dark Side of the Global Energy Transition

This project investigates the environmental, social, and economic injustices underpinning the global transition away from fossil fuels, through the lens of rare earth mining in Myanmar. Over the past....

pulitzercenter.org

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

We investigated the local business networks in the rare earth mining hub of Pangwa before it was seized by the Kachin Independence Army last year, and what happened to them since.

Original English version here:
pulitzercenter.org/stories/back...

www.frontiermyanmar.net/mm/%E1%80%87...

ဇခုန်တိန့်ယိန်းနှင့် သူ့၏ တကျော့ပြန်အင်ပါယာ

စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ မဟာမိတ် ပြည်သူ့စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင် စခုန်တိန့်ယိန်းနှင့်အဖွဲ့သည် ဒေသသယံဇာတဖြစ်သော မြေရှားသတ္တု တူးဖော်ရောင်းချပြီး ကြွယ်ဝချမ်းသာလာခဲ့ကြသည်။ ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ် ကချင်လွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်မတော် ၏ ယင်းဒေသကို သ...

www.frontiermyanmar.net

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Emily Fishbein @emilyfishbein11.bsky.social · Aug 28

1/3 The Burmese translation of my recent article with Jauman Naw is now online. Published with support from the @pulitzercenter.org's Rainforest Investigations Network, in collaboration with @justiceformyanmar.org & Myanmar Witness. Additional reporting by Zau
www.frontiermyanmar.net/mm/%E1%80%87...

ဇခုန်တိန့်ယိန်းနှင့် သူ့၏ တကျော့ပြန်အင်ပါယာ

စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ မဟာမိတ် ပြည်သူ့စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင် စခုန်တိန့်ယိန်းနှင့်အဖွဲ့သည် ဒေသသယံဇာတဖြစ်သော မြေရှားသတ္တု တူးဖော်ရောင်းချပြီး ကြွယ်ဝချမ်းသာလာခဲ့ကြသည်။ ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ် ကချင်လွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်မတော် ၏ ယင်းဒေသကို သ...

www.frontiermyanmar.net

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Reposted by Emily Fishbein

Justice For Myanmar @justiceformyanmar.org · Aug 28

Press Release 📣 Justice For Myanmar and ICJ Norway filed complaint with Norwegian police against Telenor for violating sanctions

✅ Read the press release on our website here 👉🏽 buff.ly/lk3B35u

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