YANGON // A large metal cylinder thought to be from a Chinese satellite or aircraft fell from the sky and slammed into a jade mining area in northern Myanmar, state media reported on Friday.
The large barrel-shaped object, 4.5 metres long and just over a metre in diameter, crashed onto property owned by a jade mining company in Kachin State’s Hpakant township on Thursday, reported the Global New Light of Myanmar.
Another smaller piece of metal bearing Chinese writing tore through the roof of a house in a nearby village at the same time, the paper said. No one was injured.
“The metal objects are assumed to be part of a satellite or the engine parts of a plane or missile,” the Global New Light said, adding that authorities were still trying to confirm their origin.
Pictures circulated on social media showed what appeared to be pieces of technological equipment and wiring attached to the inside of the vast cylinder.
Local residents reported hearing a loud bang before the hunk of metal landed and then proceeded to bounce some 50 metres across the mining area before coming to rest in the mud.
The bizarre events came the same day Chinese state media reported Beijing had recently launched a satellite into space.
“It could not be confirmed whether the launch of the satellite and the metal objects found in Kachin state were related,” the Global New Light said.
Hpakant is the centre of Myanmar’s murky multibillion dollar jade industry, which feeds a voracious demand for the stone in neighbouring China.
A string of deadly landslides in the mine-pocketed area have killed scores over the past year.
* Agence France-Presse
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UK-EU trade at a glance
EU fishing vessels guaranteed access to UK waters for 12 years
Co-operation on security initiatives and procurement of defence products
Youth experience scheme to work, study or volunteer in UK and EU countries
Smoother border management with use of e-gates
Cutting red tape on import and export of food
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.