The rig explosion occurred about 20 hours after Halliburton finished its cement job, but the company says its workers tested it and everything looked fine.

FORBES

In little more than a decade, the country has become by far the biggest producer in the world of every industrial commodity from steel to glass to cement, and the finished products it exports to other countries are gradually matching and surpassing the sophistication of items produced indigenously in those countries.

FORBES: Inside Pentagon, Growing Alarm Over China's Military Prowess

As the junta is also thought nearly to have finished drafting principles for a new constitution that would, under the guise of democracy, cement its grip on power, it will seek to avoid potentially destabilising actions which the release of Aung San Suu Kyi would undoubtedly constitute, in the generals' eyes until its self-serving political "reforms" are more advanced.

ECONOMIST: The junta extends the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi