Angelina Jolie has joined Burma’s opposition leader and pro-democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, in sitting down with female workers to learn more about their dire conditions. Jolie, who is a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is on a four-day visit to the Southeast Asian nation. During her meeting with the factory workers on the outskirts of an industrial zone in Burma’s largest city, Rangoon, Jolie and Suu Kyi witnessed the conditions the women live in, mostly low-cost hostels. Jolie also toured the factory. She traveled last week to Kachin state, home to more than 10,000 displaced people since a cease-fire between Burma’s government and ethnic rebels broke down in 2011. According to her trip details, it is unlikely that Jolie will be able to travel to western Rakhine state, where more than 100,000 Muslim minority Rohingya live in apartheidlike conditions in camps. It is Jolie’s first visit to Burma, which only recently emerged from decades of military rule. More than a dozen ethnic minority groups, mostly in Burma’s border areas, have been fighting for greater autonomy since the country attained independence from the United Kingdom 67 years ago. Recently, world attention has turned to the plight of stateless Rohingya Muslims who have been trafficked from Burma and Bangladesh aboard overcrowded boats.
Dolly Parton wants the coming TV movie about her life growing up poor in Appalachia to show viewers the kind of family she thinks is missing on television today. Parton, 69, is working with NBC on the TV movie, which she expects will be coming out later this year for the winter holidays, based on her hit song “Coat of Many Colors.” Eight-year-old actress Alyvia Lind has been cast to play the young Parton in the movie set in the 1950s in East Tennessee. Parton may appear as well. “It really just shows family,” Parton said. “I think we’re missing that. I don’t know if people beside me miss shows like the Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons. But it’s kinda like that. It’s just the simple life back then, back when.” The 1971 autobiographical track is about how Parton’s mother stitched together a winter coat out of scraps of fabric, but how other children mocked her for the makeshift coat.