A 15-ton jade stone has been unearthed in Kachin State’s Hpakant Township, according to The New Light of Myanmar. “The jade stone is 20 square feet in football shape,” the state-run daily reported on Thursday. The valuable stone is being guarded by servicemen from a local army battalion and officials from Hpakant’s Jade Office. Burma lays claim to possessing the world’s largest jade stone, a 3,000-ton behemoth that was discovered in 2000, also in Hpakant. The country does a brisk trade in jade, a market estimated by the Harvard Ash Center to be worth about US$8 billion in 2011.