I’M SITTING on the balcony of the View Point Hotel in Nyaungshwe overlooking the jetty where most of the skiffs and narrow timber boats leave for Inle Lake, one of Myanmar’s biggest attractions.

Navy ships from Indonesia and Malaysia are scouring south-east Asian waters for boats believed to be carrying thousands of migrants, as a senior US diplomat said Burma needs to shoulder some responsibility for the crisis.

Gaelic games flower in Asian country once reluctant to embrace the outside world.

Buddhist mobs hurling bricks attacked two mosques and torched more than 100 homes in central Burma, killing one person and injuring at least nine more.

From Cancun to the Costa Navarino, here we tip ten of the top destinations to visit this year. And it’s not all armchair travel, either...

Lavish fireworks displays have ushered in 2013 across the Asia-Pacific region and Europe is holding scaled-back festivities in the hope of beginning a new year that will be kinder to its battered economies.

MARCH

Burma’s government said today it would no longer censor local media outlets, the most dramatic move yet towards allowing freedom of expression in the long-repressed nation.

Crowds have turned out in cities across Burma to publicly commemorate the 24th anniversary of pro-democracy protests, which for the first time won approval, and partial funding, from the government.

Burma democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Norway yesterday to finally deliver her Nobel lecture — more than two decades after winning the peace prize for her dogged campaign to free her people.

Supporters of Burma’s opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi erupted in euphoric cheers today after her party said she won a parliamentary seat in a landmark election, setting the stage for her to take public office for the first time.

Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has suspended her campaigning a week ahead of Burma’s by-elections after falling ill.

Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has met Thailand’s prime minister in her first ever audience with a head of government from the region, her political party said.

Burma’s repressive government was allowing access to banned news websites today for the first time in years, including several operated by exiled dissidents.

Hundreds of supporters of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi gathered at the headquarters of her political party today as one of its leaders said an order for her release had been signed by the ruling junta.

FOREIGN journalists will not be allowed into Burma to cover the military-ruled country’s first election in 20 years, election officials said yesterday, issuing the latest restriction for an election widely criticised as a sham.

The highest-ranking American diplomat to visit Burma in 14 years offered improved relations if the country's military regime moves toward democracy.

A BURMESE court yesterday rejected an appeal by pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi against her extended house arrest, just days after the US re-engaged with the country’s ruling junta.

A 5.6-magnitude earthquake shook parts of north-western Burma today, damaging Buddhist temples believed to date to the 11th century.

Lawyers for detained Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said they would file an appeal today against the criminal conviction that put her under house arrest for 18 more months.

An American on trial for secretly entering the house of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is in hospital after suffering seizures, medical sources said today.

Burma’s military rulers tightened security in Yangon today as officials gathered to commemorate the death, 62 years ago, of the father of jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

A 2,300-year-old Burmese temple building collapsed while workers were attempting to repair it, killing at least two people and injuring scores more, security officials said today.

AS AUNG San Suu Kyi’s trial enters its second week, taxi driver Aung Thein offered a widely held view on its eventual outcome.

BURMA’S opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has pleaded not guilty at her trial and blamed the regime’s lax security for allowing an American intruder to swim uninvited to her lakeside home, her lawyers said.

The middle-aged American man whose night-time swim to visit Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi may cost her a chance at freedom came into fuzzy focus today, as a court showed a home movie he allegedly shot at her lakeside residence.

PRO-DEMOCRACY leader Aung San Suu Kyi went on trial, as hundreds of riot police ringed Burma’s most notorious prison to block protesters from proceedings that could send her to jail for five years.

BURMA needs at least €630 million ($1 billion) over the next three years to put the survivors of Cyclone Nargis back on their feet, a UN-led report said yesterday in the first comprehensive assessment of damage caused by the disaster that killed more than 84,000 people.

Foreign aid agencies urged Burma's junta today urgently to clarify rules for operating in the country's cyclone-devastated areas, after the regime promised to open its doors to the international community.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the Burmese junta's decision to allow "all aid workers" into the country to help cyclone survivors, after weeks of refusing access to foreign relief experts.

Burma’s ruling junta has agreed to allow “all aid workers” into the country to help cyclone survivors, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said today.

A World Bank top official said the bank will not give financial aid or a loan to cyclone-hit Burma because of outstanding debts.

The leader of Burma’s increasingly isolated ruling junta made his first public visit to a relief camp today as state media lashed out at swelling international criticism that it was closing the door on aid to millions in desperate need following Cyclone Nargis.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is sending UN humanitarian chief John Holmes to Burma after he failed to sway the leaders of the cyclone-hit country to act more swiftly in helping victims.

Lack of clean water will be the biggest killer in cyclone-hit Burma in the coming days, the international Red Cross warned today.

A second storm was heading towards Burma’s devastated Irrawaddy delta region tonight.

The United States was launching its first relief airlift to cyclone-hit Burma today after prolonged negotiations with the country’s military rulers.

A massive international aid effort for devastated Burma was being kept on hold by the country’s secretive ruling military toda

A BURMA state radio station yesterday said close to 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for in a single town after the devastating Tropical Cyclone Nargis swept through.

The death toll from the cyclone that ripped through Burma could reach 10,000, the foreign minister said today.

The UN’s envoy to Burma suggested today that the country’s military rulers should be offered incentives to move toward democratic reforms.

A top UN envoy arrived in Thailand today to renew efforts to negotiate political reconciliation in neighbouring Burma where the ruling junta crushed peaceful pro-democracy protests and continues to detain dissidents.