The military junta in Burma is failing the most basic responsibility of any government to take care of its citizens. In the wake of the devastating typhoon that killed at least 28,000 people and left many thousands more destitute, the international community has marshaled a large-scale humanitarian response to help the millions affected by the deadly storm.

But instead of welcoming this assistance from the world, the junta has denied aid workers entry and now has seized the limited United Nations relief supplies that were sent in to help the people of Burma, forcing the UN to suspend further relief efforts. It represents a shameful failure of the government's foremost responsibility to protect its people.

Vast parts of Burma stand under water. Villages and infrastructure have been blown or washed away. Sanitation systems have broken down, as have transportation and food distribution systems. Millions are ...  

The country of Burma or Myanmar has already lost at least 25,000 of its citizens to a terrible cyclone over a week ago.

Now, with well more than a million people adversely affected by the storm's aftermath, the death toll could rise as much as tenfold if Burma's oppressive government in its paranoia about dealing with the outside world continues restricting access to foreign aid workers.

To address this situation, the Bush administration's admonitions to the Burmese junta about accepting aid are of course correct at one level but unpromising at another. The strongmen who run that country will not be impressed by such appeals to their better angels. Nor will any aid airdrops we conduct even in the absence of permission get the job done on the needed scale. Other countries' efforts will remain similarly inadequate under current circumstances.

We need an immediate U.N. Security Council decision to ...  

For international aid workers trying to reach cyclone survivors in Burma, it's a race against time to reach up to 1.5 million stricken people. To Burma's reclusive military rulers, though, the calculus of aid looks very different, and the goal remains to keep absolute control over a cowed population.

Capricious, unworldly, and often guided by soothsayers, Burma's aging clique of generals have centralized decisionmaking to such an extent that most civilian state agencies are empty shells. And decades of self-imposed isolation have bred an extreme suspicion of outsiders in a brittle, dysfunctional junta that clings to power by crushing all opposition, say Burmese and Western analysts who have studied the group for years.

That deep-seated distrust was reflected Sunday as the junta, while accepting aid, continued to bar most foreign aid workers with expertise in massive aid distribution. Burma's leaders said ...  

Police barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in hard-hit areas Tuesday, while emergency food shipments backed up at the main airport for Myanmar's biggest city.

Some storm survivors were reportedly being given spoiled or poor-quality food rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to fears that the ruling military junta in the Southeast Asian country could be misappropriating assistance.

U.N. officials warned that the threat was escalating for the 2 million people facing disease and hunger in low-lying areas battered by the storm unless relief efforts increased dramatically.

Ten days after the tempest, ...  

The United Nations, U.S. and India told Burma's military rulers to allow international aid to reach the country, where more than 1.5 million people need help after Tropical Cyclone Nargis struck 10 days ago.

The junta must "put its people's lives first,'' UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said yesterday in New York. The delay is "another reason why the world ought to be angry and condemn the government,'' President George W. Bush said in an interview with CBS Radio.

As many as 100,000 people may have died in the disaster, according to UN officials. The death toll reached 33,416 people with 29,770 missing, Burma's state radio announced late yesterday, according to China's Xinhua News Agency.

Burma, a country of 48 million people ruled by the military since 1962, has accepted a fraction of the relief offered by the world. The UN estimates that only a third of the people needing aid have received help ...  

"I can't talk now, I think I'm in danger," a reporter in Burma whispered into the phone. Click. Phones are tapped and the few foreign journalists inside Burma are operating in secret, making it dangerous and difficult to tell the story of the cyclone that has devastated the Southeast Asian country.

Covering catastrophes always carries risk in impoverished countries where disasters can cause shortages of food, clean water, outbreaks of disease and staggering death tolls. But the challenges are multiplied in Burma where the reclusive and notoriously brutal military regime does not want details of the suffering to leak out.

"This government is very paranoid, very xenophobic and they think this cyclone could undermine their credibility," said Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based magazine and Web site put out by exiled Burmese journalists.

"The military regime wants to conceal the extent of ...  

The United States has sent its first aid flight to Burma but President George W. Bush denounced the nation's military rulers over their slow response to the devastating cyclone.

"Either they are isolated or callous," Bush told CBS News radio in an interview. "There's no telling how many people have lost their lives as a result of the slow response."

He said the "world ought to be angry and condemn" the junta, which has been widely condemned for stalling the disaster relief effort.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon echoed his words, slamming the "unacceptably slow" actions of the junta and urging the generals to accelerate aid distribution.

A US military transport plane military transport plane laden with emergency supplies was permitted to land in the disaster zone and two more US flights are due to arrive on Tuesday.

"We know that it is a small salve for ...  

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis headed out of Burma's Irrawaddy delta in search of food, water and medicine, but aid workers said on Sunday that thousands will die if emergency supplies don't get through soon.

Buddhist temples and schools on the outskirts of the storm's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centers.

The U.N. humanitarian agency said in a new assessment that between 1.2 million and 1.9 million were struggling to survive in the aftermath of the storm that struck eight days ago.

"Given the gravity of the situation including the lack of food and water, some partners have reported fears for security, and violent behavior in the most severely afflicted areas," the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

It said "the number of deaths could range from 63,290 to 101,682, and 220,000 people are reported to be missing." It said "acute ...  

Beijing, China: Relief troops walked hours over rock, debris and mud in hopes of reaching the worst-hit area of an earthquake that rocked central China on Monday, killing nearly 10,000 people, state-run media reported.

Setting out from Maerkang in Sichuan Province at 8 p.m. Monday, the 100 or so troops had to travel 200 kilometers (124 miles) to go before reaching Wenchuan, the epicenter of the quake, also in the province, Xinhua reported. After seven hours, they still had 70 kilometers (43 miles) to go.

"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses, and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," the head of the unit, Li Zaiyuan, told Xinhua.

It is over a week since Cyclone Nargis brought devastation to Burma, and its people are in mourning - although there has been no official condolence from the ruling junta. Now, everyone is pointing the finger at Senior General Than Shwe, his ministers and army leaders - first, for failing to issue advanced warning of the cyclone to those living in the Irrawaddy delta region, and second, for responding so slowly to the devastation.

Most shocking, the regime stalled aid packages coming into the country and delayed issuing visas to international aid and medical workers. While the rest of the world has been eager to help, Burma's generals are only interested in consolidating their power.

And so, only a week after tens of thousands were killed, while 1.5 million remain hungry and homeless, the regime went ahead with its planned referendum to approve a new constitution at the weekend. It is the first vote in the ...  

Criticism continued last week against the Burmese military junta which went on with referendum plans in areas unaffected by the deadly cyclone. But at least one citizen said he was eager to make his mark on policy-making.

We don't know whether he voted "yes" or "no" on the new amendment to the constitution. Rigging was reportedly widespread, with voters saying they only had to sign ballot sheets already marked "yes" , according to an e-mail sent Saturday to The Jakarta Post.

Yet at least in one town a voter said there was no intimidation; some even confided that they would vote no, the source from Burma said.

A "yes" in the referendum, critics say, would only endorse clauses in the draft constitution that further justify a prolonging of the junta's power. A no vote, some say, would just as equally provide an excuse for the regime to stay in power for at least another decade, to watch over ...  

A "sham" referendum held this weekend despite the Burmese national tragedy wrought by Cyclone Nargis can expect an overwhelming "yes" vote for a new pro-military charter, according to initial counts seen by sources close to the ruling junta Sunday.

Nearly 100 per cent of the people voted in favour of the new constitution in Kokogyun township, Rangoon Division, in the referendum held Saturday, while about 90 per cent cast "yes" votes in Mandalay Division and 95 per cent in Tachileik township, Shan State, said a government source, who asked to remain anonymous.

The Burmese military rulers pushed through the referendum Saturday intended to cement their political power despite international appeals to postpone the vote in the wake of Cyclone Nargis that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.

Although the junta has postponed the vote to May 24 in 47 of the districts worst-hit by the cyclone, including ...  

As the bloated bodies rise and fall with the current, women scrub clothes along the river bank, villagers bathe to cool themselves and a lone child sits on a dock staring aimlessly into the water.

Those unable to escape the catastrophic cyclone that pounded Myanmar's rice-growing Irrawaddy delta a week ago continue to litter the flooded landscape. But with little aid still getting through to desperate survivors, the dead have largely been abandoned — left to decay where the brackish waters carried them or waiting to be pulled out to sea by the rising tides.

"The first few we saw, we were all very shocked," said U Pinyatale, a monk from the area who has prayed for the dead. "After a while, there were just too many."

The tragedy of devastation from last weekend's cyclone in Myanmar is made worse by the ruling junta's apparent disregard for its victims.

CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey, reporting from neighboring Thailand, said the scale of the disaster and the extent of the need is becoming clearer as pictures finally come out from the worst-hit areas.

The difference between the damage done and the help being sent in are almost unfathomable.

Winds of up to 120 miles and hour and a storm surge fifteen feet high smashed everything in their path in the Irrawaddy River delta, where survivors are now at risk from malaria and dengue fever, both of which are endemic to the area.

Fresh water has been contaminated by decaying corpses and animal carcasses, as well as sea water.

Tragically, this natural disaster is being turned into a man-made one.

Relief workers have a brutal but time-proven ...  

The United Nations this week said the refusal of Burma's government to allow workers into the country's devastated agricultural region was unprecedented in the history of humanitarian relief. The human catastrophe produced by Burma's refusal to permit aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis has stunned the senses of a world that has watched this spectacle for a week.

There are uncounted numbers of persons dead, homeless and orphaned. Bodies still float in water. The World Health Organization has warned there could be outbreaks of cholera and especially malaria. U.N. member-state India warned the junta the deadly cyclone was headed toward Burma on May 1, two days before it hit. Yesterday, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said food relief hasn't yet reached the region because "regrettably" the junta won't talk to him.

It's time to kick Burma out of the United Nations. If the U.N. does not put in motion a process ...  

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

In Burma, small villages and communities remain unattended by the ruling junta. And out of the corpse-crowded waters, fevers infect the children.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely ...  

Today, May 10 is a sad day in our country’s history. The military junta is going ahead with their flaw referendum despite the appeal from the whole world, including Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Mon to postpone the process so that peo- ple can focus their effort in helping the Cyclone Nargis victims. The storm had just devastated the whole Delta region, killing thousands of people and made many more homeless. Their survival is under threat due to lack of proper shelter, food as well as drinking water where approximately 3.5 million people are living.

Holding the referendum under these circumstances display no wisdom; it just confirms that the military Junta has no respect to human values as long as they can hold on to ...  

Aung Aung says he would not normally vent his anger openly in Burma, where the eyes and ears of the country's strict military rulers are believed to be almost everywhere.

But fear of the junta is being eclipsed by fury over the government's inept response to the devastating cyclone -- which has left many without food or water more than a week after the tragedy struck.

"People are hungry. They have no clean water to drink. They are falling sick. They just want to vent their anger," the 25-year-old taxi driver said, speaking unusually freely to a foreign visitor.

"They have nothing else to lose now."

After nearly half a century of brutal rule, suffocated by a 400,000-strong military and its feared intelligence wing, most people in this blighted country are careful not to be critical of the government.

But since Cyclone Nargis hit on May 3, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving ...  

Military-ruled Burma, among the globe's poorest and most authoritarian nations, is reeling from a natural disaster of such magnitude that both the people's suffering and political aftershocks are certain to persist long after the last emergency aid has been doled out.

As bloated bodies are counted and survivors face disease and hunger in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, dramatic scenarios are foreseen in a country that has changed little since an army coup 46 years ago.

These range from a revolt led by disenchanted army officers to the specter of the entrenched, xenophobic junta allowing thousands more to perish rather than risk its grip on power by opening gates to the outside world.

"If a split in the Burmese military between reformist and hard-line elements doesn't occur now, it will never occur," said Donald M. Seekins, a Burmese expert at Okinawa's Meio University.

In ...  

Burma's military regime distributed international aid Saturday but plastered the boxes with the names of top generals in an apparent effort to turn the relief effort for last week's devastating cyclone into a propaganda exercise.

The United Nations sent in two more planes and several trucks loaded with aid, though the junta took over its first two shipments. The government agreed to let a U.S. cargo plane bring in supplies Monday, but foreign disaster experts still were being barred entry.

Despite international appeals to postpone a referendum on a controversial proposed constitution, voting began Saturday in all but the hardest hit parts of the country. With voters going to the polls, state-run television continuously ran images of top generals including junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, handing out boxes of aid at elaborate ceremonies.

"We have already seen regional commanders putting their ...  

Desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis poured out of Burma's Irrawaddy delta on Sunday in search of food, water and medicine as aid groups said thousands more people will die if emergency supplies do not get through soon.

Buddhist temples and high schools in towns on the outskirts of Nargis's trail of destruction are now makeshift refugee centers for women, children and the elderly -- some of the 1.5 million people left clinging to survival by the storm.

The reclusive military government is accepting aid from the outside world, including the United Nations, but has made it very clear it will not let in the foreign logistics teams needed to transport the aid as fast as possible into the inundated delta.

"Unless there is a massive and fast infusion of aid, experts and supplies into the hardest-hit areas, there's going to be a tragedy on an unimaginable scale," said Greg Beck of the International Rescue ...  

Burma's military rulers held a referendum Saturday aimed at solidifying their hold on power while brazenly turning cyclone relief efforts into a propaganda campaign. In some cases, generals' names were scribbled onto boxes of foreign aid before being distributed.

Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims in going ahead with the vote, which seeks public approval of a new constitution.

The referendum came just one week after Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing. The U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected.

Aye Aye Mar, a 36-year-old homemaker, looked frightened when asked if she thought anyone would vote against the referendum.

"One vote of 'No' will not make a difference," she whispered, her eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching. Then ...  

The extensive havoc wreaked on the Burmese people by Cyclone Nargis is very disheartening. And the slowness with which the Burmese military junta is responding to the world community's offer of help will only exacerbate the death toll, which has reached 22,980.

The powerful storm on Saturday, packing winds of 190kph, severely damaged Burma's Irrawaddy delta. An estimated 40,000 people are missing, as accounts from survivors and local relief workers begin to emerge.

Although the military bosses in Rangoon finally decided to allow the first UN shipment of relief assistance to be flown in on Wednesday - four days after the cyclone hit - complaints about the junta's working speed has been persistent.

News reports that elements in the Burmese ruling class are dragging their feet in issuing visas for relief volunteers to enter Burma is most irritating. Every minute that passes by means more lives are ...  

After 46 years of unbroken military rule, many people both inside and outside Burma think it will take an act of God to get rid of the generals.

Inevitably, Burma’s frustrated exile community are seeing the catastrophic destruction wrought by Cyclone Nargis as just such an event, hoping the economic fallout and misery will spark either a popular uprising or split within the military.

Neither is likely, analysts say.

Many of Burma’s deeply superstitious 53 million people are likely to blame the storm on "bad karma" from the despotism of junta supremo Than Shwe, Burmese and European analysts said on Thursday.

But those living in the heavily populated Irrawaddy delta will be far too busy in the months ahead rebuilding their lives and homes to worry about rising up.

"People are absolutely preoccupied with survival food, water, health, their relatives, getting their jobs back, rebuilding ...  

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday urged cyclone-hit Burma to admit international disaster relief, saying it was a humanitarian crisis rather than a political issue.

"What remains is for the Burmese (Myanmar) government to allow the international community to help its people," Rice told reporters in Washington.

"It should be a simple matter. It's not a matter of politics. It's a matter of a humanitarian crisis," Rice said.

Rice, flanked by Macedonian foreign minister Antonio Milososki after talks with him on US-Macedonian issues, said she was "deeply concerned by the growing humanitarian crisis in Burma."

She added: "This is the type of crisis that will only get worse."

Shari Villarosa, the charge d'affaires in Rangoon, told reporters in Washington during a conference call that "there may well be over 100,000 deaths in the delta area," citing an ...  

In opening its doors to international disaster relief, Burma's military government is breaching a wall of isolation it has built around itself for nearly half a century.

The devastation of the cyclone that struck Saturday, killing more than 22,000 people, has forced the junta to soften its pose of self-sufficiency and ask for help from a world it fears and resents.

The request for aid came less than nine months after the ruling junta rejected almost unanimous international condemnation for a brutal crackdown on democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

The government is demonstrating its reluctance now by its slow acceptance of the aid it requested, complicating visa procedures for international donors and apparently seeking to limit the access of foreign relief workers.

In Geneva, United Nations officials said travel and visa obstacles were hampering deliveries of aid to an estimated one million people believed to be ...  

Eyewitness reports on the devastation and suffering left in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Nargis in Burma trickled out Wednesday by way of Web sites and blogs.

"This is indeed a very sad moment for all Myanmar people," blogger Myat Thura wrote from neighboring Thailand.

More than 22,000 people have died, according to estimates from Burma's state-run media. Another 40,000 are believed to be missing, according to the estimates, and 1 million have been left homeless since the storm hit last weekend in Burma.

"They are my people and it hurts me so much. Why our Burmese people have to suffer such kind of hardship? Why us?" Myat Thura wrote.

Another blogger, who calls herself May Burma, blamed the storm's devastation on corruption and dissipation in Burmese society.

"Burmese used to say that our country never had natural disaster since we have our religion, culture and so many arhats [spiritual practitioners], pure monks and sayadaws ...  

U.N. officials on Wednesday declared the Burma's delta worst hit by a devastating cyclone a "major disaster," with corpses floating through flooded waters and enormous logistical challenges hampering humanitarian aid efforts.

International aid began trickling into the Southeast Asian country, but much of the Irrawaddy delta, where most of the cyclone's 22,000 victims perished, remains cut off from the world.

"Basically the entire lower delta region is under water," said Richard Horsey, Bangkok-based spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid. He predicted the casualty figure could rise "dramatically" beyond the latest figure given by Myanmar officials Tuesday.

In Geneva, the United Nations said Burma has authorized an airplane to bring U.N. aid supplies to cyclone victims.

But permission was still pending for a U.N. coordination team to accompany the flight, which ...  

The Pentagon readied people and equipment for an aid mission to cyclone-stricken Burma, but the top U.S. diplomat in the Asian nation said its military junta was "paranoid" about accepting American help.

The U.S. military was putting people and airplanes into position Wednesday in nearby Thailand. But Burma's government had not accepted the U.S. offer to send aid, U.S. defense and diplomatic officials said. The top American diplomat in Yangon, Charge d'Affaires Shari Villarosa, said the country's military junta is paranoid about the United States but is not blocking American aid in retaliation for past criticism.

"It's a very paranoid regime," she told reporters in a conference call. She said lower reaches of the Burmese regime appear to recognize the magnitude of the problem, but the senior leadership is isolated and has not yet announced a decision on how to handle outside aid, large amounts of which are ...  

The death toll from the cyclone that ravaged the Irrawaddy delta in Burma may exceed 100,000, the senior U.S. diplomat in the military-ruled country said Wednesday.

"The information we are receiving indicates over 100,000 deaths," said the U.S. charge d'affaires in Rangoon, Shari Villarosa.

The U.S. figure is almost five times the 22,000 the Burmese government has estimated.

The U.S. estimate is based on data from an international non-governmental organization, Villarosa said without naming the group. She called the situation in Burma "more and more horrendous."

"I think most of the damage was caused by these 12-foot storm surges," she said.

Villarosa also said that about 95 percent of the buildings in the delta region were destroyed when Cyclone Nargis battered the area late Friday into Saturday.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice once again called on the ...  

World pressure intensified Wednesday on Myanmar's military leaders to allow massive aid into their ravaged country.

The top United States diplomat in Myanmar warned that the toll could rise to 100,000 if aid was not prompt. The French foreign minister, meanwhile, suggested invoking United Nations powers to force delivery of international relief supplies on the reluctant Burmese government.

The Myanmar government has so far put its official tally of the deaths from the cyclone at 22,500, of which perhaps 40 percent were children. A further 41,000 people are missing, and up to 1 million people are estimated to have been left homeless.

The American ...  

Bodies are being thrown into rivers by cyclone survivors in desperate need of help.

The government-run radio station said Tuesday that 22,464 are confirmed dead and 41,000 are missing, and the United Nations says that up to 1 million could be homeless.

CNN's Dan Rivers is the first Western journalist to reach Bogalay township, where China's state-run Xinhua news agency says 10,000 died. He reported miserable conditions.

Rivers said that bodies were being dropped into rivers and that survivors had only small amounts of eggs and rice. The area's rice mills are destroyed, leaving Bogalay with a five-day supply. Water pumps were also ruined, and fuel was scarce.

He reported destroyed homes along 30-kilometer stretches. In one area, only four homes remained from a total of 369. People were taking shelter under canvas sheets, and the weather remained awful.

Rivers had seen the army and Red ...  

Anger and despair are growing among the 5 million residents of Burma's main city in the aftermath of the devastating Cyclone Nargis as petrol queues stretch for kilometers and food prices soar.

The overall mood, however, is one of resignation rather than revolution in a country that has been under uncompromising military rule for the last 46 years.

For now, any repeat of last September's anti-regime protests appears a distant prospect -- especially with memories of the army's bloody crackdown still fresh in people's minds.

"There won't be demonstrations," one taxi driver told Reuters on Wednesday. "People don't want to be shot."

Although the former capital avoided the kind of devastation that ravaged the Irrawaddy delta to the southwest, killing at least 22,000 and leaving another 41,000 missing, people are struggling for basic necessities.

Many blame the junta, which has admitted it ...  

Geneva: Travel and visa obstacles on Tuesday hampered aid deliveries to the estimated 1 million people in Burma believed to be homeless after the devastating cyclone, officials said.

Assistance had started to reach people in and around Rangoon, said Chris Kaye, the U.N. World Food Program's director for Burma.

But many coastal areas remained cut off from food supplies because of flooding and road damage. Additional truckloads of food would be dispatched Wednesday to Labutta township, the area hardest hit by the cyclone that struck over the weekend, Kaye said.

The food agency said its assessment teams were reporting tremendous storm damage to homes and shelter in villages in the rice-growing areas on Burma's coast. It said the death toll was still increasing.

However, U.N. relief spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said that some U.N. workers planning to ...  

Aung Aung has never left military-ruled Burma, though he is beginning to feel he has no choice but to say goodbye to his family and try to forge a better life overseas.

The economy is in tatters after decades of misrule by military governments, while food prices are soaring, making life even more wretched in one of the poorest countries in the world even before it was battered by a massive storm at the weekend.

"Working in another country is better than here. After I pay back the debt I will owe for going to Singapore, I can save money for my family," he said.

Aung Aung is one of the luckier ones -- the 32-year-old drives a taxi in Burma's main city Rangoon and earns about 5,000 kyats (4.50 dollars) a day, more than the average daily wage of about 1.50 dollars.

But this is still barely enough to provide for his wife and child.

"What do I do if I'm sick? I have no savings. The owner of ...  

Burma may have been hit harder by the latest cyclone than the 2004 Asian tsunami, an aid worker said today, describing fields littered with the corpses of the storm's victims.

Christian relief organisation World Vision, one of the few international agencies allowed to work inside the military-ruled state, said its teams had surveyed the most affected regions and witnessed scenes of desperation.

"They saw the dead bodies from the helicopters, so it's quite overwhelming from that height," said Kyi Minn, an adviser to World Vision's office in Burma's main city of Rangoon.

"Even from that height it's devastating."

The Government said more than 15,000 people were killed after tropical cyclone Nargis hit from the Bay of Bengal on Saturday, with thousands more feared ...  

Burma's military rulers were under fire Tuesday after revealing more than 10,000 people died in the cyclone that battered the secretive and impoverished nation, with thousands more missing.

As relief agencies scrambled to get food, clean water and supplies into a country that normally scorns foreign aid, US First Lady Laura Bush accused the regime of not doing enough to warn its people about the storm.

The criticism from Bush, one of the most prominent critics of Burma, came after the junta acknowledged the death toll was far higher than first announced -- and made a rare appeal for help from abroad.

"Although they were aware of the threat, Burma's state-run media failed to issue a timely warning to citizens in the storm's path," she said at the White House.

"The response to the cyclone is just the most recent example of the junta's failure to meet its people's basic needs," she ...  

Authorities and foreign aid workers in army-ruled Burma struggled on Monday to assess the damage from a severe cyclone that killed more than 350 people and left tens of thousands homeless.

State media said 20,000 homes were destroyed on one island alone after Cyclone Nargis, a Category 3 storm packing winds of 190 km (120 mile) per hour, ripped through Burma's Irrawaddy delta on Saturday.

The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities slowly make contact with islands and low-lying villages in the delta, the rice bowl of Burma. (Burma is called "Myanmar" by the ruling military junta.)

"The government is having as much trouble as anyone else in getting a full overview. Roads are not accessible and many small villages were hit and will take time to reach," Terje Skavdal, regional head of U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), told Reuters in Bangkok.

Teams of ...  

More than 10,000 people were killed in a devastating cyclone that hit western Burma on Saturday, Military Foreign Minister Nyan Win has said on state TV.

He said his government was ready to accept international assistance, and aid shipments were now being prepared.

Thousands of survivors of Cyclone Nargis are lacking shelter, drinking water, power and communications, but in many regions help has not yet arrived.

Five regions, in which 24m people live, have been declared disaster zones.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was "very ...  

Almost 4,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 others are unaccounted for after a devastating cyclone in Myanmar, a state radio station said Monday.

Military Foreign Minister Nyan Win told foreign diplomats at a briefing that the death toll could reach 10,000, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was held behind closed doors.

Tropical Cyclone Nargis hit the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, early Saturday with winds of up to 120 mph, leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.

The Military government had previously put the death toll countrywide at 351 before increasing it Monday to 3,939. ...  

As the referendum on the junta's proposed constitution approaches, the model of elite-driven transition loses relevance and the calls for public action become louder

The notion of political transition initiated by a country's elite has been a dominant discourse in Burmese politics since the late 1990s. The model advocates that a peaceful transition could be facilitated by negotiations between the regime's "doves" and opposition moderates. It would involve the opposition initiating a concrete proposal to the military in order to persuade the latter to sit at the negotiating table. This political strategy gained currency in the early 2000s since it coincided with the political ascendancy of former Intelligence Chief Gen Khin Nyunt. At the time, talks ...  

It was just a few months ago that the world was transfixed by Buddhist monks facing down the army in Burma's cities, fleetingly raising the hopes of a long-suffering people that decades of iron-fisted military rule might finally collapse.

This week those same people are expected to endorse a new constitution dressed up by the army as a great leap towards democracy. In reality, it is little more than a means to perpetuate indefinitely the military's often brutal and corrupt control, and to keep from power the popular opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the only Burmese leader to have won a free election in recent times.

But just to ensure that the vote in Saturday's referendum goes the right way, the hundreds of thousands of monks who caused all the trouble last September have been barred from voting, and opponents of 46 years of military rule say the army is using a mix of intimidation and patriotism to ...  

AS thuggish as strongman Robert Mugabe has been in refusing to respect the results of Zimbabwe's election in March, that country almost seems an open society in comparison with Burma, which suffers under a military junta that runs one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, was at least able to contest the election. He could speak to his people and the rest of the world. But almost five years after a bungled attempt on her life, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, without the right to speak or see her doctor. Though her party, the National League for Democracy, won over 80 percent of seats in a 1990 parliamentary election the generals ignored, she cannot even vote in a May 10 referendum on a sham constitution designed to lend a patina of legitimacy to Burma's narco-trafficking generals.

After the regime's ...