The recent New Year Sunday celebration in Myanmar on Sunday saw the joyful reunion of political prisoners and their loved ones as President Htin Kyaw announced their pardon.
Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi held talks with parliament's powerful chairman on Sunday after an election landslide set to usher in democracy and sweep out much of the military old guard.
Fresh results from Myanmar's election on Tuesday showed the opposition taking control of most regional assemblies as well as forming the next government, handing democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi sweeping powers and reshaping the political landscape.
Supporters of Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi burst into boisterous celebration on Sunday after the country held its first free nationwide election in 25 years, the biggest step yet in a journey to democracy from dictatorship.
When Aung San Suu Kyi's candidate emerges at a campaign rally in southern Myanmar, the crowd bursts into cheers and showers him with flowers, confident that the opposition will prevail this weekend after decades of struggle against military rulers.
A United Nations rights investigator raised concern on Wednesday about whether Myanmar's election next month could be considered free and fair because dozens of candidates had been disqualified and hundreds of thousands of people denied the right to vote.
When Myanmar votes next month in what has been billed as its first free and fair election in 25 years, Tun Lin, and around 4 million of his fellow citizens, won't be taking part.
Sheltering in the backroom of a provincial Thai police station is a 35-year-old street vendor who triggered a human trafficking investigation that has reverberated across Southeast Asia.
Some 30,000 Indian soldiers guarding the border with Bangladesh have a new mandate under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government this year - stop cattle from crossing illegally into the Muslim-majority neighbour.
More than 20 years after the first wave of Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar, fear is spreading through the sweltering camps of mud houses where they found shelter in southern Bangladesh that they will soon be on the move again.
In Bangladesh's southernmost tip, families cling to scraps of paper with Malaysian and Thai hand phone numbers scribbled on them as their only links to loved ones missing after boarding fishing boats, lured by hopes of a brighter future overseas.
Malaysia has found 139 graves, and signs of torture, in more than two dozen squalid human trafficking camps suspected to have been used by gangs smuggling migrants across the border with Thailand, the country's police chief said on Monday.
May 24 At least eight Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar were among some 200 migrants rescued from a trafficking boat by the Myanmar navy on Thursday, according to interviews conducted by Reuters, contradicting official accounts that all onboard were from Bangladesh.
Malaysia and Indonesia said on Wednesday they would offer shelter to 7,000 "boat people" adrift at sea in rickety boats but, anxious not to encourage a fresh influx, made clear that their assistance was temporary and they would take no more.
A boat crammed with migrants was towed out to sea by the Thai navy and then held up by Malaysian vessels on Saturday, the latest round of "maritime ping-pong" by Asian states determined not to let asylum seekers come ashore.
Thai police have arrested a man they believe is the key figure behind a brutal human trafficking network that ran a jungle camp where dozens of bodies have been found.
Myanmar expressed "deep sorrow" on Monday for the deaths of five people across the border in China's Yunnan province that it has been blamed for, while Beijing said it was clear Myanmar's air force was responsible.
China's military will take "decisive" measures if there is a repeat attack by Myanmar forces on its territory, a senior military officer said after a bomb from a Myanmar aircraft killed four people.
