"Don't lose your hope," he told one woman in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta, the rice bowl region which bore the brunt of the worst natural disaster in the country's history.

"The United Nations is here to help you."

Mr Ban said there were recent signs of "flexibility" from the regime, which in the past few days has consented to UN helicopters flying to remote villages to help speed up a relief effort criticised by the international community.

But the UN chief could not get the head of the junta, Senior General Than Shwe, to take his calls or answer his letters in the aftermath of the disaster, and the regime has a long history of thumbing its nose at world opinion.

Mr Ban is to meet Than Shwe tomorrow in the remote capital of Naypyidaw, hoping to stress the urgency of the crisis as well as the international fury that has led to allegations of crimes against humanity over the disaster.

The United Nations believes only 25 per cent of those in immediate need of food, water, shelter and medicines have been reached by international aid three weeks after the disaster struck.

There are French and US navy vessels with relief supplies at sea nearby, but the junta has refused to allow them in. It has also blocked visas for many of the foreign disaster relief experts needed to oversee the aid operation.

BURMA’S military regime is reported to have sealed off the devastated Irrawaddy delta in a bid to stop the outside world seeing the plight of its cyclone victims.  Authorities were expelling foreign aid workers and placing checkpoints along roads into the delta, the Times Online website reported.

The official death toll from Cyclone Nargis has risen to 43,318 with 27,838 missing, state radio and television said today.  But earlier, the United Nations reported that as many as 2.5 million people might have been affected severely by Cyclone Nargis which smashed into Burma on May 3.  The Red Cross reported the death toll from the disaster could hit 127,990, Times Online reported.

The crackdown came as the ruling junta again insisted it could handle the relief operation, despite warnings that many more people could die unless aid workers gained access to people in need.

CHINA

Tens of thousands of people have been killed or injured by the devastating earthquake that struck south west China on 12 May. Many more have lost their homes and the death toll continues to rise.

The epicentre of the 7.9 magnitude quake was Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province, with another seven provinces affected. Tremors were felt as far away as the capital Beijing.

A number of heavily populated areas have been badly hit. In the town of Beichuan, 80 per cent of buildings are reported to have collapsed, including several schools, burying children and teachers under piles of rubble. The nearby town of Mianzhu, which has a population of 60,000, was also seriously affected.

Chinese leaders are being far more open about the earthquake in Sichuan Province than their predecessors were after a similar disaster in 1976, and more open than the Burmese junta after a cyclone devastated much of the country earlier this month.

But the presence in Sichuan of Chinese and foreign reporters reveals only part of the story. A better test of China's new transparency will be whether the government lets reporters investigate whether human failings, official or otherwise, contributed to thousands of deaths.

The extent of the tragedy would have been hard to conceal. Video of the quake was up on YouTube shortly after the first tremors Monday. And Chinese society is far more open to outsiders and to its own people than it was under the Maoist Gang of Four in 1976, when an earthquake devastated the north. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao arrived at the affected part of Sichuan within hours of the disaster, and news crews followed.

The central government is moving quickly to shape news coverage. A Politburo member is reported to have told a meeting of propaganda officials Tuesday that the media need to "uphold unity and encourage stability." Live broadcasts from a television station in Chengdu, the provincial capital, were stopped. The government and the Communist Party want to regulate openness as though it were water from a tap.

Yet any Chinese citizen who reads about the disaster or sees images from the scene must be seared by the devastation: children hoping for rescue under the rubble of a school; parents' cries of anguish over the bodies of their young; survivors scrambling for food or staring hopelessly at the remains of their homes. Once the shock of devastation is past, many Chinese people will crave not stability but an honest accounting.

People who live in societies with a free press often disparage its excesses, for good reason. But in a disaster of national significance, the news media would soon move from coverage of the immediate impact to inquiries into its causes.

Why, for instance, did schools collapse? Were building codes enforced, or were they inadequate to limit the damage? If construction was faulty, who is to blame? Given the size and resources of China, was the response to the disaster up to the task?
If the past is any guide, Chinese leaders may find a local scapegoat to imprison or execute, but will be loath to permit a critical examination of the causes. That might turn up evidence of the corruption that pervades Chinese society, including the government and party.The survivors deserve better than a cover-up, however, and the dead wordlessly cry out for the truth

. As of Saturday noon, 178 aftershocks measuring above 4 on the Richter scale had been monitored in Sichuan and among them, 27 aftershocks measured above magnitude 5, and four above magnitude 6, said the office.

    It also revealed that medics have treated nearly 290,000 quake victims. A total of 75,086 injured victims have been hospitalized after the quake. Among them, 40,644 have been discharged from hospitals, 23,864 are still in hospital and 4,274 were transferred to other hospitals out of Sichuan for treatment.

    The Ministry of Health said that as of 10 a.m. Saturday, no major epidemic or emergent public health incidents have been reported, and disease prevention staff had covered 95 percent of all the townships in quake-hit areas.

 Domestic and foreign donations for earthquake survivors had reached 26.1 billion yuan in cash and goods, up 1.5 billion yuan from the previous day. Of the total, 3.68 billion yuan had been forwarded to the disaster area, the office said.

No. 977 train carrying urgently needed relief goods of tents and medicines passed through the railway's No. 109 tunnel at 9:53 a.m. Saturday, where a 40-car freight train derailed and was trapped, paralyzing the railway in the May 12 earthquake.

    Electricity had been partially restored in 16 counties in Sichuan by Saturday noon, but two hard-hit counties (Beichuan and Lixian) were still blacked out.

    Telecommunications services in all quake regions, except for Hongguang Town, Qingchuan, have resumed. Residents of Hongguang were evacuated because of concern about possible further geological disasters.

May 23 - China says it must focus on the fight to keep drinking water clean and contain chemical spills after May 12's massive earthquake.

The country's vice environment minister Wu Xiaoqing also told a news briefing that officials had still to recover 15 hazardous radioactive sources.

But Wu insisted that the situation was under control and there had been no accidental releases of radiation or other uncontrolled hazardous leaks.

For the earthquake survivors an immediate priority is access to supplies of safe drinking water and tents.

The Chinese government has ordered domestic tent manufacturers to produce and transport 30,000 tents to the quake zone each day and 900,000 within a month.