In the coming month of February, we will usher in the Chinese Lunar New Year, otherwise known as the Spring Festival. As most readers are aware, part of the fun during this festive season involves looking at our horoscopes for the new year based on the Chinese zodiac calendar. Horoscopes follow a classification scheme that assigns an animal and its reputed attributes to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle. Last year was the year of the dog, and this year will be the year of the boar.

When the military-backed government of Myanmar began a series of political reforms in 2011, the country’s political landscape changed for good. The political reforms carried out by Myanmar’s then government included the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, the establishment of the National Human Rights Commission, general amnesties for more than 200 political prisoners and many others.

In northern Rakhine state, the refugee crisis is not the only worry on the minds of the Myanmar government. On 4 January, also Independence Day in Myanmar, Arakan Army militants killed 13 people and wounded nine others in Rakhine. According to local reports, the insurgents attacked four police posts in the Buthidaung area. The attacks by the Arakan Army reveals a deeply divided state, which has been marred by various other ethnic conflicts.

Myanmar's army accused rebels on Friday of attacking and killing "some" of its soldiers, the first skirmish acknowledged by the military in the wake of its unprecedented ceasefire with ethnic armed groups.

Two Reuters journalists jailed while reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar are set to appeal the decision Monday, after spending more than a year behind bars despite global outcry over their convictions.Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested in December 2017 and later sentenced to seven year prison terms for what prosecutors said was the possession of classified material on security operations.Reuters disputed the charge and said the two were set up after probing the massacre o

Faced with dwindling tourist numbers from the West, Myanmar is pulling out all stops to woo visitors closer to home. It has relaxed visa rules to visitors from China, South Korea and Japan and aims to bring about half a million of them over to Mandalay this year.Beginning 1 October this year, the country has waived visa requirements for visitors from Japan and South Korea for one year, as a trial run. Visitor growth from these two countries had been stagnating for a while.

The violence which drove 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar into Bangladesh was "without excuse", United States (US) Vice President Mike Pence told Aung San Suu Kyi in stinging comments on Wednesday.On the side-lines of the 33rd ASEAN Summit in Singapore, Pence piled the pressure on Myanmar's de facto leader, calling for an explanation of the jailing of two Reuters journalists over their coverage of the crisis.