According to the News off the Wire 

Myanmar’s military regime has approved visas for dozens of relief workers.

Relief workers slowly moved into Myanmar’s cyclone-ravaged delta on Thursday after the junta started to ease restrictions on access, as the United Nations said all its visa requests had been granted.

The last 45 pending visas were granted to U.N. staffers, a United Nations statement said Thursday. Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders and the U.N. Children’s Fund have sent more than 14 aid workers in recent days into the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the cyclone that landed May 2.

“I went to some areas where no international relief personnel had been to, and the priorities for these people are food and shelter. We’re going to be working very hard to deliver these items to them,” Tony Banbury, regional head of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP Television News Thursday.

Richard Horsey, spokesman for the UN’s emergency relief arm, said the situation was “tentatively positive”, with international UN staff able to move into the delta after giving the regime 48 hours’ notice.

Overseas staff were also now receiving permission to get into the country, after weeks of delays.

“We haven’t had any problems with visas for the last week to 10 days and yesterday (Wednesday) we were issued with the last of the 45 visas we were awaiting,” Horsey said.

Several international aid workers have reported receiving travel approval for the delta in the last week, including six from the UN children’s fund UNICEF, five from World Vision and two from Save the Children.

“One of the biggest challenges now is transporting aid through the maze of waterways that make up the Irrawaddy Delta,” said Chris Northey, emergency team leader with aid group CARE.

US Navy ships which have been idling off the coast of Myanmar loaded with crucial supplies could leave soon, a top US commander said.

A French navy ship carrying aid for cyclone victims has handed over its cargo to the UN in Thailand after the junta refused to let it into the country, the French foreign ministry said Thursday.

 Helicopters for World Food Program WFP to deliver aid in Burma

The supplies have now been entrusted to the UN’s World Food Programme, who will take them into Myanmar.

Japan, which has so far donated $13 million in aid, sent a 23-member medical team to the country Thursday, the Foreign Ministry said in Tokyo.

Many nations critical of Myanmar’s abuses had put politics aside to help survivors of Cyclone Nargis. Representatives from 50 nations pledged up to $150 million Sunday, while remaining quiet about politics.

After weeks of insisting that the junta could deliver aid themselves, the New Light of Myanmar on Thursday maintained a softer stance.

It said many rescue tasks has been carried out, “largely due to the donations made by internal and international donors.”

But volunteers returning from the delta area said tragic scenes remained, with dead bodies and the corpses of animals still rotting in the fields, and villagers relying on survival skills in the absence of outside help.

“Villagers are very familiar with standing on their own,” Myo Thant, who has been delivering private supplies to the delta, told AFP.

“They rebuilt small huts, took off clothes from dead bodies, found drinking water from the rain or from other villages — most of the survival work was done on their own.”