Leaders of Myanmar's most enduring ethnic rebel group met with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi a day after meeting with the country's president, the latest step in the group's effort to open a dialogue to achieve greater autonomy.

The 2 1/2-hour meeting Sunday of leaders of the Karen National Union with Suu Kyi also followed an agreement the group reached Friday with the military-backed but elected government to firm up a cease-fire they made in January.

"These meetings will definitely support our efforts to achieve national reconciliation, and these meetings will help bring about a genuine democratic nation," Suu Kyi told reporters after Sunday's meeting.

The meetings with President Thein Sein and Suu Kyi were virtually unprecedented for the KNU, which has mostly been engaged in an armed struggle for greater autonomy from Myanmar's government since the country obtained independence from Britain in 1948.The KNU has been the most durable of the dozen or so major ethnic groups at odds with the government, and despite having much of its military force crippled by government offensives in the 1990s, remains the best known internationally.

An American couple has given dozens of centuries-old framed and delicately carved cow skins for grand shadow plays to the Thai government so the items can be returned to their origins.

"They have historical value," Culture Minister Sukumol Kunplome said yesterday. Sukomol said Dr Sarah M Bekker and her husband Konrad Bekker bought the items from a German woman who said a Thai grand shadow play performer sold them to her in 1910.

The cow skins feature the characters and scenes of Thai grand shadow plays, mostly about the Epic of Ramakien [Thai version of Ramayana]. They are from the early Rattanakosin Period.

The Bekkers contacted the Thai government through the Thai embassy in Washington DC, in 2009. The embassy consulted Thailand's Fine Arts Department before deciding to accept the key tools for shadow plays.

For the first time, Google is exposing gorgeous, hedonistic and possibly even embarrassing photos of people, beaches, entertainment zones, hotels, homes, temples and other scenes in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket via its Street View maps.

Anyone in the world can go online and, for free, gawk at Google's pictures, which are "digitally stitched" together to offer a movable journey through Thailand's three famous tourism hotspots -- including countless shots of Thais and foreigners unaware they've been photographed.

Google hopes its newest Street View portal will emphasize the paradises and delights of Thailand, and lure more tourists to enjoy the lusciousness this Southeast Asian tropical land offers.

"We drove Phuket, Chiang Mai and Greater Bangkok and we got 95 percent of those areas, and have images that are 360-degree panoramas," says David Marx, global communications and public affairs manager for Google Asia Pacific.

"Tourists within Thailand and outside of Thailand can use this as kind of a tool to plan their trips and to virtually explore Thailand."

Thailand's Chonburi went top of Group G after a narrow 1-0 win over Singapore's Home United on a busy Wednesday night of action in this season's AFC Cup competition.

Former Home star Kengne Ludovick returned to haunt his former employers, scoring the game's only goal in the 68th minute when he rose to head home Suree Sukha's pinpoint free-kick. Ludovick's winner takes Chonburi to the top of their group following their opening day draw with Myanmar outfit Yangon United, while Home United occupy second place with one point from two games.

In the group's other game, Citizen captain Festus Baise bagged a last gasp winner as the Hong Kong outfit earned their first three-point haul of the campaign courtesy of a 2-1 win over Yangon United. Brazilian defender Helio had opened the scoring for the hosts at the Mongkok Stadium, only to see Yangon's Serbian striker Mialn Jovanovic level matters with a delightful overhead strike on 65 minutes.

Citizen were, however, not to be denied, Baise surging forward to score the decisive goal in the last minute of normal time.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra left Bangkok on Monday for the southern resort province of Phuket for the third Cabinet 'retreat' on Tuesday, with more than a dozen development projects in the five southern provinces will be on the agenda for consideration.

The Phuket meeting is the third in the onsite upcountry meetings which began with Chiang Mai Jan 15 and Udon Thani Feb 22.

Ms Yingluck and her Cabinet were scheduled to leave Bangkok from Don Mueang military airport at 8.30am by a Royal Thai Air Force aircraft to Phuket.

The premier and ministers will visit Phang-nga and Phuket today before she chairs the Cabinet meeting at Prince of Songkhla University's, Phuket campus on Tuesday.

Upon arrival, Ms Yingluck will go to Phang Nga to chair a meeting to clarify government policy on the Thai Women's Empowerment Fund to women's organisations in the South.

A court in Thailand on Tuesday sentenced one of the kingdom's most controversial political figures, media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul, to 20 years in prison for corporate fraud.

Sondhi is the founder of the royalist 'Yellow Shirt' protest movement, which has played a major role in Thailand's colour-coded political conflict and helped to topple fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006.

The Criminal Court in Bangkok convicted Sondhi of violating the Securities and Exchange Act in a case dating back to the mid-1990s, and gave him the maximum sentence possible, a court official told AFP.

Thailand’s exports rose 1.2 percent in January from a year earlier, a Finance Ministry official said on Monday, as manufacturing begins to recover from severe flooding last year. Imports dipped 0.2 percent in January from a year before, leaving a trade deficit of $0.6 billion, ministry economist Boonchai Charassangsomboon told a news conference, saying that was based on preliminary data from the Commerce Ministry’s customs department.

The official customs data is normally published around the 20th to the 22nd of each month but it has been postponed this month, with officials blaming data system changes. Flooding in the second half of last year hampered agricultural production before devastating central industrial provinces from October. As a result, exports fell 12.4 percent in November from a year before but they were only down 2 percent in December.

Imports rose 19.1 percent in December, when firms rushed to bring in new machines and material to replace those damaged by the floods. “The small growth in January exports reflected signs of recovery in the manufacturing sector,” Boonchai said.

Japan's Honda Motor Co said on Tuesday it expected to resume operations at its flood-hit plant at Thailand's Rojana industrial estate a month after flood-waters are drained from the complex, which was forced to shut on Oct. 6.

The floods are likely to cause Thailand's auto sector, the biggest in Southeast Asia, to miss its output target of 1.8 million units this year, Hiroshi Kobayashi, president and chief executive of Asian Honda Motor Co Ltd, told reporters after meeting with Thailand's Industry Minister to discuss the floods.

Thailand raced on Tuesday to build floodwalls on the outskirts of Bangkok to prevent the worst floods in half a century from inundating parts of the capital later this week when water flowing from the north reaches the low-lying city.

At least 269 people have been killed by heavy monsoon rains, floods and mudslides that have battered 27 of Thailand's 77 provinces since late July, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation.

Much of Thailand's north, northeast and central plains are flooded, affecting 2.3 million people. Bangkok - only two metres above sea level - could be next if water overflowing from reservoirs in the north arrives at the same time as high estuary tides are due from October 13.

Rescue workers hastily built a floodwall in Pathum Thani, north of Bangkok, where strong currents burst a river embankment overnight, flooding homes in water at least two metres high. Lerpong Kaewsrichan, deputy governor of Pathum Thani province, said the water had mostly submerged farmland and two industrial estates in the area had been spared for now.

Floodwaters that have wreaked havoc across Thailand, killing more than 260 people, are now threatening the capital, Bangkok.

Officials are preparing to evacuate thousands of people from areas of the city they fear will be inundated by floodwaters coinciding with peak high sea tides within days. Severe flooding has affected 2.3 million people in 760,000 homes and caused damage to factories and businesses estimated at billions of dollars.

Rail and road transport across the country are crippled, with 214 roads damaged, including the Asian Highway, the main route to the north of the country. Tens of thousands of people have also been displaced by flooding in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos after two months of heavy rain. The floods have ravaged vast areas of Asia's food bowl, threatening to drive up food prices.

In Thailand's worst-hit area of Ayutthaya, the former royal capital, dozens of factories in an industrial zone were engulfed when a six-metre-high earth embankment collapsed.