Myanmar

20 July 2022; MEMO: Qatari telecommunications firm Ooredoo ORDS.QA is in talks to sell its Myanmar unit in what would mark the exit of the country's last foreign telecoms operator, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

YANGON, June 26 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar ceremonially burnt seized narcotic drugs in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi on Sunday, marking the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

In Yangon, 33 kinds of narcotic drugs and precursor chemicals worth over 356.68 billion kyats (192.6 million U.S. dollars), which were seized in the lower part of Myanmar, were destroyed on Sunday morning.

The destroyed drugs included heroin, cannabis, stimulant, methamphetamine and ecstasy among others in connection with 5,914 drug cases.

June 17 (Reuters) - The wife of pro-democracy figure Kyaw Min Yu, sentenced to be executed on the orders of Myanmar's ruling generals, says that if her husband dies he will take with him the beliefs he has carried throughout a life spent fighting dictatorship.

Kyaw Min Yu, better known as Jimmy, and former lawmaker and hip-hop artist Phyo Zeya Thaw are set to be the first people since 1988 to be executed judicially in Myanmar.

YANGON, May 12 (NNN-MNA) – Myanmar will resume accepting tourist e-visa applications, starting this Sunday, more than two years after the country suspended all new e-visa applications, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our Online e-Visa service will resume with effect from May 15, 2022, for tourist visa applications,” the Immigration and Population Ministry said, today.

The move came after the country’s resumption of international commercial flight operations, on Apr 17, and the reopening of its borders to international travellers.

April 17 (Reuters) - Relatives of hundreds of prisoners gathered outside Myanmar's Insein Prison on Sunday after the military government announced the release of 1,600 prisoners in an amnesty to mark the Southeast Asian nation's new year.

The number of prisoners released in the annual amnesty was a fraction of last year's 23,000. It was unclear whether it would include jailed members of the civilian government overthrown in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup.

A local reporter on the scene told Reuters that no political protesters had been released so far from Insein.

April 14 (Reuters) - Rubble and ashes, overlooked by a single golden pagoda, are almost all that remain of the wood and brick houses most people had built for themselves in the quiet riverside village of Bin in the Buddhist heartland of central Myanmar.

Bin is one of more than 100 villages partially or completely burned by Myanmar's military since the start of this year, its homes among more than 5,500 civilian buildings razed as troops try to suppress opposition to last year's coup, according to media reports collated by activist group Data For Myanmar.

YANGON, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Tropical storm Asani has crossed Myanmar's delta region starting from Haiggyikyun, an island located at the mouth of the Pathein River, on Tuesday, according to the country's state weather department.

"Some 4,600 people in the region were already evacuated," U Win Shwe, deputy director-general of the disaster management department under the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, told Xinhua.

YANGON, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Seven people were killed in a road accident Saturday on Pathein-Chaungtha road in Ayeyarwady region, according to the local police.

A private car collided with an express bus and caught fire, killing seven people on board, including two men, three women and two children, said an officer of the Ayeyarwady police.

The officer said the passengers on the express bus were not seriously injured as they all got off the bus after the accident. They tried to open the doors of the private car when the fire broke out, but failed.

Bangkok, Feb 15 (AP) Myanmar will not participate in this week's meetings in Cambodia of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, spurning an invitation to send a non-political representative instead of its chief diplomat, its government said Monday.

Cambodia, the current ASEAN chair, said earlier this month that members of the regional group had failed to reach a consensus on inviting Myanmar Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin to its meetings on Thursday and Friday in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

YANGON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Myanmar's junta showed off its military strength with a parade in the capital Naypyitaw on Saturday, with its leader Min Aung Hlaing defending last year's coup as necessary to protect the country from enemies, both domestic and foreign.

Celebrating Myanmar's Union Day, which marks independence from British colonial rule in 1947, the government also announced that 814 prisoners would be pardoned. Pardons are often granted on major holidays.