An ethnic militia group in southeastern Myanmar that faces sanctions by the United States over its alleged involvement with human trafficking and online scams has criticized Washington’s actions.

The humanitarian needs of hundreds of thousands of survivors remain desperately pressing a month after Myanmar’s deadly earthquake, compounded by airstrikes that the military government is reportedly carrying out despite ceasefires.

A new U.N. report warns that transnational organized crime groups in East and Southeast Asia are spreading their lucrative scam operations across the globe in response to increased crackdowns by authorities.

Basic services have yet to be restored to the areas of Myanmar worst hit by a huge earthquake three weeks ago, and emergency workers recovering bodies and clearing debris are contending with regular aftershocks and lack of resources, humanitarian services say.

A group of more than 270 some men and women, who were rescued from forced labor in scam compounds months earlier but remain in detention in Myanmar, attempted a mass escape Sunday from a guarded facility out of fear that they may end up being sent back to the places they were trying to escape from, where they face beatings, torture and potentially even death.

Several Southeast Asian countries are kicking off their annual water festival holiday, an occasion for merrymaking during what is usually the hottest time of the year.

Human rights experts for the United Nations are expressing urgent concern about ongoing military operations in Myanmar’s civil war, despite ceasefires called by major parties to facilitate relief efforts after the country’s devastating March 28 earthquake.

Long-shot efforts to find survivors from Myanmar’s devastating March 28 earthquake are winding down, as rescue efforts get supplanted by increasing relief and recovery activity.

People in Myanmar’s earthquake-stricken areas were braced for thunderstorms late Sunday, after heavy rains and winds the previous night disrupted rescue and relief operations and added to the misery of the many who lost their homes in the disaster and were forced to sleep in the open.

The confirmed death toll from last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar has risen to 3,455, as U.N. agencies and foreign aid donors ramp up their emergency relief efforts.

Day after day, Chinese rescue teams haul children and elderly people from collapsed buildings.

Search teams have pulled more bodies from the ruins of buildings a week after a massive earthquake rocked Myanmar killing more than 3,300 people.

The death toll from the earthquake that hit Myanmar nearly a week ago has risen to 3,145 as search and rescue teams find more bodies.

Myanmar’s ruling military has declared a temporary ceasefire in the country’s civil war to facilitate relief efforts following a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that has killed more than 3,000 people.

Rescue workers have saved a 63-year-old woman from earthquake rubble in Myanmar’s capital.

For those trapped in rubble after an earthquake, survival depends on many factors, including weather and access to water and air.

Just after sunrise on Saturday, a satellite set its long-range camera on the city of Mandalay in Myanmar, not far from the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Southeast Asian country’s second-largest city.

The death toll in last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar has passed 2,000.

Friday's deadly earthquake rattled most of Myanmar and Thailand but certain areas sustained the heaviest damage, including flattened buildings and many lost lives.

The Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar has been plagued by wars and natural disasters since it became independent from Britain in 1948, when it was still called Burma.

Emergency aid has streamed into Southeast Asia in the two days since a massive earthquake struck Myanmar and Thailand.

The smell of decaying bodies permeated the streets of Myanmar’s second-largest city on Sunday as people worked frantically by hand to clear rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive, two days after a massive earthquake struck that killed more than 1,600 people and left countless others buried.

The death toll from Myanmar’s powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake keeps climbing amid rescue efforts.

A unilateral partial ceasefire to facilitate earthquake relief efforts has been announced by Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government.

A major 7.7 magnitude earthquake that originated near Mandalay, Myanmar shook the Earth as far as Bangkok.

Even before a powerful 7.7-magnitude quake hit Myanmar, more than 3 million people in the country faced displacement.

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake and an aftershock measuring 6.4 rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand on Friday, bringing down buildings and disrupting power supplies and transport services.

A powerful earthquake has rocked Myanmar and caused extensive damage across a wide swath of one of the world’s poorest countries.

Scientists have discovered an ancient wasp with a body like a Venus flytrap to seize and snatch its prey.

The United Nations food agency says that more than 1 million people in the war-torn nation of Myanmar will be cut off from food assistance due to critical funding shortfalls.

Thousands of sick, exhausted and terrified young men and women, from countries all over the world squat in rows, packed shoulder to shoulder, surgical masks covering their mouths and, some, their eyes.

Rohingya refugees in crammed Bangladeshi camps say they are worried about a U.S. decision to cut food rations by half beginning next month, while a refugee official says the reduction will impact the nutrition of more than 1 million refugees and create social and mental pressure.

An independent online news agency in Myanmar is alleging that one of its journalists arrested two years ago has been subjected to daily physical and mental abuse after exposing human rights violations in the country’s main prison where he is being held.

Eighty-four Indonesians freed from scam centers in Myanmar are set to return home Friday as the repatriation effort for such workers strains regional resources.

Eighty-four Indonesians freed rom scam centers in Myanmar arrived at the Thai border city of Mae Sot earlier on Thursday, part of an ongoing large scale repatriation effort following a crackdown by Thailand, Myanmar and China.

A new crackdown on online scam centers has led to over 7,000 people from around the world being held in a Myanmar border town awaiting repatriation.

An airlift carrying more than 1,000 Chinese nationals who had worked at online scam centers in eastern Myanmar began Thursday, after the rescued workers were taken across the border to Thailand and put on chartered flights to China.

Efforts to shut down online scam centers in Myanmar appear to gain momentum with a visit by a top Chinese official to the border zone ahead of expected large-scale repatriations of workers in the illicit industry.

Thailand's army says some 260 people believed to have been trafficked and trapped into working in online scam centers are to be repatriated after they were rescued from Myanmar.

Thailand on Wednesday cut off power supplies to areas in Myanmar where scam networks operate, following a public outcry demanding government action to tackle the problem.

Peace prospects look bleak in Myanmar as a civil war rages despite international pressure on the military four years after it seized power from an elected civilian government.

Southeast Asian foreign ministers met this year under the regional bloc’s new chair, Malaysia, seeking a breakthrough over Myanmar’s drawn-out civil war and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

An airstrike by Myanmar’s army on a village under the control of an armed ethnic minority group has killed about 40 people and injured at least 20 others, officials of the group and a local charity say.

Myanmar’s military government has announced that provisional results of a census taken in October put the Southeast Asian nation’s population at about 51.3 million, a slight drop from the last official nationwide count of about 51.5 million taken 10 years ago.

The Moken, a group of indigenous people from Thailand and Myanmar, once sailed freely between the archipelago of 800 islands off the coast of the two countries.

Sri Lanka's navy says it has rescued more than 100 people believed to be Rohingya refugees who were found adrift aboard a fishing trawler off the island nation.

U.N. experts say there has been a slight drop in the production of opium in Myanmar, the world’s biggest source of the illicit drug from which heroin is derived, but warn there are still strong prospects for future expansion of the deadly trade.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has asked judges to issue an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

Witnesses say a powerful rebel group has seized a key trading town in northeastern Myanmar on the Chinese border, taking control of a lucrative rare earth mining hub in another setback for the military-led government.

The U.N. Development Programs is warning that Myanmar’s Rakhine state, home to the Rohingya minority and engulfed in conflict between government forces and a powerful ethnic group, could face an imminent acute famine.

Three well-armed militias launched a surprise joint offensive in northeastern Myanmar a year ago, breaking a strategic stalemate with the regime’s military with rapid gains of huge swaths of territory that inspired others to attack around the country.

Three well-armed militias launched a surprise joint offensive in northeastern Myanmar a year ago, breaking a strategic stalemate with the regime’s military with rapid gains of huge swaths of territory that inspired others to attack around the country.

Concern is rising that two nonviolent activists opposed to military rule in Myanmar are at high risk of torture after being arrested in raids this week in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.

The main group coordinating opposition to military rule in Myanmar has rejected a surprise offer from the ruling generals to hold talks on a political solution to the country’s nationwide armed conflict.

State media in Myanmar reported that floods and landslides triggered by last week’s Typhoon Yagi and seasonal monsoon rains have claimed at least 226 lives, with 77 people missing.

State-television in Myanmar says the death toll in the military-run country from flooding and landslides caused by Typhoon Yagi has reached at least 74.

The editor of an independent online news service in Myanmar says a military court has given a life prison sentence to one of its journalists and sentenced another to 20 years after convicting them under a counterterrorism law.

Britain is circulating a United Nations resolution on Myanmar urging renewed peace efforts.

China’s military is carrying out armed patrols near the Myanmar border this week, where the government is concerned about potential fallout from fierce fighting in a civil war on the other side.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees have rallied in a southern Bangladeshi coastal district where they live in sprawling camps, marking the seventh anniversary of their mass exodus from Myanmar.

China’s top diplomat has visited Myanmar and met with the leader of its military government as growing instability from the neighboring country’s civil war causes concern in Beijing.

Myanmar’s military regime says it has lost communications with the commanders of a strategically important army headquarters in the northeast.

The military regime that seized power in Myanmar 3 1/2 years ago extended a state of emergency in the civil war-wracked country for another six months, saying it needs time to prepare for long-promised elections.

Southeast Asian top diplomats have condemned violence in Myanmar’s ongoing civil war and urged for “practical” means to defuse rising tensions in the South China Sea during the last of the three-day regional talks with allies including the U.S., Russia and China.

Top diplomats from Southeast Asia have met with China’s foreign minister for talks that come as friction escalates over Beijing's growing effort to press its sweeping maritime claims.

Southeast Asian foreign ministers have gathered in the capital of Laos for a regional forum that runs through Saturday.

Recently renewed combat in northeastern Myanmar between troops of the military government and ethnic minority militias has in the past few days become more complicated, as two minority groups not previously involved in the fighting stepped into the fray.

New fighting has broken out in northeastern Myanmar, bringing an end to a Chinese-brokered cease-fire and putting pressure on the military regime as it faces attacks from resistance forces on multiple fronts in the country’s civil war.

Relatives of a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police in central New York are demanding justice.

Supporters of Myanmar’s imprisoned ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi have carried out peaceful flower-themed protests marking her 79th birthday.

The United Nations envoy charged with reporting on violations against children in conflicts around the world says that first and foremost she is worried about what’s happening to youngsters in war-torn Sudan.

A new United Nations report says East and Southeast Asia are awash in record amounts of methamphetamine and other synthetic drugs.

The U.N. human rights office has warned of “frightening and disturbing reports” about the impact of new violence in Myanmar's western state of Rakhine and new attacks on Rohingya civilians by the army and an ethnic armed group fighting it.

Guerrilla fighters from the main ethnic Karen fighting force battling Myanmar’s military government have withdrawn from the eastern border town of Myawaddy two weeks after forcing the army to give up its defense.

Officials in Thailand say about 1,300 people have fled from eastern Myanmar into Thailand as fresh fighting erupted at a border town that has recently been captured by ethnic guerillas.

It’s water festival time in Thailand where many are marking the country’s traditional New Year, splashing each other with colorful water guns and buckets in an often raucous celebration that draws thousands of people, even as this year the Southeast Asian nation marks record-high temperatures causing concern.

Myanmar’s military has begun basic training at military bases and schools across the country for draftees called up under the country’s recently activated conscription law.

The chairman of Japan’s Nippon Foundation says the charity will spend $2 million to help move tens of thousands more Rohingya refugees to a remote island in Bangladesh and provide them with skills training.

Guerrilla fighters from Myanmar’s Karen ethnic minority are claiming to be close to seizing control of a major trading town bordering Thailand.

The U.N.’s leading human rights body has agreed to measures aimed at putting pressure on Myanmar and Iran, whose governments have been accused of using violence against their own people.

A dramatic story of survival and rescue off Indonesia’s west coast is a reminder of the plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar who make extremely dangerous voyages across the Indian Ocean to seek better lives.

Singapore’s prime minister says Southeast Asian countries’ quest to reach agreement with China on a code of conduct in the contested South China Sea will take time, with difficult issues yet to be resolved despite recent efforts to accelerate the process.

An increasingly assertive China and a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia for a rare summit this week.

Ever since Myanmar's military announced it is implementing conscription to fill its ranks, Thwel sees very few options.

Federal prosecutors say a leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.

Nine members of the United Nations Security Council have condemned “indiscriminate” airstrikes by Myanmar’s military against civilians.

A Bangladesh official says more than 100 members of Myanmar’s Border Guard Police have fled their posts and taken shelter in Bangladesh during fighting between Myanmar security forces and an ethnic minority army.

When the army overthrew Myanmar’s elected government in 2021, it looked like a walkover that could entrench the military in power indefinitely.

The United Nations' refugee agency is reporting that one in every eight Rohingya who attempted to flee their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat last year died or went missing.

Myanmar’s leading resistance group and allied ethnic armed groups battling the military government have released a political road map to ending military rule and enabling a peaceful transition of power.

Myanmar was a rising star in Southeast Asia before its military seized power three years ago in a takeover that has brought civil strife and a tightening vise of international sanctions, undoing years of progress and leaving the economy 10% smaller than it was in 2019.

Simmering tensions in the South China Sea.

A study issued Tuesday by researchers collecting evidence of war crimes in Myanmar supported reports that air strikes by the military government damaged churches in the Buddhist-dominated country’s sole Christian-majority state.

A veteran Laotian diplomat recently appointed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ special envoy to Myanmar, has arrived on his first mission to the strife-torn nation.

Myanmar’s military government has acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from a key city on the northeastern border with China after it was taken over by an alliance of ethnic armed groups it has been battling for months.

Indonesia’s navy says it forcibly pushed a boat packed with refugees back to international waters after the vessel approached the shores of Aceh province.

Indonesian authorities have detected at least five boats packed tight with Rohingya refugees approaching the shores of Aceh province.

Myanmar, already wracked by a brutal civil war, has regained the unenviable title of world’s biggest opium producer.

China has intensified a crackdown on online scams operated in border areas of Myanmar.

A major offensive against Myanmar's military-run government by an alliance of three militias of ethnic minorities has been moving at lightning speed, inspiring resistance forces around the country to attack.