It has organised a Facebook Like and Share campaign with its customers.

Ooredoo Myanmar made a post “Let’s celebrate Ooredoo 3rd Anniversary together with everyone!” on its official Facebook page starting today. Customers who like the post should share it by typing #Ooredoo3Years and should share this post not later than 23:59:59 on August 20.

Ooredoo Myanmar will select 30 winners and inform the winners with a comment under their shared post. The winners should send the message though Ooredoo Facebook message box not later than August 23 by typing their Ooredoo SIM number together with #Ooredoo3Years tag.

“It is already three years since we became an integral part of the nation’s daily life. We will continue to work hard to provide innovative products with quality service,” said Charity Safford, chief marketing officer of Ooredoo Myanmar.

The ministry has proposed that the government apply a special consumption tax on pickups to be set at 60 per cent of the tax on cars with nine seats or less with similar engine displacement.

Speaking at a press conference in Hanoi yesterday, Pham Dinh Thi, head of the ministry’s Tax Policy Department, said pickups mainly have engine displacement of between 2,000 and 3,000cc, so if the tax on the car with nine seats and less is currently 55 per cent of the car value, the tax on the pickups should be 33 per cent.

The proposal was made after the prime minister required the ministry to study and check the tax on pickups in the region. The ministry found that regional countries usually levy special consumption tax on pickups lower than that of autos with nine seats or less.

According to the Law on Special Consumption Tax regulations, a special consumption tax of 15 per cent is levied on pickup trucks with engine displacement of 2,500cc or less, 20 per cent for those with over 2,500cc-3,000cc and 25 per cent for those with over 3,000cc.

In recent years, the number of pickups has sharply increased in Vietnam, the majority imported. In 2012, 3,291 units were sold, of which 3,252 were imported and 39 units were locally assembled. In 2016, sales soared to 28,233 units, of which 27,265 units were imported and 968 units were locally-assembled.

Thi said the five-seat pickups had for many years enjoyed special consumption tax lower than that of vehicles with the same number of seats (lower than SUV models, with engine displacement from over 2,500cc to 3,000cc, taxed 55 per cent). Therefore, the number of consumers moving to buy pickups instead of SUVs has been seen increasing rapidly.

If the finance ministry’s proposal is approved by the government and the National Assembly, the average special consumption tax on pickups will increase by 50 to 100 per cent.

Phuc’s first official visit to the country since he took power in April last year will include many cabinet ministers, including the trade and industry, planning and investment, science and technology, agriculture and rural development, information and communications portfolios, in discussions with their Thai counterparts.

Phuc will meet Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha at Government House today to discuss issues, including defence and security cooperation, trade and investment, and connectivity and regional cooperation.

After the plenary session, the two premiers will witness the signing of deals including memoranda of understanding on economics and trade, telecommunications, science and technology, and “sister city” cooperation between Thailand’s Trat and Vietnam’s Ca Mau provinces.

The draft joint communique to be issued after the meeting states the two premiers would exchange their views on the development, management and environmental impacts in the Mekong basin shared by Thailand and Vietnam.

The two leaders prioritised a balanced approach between economic benefits and environment preservation while ensuring the well-being of their citizens, according to the draft statement seen by The Nation.

The premiers will also address Vietnam’s serious concerns about the contentious South China Sea, about which Hanoi has been at loggerheads with China for decades. Both sides will reaffirm the importance of maintaining peace, security and stability as well as freedom of navigation, including overflights above the contentious sea, the statement said.

They will also focus on full implementation of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, and prioritise solving conflicts through peaceful means in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Both sides will also express their support for Asean and China’s early conclusion of a code of conduct on the South China Sea, following the ministerial meeting early this month in Manila, which adopted a framework to establish the code.

During his visit, which will last until Saturday, Phuc will pay a courtesy call on the president of the National Legislative Assembly, meet with high-level Thai business executives, and attend a business forum and the opening ceremony of the “Vietnamese Goods Week in Thailand” at Central Ladprao Department Store.

He will also travel to Nakhon Phanom province to visit the President Ho Chi Minh Memorial Site and meet with Thai communities with Vietnamese ancestry there.

Trump, who has criticised Amazon in the past, offered no specific facts to back up his argument. He launched his tirade in an early-morning tweet as he came under attack for blaming “both sides” following the death of a protester during a white supremacist rally over the weekend in Virginia.

“Amazon is doing great damage to tax paying retailers,” Trump wrote.

“Towns, cities and states throughout the US are being hurt – many jobs being lost!”

Trump appeared to revive an argument that Amazon has an unfair advantage over other retailers by avoiding sales taxes. But the online giant has in recent years agreed to pay local sales tax in all US states.

According to the fact-check website Politifact, Amazon last year paid $412 million in US federal, state, local and foreign taxes.

Amazon has been blamed for the woes of a number of brick-and-mortar retailers, although analysts say many other factors have affected the sector.

Seattle, Washington-based Amazon has grown from its origins as a retailer to a diversified tech group in cloud computing, online video and other services.

In January, Amazon announced that it planned to create more than 100,000 new US jobs over the coming 18 months.

During the election campaign, Trump said Amazon would has “huge antitrust problem,” presumably due to its position in retail.

Trump has also claimed that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post as a way to lobby on behalf of Amazon.

Amazon did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on the president’s tweet.

Trump’s comments come after several business leaders quite White House advisory panels, criticising the president failing to speak out immediately against white supremacists after the weekend rally and then saying they and counter-protesters shared blame for the violence.

The United Nations said Tuesday that it was evaluating humanitarian needs in Sierra Leone, while the first Israeli aid packages were sent and Britain pledged its support.

Officials at Freetown’s central morgue said 105 of the more than 300 officially dead were children, and burials began on Tuesday for some of the bodies too mutilated to identify. An independent but unofficial morgue estimate put the toll at 400 dead.

President Ernest Bai Koroma fought back tears on Tuesday as he visited the devastated hilltop community of Regent, saying the scale of the challenge ahead was “overwhelming us”.

“Entire communities have been wiped out,” Koroma said. “We need urgent support now.”

The government of Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, has promised relief to what the Red Cross says is more than 3,000 people left homeless, opening an emergency response centre in Regent and registration centres to count those left on the streets.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York that the UN country team was “supporting national authorities in rescue operations, helping evacuate residents, providing medical assistance to the injured, registering survivors, and providing food rations, water and dignity kits to those affected.”

– From shock to anger –

Speaking to AFP at the mortuary at the Connaught Hospital, technician Mohamed Sinneh Kamara said his team lacked equipment to process and identify the bodies piling up.

“We have logistical constraints including a lack of gloves, PPE (personal protective equipment) and rain boots,” he said as families gathered to identify their loved ones’ bodies.

Mabinty Sesay’s family had gone to Regent for an all-night prayer session when the church was buried in the mudslide. “I have lost 13 of my family members but was only able to identify two,” she told AFP at the morgue.

One woman collapsed after seeing her husband’s dead body among the piles of corpses, amid a powerful stench of decomposing flesh.

Adele Fox, national health coordinator for Sierra Leone for the charity Concern Worldwide, told AFP that the search for bodies continued but that survivors were facing difficult conditions.

“There is basic need for food, water, sanitation equipment and medical assistance. Since it is still the rainy season, further flooding is also a possibility,” she warned.

The sentiment among those in the disaster areas had shifted from shock and grief to anger at what is an annual problem in Freetown, though never before on this scale.

“There is some frustration over the regularity of flooding and destruction during the rainy season and its effects,” Fox said.

– ‘Wake-up call’ –

Society 4 Climate Change Communication (S4CCC), a local environment group, has called the tragedy a “wake-up call”.

Deforestation, a lack of urban planning and vulnerability to climate change had all played a part, it said.

The UN said contingency plans were being put into place in case of an outbreak of waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea, as dirty water stagnates in the streets.

Many homes are now without a water supply due to damage to a reservoir near Regent, according to the Guma Valley Water Company.

Sulaiman Zaino Parker, an official with Freetown’s city council, said that 150 burials took place on Tuesday evening and that many victims would be laid to rest in graves alongside those of the country’s last humanitarian disaster, the Ebola crisis, in nearby Waterloo.

“We have started burying some of the mutilated and decomposed bodies. All the corpses will be given a dignified burial with Muslim and Christian prayers,” Parker said.

The graves would be specially marked for future identification, he added.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis “prays for all who have died, and upon their grieving families and friends he invokes the divine blessings of strength and consolation.”

Guinean President Alpha Conde visited in solidarity with Sierra Leone on Tuesday and was galvanising aid from west African nations, his aide Naby Youssouf Kiridi Bangoura told AFP.

Three days of torrential rain culminated on Monday in the Regent mudslide and torrential flooding elsewhere in the city, one of the world’s wettest urban areas.

Freetown is hit each year by flooding during several months of rain, and in 2015 bad weather killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.

Sierra Leone ranked 179th out of 188 countries on the UN Development Programme’s 2016 Human Development Index, a basket of data combining life expectancy, education and income and other factors.

The grim discovery was made on Tuesday night by a young woman who was rummaging through bins near a park.

The legs had been severed at the groin but there was no trace of the rest of the body making identification of the victim difficult.

Forensic experts were combing through surveillance footage from the neighbourhood, the reports said.

Italian police officers and forensic move body parts remains on a stretcher, the parts were collected after inspecting a trash bin in Guido Reni street, Flaminio district, in Rome, Italy, 16 August 2017. EPA PHOTO

In 2015, the city was shaken when a severed leg tattooed with the words “Today is a good day to die” was fished out of a tributary of the River Tiber, which flows through Rome.

That leg, which had been severed above the knee, belonged to a hardcore fan of the Rome football club Lazio who was a known drug user and had a criminal record.

The 35-year-old female, named Abuh and measuring around one metre (three feet) in length, steamed out of the Shibukawa Animal Park in Okayama prefecture in early August having been allowed to walk freely around the zoo during opening hours.

Zoo keepers, unable to trace the truant tortoise, offered a reward of 500,000 yen ($4,500) for her safe return.

Their plan proved a success when a sharp-eyed local bounty hunter spotted the roaming reptile in nearby shrubbery.

This handout taken and released on August 16, 2017 by the Shibukawa Animal Park shows Abuh the female giant tortoise after she was found near the animal park in Okayama prefecture.

“We were so relieved that she came back safely as she is so popular among children,” said zoo staffer Yoshimi Yamane, describing Abuh — who weighs 55 kilogrammes (121 pounds) — as having a “gentle” disposition.

“We will try to take new measures so that this won’t happen again,” Yamane added, without giving details.

The incident was the second time in less than a month that Abuh had disappeared.

Her return home to the zoo was a top item on a TV news bulletin by Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

They said at least 500 Rohingya had made the difficult journey into Bangladesh, some claiming they had been abused by soldiers in Myanmar.

The latest influx follows a months-long bloody military crackdown on the mainly Muslim minority in Myanmar last year that led tens of thousands to flee across the border. The United Nations has said the violence may amount to ethnic cleansing.

Abu Toyyob said he escaped with his seven-member family as the army vandalised Rohingya houses and detained young men.

“They arrested my younger brother from home and injured my two-year-old son by kicking him with boots,” the 25-year-old told AFP.

“I immediately set off with my family and crossed the Naf two nights ago,” he added, referring to the river that divides the two countries.

Dhaka estimates that nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees are living in squalid refugee camps and makeshift settlements in the resort district of Cox’s Bazar, which borders Rakhine.

Their numbers swelled last October when more than 70,000 Rohingya villagers began arriving, bringing stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of Myanmar soldiers.

Bangladesh border guards said they had stepped up patrols after reports of a military build-up on the other side of the river.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee voiced alarm at reports that an army battalion had flown into Rakhine to help local authorities boost security in the region.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya who live in Rakhine, who are seen as interlopers from Bangladesh, denied citizenship and access to basic rights.

But they are also increasingly unwelcome in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where police often blame them for crimes such as drug trafficking.

Dhaka has floated the idea of relocating tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote, flood-prone island off its coast, despite opposition from rights groups.

An official with the UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which looks after settlements for unregistered Rohingya refugees, said the organisation was aware of new arrivals.

The numbers were “not as alarming as the October influx,” the official said.

His plight in ‘ward 100’, where the death of so many children has sparked outrage, is emblematic of a healthcare crisis where doctors are stretched to breaking point and hospitals run out of oxygen due to unpaid bills.

Authorities have launched an inquiry into the causes of the oxygen disruption at the now-notorious Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur, which Indian media has linked to the deaths of 30 infants last Thursday and Friday.

This file photo taken on August 12, 2017 shows relatives mourning the death of a child at the Baba Raghav Das Hospital in Gorakhpur, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. 

Local officials have blamed an outbreak of encephalitis for the deaths and denied a lack of oxygen was responsible.

But doctors and medical experts point to woeful underfunding in public health in eastern Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest regions, where just a handful of specialists are available to treat millions.

“This (deaths) won’t change soon, as it isn’t a simple oxygen issue. The rot is deep and the system needs to be overhauled,” a senior hospital official told AFP in Gorakhpur, speaking on condition of anonymity.

India was spending just 1.4 per cent of its GDP on public health in 2014 — far below the global average of six per cent.

In Gorakhpur, there are just 529 primary health care clinics — less than half the number needed to cater for nearly 4.5 million people living in the district, July data from Brookings India shows.

There are just five paediatricians and 22 encephalitis treatment centres, despite the mosquito-borne illness wreaking havoc in low-lying areas of the state every year during the monsoon.

India’s most populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are ravaged by encephalitis every year.

The disease, which affects mainly malnourished children, causes brain inflammation and can result in headaches, seizures, fever and even brain damage.

Professor K.P Kushwaha, who headed Baba Raghav Das Medical College until mid-2015, said the hospital could not cope with the volume of patients.

“The government now needs to make at least five such hospitals across the region to tackle this load and get better results,” he told AFP.

– Life and death –

Prasad, a poor farmer from Uttar Pradesh, travelled roughly 65 kilometres (40 miles) with his wife and two-year-old daughter after the infant suddenly ran a high fever.

He arrived at Baba Raghav Das Medical College just hours after hospital authorities declared that another 25 infants had died over the weekend.

Prasad’s daughter was found a bed in the overcrowded ward, where many parents were forced to squat on the floor in nearby corridors. It was worse in the neo-natal unit, where three to four infants crowded a single bed.

“We take turns to go out in the corridor and hall to rest, while the other one stands here,” Prasad told AFP, gesturing to his wife and ill daughter.

“She probably has pneumonia, I don’t know, the doctors haven’t told me anything.”

Just days earlier, panicked parents used manual pumps to help their stricken children as the supply of oxygen fizzled out.

Professor K.P Kushwaha’s successor was stood down over the oxygen debacle, which allegedly stemmed from nearly $100,000 in overdue bills, some dating back to November.

His replacement, P.K Singh, promised conditions at the hospital would improve “whatever the shortcomings”.

“I understand that the hygiene situation here is very bad and there is a risk of infection,” Singh told AFP.

But the district’s chief medical officer Ravindra Kumar told AFP nothing could change as long as encephalitis plagued the poor eastern region.

“So far we have only been shooting in the dark without much idea about its causes, prevention or the cure,” he told AFP.

A lack of primary health centres meant illnesses were not detected early and by the time patients arrived at hospitals it was too late, said a local government official, gesturing to beds full of sickly children.

“If people like them get the right advice and prompt referral, it can make the difference between life and death,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Duterte has waged an unprecedented crackdown on drugs during his 14 months in power that has seen police and suspected vigilantes kill thousands of people, leading to warnings by rights groups that he may be overseeing a crime against humanity.

In one of the deadliest operations of the war, police reported killing 32 people in a series of raids Monday on suspected drug traffickers across Bulacan province, which neighbours the capital of Manila.

“We wanted to shock and awe these drug personalities,” Romeo Caramat, the Bulacan police chief, told reporters in Manila on Wednesday, adding 109 suspects had also been arrested.

“Other drug personalities will think twice before continuing with their drug trade.”

Caramat insisted the police had only killed the suspects in self defence, and highlighted in the press conference that pistols and grenades had been seized in the raids.

“We know we have done nothing wrong,” Caramat said.

He later told AFP that no police had been killed or wounded.

When asked how it was possible there had been no police wounded if the raiding officers had been acting in self defence when killing 32 people, Caramat said: “Don’t ask me to explain”.

Duterte easily won last year’s presidential election largely on a vow to kill tens of thousands of drug traffickers and addicts, which he said was necessary to stop the country’s slide to narco-state status.

Duterte promised during the campaign he would win his drug war in three to six months, a vow that resonated with voters fed up with high crime rates and corrupt politicians.

Duterte then as president railed against critics who said it was impossible to quickly end the drugs problem by killing traffickers and addicts.

But Duterte, who is limited by the constitution to serving a single term of six years, conceded last week that he may be unable to deliver on his campaign pledge.

“Look, these shabu (meth) and drugs, et cetera, cannot be solved by one man, for a president for one term. It has bogged nations (down),” he said in his southern home city of Davao on Friday.

But in another speech last week, at national police headquarters, Duterte also signalled there would be no change in tactics.

He again vowed to pardon police if they were found guilty of murder for killing while fighting his drug war.