Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel is pulling out of a long-planned trip to Vietnam and Myanmar this month because of a demanding schedule at home, defense officials said Tuesday.

The last-minute decision to postpone the 10-day trip came after Hagel faced criticism over his performance from unnamed officials inside President Barack Obama's administration in a series of news reports.

Myanmar President Thein Sein opened unprecedented talks with army top brass and political rivals including Aung San Suu Kyi Friday, as U.S. President Barack Obama called for "inclusive and credible" elections next year after decades of disastrous military rule.

Thein Sein and Suu Kyi walked into the meeting together to begin extraordinary discussions in the capital Naypyidaw ahead of 2015 polls viewed as a key test of democratic reforms under the quasi-civilian government.

Myanmar's president has called an unprecedented summit of army top brass and political rivals including Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party, political figures said Thursday, a year ahead of crucial elections.

The talks, scheduled for Friday in the capital Naypyidaw, are the first of their kind in the country that is attempting to emerge from the shadow of decades of outright military rule.

Myanmar has jailed seven men for lynching 10 Muslim bus passengers in an attack that sparked mass unrest between Buddhists and Muslims in the western state of Rakhine two years ago, authorities said Tuesday.

The men were each given seven years in jail by Thandwe county court for the murders, which saw the passengers dragged from the vehicle and killed by a mob, an official from the town's administrative office said.

A climate of fear in Myanmar's Rakhine state is pushing stateless Rohingya Muslims to flee in "unprecedented" numbers, with almost 10,000 people taking to boats in the region in just two weeks, activists said Monday.

A surge in boats leaving from northern Rakhine, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya live in isolated communities, has seen around 900 people a day making the perilous journey by sea, according to the Arakan Project, a Rohingya rights group.

Two Myanmar migrant workers accused of murdering a pair of British tourists on a Thai island have retracted their confessions and alleged they were tortured, lawyers said on Wednesday.

Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun were charged with the murder of David Miller, 24, and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, after the tourists' battered bodies were found on the island of Koh Tao last month.

Landmark elections in Myanmar that could propel opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party into office have been provisionally scheduled for late next year, electoral officials said Tuesday.

The 2015 general election, seen as a key test of Myanmar's democratic reforms, is due to be held in the final week of October or the first week of November, Union Election Commission chairman Tin Aye said at a meeting with political parties in Yangon.

Six Myanmar journalists have been jailed by a Yangon court for "state defamation", the country’s interim press council said Friday, amid mounting concern over a roll back of press freedom in the former junta-run state.

The five editorial staff and one publisher were each sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday, according to a statement from the Myanmar Press Council (MPC), which criticised the jail terms.

Britain's top envoy in Thailand met Thai and Myanmar officials in Bangkok Tuesday to discuss the investigation into the murder of two British tourists, as concerns mount over the handling of the probe.

Thai police have charged two migrant workers from Myanmar with the murder of David Miller, 24, and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, after the tourists' battered bodies were found on the southern island of Koh Tao on September 15.

Four civilians including a 12-year-old boy were killed and several wounded when a mortar bomb hit a crowded road in conflict-hit eastern Myanmar, witnesses and police said on Sunday.

The incident happened on Saturday in an area of Karen state near the Thai border, which residents say has been rattled by fighting in recent weeks between troops and a rebel splinter group representing the ethnic Karen minority.