Rohingya crisis: Thousands rally in defence of Myanmar army

Military songs rang out across downtown Yangon on Sunday as tens of thousands rallied in defence of Myanmar's army, an institution accused by the global community of driving Rohingya Muslims from the country.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled western Rakhine state to Bangladesh since late August when raids by militants from the minority group were met with ruthless army "clearance operations".

The United Nations has led global condemnation, calling the crackdown a "textbook" example of ethnic cleansing.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson phoned army chief Min Aung Hlaing earlier this week to express his concerns at alleged atrocities in Rakhine state and urge a swift and safe return for the Rohingya.

But inside Myanmar support for the army has surged — an unlikely turnaround for a once feared and hated institution that ruled for 50 years and whose lawmakers lost heavily in 2015 polls.

Those elections sent Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party into power, but the Rohingya crisis has put her government on the backfoot.

Demonstrators carried banners lauding Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing and rebuking the international community for "pressuring the Tatmadaw" — as Myanmar's army is known.

"The Tatmadaw is essential for the country, it protects our ethnic groups, races and religion," Nan Aye Aye Kyi, 54, told AFP as the rally snaked through Yangon to the iconic Sule Pagoda.
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Trump, senators unveil bill to slash legal immigration to US

US President Donald Trump and two Republican senators on Wednesday unveiled a plan at the White House to half the number of legal immigrants to the United States eventually and favour newcomers who speak English.

Trump threw his support behind a bill developed by senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia that they say would cut legal immigration by 50 per cent over 10 years by reducing the kinds of relatives immigrants can bring into the country. The legislation faces an uphill climb to get through Congress.

"This competitive application process will favour applicants who can speak English, financially support themselves and their families and demonstrate skills that will contribute to our economy," Trump said.

Trump and the Republican lawmakers blasted the current immigration system as out of date and argued that it hurts American workers by driving down wages.

"The reforms... will help ensure that newcomers to our wonderful country will be assimilated, will succeed and will achieve the American dream," Trump said.

Under the new bill, the United States would prioritise high-skilled immigrants by setting up a merits-based system similar to those used by Canada and Australia.
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High exports, increase in investment boost German economy in 2017

BREAKING NEWS - The German economy defied increased political risks and picked up speed in the first quarter of 2017 as companies invested more, consumers and the state continued to spend and exports soared despite the threat of rising protectionism.

Europe's biggest economy grew by 0.6 per cent in the quarter from the quarter before, when it expanded 0.4 per cent, the Federal Statistics Office said on Friday.

That was the strongest quarterly growth rate since the first quarter of 2016, when the economy grew 0.7 per cent. It was in line with the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll.

The figures are the latest in a batch of solid data that are likely to help Chancellor Angela Merkel and her centre-right CDU/CSU bloc to burnish their economic credentials before a Sept. 24 federal election, when she will seek a fourth term.

Merkel's conservatives have already widened their lead in opinion polls over the main opposition Social Democrats (SPD), who are junior partners in the current coalition and want to replace Merkel with their chancellor candidate, Martin Schulz.

"A boom without end in Germany... and despite all the risks," Bankhaus Lampe analyst Alexander Krueger said, calling it a good sign that the upswing was based on a broad foundation.

"However, it should be noted that the economy would be humming less without the support of interest rates, which are too low for Germany," he added, in reference to the European Central Bank's ultra-loose monetary policy.

The Federal Statistics Office said investments in buildings and equipment grew strongly, partly due to a mild winter, while households and state authorities increased their expenditures slightly at the beginning of the year.
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Best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings': Trump

President Donald Trump lashed out in a series of tweets on Friday amid a firestorm over the abrupt firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey, defending the shifting narrative and timeline his administration has offered for the decision.

He questioned whether his administration should cancel all future press briefings and, instead, replace them with written responses to questions, "for the sake of accuracy."

The president's advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey on Tuesday in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless.

The president tweeted, "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

He added, "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

The decision to fire Comey amid an ongoing FBI investigation into ties between the Russian government and members of Trump's 2016 campaign has raised concerns that Trump was trying to undermine a probe that could threaten his presidency.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted the information she and her colleagues offered was consistent. "It was a quick-moving process," she said. "We took the information we had as best we have it and got it out to the American people as quickly as we could."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Rosenstein drafted the memo raising concerns about Comey on his own accord. The next day, Sanders said the president asked Rosenstein to put his concerns in writing.
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