Australia Post made a $36 million profit last financial year, but its top six executives, including managing director and group CEO Ahmed Fahour, banked nearly half that amount, around $17.4 million in combined salaries, bonuses and retirement benefits last year.

Fahour's $4.4 million salary was topped up by $1.2 million bonus in 2015-16, while another five executives were on annual pay packets between $1.3 million to $1.8 million.

Another $368,000 was paid last year in retirement benefit to the former chief operating officer, taking the total benefits to senior executives to $17.863 million.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has confirmed that Moscow has been mediating talks between Damascus and the Syrian Kurds to help maintain Syria's sovereignty and statehood, in an interview with Russia's Izvestia daily.

Russia "makes efforts to establish a common understanding between the Syrian government and the Syrian Kurds for the sake of a united Syria," the minister told Izvestia in an interview he gave ahead of Diplomat's Day, a Russian holiday celebrated on February 10.

Lavrov went on to say that four rounds of negotiations, brokered by Russia and including direct contact between the Damascus delegation and "representatives of the political and public structures of the Syrian Kurds," had already taken place between June and December in 2016. In addition, the gatherings also involved indirect talks between the two sides.

Aging and graying Europe won't close its doors to asylum seekers, as it needs immigration, the EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said, adding that Europeans had been migrants themselves "up to few years ago."

"I believe Europeans should understand that we need migration for our economies and for our welfare systems, with the current demographic trend we have to be sustainable," Mogherini said.

Mogherini, who was speaking at the Senior Officials Meeting at the Valletta Joint Action Plan 2017, was joined by Maltese Foreign Minister George Vella, as well as officials from Europe and Africa. The meeting was convened to deal with migration through cooperation with third countries.

The battle against picking Elliott Abrams for the number two position in the State Department is on. Republican Senator Rand Paul played a crucial role in blocking the naming of John Bolton to that position in December - along with Bolton's mustache, that is - and Paul issued a statement last night titled, "Do not let Elliott Abrams anywhere near the State Department." It savaged Abrams as a neoconservative who along with his buddies is dedicated to perpetual war.

I hope against hope that the rumors are wrong and that President Donald Trump will not open the State Department door to the neocons. Crack the door to admit Elliott Abrams and the neocons will scurry in by the hundreds.

Neoconservative interventionists have had us at perpetual war for 25 years. While President Trump has repeatedly stated his belief that the Iraq War was a mistake, the neocons (all of them Never-Trumpers) continue to maintain that the Iraq and Libyan Wars were brilliant ideas. These are the same people who think we must blow up half the Middle East, then rebuild it and police it for decades.

They're wrong and they should not be given a voice in this administration...

He also said that Trump should hire a realist, not a neocon:

Elliott Abrams is a neoconservative too long in the tooth to change his spots, and the president should have no reason to trust that he would carry out a Trump agenda rather than a neocon agenda.

But just as importantly, Congress has good reason not to trust him — he was convicted of lying to Congress in his previous job.

The Kentucky senator appeared on CNN this afternoon and repeatedly used the phrase "nation-building" but never neoconservative. Wolf Blitzer defended Abrams. He said Abrams had been pardoned for his conviction for lying to Congress. Paul said that didn't mean he was innocent, it just means he has friends in high places.

The senator went on to say that Abrams poses the danger of creating a "government within a government," as he and the Iran-Contra co-conspirators did, and fomenting war. Paul also referenced Abrams's militarism in Guatemala (as we did yesterday and Allan Nairn did brilliantly on Charlie Rose in 1995).

Abrams also supervised, covered up and defended a policy of arming a Guatemalan government undeniably waging war against an indigenous native population. Thousands of the indigenous people of the Ixil region of Guatemala were exterminated. The Guatemalan President was eventually convicted of war crimes. Abrams was an unabashed supporter and organizer of sending arms into this tragic situation.

More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, according to two senior United Nations officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence, suggesting the death toll has been a far greater than previously reported.

The officials, from two separate UN agencies working in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months, said they were concerned the outside world had not fully grasped the severity of the crisis unfolding in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

"The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation - we could be looking at thousands," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both officials, in separate interviews, cited the weight of testimony gathered by their agencies from refugees over the past four months for concluding the death toll likely exceeded 1,000.

In his first call as president with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads as a bad deal for the United States, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official with knowledge of the call.

When Putin raised the possibility of extending the 2010 treaty, known as New START, Trump paused to ask his aides in an aside what the treaty was, these sources said.

Trump then told Putin the treaty was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, saying that New START favored Russia. Trump also talked about his own popularity, the sources said.

The White House declined to comment. It referred Reuters to the official White House account issued after the Jan. 28 call, which did not mention the discussion about New START.

It has not been previously reported that Trump had conveyed his doubt about New START to Putin in the hour-long call.

While he was campaigning, it was wise to refrain from coming to any definite conclusions about Trump's character or intentions. Much of what a presidential candidate says before election day is rhetoric, marketing and bluff, designed to attract as many votes as possible.

As a general rule, the words of a politician, particularly one who is facing an election, rarely translate into actual policy. Actions and results are what count, not discourse or style. Not following this rule is what made America's anti-Bush, anti-war 'dissident left' fall for Obama's deception, and conversely, engage in anti-Trump campaigns before he got into office.

The rule still applies now that Trump has become president, although his words carry more weight because they are now a signature away from becoming executive orders. Someone in his position understands that inconsistency in word and deed risks eroding his authority.

During a meeting between Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich and President Trump at the White House, the chief executive of the world's largest semiconductor maker told the president that his company would invest $7 billion in a new factory in Arizona. Krzanich said the investment is an expansion of Intel's presence in Chandler that will enable a plant capable of advanced 7-nanometer chip production. The partially built Fab 42 facility will be completed in 3 to 4 years and is expected to add 3,000 company jobs.

Krzanich added that Trump's "advantageous" tax and regulatory policies are partly responsible for their decision to announce the new factory at the White House. Trump called the investment "a great thing for Arizona," and said the products will be "amazing."

We do find it It is somewhat ironic that the same chip fabrication facility was used by Intel to appease none other than Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, to wit:

The White House has announced that following his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama will travel to the Phoenix area on Wednesday to deliver remarks at Intel Corporation's Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Ariz. President Obama visited Intel's Oregon campus in 2011, during that visit, Intel announced a $5 billion investment to build Fab 42 in Chandler, Ariz. This visit presents an opportunity for Intel to showcase progress on the construction of Fab 42 and the investment in action.

Jeremy Corbyn's future as leader of the Labour Party may be in doubt yet again amid rumors of a second coup, this time from the party's left-wing. Pro-EU Labour MPs may use Corbyn's support for Theresa May's Brexit Bill to dethrone him.

Corbyn may stand down if his command to Labour MPs to support the government's Brexit Bill is challenged by his closest allies, such as Diane Abbott and Clive Lewis.

Lewis had previously said he could not back the European Union (Notification Of Withdrawal) Bill, without a set of amendments proposed by his party. The changes would see Britain's strategy watered down to something often referred to as "soft Brexit."

"I've got to make a decision on how I vote," the shadow business secretary told the BBC on Wednesday morning. "I'm going to make my mind up. I don't know - [a] lot on my plate, [a] lot on everyone's plate."

It's no secret that Russia and China both share a growing appetite for gold. But how excited are they about U.S. Treasuries, the most boring but "safe" investment which basically translates into "we believe that everything will basically stay the same"?

From the looks of it, Moscow and Beijing no longer think T-bonds are a safe bet or in their national interests.

As Bloomberg's Zhuo Zhang explains, Russia and China are selling their treasuries and buying up all the gold they can get their hands on:

As they sharply increase their gold reserves, China and Russia are selling off their U.S. Treasuries, with their hunger for the metal coming amid a strict diet excluding dollars. Gold is appealing to these countries because it shields them from the U.S. government's ability to control the value of their holdings. Gold is a country-less currency. A continuing trend of reserve buildup and Treasury sales might weaken the dollar and pressure gold prices higher.

China and Russia have officially added almost 50 million ounces of gold to their central banks while selling off more than $267 billion of Treasuries.

Yes, for those who missed it: "Gold is appealing to these countries because it shields them from the U.S. government's ability to control the value of their holdings. Gold is a country-less currency. A continuing trend of reserve buildup and Treasury sales might weaken the dollar and pressure gold prices higher."