Good Morning Australia!! - An advocate for freedom dies in Beijing's custody - Lula defies the prosecution - Iraq is investigating executions of IS fighters - And more on your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo died in hospital where he was undergoing treatment for terminal liver cancer.  The human rights and democracy advocate was serving an eleven year prison term for criminal subversion, and Chinese authorities did not allow him to leave the country for treatment as he requested.  The Nobel committee condemned the Chinese Government:  "We find it deeply disturbing that Liu Xiaobo was not transferred to a facility where he could receive adequate medical treatment before he became terminally ill," said Berit Reiss-Anderssen, the leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.  "The Chinese Government bears a heavy responsibility for his premature death," she added.

Russia handed long prison terms to five Chechens in the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was brazenly gunned down outside the Kremlin.  The Nemtsov family lawyer says the case will not be solved until whoever ordered the shooting is caught, and that may never happen.

Lula is not backing down, and is running for president of Brazil once again.  "If anyone thinks that with this sentence they will pull me out of the game, they should know that I am in the game," said former president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, a day after a court sentenced him to almost ten years in prison for supposedly accepting bribes, which he is appealing.  Supporters believe the trial and ruling was politically-motivated to keep the popular leader out of next year's race (you know, before he lifts ANOTHER 28 million people out of poverty like the last time).  "From this moment, I want to ask the Workers' party for the right to be a candidate for president," Lula shouted; "Lula for president!" the crowd responded.

Baby Elephant Alert!  Baby Elephant Alert!  At the Africa Safari Zoo in Puebla, Mexico.

The EU is suing Poland to stop logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest, a unique primeval habitat that's pretty much the last place in Europe that looks the same way it did a thousand years ago. 
Bialowieza Forest
The forest is a UNESCO World Heritage site and the last refuge of the European Bison and other rare species. 
Moooo! Mooooo!
But Poland's ultra-right wing government tripled the amount of logging, supposedly to curb a beetle infestation.  The complaint is filed in the European Court of Justice.

Three males Lions that escaped from South Africa's Kruger National Park have been killed after they were found chowing down on a farmer's cow.

Human Rights Watch says Rwanda is skipping fair and open trials and putting people to deal for minor offenses.  HRW says 37 executions took place between July 2016 and March 2017 in western Rwanda for such "crimes" as banana theft, smuggling small amounts of marijuana, and using the wrong kind of fishing net.  The government denies extra-judicial killings take place.

Iraq is investigating a video that appears to show uniformed government troops throwing suspected IS fighters off of a cliff and firing at their bodies.  Human Rights Watch said it had verified the location near Mosul with satellite imagery.  The video comes just after Iraqi troops, Shiite militias, and the Kurdish Peshmerga defeated the so-called Islamic State in Mosul, ending a three-year occupancy.

A New Zealand woman is dead after an accident during a rather popular (if unsafe) tourist activity on the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten.  The 57-year old Kiwi was knocked backwards while standing just outside Princess Juliana Airport to feel the powerful blast from a passenger jet about to take off.  The airport is right on the beach, and tourists gather on the other side of the fence to pose for photos or videos as jets come in just a few meters above their heads, or hanging on to the fence as the engines blast at them.  The woman was declared dead at hospital.  Rather than restrict that portion of beach, Sint Maarten authorities hung up a few warning signs.