Good Morning Australia!! - Shirtless face-lifted man brags about big missile - Are Fancy Bears attacking Germany? - Trump messes up the market again - Europe's winter weather got worse - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

With less than a month to go before Russia's presidential election, Vladimir Putin announced the development of new, "invincible" nuclear weapons that can evade Western anti-missile systems.  Before a joint sitting of both houses of the Russian parliament, Vladimir said: "This.. is not a bluff," which is totally something someone would say when they're not bluffing.  "They need to take account of a new reality," he said of the West.  Putin then played a demonstration video showing the same lame, 1990s-style animation Russia uses every time it talks about its nuclear arsenal, with warheads falling hilariously close to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago winter retreat in Florida.  "I can assure you that all these things really exist and all these things work very well," Putin said, which is totally something someone would say it these things really exist and work very well.

Russian hackers are suspected in a sustained, "ongoing" cyber-attack on the German government.  Local media reports said that the Russian hacking group APT28 - AKA "Fancy Bear" - had placed malware in a government network as early as a year ago, and it has infiltrated both the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry.  How much data was intercepted within that period of time remains unclear.

The Dow Jones lost 400 points after the orange clown Donald Trump nonchalantly announced new tariffs and steel and aluminum imports to the US.  But he didn't say when or how much or which nations, which one analyst likened to pulling the pin on a grenade and non telling anyone where he's throwing it.  Worried about increasing protectionism and retaliatory, tit-for-tat trade barriers from China and/or India, the market panicked.

US Ambassador to Mexico Roberta Jacobson, a respected career diplomat, announced she plans to step down.  This latest loss in America's beleaguered diplomatic corp comes after yet another telephone argument between the orange clown Donald Trump and Mexican President Pena Nieto, who is making it clear Mexico will not pay for Trump's idiotic border wall.  Several top state department posts are being performed by "temps" and many ambassadorships remain unfilled because the clown hasn't nominated anyone to do the jobs.

If only all babies were this well-behaved on airplanes.

From exile in Belgium, Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont has abandoned the Spanish region's presidency and left it to someone else to clean up his mess.  "We won't surrender, we won't give up," he said in a video to anyone who still supports him, "I know that the path we have ahead is long and fraught with difficulties."  Puigdemont tapped Jordi Sanchez to assume the candidacy.  Sanchez is an fellow pro-independence campaigner who didn't leave the country and is currently in jail in Madrid on charges of sedition.  Puigdemont spent the better part of the last two years whipping up separatist sentiment in the area around Barcelona, despite Madrid's constant warnings that secession was illegal and would not be allowed. 

A new winter storm has blasted into Europe from the Atlantic as the region reels from the arctic inversion pushed into Europe from Siberia.  Ireland is expecting several centimeters of snow, Dublin airport closed and was not expected to open again until Saturday, and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar warned people to leave work early on Thursday: "The risk to life and limb presented by severe weather conditions should not be underestimated," Varadkar said.  Two-thousand drivers were trapped in their cars near Montpelier, France because of winter storm conditions, some as long as 24 hours.  In fact, traffic networks were mess up all over.  One London train tunnel was reportedly closed because of an 8-foot icicle.  At least the Polar Bears are enjoying themselves.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation wants South Africa to ban "gratuitous displays" of the apartheid-era flag, which it says amounts to "hate speech, unfair discrimination and harassment".  The foundation formed to continue Nelson Mandela's work said "some South Africans do not fully appreciate that apartheid was a crime against humanity" and display of the apartheid flag is "a celebration of that crime and a humiliation of its victims".  Critics said something about free speech, blah blah blah.

Venezuela delayed its snap presidential election until late May, in a deal with opposition parties to give them more time to prepare.  Ordinarily, the country holds its election in December, but President Nicolas Maduro wanted to get it in now while the conservative opposition was in disarray.  It shows no sign of getting its act together, as the main opposition coalition is refusing to take part and is criticizing another conservative for announcing his run.