Good Morning Australia!! - New Zealand has a quake and tsunami alert - An explosion at NASA dashes hopes for the SpaceX rocket - Democracy under threat in yet another South American country - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

New Zealand's Civil Defense declared a Level Two Tsunami threat after a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake off the coast of east cape on the North Island.  People in the Tologa Bay area have been evacuated and others are being urged not to go to the shore for tsunami sightseeing - stay away from the water.  The East Cape and Great Barrier tide gauges recorded waves of 30 centimeters.  But don't forget, it only takes a few inches of fast-moving water to knock a person off their feet.

Brazil's ousted President Dilma Rousseff appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the Senate's decision to remove her from office over allegations of using an accounting tactic to conceal a budget deficit.  Ms. Rousseff has maintained her innocence throughout the the flawed process, and the allegations against her weren't actual crimes.  But the Supreme Court has ruled against Rousseff at every turn, and the chief justice presided over the impeachment trial in the Senate.

The streets of Caracas, Venezuela were jammed packed with hundreds of thousands of people in dueling rallies:  The conservative group demanded a recall referendum for the removal of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro, blaming him for a deepening economic crisis that has people lining up outside stores for hours to purchase scant few items.  Government supporters rallied around Maduro, who blames a conspiracy of the US and conservative business interests in wrecking the economy.  "The nation has triumphed," President Maduro told his crowd, "They wanted to intimidate the people but the people are here."

No one was hurt when the SpaceX rocket exploded on NASA's launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The rocket's payload, the Israeli-built Amos-6 communications satellite for Facebook, was also destroyed.  The bird alone cost US$200 Million.  Facebook's Mark Zuckerburg said it was "disappointing".  SpaceX's Elon Musk said the anomaly happened during fueling for Saturday's planned launched, which is now obviously scrubbed.

French resorts are lifting their burkini bans, a week after the country's top administrative court ruled one town's law "seriously and clearly illegally breached fundamental freedoms".  In other words, stop telling Women what they can wear.  Nice, Villeneuve-Loubet, Cannes, Frejus, and Roquebrune have begun to obey the ruling, although a couple of towns on conservative Corsica are holding out.

Also in France, children returned to school to brand new tightened security measures inspired by the series of terrorist attacks.  This included guards and metal detectors on some buildings, and all twelve million students will be taught to hide, escape, and help each other during simulated attacks.

Hey, remember that big blast from 95 light years away that had researchers at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) pointing their telescopes at a specific star in hopes of finding.. something?  False Alarm!  Although they have no way of knowing for sure at the present time, the signal detected by Russians a year ago is now believed to be mere noise - possibly generated from right here on earth.

A solar ecplipse was visible on France's Reunion Island.