Good Morning Australia!! - Trump tries to stop a critical book from being published - Trump's top law enforcer is trying to reverse progress on marijuana decriminalization - Another Chibok girl escapes - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

HEY!  Southeastern Australia will experience extremely hot and dry conditions on Saturday!  Respect burn bans, check on your elders, and stay cool this weekend!

Lawyers for the orange clown will try to stop publication of a book containing explosive revelations about flaming incompetence, crippling internal competition, and bizarre behavior in the White House of Donald Trump.  Excerpts from journalist Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" - now being rushed onto the global marketplace this week instead of next Tuesday - have already dominated the headlines around the world, primarily because of quotes from Trump political guru Steve Bannon in which he trashes everything and everyone in the White House. 
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But it also contains bizarre stories of Trump's private bedroom where his wife, child, and even the housekeeping staff are banned; Ivanka Trump's presidential ambitions; hatred and paranoia running amok in a staff that just can't work together.  Stopping the book would be prior restraint, which is specifically banned by the US Constitution and ample case law.

Former British PM Tony Blair is denying that he warned Trump's son in law Jared Kushner that British spies were watching Donald Junior or even Trump himself, as described in a portion of the book "Fire and Fury".  Blair told the BBC that he did meet with Kushner, but was not angling for a gig as Mideast Advisor.  Blair offices calls the rest of it "absurd", "a complete fabrication", and "simply untrue".

Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed the Obama Administration's hands off policy on federal agents enforcing marijuana prohibition laws.  That puts the federal government on a collision course with states that have successfully decriminalized medical and recreational marijuana, the most recent being California.  Most critics hold that Sessions' ulterior motive lies with his political donors and allies who have significant investments in the gruesome and immoral capitalist spectacle of "private prisons", which stand to make a windfall if the federal government starts locking up law-abiding Americans for pot charges.

Legalization of Reefer has kind of been like the legalization of gay marriage - once the taboo was broken, the mainstream realized that the world wasn't going to come to an end, as conservative doomsayers and fear-mongers like Sessions would have them believe.  Now, one in five Americans live in states where recreational marijuana is legal, and polling has steadily shown that a vast majority want pot to be legal from sea to shining sea. 

Anyway...

Nigeria says another Chibok school girl has escaped from Boko Haram.  More than 270 girls were kidnapped by the Islamist extremist group from a school in the north-eastern town of Chibok.  About 100 are still being held, with the rest having escaped or been freed by the Nigerian military.

A truck driver thought he could beat a passenger train through a crossing in rural South Africa:  He didn't, and 18 people are dead while hundreds are recovering from various injuries.  "The truck driver was taking chances," said Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi, "He thought that he was going to pass through."  Fire raced through part of the wreckage trapping many of the victims, some of whom died of burn injuries.

The death toll in that bus crash off of La Curva De Diablo (The Devil's Curve) in Peru is significantly higher than initially reported.  At least 50 people are dead, and only six people survived the 100 meter plunge off of the treacherous Pacific coastal road earlier this week.

A fire in a shoe factory in Novosibirsk, Russia killed ten people, including seven Chinese migrants.

The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 11 people in Kabul, Afghanistan.  The bomber targeted a group of police managing a demonstration in the capital.

North Korea is the greatest threat to Japan since World War II, says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who is vowing to build up the country's defenses to counter Pyongyang missile and nuclear programs.  Tokyo last month approved a budget which increases the defense budget to record levels.  Abe is also planning to push harder for his long-held goal of dumping Article Nine of the constitution, which outlaws war as a means to settle international disputes. 

Authorities in western Japan fined former Sumo Yokozuna (Grand Champion) Harumafuji around AU$5,600 for assaulting a junior wrestler and fracturing his skull, an embarrassing incident that forced him to retire at the peak of his competing skill in November.  The Japan Sumo Association (JSA) also formally sacked its chief Takahohana, himself a former Yokozuna.  With this, the JSA hopes to put the scandal behind it before the two-week tournament that begins in Tokyo on 14 January.  The ancient sport was just climbing back to a level of respectability after a decades of scandals including gambling, match-fixing, assaults, and jailing of a coach who oversaw the beating death of a teenage wrestler.

Blackface is never okay.  Okay?  No.  Never do blackface.  A comedian in Japan is being accused of cultural insensitivity for painting himself black for a New Year's program comedy bit, and impersonating Eddie Murphy.  African-American writer Baye McNeil, who lives in Japan, had to issue a periodic reminder that black people were "not a punchline nor a prop".  Three years ago, he successfully campaigned to prevent stop the performance of two bands in blackface on national TV.

The son of tennis great Boris Becker is pressing racism charges against a lawmakers from the racist and xenophobic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, who referred to the younger Becker as a "little half-negro" on Twitter.  Germany has strict hate speech laws, and the government says said it will enforce them a little more closely, with the rise of scumbag racists like the AfD and anti-immigrant groups.  The AfD lawmaker denied insulting Becker and blamed an assistant for the offensive statement.