World AM News Briefs For Monday, 23 July 2018

Hello Australia!! - Israel evacuates civilian volunteers from Syria - The FBI reveals why it wiretapped a Trump aide - Japan joins the global club of places setting dangerous and deadly temperature records - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Israel has evacuated several hundred "white helmet" civil volunteers and their families from Syria, as the Syrian government gets closer to regaining complete control of the country after years of civil war.  The White Helmets are non-aligned volunteers who assist victims of the war regardless of their affiliation, but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and his Russian allies claim they support the rebels and also have links to jihadist groups.  The plan was to evacuated 800 of them, but only 100 plus 322 family members made it to the Golan Heights border.  Jordan said that "Britain, Germany and Canada made a legally binding undertaking to resettle them within a specified period of time due to 'a risk to their lives'."

The US FBI released hundreds of pages of documents that convinced four federal judge to okay wiretaps and other surveillance on Carter Page, a top foreign policy aide on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.  The documents include 422 heavily redacted pages of evidence that show the FBI had multiple reasons to believe Page was the subject of "targeted recruitment" by Russia in its efforts to undermine the 2016 presidential election.  Investigators also believed that Page had been "collaborating with and conspiring with the Russian government" and said Russia's efforts were being coordinated with Page and "perhaps other individuals associated with" the Trump campaign.  Page denies any wrongdoing.

Debilitating and record breaking heat is expected to hang around Japan for another few days at least.  More than 30 people are dead in the heat wave, eleven of them on a single day.  The temperature topped 40 C degrees in Gifu and got very close to that in Kyoto, setting a record.  unfortunately, this is part of a pattern of record-shattering heat in the Northern Hemisphere summer; this month Ouargla, Algeria hit 51.3 C degrees, which is the highest recorded temperature for Africa.  There are also around 50 wildfires rage in the Swedish Arctic Circle, which is unusual.  A few weeks ago, record temps were set in the US, Europe, Middle East, and South Asia.

The G20 is meeting in Argentina, where French trade minister Bruno La Maire is condemning Donald Trump's unilateral trade sanctions against allies and good partners.  "The law of the fittest - this cannot be the future of global trade relations," said la Maire.  "The law of the jungle will only turn out losers, it will weaken growth, threaten the most fragile countries, and have disastrous political consequences," he cautioned.  He also said the US wasn't going to even get to talk about its alleged stated goal of free trade with Europe until it backs down on this year's import tariffs on steel and aluminum.

India has scrapped its tampon tax, which was previously twelve percent on women's sanitary products.  Activists claimed the fees made the products even more unaffordable in a country where an estimated four out of five women and girls already have no access to items like sanitary pads.  The tax was part of an overall GST enacted only a year ago.

An explosion targeting an Afghan warlord returning from self-imposed exile killed as many as 14 other people instead.  Northern militia general and Afghan Vice-President Abdul Rashid Dostum had just passed through a public square when the explosion occurred and escape injury.  Dostum was a key but troublesome ally of the US and NATO forces who ousted the Taliban in 2001, but he has been blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the country's long-running civil war.  It's believed that the Afghan government allowed him to return from Turkey to shore up support in the north before elections.

Gunmen shot and killed eleven cab drivers in a minivan near Johannesburg, South Africa.  They had been returning from a colleague's funeral.  The motive isn't clear, but rival taxi driver groups have engaged in deadly violence in the past in SA.