Good Morning Australia!! - Europe's stabilizing force gets another term in office, despite a US push to put the Islamophobic far right into power - The NFL delivers a stinging rebuke to the orange clown, as players, coaches, owners, even water-boys defy Trump - Just another American Sunday as bullets fly in church - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears sure to have a fourth term in office after this weekend's election.  Her Christian Democrat coalition is expected to come out with almost 33 percent of the vote, putting her in the position to form alliances with smaller parties.  The Social Democrats were in second place with more than 20 percent, and combined with The Greens and Die Linke means that 38 percent of Germans voted for the Leftist agenda (they just couldn't agree on a single party as usual dammit).  The racist and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) got 13 percent - more than expected, and for some reason being hailed as an amazing upset by the international corporate conservative media.  But seeing as no other party will even consider entering into a coalition with the racists, their fortunes will be temporary.

Germany expected interference in its election from Russia, but in fact it came from the other direction.  The main reason for AfD got enough votes to occupy some seats in the Bundestag is suspected to be a shadowy campaign of fake news waged by a far-right wing American billionaire family.  Rebekeh Mercer is daughter of billionaire hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, a major funder of Donald Trump's presidental campaign, and right-wing propaganda in the US.  The Intercept discovered she financed a campaign by The Gatestone Institute to spread false stories in Germany about mosques replacing churches, and homes being seized to provide housing for "hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East".  The stories were lies, but appear to have at least contributed to the small fortunes of the AfD.

Next...

NFL player rebuked and defied the orange clown by refusing to take part in traditional National Anthem ceremonies before Sunday's games.  It started in London, England with all members of both the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Baltimore Ravens either "taking a knee" or locking arms in solidarity against Donald Trump's ignorant divisiveness and US police brutality against black people.  Even the owner of the Jaguars locked arms against the man whose presidential campaign he donated to last year.  Later, the Pittsburgh Steelers refused to leave the locker room until the anthem was over, while their hosts The Chicago Bears locked arms.  The Seahawks and Titans also remained in the locker room before the start of their game.  The protests will likely continue all week and beyond.  The performers who sang the national anthem in Nashville and Detroit all "took a knee".

This all happened because Donald Trump last week called sports heroes who won't stand for the national anthem "sons of bitches", insulting the hardworking and honorable mothers of these American sports heroes.  The orange clown also demanded that team owners fire these players.  Not only did the owners refuse, some of them joined their players and coaches in protest.  The NFL is for better or worse, a brotherhood - and Trump isn't in it.  The NFL isn't planning to fine any player protesting or skipping out on the US national anthem.  The protests started last year when then-San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick regularly dropped to one knee during the US national anthem pregame to protest police brutality against the black community.  US Cops have shot and killed more than 225 black people under questionable circumstances since Kaepernick started this protest.

Oh - and please remember, Trump said some of the nazis who performed a torch-lit march and murdered a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia "were very fine people", but called athletes who protest police brutality "sons of bitches".  That's your ally, Australia!

Moving along..

A gunman in Nashville, Tennessee shot and killed a woman in a church and wounded at least six more people before he was shot by a church usher.  Because it's America, church ushers carry guns - and in Tennessee, gun laws are virtually non-existent.  The gunman shot himself but failed to die, so he's under police guard at hospital. 

The Vatican on Sunday revealed the reason behind the hasty departure of its auditor general:  Libero Milone allegedly hired an outside detective to investigate the private lives of Vatican personnel.  Milone called the charged "trumped up" and blamed the Catholic Church's old guard.  He worked with Cardinal George Pell to bring some order to the Vatican's shady finances, but Pell has returned to Australia to face historical sex abuse charges.  That leaves Pope Francis without his two top financial reformers.

A Russian general has been killed fighting in Syria.  Lieutenant General Valery Asapov was mortally wounded by a shelling attack by the so-called Islamic State.  He "was at a command post of Syrian troops, assisting the Syrian commanders in the operation for the liberation of the city of Deir ez-Zor", according to the Kremlin.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria have set back Puerto Rico for "decades", according to the US territory's non-voting representative to the US congress:  "The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years," said Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez.  "I can't deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that of a week ago.  The destruction of properties, of flattened structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere.  The island's greenery is gone."  Puerto Rican officials are looking for a lot of help from Congress because the island's infrastructure was in sorry shape long before the hurricanes due to the US$73 Billion debt crisis.

There are just two sites left in Mexico where rescuers have any hope of finding anyone that survived a building collapse after last week's killer magnitude 7.1 earthquake.  The death toll is now more than 319 lives lost, including 181 in Mexico City.  The most recent rescue was a small dog from a pancaked apartment building, performed by Japanese rescuers. 

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is promising to cooperate with Japanese investigators after a chunk of a Boeing 777-200 fell off after taking off from Kansai International Airport, crashing through the rear window of a car in busy downtown Osaka.  Two women in the car weren't hurt, and the jet went all the way through to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport without further incident.  "KLM regrets this incident and has immediately launched an investigation into the causes." read the statement from the airline, which added officials were "in close contact with Japanese civil aviation authorities and Boeing".