World AM News Briefs For Monday, 4 September 2017

Good Morning Australia!! - Stern warnings for North Korea after it detonates a Hydrogen bomb - The world apparently got over the tragic image of a refugee boy - 2017 claims another music legend - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The United Nations Security Council will meet on Monday morning in New York to discuss North Korea's detonation of its most-powerful nuclear weapon to date.  The the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the blast at the underground testing facility in the far north of the secretive country registered a 6.3 magnitude on its sensors - far more powerful than North Korea's previous blasts. 

Pyongyang said the blast was a test of a hydrogen bomb - much more powerful than a standard atomic bomb - and that it could fit such a device on an intercontinental ballistic missile.  US Defense Secretary James Mattis issued a stark warning to North Korea:  "Any threat to the United States or its territories including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response," he said outside of the White House.

Australia is backing UN action, and urging China to put more pressure on Pyongyang.  "North Korea's reckless conduct poses a grave danger to global peace and security," said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in a joint statement with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Defense Minister Marise Payne.

But as Sunday morning rolled around to the United States, Donald Trump showed that he is not intellectually or temperamentally prepared to deal with the North Korea situation.  Faced with news that Pyongyang has an H-Bomb, Trump tweeted an attack against.. his ally. 

"South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!" the moron tweeted, without ANY basis in facts.  Although South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in has supported continuing dialogue with the North to resolve the issue, he has not revived a policy that Seoul abandoned years ago to try to ply North Korea with increased economic aid.  A former senior US State Department official said of Trump, "It was unseemly, unhelpful, and divisive to gratuitously slap our major ally at the very moment when the threat from (North Korea) has reached a new height."  Later, reporters asked him if the US would attack North Korea, and Trump replied:  "We'll see." 

Trump later suggested an economic boycott of any country doing business with North Korea, which seemed to be aimed at Beijing - pretty much North Korea's only friend in the world.  China's Foreign Affairs Ministry said it "resolutely opposes and strongly condemns" North Korea's action.  Xinhua news agency reported that President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in China, and agreed to "appropriately deal" with North Korea's nuclear test.  Moscow, Paris, and London issued varying degrees of condemnation.  International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano, said the nuclear test was "an extremely regrettable act" that was "in complete disregard of the repeated demands of the international community". 

Moving along...

Since the photograph of a drowned, three-year old Syrian boy on a Turkish beach forced the world to look at the plight of refugees fleeing the Middle East into Europe, more than 8,500 people have also drowned or have disappeared in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. 

The UN High Commission on Refugees released the numbers to coincide with the two year anniversary of the death of little Alan Kurdi, along with his brother and mother.  Clampdowns on refugee smuggling routes after the tragedy have slowed the rate of deaths recently, but the International Organization for Migration says more than 120,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, with about 82 percent traveling to Italy from Libya.

Aid groups now say that more than 73,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar across the border into Bangladesh since the current round of violence began on 25 August.  Refugee camps are full and many of the new arrivals are suffering from respiratory diseases, infection and malnutrition.  Rohingya are describing horrible scenes of children being shot and people being burned alive. 

Cambodia's ruling party solved the problem it was facing with a tough election next year:  Authorities arrested the opposition for alleged conspiring with unnamed foreigners to harm the country, and handed a tax bill so massive to an opposition newspaper that The Cambodia Daily announced it will shut down.  The ruling Cambodian People's Party is made of the remnants of the dreaded Khmer Rouge - it renounced Marxism-Leninism economics a quarter century ago, but kept the authoritarianism and command structure.

After denying accusations of extra-marital affairs as a "smear campaign", South African Deputy President Ramaphosa has admitted having an affair, he claims eight years ago.  But leaked personal emails suggested that Mr. Ramaphosa had a series of affairs with young women, and had unprotected sex - a sensitive subject in a country with a high HIV infection rate.  Ramaphosa wants to contest he leadership of the ruling ANC party later this year and be the party's candidate to replace President Jacob Zuma.

Bomb disposal experts disarmed a massive bomb found underneath the financial center of Frankfurt. 

British forces dropped the bomb during World War II but it didn't explode.  Authorities had ordered the evacuation of more than 60,000 people including hospital patients because that thing packed enough explosives to level a city block.

Steely Dan guitarist, bassist, and songwriter Walter Becker is dead at age 67, according to a statement on the legendary Jazz-Rock band's website that didn't provide a cause of death. 



"He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny," read a statement from lead singer and co-founder Donald Fagen, "I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band."  Mr. Becker missed a series of dates with the band in July due to an unspecified illness.  Steely Dan is famous for the songs "Do it Again", "Reelin' in the Years", "My Old School", "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Black Friday", "Peg", "Deacon Blues", "Josie", and "Hey Nineteen".  You know what?  Go, right now, and download some Steely Dan and enjoy it before Trump and Kim blow up the world.