World AM News Briefs For Thursday, 1 February 2018

Good Morning Australia!! - Hong Kong plugs a hole to protect Elephants - Trump butts heads with the FBI - Hillary's hidden apology - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Hong Kong lawmakers have voted to phase out the elephant ivory trade, leading to a total ban by 2021.  "Shutting down this massive ivory market has thrown a lifeline to elephants," said Bert Wander of the global advocacy group Avaaz. 

Campaigners said that Hong Kong had a massive stockpile of ivory stored away before the 1989 global ban, which worked as a smokescreen for nefarious actors dealing in tusks from elephants that were killed by poachers after that.  Just last year, Hong Kong authorities seized the world's biggest ever haul of ivory tusks - some 7.2 tons.  Mainland China's Ivory ban came into force at the first of the year.

Kiribati officials say the ferry sinking tragedy was worse than earlier reported.  There were 85 passengers and crew on board the boat when it left Nonouti Island on a 250-kilometer trip to Betio earlier this month, and most of them were teenagers returning to school.  Only seven people have been rescued, although they indicate that a life raft with seating for 25 people might be out there on the Pacific Ocean.  The survivors say the boat broke up shortly after setting out - it wasn't reported missing until two days later.

An Amtrak train carrying US Republican lawmakers to an annual retreat at a mountain resort crashed into a big rig truck hauling trash, killing one of two people in the cab.  A few people on the train were slightly injured, but not badly.  A convoy of buses arrived shortly after to the meeting, where Mike Pence will speak tonight and the orange clown Donald Trump will appear tomorrow.

The head of the US FBI reportedly clashed with the orange clown Donald Trump over the release of a memo that criticizes the nation's premier law enforcement agency and special prosecutor Robert Mueller for the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia.  The clown intends on releasing the memo, even though the FBI is complaining that it has not had time to vet it for classified information.  FBI Director Christopher Wray is opposing the release of the memo on the grounds that it "paints a false narrative", and the Department of Justice has said it would be "extraordinary reckless" to release it.  

Democrats who've seen the memo, penned by Trump ally and House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, say it contains nothing more than the usual cherry-picked GOP talking points.  Yesterday, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan confirmed he had read it, and claimed it "raised questions" - but he studiously avoided words like "proof" or "evidence", tacitly admitting that there is no substance to Mr. Nunes accusations.  BTW, Devin Nunes looked like this in High School:

SO, you see what we're dealing with.  At the same time, the cowardly Republicans are blocking the release of the response to the memo written by Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee.

Waiting until the moments before the State of the Union Address so that no one will see, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton admitted she should have fired an adviser accused of sexual harassment during her 2008 presidential campaign.  "If I had it to do again, I wouldn't," she wrote in a lengthy Facebook post explaining her view of the situation.  Back in the 2008 campaign, the young woman complained when Clinton's "faith advisor" Burns Strider inappropriately touched her and sent suggestive messages.  But instead of sacking the sack of crap as her campaign staff suggested, Hillary reassigned the young woman.  Hillary explained that the events took place long before the "seismic shift" in social attitudes towards sexual harassment as manifested by the #MeToo campaign.

Anyway..

Pope Francis is sending a top Vatican investigator to Chile to look into accusations a bishop covered up sexual abuse committed by a priest.  During a visit to the country last week, the Pope met with the victims of the abuse - but later said he believed that that Bishop Juan Barros was innocent, and accused people of slandering him.  After an outcry, Francis apologized.

A court in Turkey sentenced three Syrians to life imprisonment over their role in the January 2016 suicide blast that killed a dozen German tourists. The bomb targeted the square between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

Kenya is keeping the top three TV stations off the air until further notice for planning to broadcast the self-proclaimed "inauguration" of opposition leader Raila Odinga.  The interior ministry described it as an attempt to "subvert or overthrow" the government the "would have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent Kenyans".  The Media Council of Kenya described the government action as "unconstitutional" and "the greatest threat and assault on freedom of expression and media in Kenya's recent history".