Good Morning Australia!! - The UK strikes back at Russia, and the US reveals its opinion on the spy attack - Opposition to Trump's CIA pick - Duterte threatens to leave the ICC - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The UK will expel 23 Russian diplomats, after Moscow missed the deadline to to explain how and why a Russian-made nerve agent was used in the attempted assassination of a former double agent.  Prime Minister Theresa May said the 23 "undeclared intelligence officers" posing as diplomats and had a week to vacate.  The Kremlin said it would take "symmetrical measures that are completely appropriate for the situation".  66-year old Sergei Skripal and his daughter 33-year old Yulia Skripal remain in a critical condition after being exposed to a uniquely Russian Nerve toxin called Novichok; Detective Sgt. Nick Bailey who responded to the scene of the attack in Salisbury is in a serious but stable condition, but is said to be improving.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the spy poisoning on 4 March was "Russia's crime", and demanded the Kremlin "must come clean about its own chemical weapons program".  Speaking before the UN Security Council, she said the panel's credibility was at stake after one member used banned weapons on the soil of another member.  "If we don't take immediate, concrete measures to address this now, Salisbury will not be the last place we see chemical weapons use," Haley said.  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier said the use of a nerve agent was "unacceptable" and called for a thorough investigation.

War monitors say at least 22 people died in the aerial bombardment of East Ghouta today, and 44 dead yesterday.  With the brakes off, Syrian and Russian forced have relentlessly pounded the former rebel district outside Damascus for a few weeks now, ingoring the UN Security Council's call for a ceasefire to get the injured out and deliver food and aid to the almost 400,000 trapped in the beseiged towns.  Only 56 patients have been evacuated this week.

The orange clown Donald Trump picked a TV pundit to head his economic team.  Larry Kudlow is a stone supply-sider, loves tax cuts for the rich even though there's no evidence it has ever "trickled down", and is known for his despicable reaction to the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan in 2011: "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that."  He said that.  Krudlow and Trump are long-time friends, although the pundit recently opposed the clown's tariffs on Steel and Aluminum imports to the US.

Unnamed US officials told NBC News that the orange clown's pick to head the CIA Gina Haspel was not present at a US secret black site in Thailand where a detainee was so badly abused that he lost an eye.  That contradicts a book written by a CIA interrogator that said not only was Haspell present, but she belittled a victim of US torture (an allegation since retracted).  There is no doubt Haspell was in charge of the illegal "Detention Site Green", where said detainee Abu Zubaydah was kept in a coffin for hundreds of hours and waterboarded scores of times.  Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is the first Republican to publicly oppose Haspell's nomination.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is pulling his country out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its investigation of his blood-drenched "war on drugs", in which anyone can kill anyone else as long as they claim the dead one was a drug dealer.  Because of the volume of killings, the death toll could be around 4,000, as police say, or much higher, as human rights groups insist.  Withdrawing from the ICC wouldn't stop teh investigation, but could make it next to impossible to enlist local authorities' cooperation.  The UN Human Rights Council last month asked the Philippines to accept a UN special rapporteur on its deteriorating human rights situation.

Facebook has banned the far-right group Britain First over its legacy of hateful posts and racism.  "We do not do this lightly, but they have repeatedly posted content designed to incite animosity and hatred against minority groups, which disqualifies the pages from our service," Facebook said in a blog post.  Social media has been crucial to the spread of these miscreant hate-moger organizations that used to occupy the fringes of discourse - anti-facist organization HOPE Not Hate found that Britain First had the "second most liked Facebook page in the politics and society category in the UK – after the royal family".