Hello Australia!! - The far-right fails in the Netherlands - A Kiwi river has become a person - The US says Russian spies were behind the giant hack at Yahoo - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's center-right VVD has won the most seats in the Netherlands election, pretty much ensuring a coalition government that freezes out the right-wing racist "Freedom Party" of xenophobe Geert Wilders, which placed in a tie for third place.  The Green Left party is set to quadruple its seats, and Labor appears to have taken a nasty hit.  Rutte is believed to have benefited from a public spat with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, showing him to be a strong leader.  More accurate numbers will be out later today.

Hackers opened a new front in the war of words between Europe and Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan as they took control of the Twitter accounts of Amnesty International , UNICEF, the BBC, and others to post pro-Erdogan messages.  Most of the posts were gone before too long, but made reference to Erdogan's accusation of "nazi"-like behavior by several countries that canceled campaign rallies for Turkish officials to speak to ex-pats in Europe.  Erdogan is pushing a constitutional referendum next month to consolidate his power.

The US Justice Department announced charges against two Russian spies and two hackers allegedly behind the 2014 hack and data theft at Yahoo, comprising half a billion user accounts.  One of the men, a Kazakh national, was arrested in Canada earlier this week; the others are Russian nationals and residents.  Prosecutors say the scheme included targeting the "personal accounts belonging to Russian journalists; Russian and U.S. government officials; employees of a prominent Russian cyber-security company; and numerous employees of other providers whose networks the conspirators sought to exploit".

The US Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate for only the third time in a decade.  The central bank voted to raise its key rate target one quarter point, from 0.75 percent to a flat 1 percent.  Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to increase rates a total of three times this year.

Some of Donald Trump's tax returns have been leaked, but they don't show much and might have been leaked by Trump himself or someone close to him.  US Liberal news show host Rachel Maddow revealed the documents on her show on the MSNBC network with journalist David Cay Johnston, who said the forms arrived in his mail.  They show that Trump made about US$150 Million in 2005, wrote off $100 Million in business losses, and paid $38 million in federal income taxes - an effective rate of about 25 percent. 

However, Maddow or Johnston didn't have any of the additional schedules or details that come with a billionaire's taxes, so it is not clear how Trump blew $100 Million that year; and the two pages from more than a decade ago didn't reveal any financial links with nefarious foreign interests.  In the end, Maddow proved that Trump is, or was, rich and that he pays taxes, which produced a gloating Tweet from Trump Jr and a belief among her contemporaries that maybe Maddow had been used.  Democrats and others have been trying to get Trump to formally reveal his more recent tax returns - complete with schedules and worksheets - to determine if he has business links with banned entities or other links that might compromise US national security.

France's Front National can't seem to escape its anti-Semitic roots:  The FN fired a top official in the city of Nice who said that there were no "mass murders" during the Holocaust.  FN leader Marine Le Pen has shifted the party's anti-Semitism to anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric, and is expected to do well in next month's presidential election, although she is expected to lose in the second round of voting in May.

The Munich state court in Germany sentenced three men and a woman to prison for forming a far right terrorist group with the intention of bombing refugee homes as a tactic to scare immigrants into leaving the country.  Members of the so-called "Oldschool Society" got prison terms of between three and five years each.  "The verdict today shows that the state is determined and vigilant in the fight against right-wing extremism and far-right terrorism," said Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.  Germany has seen a sharp increase in attacks on asylum homes in the two years that immigrants have poured into Germany seeking refuge in Germany from war, persecution and poverty.

An avalanche in Austria's Tyrol region killed four skiers.

The death toll in the landslide at the garbage dump outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia has been raised to 113, with dozens more still missing.

A suicide bombing at the main court complex in Damascus, Syria killed at least 31 people, and showed that terrorists are still able to strike at the heart of the regime on the sixth anniversary of the civil war. 

Colombian President Juan Manual Santos apologized to citizens for unknowingly taking illegal payments from the tainted Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht during the 2010 election campaign.  "I am deeply sorry and ask forgiveness from Colombians for this shameful act that should never have happened and that I have just learned about," Santos said.  Odebrecht is implicated in a widening pay-to-play scandal that seems to touch every corner of the South American continent.

New Zealand's parliament passed a bill recognizing the Whanganui River as a living entity - effectively giving the North Island waterway the same legal rights as a person.  It's believed to be the first time in the world that a government has recognized a river as a person, and caps a 160 year campaign by Maori who revere it.  Two people will represent the river in legal proceedings, one Maori and one from the crown.  "I know the initial inclination of some people will say it's pretty strange to give a natural resource a legal personality," said New Zealand's Treaty Negotiations Minister Chris Finlayson, "But it's no stranger than family trusts, or companies or incorporated societies."