Hello Australia!! - China's new weapon appears to out-do the US - Brazil's new president attacks the environment and minorities - Doctors put down their instruments to protest universal healthcare funding - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

China might have changed the equation on the waves of the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first nation to equip a People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ship with an electromagnetic "rail gun" which shoots projectiles at five-times the speed of sound.  The US has been experimenting with the technology for some years without any announcements of major breakthroughs.  US intelligence also believed the Chinese wouldn't have the technology for another six years.  "The rapid growth of the PLA Navy could easily take over the US Navy in the Asia-Pacific, if not comparable, by the 2030s," warned Dr. Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in an interview with the ABC.  This advance in weapons technology comes just after Chinese President Xi Jinping basically threatened democratic Taiwan to accept the "inevitability" of reunification with the authoritarian Beijing.

Public sector doctors in Bolivia will put down their stethoscopes and scalpels on Thursday and Friday in a 48 hour strike to protest the government's new universal health care plan.  The government is spending the next three months registering 5.8 million people who could not afford healthcare coverage for the new program.  But the doctors say the budget of US$230 Million dollars isn't near enough to do the job properly:  "We're going to need one billion dollars, at least, but this won't be enough to guarantee universal health care," said Erwin Viruez, president of Bolivia's professional medical college.  "We don't have any supplies, there aren't enough beds."

A day after calling on Brazilians to come together and on his first full day in office, Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro targeted minorities, the poor, and the environment, while giving a hand-out to big agriculture.  He stripped the agency in charge of indigenous affairs of its responsibility to demarcate native lands, handing those powers over to the agriculture ministry.  This includes large tracts of rainforest that have lost any protection they had left, and lands once set-aside for the descendants of African slaves.  Bolsonaro also put the human rights agency under the control of an ultra-conservative evangelical minister who claims that "the Brazilian family is being threatened" by LGBT people.

The death toll in the tower block collapse in Magnitogorsk, Russia is now 33 lives lost.  Baby Ivan, who was rescued from the rubble 35 hours after the gas explosion that caused the disaster is said to be in a stable condition in a Moscow hospital.

At least six people died with debris from a freight train hit a passenger train on a bridge in Denmark.  This happened on the span crossing the frigid waters of the Great Belt Strait which connects the Baltic Sea to the North Sea.  A winter storm was whipping across the region, making the rescue of survivors miserable, but later everything got better.

There is public anger in South Africa over public money being spent to record an album of songs by former president Jacob Zuma, who was chased out of office over rampant corruption.  The eThekwini district agreed to fund the album of protest songs sung by Zuma on the logic that it would preserve an aspect of cultural heritage.  Yeah, what?  The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party says it will fight "tooth and nail" against this expense.