Good Morning Australia!! - The Syrian death toll mounts as governments point fingers - What the hell was Pepsi thinking with its aborted ad campaign? - Drug cartel money allegedly managed to penetrate Mexico's firewall against corruption - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The death toll in the latest chemical weapons attack in the Syrian Civil War is now more than 70 lives lost.  Some officials say 75, a monitoring group tracking the war says 86 are dead, yet another report puts it above 100.  What is indisputable is that many of the dead and injured are young children.  Heartbreaking images are coming out of the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun near Idlib, a rebel-held area.  Yesterday, it was a pile of bodies of children; today, it's a young father saying goodbye to his infant twins before they are buried.  Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) say the victims showed the symptoms of a Sarin gas attack.

The consensus is that Syrian government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are responsible for the chemical weapons attack.  But the rift between the West and Russia has prevented a vote in the UN Security Council to condemn the attack.  Syria's representative denied his army even has banned chemical weapons, and Russia tried to shift blame to Syrian rebel groups.  US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley specifically slammed Russia for blocking a robust response to the attack:  "Time and time again Russia uses the same false narrative to deflect attention from their allies in Damascus," Ms. Haley said.  "How many more children have to die before Russia cares?"  But she closed on an ominous note, broadly hinting the US could take unilateral action.  

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been removed from the US National Security Council, and the Trump administration's explanation couldn't have been stupider.  It wasn't announced - a reporter for Bloomberg found the change in some obscure federal paperwork filings.  Once word got out that Donald Trump's dreaded liver-spotted nazi hobo was demoted, the White House claimed that his purpose on the council was to keep an eye on Michael Flynn, the National Security Advisor who resigned after less than a month on the job over his ties to Russia and Turkey.  Which immediately raises the question, "If you thought Flynn was a loose cannon, WTF was he doing as National security Advisor?" 

Two complications are raising their ugly heads before Donald Trump's ugly head has a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday.  First, North Korea launched another missile into the Sea of Japan.  It was an old-school, liquid-fueled SCUD missile and likely intended to remind China and Washington that North Korea is still there and needs to be dealt with.  The other complication is Taiwan's announcement it will build and operate eight new submarines.  They could be in service within a decade, if there's no global thermal nuclear war.  Beijing considers Taiwan to be a renegade province and has been increasingly assertive in the waters in the waters surrounding the island, while Trump has openly courted a closer relationship with Taipei.

A suicide bomber killed six people in Lahore, Pakistan - two census workers and four troops protecting them.  The Pakistani Taliban said the attack was revenge for a military operation that claimed some of its fighters a week earlier.

Russian cops arrested seven people in Saint Petersburg for allegedly recruiting for the so-called Islamic State.  This comes after the subway suicide bombing that killed 14 people and injured almost 50.  So far, the new arrests haven't been linked to Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Kyrgyzstan-born man suspected of carrying out the suicide bombings.

US prosecutors indicted the commander of a Mexican police intelligence-sharing unit for allegedly passing information on a DEA investigation to the Beltran Leyva drug cartel.  The charges state Ivan Reyes Arzate was caught on a wiretap arranging this in exchange for millions of dollars.  He had already been sacked in November.  Cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva was killed in 2009, meaning that Reyes could have been doing this for several years.  Reyes was a member of a police group specifically set-up to bypass traditional police channels suspected to have been rife with corruption.

South African President Jacob Zuma managed to survive a move to force his resignation.  The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party's National Working Committee backed Zuma after some allies and senior ANC members demanded he step down.  The latest transgression was Zuma's sacking of the only person holding his country's economy together, former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan - but the corruption goes back for years.

And now, two stories showing that there aren't enough black people working in advertising, because someone could have warned against this nonsense.

Nivea is apologizing for its short-lived ad campaign called "White is Purity".  Yeah, you'd think that would have been obvious.  Intended to show that the German skin care company's new deodorant doesn't stain garments, it offended anyone with a lick of common sense while delighting racists who tried to co-opt the slogan. 

Pepsi, too, is apologizing for an ad featuring Kendall Jenner that appears to make light of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US.  A commercial features the reality TV star leaving a glamor photo shoot to participate in an unnamed but familiar protest - and then achieving social justice by offering a Pepsi to a cop.  Bernice King, the daughter of murdered 1960s Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, wryly tweeted:  "If only Daddy would have known about the power of ."  Activist DeRay McKesson tweeted sarcastically: "If I had carried Pepsi I guess I never would've gotten arrested.  Who knew?"  Ms. Jenner is said to be very upset, and PepsiCo apologized for putting her in this position.  Last time Pepsi messed up that bad, Tito had to put out a fire on Michael's hair.