Good Morning Australia!! - The Earth has entered its warmest period in modern record-keeping - Europe is aghast as the Brexit is hurtling towards chaos - Why did Rolf Harris get wood at an elementary school? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The day after Donald Trump bragged about America's oil and gas producing in his State of the Union Address, American scientists reported that last year was the fourth-hottest year ever recorded.  It means that the past five years have been the five warmest years in the modern record:  "This warming has been driven in large part by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  The Earth's average temperature has risen a little more than 1C Degrees over pre-industrial levels, which is more than two-thirds of the way to the warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius that was set in the Paris climate agreement.  The announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA had been delayed for weeks delayed because of Trump's government shutdown over the New Year and much of January. 

Amnesty International says the United Arab Emirates is recklessly arming militias in the Yemen Civil War with advanced weapons supplied by the US and other states.  The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthi Rebels which are backed by Iran.  Amnesty said the militias were not accountable to any government and that some stood accused of committing war crimes.  Yemen was already a disaster before the proxy war; more than 6,500 civilians are among as many as 83,000 dead since fighting commenced in 2015, and the campaigner Save The Children says almost 85,000 children have starved to death because of food shortages caused by the war.  The West has contributed more than US$3.5 Billion in weaponry to the conflict.

With the Brexit fast approaching and no deal in sight to make the UK's divorce from the European Union anything less than traumatic, European Council President Donald Tusk is speaking out:  He says there is a "special place in hell" for the people who promoted Brexit with no plan to carry it out. Mr. Tusk said this in a news conference with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and later repeated it on Twitter so everyone could be clear.  The Brexit is scheduled to happen on 29 March, and the EU says it will not renegotiate the deal it reached with UK Prime Minister Theresa May - a deal that has been rejected by Parliament.

Author Dan Mallory is admitting he's been lying about having a brain tumor, saying he faked having cancer as a way to disguise his struggles with bipolar disorder.  This is after after the New Yorker published a profile accusing him of spinning a history of lies about his personal life.  He wrote the best-selling "The Woman in the Window" under the pseudonym A.J. Flynn; a movie version starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman is due out later this year.

Rolf Harris has been caught visiting an elementary school, and UK cops now have to determine if he was in violation of his parole from his conviction of pedophilia offenses.  The 88-year old "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" singer wandered into Oldfield Primary School in Maidenhead on Tuesday afternoon, he claimed to get some wood from a sculptor working on site.  Alrighty then.  School officials asked him to leave - but not before he waved at the kids, and the Daily Mirror tabloid got photos.  Rolf was paroled in 2017 after serving three years of a five year prison term for molesting four teenage girls between 1968 and 1986.

P!nk gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.