Hello Australia!! - All of a sudden, there's a lot of chaos and confusion in Washington, DC - Moscow is sending some devastating weapons to Syria - Merkel admits her mistakes - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is set for a showdown with Donald Trump on Thursday.  While Trump was at the United Nations in New York on Monday morning, Washington, DC bubbled over with reports that Rosenstein was either about to quit or about to be fired.  This is highly important because as the nation's number-two law enforcer, Rod Rosenstein oversees the investigation into Russian influence over Trump and the 2016 presidential election.  He denies last week's New York Times report claiming he offered to secretly record Trump and was plotting to get a majority of cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment of the US Constitution to remove Trump from office.  After a brief meeting at the White House, Chief of Staff John Kelly walked out with Rosenstein as a public show of support; he stays in his job, at least until whatever happens on Thursday.

Octogenarian white men in the US Senate expressed their support for US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, after a second woman came forward to accuse him of sexual impropriety.  Only this incident happened at Yale University, not in high school like the previous accusation.  The new accuser says Kavanaugh dropped his pants and wiggled his doohickey in her face at a party.  The Senators, Trump, and Kavanaugh claim this is a plot of coordinated character assassination by the opposition Democrats. 

But guess what?  Attorney Michael Avenatti - who represents porn star Stormy Daniels, who says she had an affair with Trump - now says his latest client is a third woman with a "credible" accusation to make against Kavanaugh.  So, look for that shoe to drop this week before accuser number-one shows up to testify in the US Senate on Thursday.  The accusations have some pundits wondering if Kavanaugh's nomination, once considered a shoe-in, will even get the minimum 51 votes in the Senate confirmation process, if it even gets that far.

Against the background of all that thoroughly unnecessary drama, Trump says he will hold a second meeting with Kim Jong-un.

Anyway..

Moscow is bolstering Syria's air defenses with a modern S-300 missile system, as well as gear to scramble communication of foreign warplanes and disrupt satellite positioning systems.  This comes a week after a Russian IL-20 electronic intelligence plane was accidentally shot down during an Israeli air strike, killing 15 people.  Israeli blamed indiscriminate Syrian anti-aircraft targeting.  Last week, the Russians said Israeli warplanes deliberately came in for an air strike behind the surveillance plane, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the downing was caused by "premeditated actions by Israeli pilots which certainly cannot but harm our relations". 

An Indonesian teen survived 49 days adrift at sea on a wood and bamboo fishing platform.  A Panamanian vessel rescued 18-year old Aldi Novel Adilang near Guam, thousands of kilometers away from home on Sulawesi.

Rescuers finally reached Indian yachtsman Abhilash Tomy, who was stranded 3,200 kilometers off Perth.  He was taking part in a round the world race when his yacht was damaged by heavy wind last week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is apologizing for the scandal over promoting domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen amid anger over his failure to stop far-right rioting in Chemnitz, denying video evidence of far right mobs harassing perceived immigrants, and passing information to the far-right AfD political party.  Maassen's promotion and pay raise have been cancelled, although he will stay in the interior ministry as a consultant.  Merkel says she was too concerned on the "proceedings in the Interior Ministry" but now "the coalition needed to focus on "solving people's problems".

Hong Kong is banning a political party that wants the city to break away from China and form its own republic.  Although some fear that ordering the Hong Kong National Party to shut down is a sign of Beijing's creeping authority, the ban is legal under Hong Kong's Societies Ordinance - a leftover from the British colonial occupation that allows authorities to act "in the interests of national security, public order, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".

A farm worker from New Zealand has been jailed for 14 days and fined $2,500 for poisoning 406 wedge-tailed eagles in Victoria's Gipplands area.  Authorities say 59-year old Murray James Silvester did so at the orders of his employer; others are under investigation but haven't been charged yet.  The Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning (DELWP) says it could take two and a half years for the eagle's population to recover to where it was before the killing started.

The UN unveiled a new statue honoring South Africa's Nelson Mandela.