World AM News Briefs For Tuesday, 27 March 2018

Good Morning Australia!! - Russian diplomats are expelled from more than a dozen countries after the poison gas attack in England - The death toll rises in the Siberian Mall fire - Two elderly women are murdered by anti-Semites in France - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The US ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, UK earlier this month.  It was part of a coordinated wave making up the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history, and the Kremlin vowed to retaliate.  Members of the European Union kicked out 33 Russians, Ukraine ousted 13, and Canada told four to hit the road, Norway and Albania expelled one each. 
These countries weren't just acting in solidarity with the UK after the first chemical attack on European soil since the end of World War II - many had bristled under their own problems with Russian provocations, hackings, and border incursions.  Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition in hospital after being exposed to the Russian-made chemical weapon Novichok at a crowded restaurant on 4 March. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to address the fire that swept through the Winter Cherry shopping mall in Kemerovo, Siberia.  The death toll has been raised to 64 lives lost including several children, and ten people were still unaccounted for. 
Authorities have detained four people, and reportedly looking for a security guard who allegedly shut down the public address system and fire alarm.  But investigators have found numerous other fire safety violations throughout the complex, including locked doors at the cinema where many bodies were found.  Local reports say the children were calling home and suing social media to say goodbye to their families.

Two shocking, cowardly, and despicable crimes might make France face its growing anti-Semitism problem.  Prosecutors in Paris say an 85-year old woman who had survived the holocaust was stabbed several times before her public housing apartment in the 11th Arrondissement was set on fire, and anti-Semitism was the motive. 
Two suspects were quickly arrested - a 29-year old neighbor who knew Mireille Knoll since he was a little boy, and a 20-year old homeless man.  One of them had previously been convicted of molesting a 12-year-old girl who had been staying at Mireille Knoll's flat. 
Ms. Knoll escaped the 1942 round-up of Parisian Jews by nazis and their French collaborators.  Last month, a judge confirmed that the 2017 murder of 65-year old Sarah Halimi, who was beaten and thrown out of her window, was motivated by anti-Semitism.

Saudi Arabia says its forces shot down seven missiles launched into Saudi territory by Houthi rebels in Yemen.  But one man was killed as the fragments rained down on a suburb of the capital Riyadh.  Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of providing the missiles to the Houthi, Iran denies it.

While United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, the world body has released statistics on the three years of all-out conflict.  More than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's civil war, 53,000 have been wounded, while 22.2 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance or protection.  A cholera epidemic sickened 1.1 million people, and accounts for around 2,200 of the overall death toll.  A rapidly-spreading diphtheria outbreak has infected 1,300 people and killed 75.

North Korea's Kim Jong-un is apparently making a very rare trip outside his country to Beijing.  It's the first time he's left North Korea since coming into power in 2011.

A police operation in a Rio de Janeiro Favela killed at least eight people, and critics say many were just innocent residents who got in the way of a police revenge mission for an officer killed a week ago.  The police claim they were attacked by drug gangs in the Rocinha Favela, the hillside community above the country's most-famous beaches that is frequently seen in movies set in Rio.  One of the victims of Saturday's operation, 19-year old Matheus de Oliveira, was part of a historical dance troop:  "Drug traffickers don't dance waltz," said an anti-drug counselor in the community.  Other critics say the death toll might be higher because cops didn't bother to determine if wounded civilians needed medical treatment.  This comes eleven days after the assassination of Marielle Franco, a police violence critic and Rio city councillor who was born in the Favelas.

America's oldest gun manufacturer, Remington Arms, filed for bankruptcy protection.  Although it came alongside the international "March For Our Lives" for gun control in the US, the company has been the target of lawsuits for manufacturing the Bushmaster AR-15 assault weapon that was used to slaughter 20 first-graders and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

HOLY CRAP that was a big mountain lion trying to get into a house and wandering around some yards in Azusa, east of Los Angeles, California.