World AM News Briefs For Tuesday, 4 September 2018

Good Morning Australia!! - Brazilians blame budget cuts for destroying their national heritage - Argentina announces deep austerity - How the Anti-racists outnumbered the far-right ten-to-one in Chemnitz - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

There is grief in Brazil over the fire that destroyed the National Museum in Rio De Janeiro and most of its 20 million items and artifacts; and there is building anger over a tragedy that many say was foretold and could have been avoided. 


Although the exact cause of the fire that gutted the 19th century former palace is not known, pundits, journos, and regular citizens are pointing to years, decades of warnings over budget cuts that made the venerable institution completely unsafe and vulnerable to fire.  "For many years we fought with different governments to get adequate resources to preserve what is now completely destroyed," said the museum's vice director Luiz Duarte, "My feeling is of total dismay and immense anger."  Others said the fire is a manifestation of bigger problems rippling through Brazil.  "This fire is what Brazilian politicians are doing to the people," said tearful school teacher Rosana Hollanda, "They're burning our history, and they're burning our dreams."

Argentina's president announced sweeping and extreme austerity measures to deal with the currency crisis.  Two and a half years into his presidency, Mauricio Macri went on TV first thing Monday morning to announce that he'd shut down half of the government's ministry's - he didn't specify which ones - and tax hikes on exported grains and other products.  These actions are apparently to woo the International Monetary Fund (IMF) into accelerating payments from US$50 Billion in emergency funds.  The Argentine Peso lost about half of its value since the beginning of the year.

Plans to shrink the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) have triggered a red alert with the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which says sacking experienced forecasters who "built up their experience about that and weather patterns here for a good 10 to 15 years" is not the thing to do during a time of drought and wilder weather patterns caused by Global Warming:  "It's going to be a brain drain and it's going to mean the quality of the service will be hugely reduced," said CPSU organiser Melanie Booth. 

BOM released a statement denying job losses and claimed services will be improved by concentrating personnel in Melbourne and Brisbane:  "Claims of cost-cutting and job losses are simply untrue and there are no plans to remove the bureau's local presence from any state or territory."

Human rights activists are appalled at Malaysia after two women convicted of attempting to have lesbian sex in a car were caned in a religious court.  It is reportedly state of Terengganu's first conviction for same-sex relations and its first public caning, which took place in the Sharia court.  "Sexual acts between two consenting adults should not be criminalised, let alone punished with whipping," read a statement from the Malaysian human rights group Women's Aid Organisation.

An explosion at a munitions factory in South Africa killed at least eight workers.  The Rheinmetall-Denel plant outside Cape Town makes munitions and explosive products for the South African military and police, and for export.

Almost 90 dead elephants have been found in what could be the largest such poaching events in Africa.  A conservation group came across 87 carcasses, murdered for their tusks which are trafficked to Asia, outside Botswana's famed Okavango Delta wildlife sanctuary.  The country had just disarmed its anti-poaching force.  "People did warn us of an impending poaching problem and we thought we were prepared for it," said Dr. Mike Chase from Elephants Without Borders, "The poachers are now turning their guns to Botswana.  We have the world's largest elephant population and it's open season for poachers."

The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation is apologizing after one of its classical music stations played Wagner's "Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods)", especially for the upset that it might have caused to holocaust survivors.  The 19th-Century German composer Richard Wagner was a virulent anti-Semite who was revered by the nazis who came up a few decades later because of its themes of racial purity.  

Tens of thousands of Germans turned out for an anti-racism concert in Chemnitz, staged to prove "There are more of us" (#wirsindmehr) than the anti-immigration right-wingers who rioted in the eastern city last week. 

Chemnitz officials estimated that as many as 50,000 people had come out - double the expected number and ten times as many as the largest protest that degenerated into right-wing mobs breaking off to hunt, harass, and beat those perceived to be immigrants. 


Originally planned to be held beneath the massive stone sculpture of philosopher Karl Marx at the city's center (where the xenophobes gathered earlier), the project grew in size and enthusiasm, and had to be moved to a larger venue.