Good Morning Australia!! - May "reluctantly" calls for a snap election - Trump actually called Erdogan to congratulate him on his power grab - The military confrontation that wasn't - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

UK Prime Minister Theresa May is calling a snap election to take place on 8 June.  "We need a general election and we need one now," Ms. May said in a surprise announcement from Number 10.  "I have only recently and reluctantly come to this conclusion but now I have concluded it is the only way to guarantee certainty for the years ahead."  Senior Tories had been urging her to take advantage of the disarray in UK Labour which is crippled with infighting between Jeremy Corbyn's insurgency from the Left and centrist acolytes of former PM Tony Blair, and opinion polls give her a clear lead over Labour.  Parties were also geared towards local elections that will still take place on 4 May, meaning they will have little time to shift resources around for parliamentary elections.

Jeremy Corbyn is welcoming the snap election, but other opponents say holding an election while negotiating the country's exit from the European Union is ridiculous.  The issues are further clouded by Scotland's desire for another independence referendum.  First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says the election will be about Tories trying to push England more to the right; but in Scotland, it will be "about standing up for Scotland in the face of a right-wing, austerity-obsessed Tory government with no mandate in Scotland but which now thinks it can do whatever it wants and get away with it". 

The UK snap election will send North Ireland voters to the polls for the fourth time in a year and marks another place where Ms. May is making an enormous gamble.  And those voters already overwhelmingly voted "no" on the Brexit - Catholic, Protestant, Republican, Unionist alike.  Sinn Fein will be looking at this opportunity to increase its gains from local elections just weeks ago.  Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams over the weekend said the Brexit threatens Ireland's economy and would put a hard border along the six countries of the north.  "The only Brexit we want to see in the North is a British withdrawal from this part of Ireland," said Gerry. 

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster couldn't come up with anything better than the snap election "provides the people of Northern Ireland with the opportunity to vote for the union".  And Ulster Unionist Leader Robin Swann MLA said Northern Ireland "needs strong representation at Westminster now more than ever" amid the Brexit it voted against.  But SDLP leader Colum Eastwood is disgusted: "From the beginning of her tenure as British prime minister she has shown very little but disinterest and disdain for this place," he said.  "It tells you all you need to know about Theresa May that she would call a snap Westminster election in the middle of intense efforts to restore power-sharing government to Northern Ireland."

ANYWAY...

Indonesia has 64,000 cops on duty to prevent violence in today's governor's election in Jakarta.  Conservative Muslims are threatening disruptions based on their opposition to incumbent Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian known as "Ahok" who is on trial for supposed blasphemy.  The poll will be a test of Indonesian pluralism, as the electorate seems drawn on religious lines.

France arrested two men on suspicion of planning an attack just before the first round of the French presidential election.  The two Frenchmen, aged 23 and 29, met in prison and were known to police as Islamist radicals. 

The Pentagon says a chemical weapons attack on an Iraqi army unit with Australian and US advisors was ineffective.  This happened in west Mosul, as Iraqi forces solidify their control of Iraq's second-largest city from the so-called Islamic State.  The Yanks and Aussies were screened, found to be unharmed, and returned to duty.  US officials say the attack "further displays the desperation of ISIS as they seek to hold an untenable position in Mosul".

Donald Trump demonstrated his complete ineptitude in foreign policy again:  The orange clown actually called Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan to congratulate him on his referendum victory over the weekend, which critics lambast as the death of Turkish democracy.  Trump undercut his own State Department which had expressed concerns over accusations from European election monitors that the ballot wasn't completely on the up and up because officials allowed uncertified ballots to be counted.  The referendum itself was on granting Erdogan dictatorial powers to declare emergencies, dismiss parliament at a whim, and hire and fire ministers without elections.  

When fascist blowhard Donald Trump said he had an "armada" sailing up to the Korean peninsula last week to express US displeasure over Pyongyang's missile tests, it was a screw-up.  Defense News is reporting that while the White House and the US Navy were claiming the Navy battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was heading to Korea, it was actually going in the opposite direction in the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles away.  The New York Times described "a glitch-ridden sequence of events, from a premature announcement of the deployment by the military's Pacific Command to an erroneous explanation by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis."  The ships won't even get to Korea until late April.