Good Morning Australia!! - A particularly cowardly terrorist attack in France - The US denies involvement in the coup is Turkey - A dictator won't be skating out of his prison sentence for crimes against humanity - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The so-called Islamic State is actually claiming responsibility for one of the most cowardly attacks in recent memory:  Two "men" entered a Roman Catholic church during a morning prayer service, forced an 86-year old priest to his knees and slit his throat.  This happened earlier Tuesday morning in the Normandy town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, south of Rouen.  The attackers took four people hostage as police arrived, seriously injuring one of them.  But after a standoff, the cops shot and killed the attackers. 

French prosecutors are identifying one of the attackers as 19-year old Adel Kermiche, who had a criminal record.  Kermiche was reportedly on four hours of unsupervised release at the time of the attack, and wearing a monitoring device from a previous terrorism conviction.  He had in the past tried to get to Syria to join up with Islamic State.  Kermiche did not come from a family of morons:  His mother is reportedly a professor and his older sister is a doctor. 

The murdered priest was Pere Jacques Hammel, described as a quiet and humble man.  A nun named Sister Danielle who escaped the church said, "(The attackers) were busy with their knives.  They were filming themselves preaching in Arabic in front of the altar.  It was a horror.  Jacques was an extraordinary priest. He was a great man, Father Jacques."  It's not certain if they were able to record any video, or if they did, if they were able to send it to their jihadist pals in Syria.

President Francois Hollande visited the scene of the attack, saying that attackers had committed a "cowardly assassination" and described the fight against Islamic State:  "This war will be a long one.  What is being attacked is our Democracy.  That is the target.  It will be our shield.  It is our unity that will give us strength. The war against hatred and fanaticism," President Hollande said, "We will win."  Pope Francis decried the "pain and horror of this absurd violence" and "condemned in the most radical way any form of hate". 

Moving along...

Thailand has arrested and charged three human rights activists for reporting torture and abuse by soldiers in the country's south.  They up to two years in prison if found guilty of defaming the military, and a further three years if they are found to have violated the country's computer crimes act.  After Thailand's democracy crumbled, the junta has increasingly used defamation and lese majeste laws to clamp down on dissent.

The US military is strongly condemning an idiotic item in a pro-government Turkish newspaper that accuses a retired US General of helping to plan this month's failed coup.  Yeni Safak newspaper reported that former four-star Army General John Campbell - who led NATO forces in Afghanistan before retiring earlier this year - made secret trips to Turkey and distributed billions of dollars to pro-coup military personnel.  "There is no truth to the assertions," says the US Army, adding that it "categorically rejects the irresponsible assertions in the Turkish press of involvement in the recent political activities in Turkey".

Sporting federations have struck 85 Russians from the list of those who will compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio in a week or so.  This is after the IOC chickened out and failed to act on the World Anti-Doping Agency's recommendation to ban Russia from participating because of wide-spread, state-sponsored promotion of illegal performance enhancing substances.  This cuts the Russian team from 387 to 302 athletes, and not all federations have weighed in yet.

Peru's President Ollanta Humala will not pardon former dictator Alberto Fujimori, who is currently serving a 25-year prison term for human rights abuses committed in his rule in the 1990s.  Humala will hand off power to President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Thursday, who has also ruled out a pardon.  Mr. Kuczynski won the presidency in a close election against Fujimori's daughter Keiko, who excused daddy-dearest's death squads and forces sterilization of impoverished indigenous women.

A judge is ordering South Africa's public broadcast SABC to reinstate four journalists who had been sacked for speaking out against censorship at the corporation.  The four complained when their bosses banned the use of video footage of violent protests, which management claimed was to prevent copycats.  Last week, SABC was ordered to stop censoring the news.