Millions of Aussies are being forced to change their retirement plans – Russian jail time fails to scare off members of the Greenpeace Arctic 30 – May Day results in raises for some, teargas for others – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

When are you going to retire?  Wrong, you’re going to retire a few years later than expected if the Liberal Party gets its way.  Treasurer Joe Hockey has announced that Australians born after 1965 will have to work until they are 70 before they are eligible for the age pension.  Because of the new Liberal Party budget plan, Australia will have the world’s highest retirement age.  Australians should expect a host of other belt tightening measures.

More May Day goodies for Latin America:  Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has announced a 10 percent increase in social security payments as well as tax cuts for the less well-off.  These changes will affect 36 million low-income families.  And after intense negotiations with labor unions in Bolivia, President Evo Morales has agreed to raise the country’s minimum wage by a full 20 percent.  Both leaders have elections coming up later in the year.

Seattle, in America’s Pacific Northwest, will raise the minimum wage to US$15 (A$16.17) per hour, making it the highest in the country.  Mayor Ed Murray struck a deal with business leaders on a plan that will give businesses with fewer than 500 employees seven years to comply and larger businesses three years.  Further increases would be tied to inflation.

Kevin Rudd is reportedly a leading candidate to be tapped as the Untied Nations’ Special Envoy to Syria.  Lakhdar Brahimi will appear before the Security Council this month, but is expected to resign that post by the end of this month, due to the failure of the Geneva peace talks.  British diplomat Michael Williams and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solano are also in consideration.

The European Union Peacekeeping force has arrived in the Central African Republic (CAR) and has taken up positions to secure the capital Bangui’s M'Poko Airport.  This initial force of 150 troops will eventually grow to 800.  The UN refugee agency says around 173,000 people have been internally displaced since last December, while 37,000 others have fled to neighboring countries because of the civil war.

At least 19 people are dead in a car bombing in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.  Witnesses said that a man parked his car, walked away and the next thing they know, the car blew up.  No one has claimed responsibility yet, but Boko Haram said that it was behind the bombing that killed 70 people outside Abuja last month.

Parents of the 230 schoolgirls abducted from a boarding school in northeast Nigeria are demanding the government do more to find their daughters.  The girls were taken by Boko Haram Islamist guerillas and many have reportedly been spirited out of the country and forced into marriages with the militants. 

Thousands of demonstrators defied Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ban on May Day demonstrations on the streets of Istanbul.  Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to try and disperse the protesters.  More than 140 were detained and 90 were hurt – including 19 police officers.  Erdogan has repeatedly angered the education, urban, liberal class with his autocratic rule, but remains popular with the conservative countryside.

Dutch authorities arrested 44 Greenpeace demonstrators for trying to stop a Russian Gazprom ship from delivering oil to Rotterdam.  Among the group are members of the Arctic 30, who spent weeks in Russian jails for a protest at a Gazprom oil rig in the Arctic Ocean, which they are trying to protect from the disastrous and inevitable messes caused by oil drilling.