Good Morning Australia! - Concern for dozens of people on an airliner that crashed in Indonesia - China clamps down on the Internet after the Tianjin blast - Syrian forces attack a marketplace packed with civilians - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:
Villagers in Indonesia's western Papua province found the wreckage of a Trigana Airlines flight that crashed on Tangok Mountain near the PNG border. The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was carrying 54 people - 44 adult passengers, five children and infants, and five crewmembers. It's unclear if any of them survived. The flight took off from Sentani airport in Jayapura yesterday afternoon, bound for the town of Oksibil. But controllers lost contact with the flight about a half hour after takeoff.
China for the first time is acknowledging that almost a hundred peole are missing in the aftermath of last week's massive explosions in Tianjin. Firefighters are among the 95 still unaccounted for, and the death toll is 112 lives lost. And they're admitting that hundreds of tons of cyanide is still at the blast site. But officials are also cracking down on information about the disaster - they've shut down dozens of websites and hundreds of social media accounts for allegedly "spreading rumors".
A suicide attacker killed 13 people including Shuja Khanzada, the home minister of Pakistan's Punjab Province. Khanzada was in charge of the region's anti-terrorism effort. A Sunni militant group with links to Al Qaeda took responsibility for the blast.
Syrian forces killed at least 80 people in an aerial attack on a crowded market place in Douma, a rebel-held town near the capital Damascus. Hundreds of people are also injured. It's the latest assault on the town, which forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad regularly subject to airstrikes and helicopter barrel-bombings.
An audio recording attributed to Boko Haram leader Abubaker Shekau has emerged, in which the voice claims to be firmly in charge of the Nigerian terrorist group. The most recent video from Boko Haram have not featured Shekau and his famously demonstrative antics, and regional officials speculated he had by killed or incapacitated. Boko Haram is reponsible for thousands of deaths, injuries, and kidnappings in its quest for a breakaway sharia law state.
The African Union is warning that the political crisis in Burundi can destabilize the nation and the region. This comes a day after the latest assassination, this time of a former military chief. The country's security boss was killed earlier, and a human rights activist was wounded in a drive-by shooting. Burundi, in southeast Africa, has been rocked with protests and violence after President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for and was elected to what critics say is an unconstitutional third term.
Ecuador President Rafael Correa is declaring a state of emergency around the Cotopaxi Volcano, uncomfortably cose to the capital Quito. The mountain has belched smoke and ash in recent days, leading to fears of a possible full-scale eruption. Authorities already evacuated hundreds of people from villages, and the emergency declaration gives President Correa more flexibility in using government funds to deal with the situation.
A wacky koala really, really wanted to tag along when SA resident Ebony Churchill took her quad bike out to check on the cattle over the weekend.