Hello Australia!! - Washington is abuzz with word of evidence an impeachable offense - American blame Trump for the US government shutdown - Ireland's law legalizing abortion faces a test - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Talk of impeaching Donald Trump is growing louder in Washington, DC, after Buzzfeed News reported he had directed his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.  Democrats, who now control key committees in the House of Representatives, are vowing to investigate the report.  Some are also openly calling on Trump to resign or be impeached; and others say that if special prosecutor Robert Mueller has corroborating evidence, it's time to get a move on.  Ordering subordinates to lie to congress has the basis of the first of the three articles of impeachment that forced Richard Nixon to resign the US Presidency in the 1970s.

Saturday is the 29th day of the US government shutdown, and polling says the American people don't like it and they're blaming Trump.  Six reputable pollsters released new data in the last week that share three common themes:  The public largely blames the White House for the shutdown; most object to the shutdown, especially as a negotiating tactic by Trump to get his border wall built; few see the proposed wall as an effective way to combat undocumented immigration.  Congress was still controlled by Trump's Republicans when it passed a funding measure late last year, but Trump rejected it; the Democrats, who now control the lower House, have passed similar funding measures but Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell refuses to allow them to come up for a vote even though his own caucus says they would vote yes to reopen the US government.

Russia has arrested a model who claimed to have evidence of Russian involvement in the 2016 US presidential election.  Her lawyer posted video of four men bundling Nastya Rybka at Moscow's main airport and rushing her away.  She and her attorney thought they had been granted safe passage through Moscow so Rybka could make her way back to her native Belorussia after being deported from Thailand for soliciting.  When she was arrested there last year, she claimed to have videos of her old boyfriend - billionaire oiligarch Oleg Deripaska - discussing the election with three Americans.  Deripaska reportedly now has possession of those videos, Thailand washed its hands and deported her, and things don't look very good for her right now.

Two days after arresting a prominent Iranian journalist, the US is admitting it took Marzieh Hashemi into custody.  The US Justice Department says she is not accused of any crime, but is a witness before a closed-door Grand Jury proceeding.  She was born in New Orleans 59-years ago and changed her name from Melanie Franklin when she converted to Islam; for the past 25 years, she has been a news reader on Iranian TV.  Her family and Iran allege the US has treated her shabbily, confiscating her Hijab and serving her meals of pork, which Muslims are not allowed to eat.

An Irish hospital is under fire for refusing to perform an abortion on a woman's fetus that had been diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality.  This is despite Ireland's historic decision to legalize Women's Reproductive Rights through an overwhelming victory in a public referendum.  Coombe Hospital in Dublin claimed it lacks the resources to provide a full range of abortion services, and told the woman she must wait four weeks to see if there was a spontaneous miscarriage.  Supporters say that's bunk, and the woman followed the law and got the approval of two doctors to confirm the fetus is fatally flawed.

France's human rights chief is calling on the government to stop police from using the LBD40 "flash ball grenade" launchers following gruesome injuries to some 40 Yellow Vest protesters.  One man was hit in the back of the head and left in a coma for six days; Campaigners say a dozen people have lost an eye to the LBD40, which is manufactured by the Swiss company Brugger and Thomet.  Interior Minister Laurent Nunez says if police didn't have the non-lethal ordinance "perhaps some of them would have been lynched" during the often raucous protests.

Former US President Jimmy Carter's greatest victory is coming almost 40 years after he left office.  The Carter Center announced the world is close to eradicating the Guinea worm, a parasite that causes a painful disease that leaves patients bed-ridden for months.  Thanks to eradication efforts in Africa championed by Mr. Carter, only 28 cases of Guinea worm were reported in 2018, compared to the 3.5 million infections recorded in 1986.  If the Carter Center is 100 percent successful, Guinea worm would be the third disease to be eradicated from the planet, after smallpox and rinderpest.