Hello Australia!! - Confusion over Trump's reasons for calling off the "cocked and loaded" strike on Iran - A magazine writer accuses Trump of a heinous crime - Poachers may have wiped out a critically endangered species - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

If we are to believe Donald Trump, he called off a US military strike on Iran at the last minute after being informed that as many as 150 Iranian civilians would be killed: "I didn't like it.  I didn't think it was proportionate" for Iran's downing of a US military Surveillance drone earlier in the day.  He also used the malapropism "cocked and loaded", instead of the proper phrase "locked and loaded" to describe America's readiness, and one can only guess where he heard the incorrect version. 

Given his record of telling lies, it has left Washington and journalists struggling to determine exactly what happened yesterday when Trump and defense officials were gathered in the Situation Room.  Initial reports from people inside the room said that planes were in the air and the missiles were aimed at Iranian defense targets when Trump changed his mind; Trump in an interview with NBC News to air this weekend later claimed that the planes were not in the air.  

Anyway..

A magazine writer has gone public with her allegations she was raped by Donald Trump in the 1990s.  In a cover story in New York magazine, Elle's "Agony Aunt" E. Jean Carroll says she encountered Trump in the Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman while he was supposedly purchasing a gift for another woman.  Ms. Carroll recalls in graphic detail that he allegedly followed her to a dressing room where he assaulted her.  The White House denied the allegations as "completely false".  Carroll joins at least 21 other women leveling sex assault and/or misconduct allegations at Trump.

In the UK, Tory MP Mark Field has been suspended as a Foreign Office minister after grabbing a female Greenpeace activist by the neck and shoving her into a column.  This happened last night at a black tie event at Mansion House in which the chancellor was speaking.  Labour is demanding Field be sacked.  The activist Janet Barker says Field needs at least to undergo anger management therapy.

Spain's Supreme Court has increase the jail terms of the so-called "Wolf Pack" who gang raped a woman during the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona in 2016.  The five were initially convicted sexual abuse and given nine year prison terms, which sparked outrage throughout the country and beyond.  The top court changed that verdict to rape for all five men, and increased their prison sentences accordingly.  All five men had been on provisional release while awaiting the Supreme Court's decision.

Uruguay's top court is ordering the government to sell the big, ugly bronze eagle that was once on the bow of the Graf Spee, the giant World War II German battleship that was sunk by the Brits in 1939.  The proceeds will go to compensate the private salvage experts Uruguay hired to help recover the relic from the River Plate, and the private investors who funded the operation in 2006.  Since it's a nazi relic, many believed that it should just have been melted down.

Rangers say more than 500 critically endangered white-backed vultures were poisoned to death on Botswana.  Elephant poachers are suspected of lacing the carcasses of murdered elephants with poison, and the flying scavengers fed on them.  A few eagle, plus 17 white-headed vultures and 28 hooded vultures - which are "critically endangered" as well - were also killed.  Conservationists fear that with so many breeding pairs wiped out, the species will not be able to recover.  So why would the poachers do this?  Because wildlife rangers often search the skies for circling vultures to locate the carcasses of murdered elephants and poaching operations, and the bad guys want to throw the rangers off their trail.