Hello Australia!! - Trump's bigly yuuuuuuge failure on health care plops into the porcelain bowl - Putin pretty much endorses a French xenophobe - The UN will investigate alleged atrocities in Myanmar after all - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

US Republicans pulled their bill to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) - known as Obamacare - with a conservative version.  After much drama on Capitol Hill it was apparent that factions of the majority Republican Party were not going to unite, and thus House Speaker Paul Ryan personally went to the White House to plead with Donald Trump to withdraw the legislation for the near-term.  Earlier in the day, the White House released several statements appearing to put the onus on Mr. Ryan to get the bill passed.  In the end, neither Trump nor Ryan wanted to have their fingerprints on a losing vote - but even without the official tally, this is an ignominious failure of Republicans who've had seven years to come up with a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare and just didn't deliver on their central campaign promise.

The top Democrat on the US House Intelligence Committee is blasting the panel's Republican leader for canceling an open hearing into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.  Adam Schiff accused Devin Nunes of attempting to "choke off public info".  Nunes separately said that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort - a man with deep business ties to the Kremlin and its friends - would testify before the committee, although it's not clear if he meant in open session.  Nunes is under fire for traveling to the White House earlier this week to deliver unvetted information about Trump's insiders that wasn't given to his own committee first.

If Russia is interfering in France's presidential election, it's not bothering to hide it anymore.  Far-right wing candidate Marine Le Pen went to the Kremlin to meet with Vladimir Putin, as part of Russia's strategy to destabilize Western politics and economies and build its own influence in the aftermath.  Le Pen's anti-immigration and anti-EU platform appeals to the Kremlin, and not surprisingly she wants to ease economic sanctions against Moscow.  For his part, Putin praised Le Pen as representing part of a "quickly developing spectrum of European political forces". 

Russia is denying it is arming the Afghanistan Taliban.  This is after NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Curtis Scaparrotti told US lawmakers, "I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban."  Russia's special envoy in Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov said the allegation was "false" and an attempt to "justify the failure of the US military and politicians in the Afghan campaign".  In 2015, the Kremlin said that "the Taliban interest objectively coincides with ours" in Russia's fight against so-called Islamic State.

Egypt's former president Hosni Mubarak has been released from detention, six years after he was overthrown.  Egypt's top appeals court this month cleared him over the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his 30-year reign.   More than 800 people were killed in that episode, which led to the election of Egypt's only freely elected president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.  But that didn't go well as Morsi pushed a restrictive and unpopular Islamist agenda that returned protesters to the streets, only to have Mubarak's former military chief Abdul Fattah al-Sisi take power and go back to the old "benevolent strongman" model of governance.

The United Nations Human Rights Council will investigate the Myanmar's army alleged human rights abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority.  Campaigners have already gathered accounts of gang rapes and mass killings from 70,000 Rohingya who fled over the border to Bangladesh.  Last month, the UN published a a damning report containing gory and horrific details of these crimes, but initially turned down a chance to carry out a larger investigation.  Myanmar is carrying out its own probe and does not welcome the UN's new move, which was opposed by China and India. 

The Gambia will set up a truth commission to investigate abuses during the reign of former President Yahya Jammeh, who was forced to step down in January after 22 years of authoritarian rule.  Justice minister Abubacarr Tambadou said people will be encouraged to confess to crimes, and the personal finances of Mr. Jammeh would come under scrutiny.  US$11 Million in treasury money went missing as Jammeh went into exile earlier this year.

Chile's High Court sentenced 33 former intelligence agents for the disappearance of five Left-wing political activists in 1987, in the final years of the fascist Pinochet dictatorship.  The victims were kidnapped and thrown from military helicopters into the Pacific Ocean, and their bodies were never found.  It's not clear if the men were drugged or killed between abduction and being dumped.  Among the defendants sentenced to 15 years in prison were two chiefs of the CNI intelligence service, who are already serving life sentences for atrocities committed under dictator Augusto Pinochet.