Bill Shorten stands up for Marriage Equality – Politics trumps Medicine and Science after Ebola visits New York City – Vladimir Putin is sick of being bad-mouthed – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Labor leader Bill Shorten told the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) that he supports same sex marriage, making him Australia’s first political leader to defend marriage equality before the group.  Shorten made it clear that religion shouldn’t be used to divide people, and that he thought the current marriage laws ensures that some people are divided and excluded.  The ACL didn’t change its views, but the managing director said he appreciated that Shorten was “fearless and frank”.

So, America is all Ebola crazy again.  Health services workers were conspicuously retracing the path that Dr. Craig Spencer took in the city, unnecessarily disinfecting things he might have touched to reassure the public.  Spencer was not effusively symptomatic – he was not spewing infected bodily fluids all over the place.  The man is a doctor, give some credit.  No one is going to get Ebola on the NYC subway; and I can assure you there are already things growing down there that will kick Ebola’s ass, steal its wallet, find Ebola’s friends, and stalk them on the internet.  Spencer is the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) volunteer who treated Ebola patients in Guinea, returned to New York, and then started developing symptoms.

AS IF TO FEED the unnecessary panic, the governors of New York State and neighboring New Jersey – each with higher office on their minds – ordered that medical personnel returning to New York after treating Ebola patients in West Africa would be automatically subjected to a 21-day quarantine.  Mind you, it’s not clear that the governors even have that authority.  And the decision appears to have been purely political as no health officials were consulted.  In fact, New York City’s health commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett, was not informed in advance of the Cuomo-Christie mandatory quarantine order and was “furious” upon learning about it.  Nevertheless, a female doctor just returning to New Jersey from West Africa on Friday afternoon was immediately rushed into involuntary quarantine – no choice.

The Governor of New Jersey is Chris Christie, a republican believed to be readying a bid for President in 2016.  The Governor of New York State is Andrew Cuomo, who is (barely) a democrat believed to have national ambitions as well, but who likely moved to blunt a challenge from the right.  A little inside info here – the White House has spent the past few weeks trying to tamp down unreasonable panic over Ebola (including welcoming one of the Dallas nurses who survived Ebola).  And Cuomo’s joining with a republican to institute involuntary quarantines is not sitting well with Cuomo’s fellow Dems.

You know what America really does have a problem with?  Not Ebola, guns.  Outside Seattle, Washington, a popular, well-liked football player and homecoming king whipped out a handgun in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School cafeteria and killed a classmate who refused to date him, and shot others sitting at her table.  14-year-old freshman Jaylen Fryberg then turned the gun on himself.  America’s corporate media was filled with all sorts of soul-searching over how this could happen, with few mentioning that maybe minors shouldn’t have guns.

You know where Ebola really, really is a problem?  Not America, but West Africa.  In Mali, health officials are desperately trying to retrace a family’s path after a two-year-old girl died of Ebola.  The girl’s grandmother picked her up when her nose was bleeding – meaning that the toddler was already highly symptomatic – and used public transportation to leave Guinea and go to Mali for treatment.  Unlike the New York City situation, people traveling alongside this poor kid are in danger.  The UN World Health Organization dispatched a team to Mali and says the situation is an “emergency”.

A court in Argentina sentenced an ex-police chief and former interior minister for running a torture chamber for the junta in the 1970s.  The two fallen officials were among 19 charged with kidnapping, torturing, and murdering 128 prisoners in the city of La Plata – 13 other defendants got life sentences, others were sentenced to shorter terms.  The judge said those convicted were accomplices in a genocide against mostly young, Left-wing activists in Argentina between 1976 and 1978.

A suicide bombing at an Egyptian military checkpoint in Sinai killed 31 soldiers.  President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared three days of mourning, and a three-month state of emergency for parts of Sinai.  Muslim militants are suspected, but no group has claimed responsibility.

Japan is warning of increased seismic activity a volcano in southern Japan located roughly 64 kilometers from a nuclear plant.  Ioyama is located in the volcanically active Kirishima Range on Kyushu.  The conservative government in Tokyo has been pushing to restart the Sendai Nuclear power Plant, shut down since the 11 March 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami which swamped the Fukushima Daiichi plant hundreds of kilometers to the north, causing a triple meltdown.

Vladimir Putin says Russia didn’t pick this fight.  The Russian President accuses the United States of destabilizing the world’s current troublespots, by supporting “dubious” groups ranging from “open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals” – referring to the neo-nazi street thugs who backed the ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, and to Syrian rebels who opposed President Bashar al-Assad but later formed into Islamic State.  Putin also denied accusations he’s trying to restore the territory Moscow formerly controlled under the Soviet Union.