World News Briefs For Saturday, 28 October 2017

Hello Australia!! - Catalonia's parliament pulls the secession trigger - Russia introduces the world to "Satan 2" - The White House claims it knew nothing about a dirty deal in Puerto Rico - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Spain's parliament stripped Catalonia of its autonomy and dissolved the Catalan assembly, after the local lawmakers declared independence from Madrid.  This is Spain's worst constitutional crisis since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco and the new democracy which began in 1978, and sets up the possibility of confrontation between Madrid and what appears to be a vocal minority demanding independence based on cultural and economic grievances. 

The separatists point to the recent independence referendum - ruled illegal by Spain's courts - which had 90 percent voting to secede.  But Madrid points out that only 43 percent of voters bothered to turn out, indicating that most Catalans want to stay in Spain.

Russian test fired its RS-28 Sarmat missile, nicknamed "Satan 2"; when equipped with a dozen nuclear warheads, it would be theoretically capable of wiping out an area the size of France or Texas.  The Kremlin fired the gigantic rocket from the Plestek Cosmodrome spaceport roughly 500 miles north of Moscow, and it flew 3,600 miles East until hitting its target on the Kura test range.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis visited the border between North and South Korea, stressing that diplomacy and not war will be the path to solving the peninsula's nuclear crisis.  These talking points, which run counter to Donald Trump's idiotic bombast, were repeated at the Panmunjom "truce village", at a military observation post inside the Demilitarized Zone, and in off-the cuff comments to U.S. and South Korean troops.  But he did poke at Pyongyang's provocations, calling the north "an oppressive regime that shackles its people, denying their freedom, their welfare and their human dignity in pursuit of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery in order to threaten others with catastrophe".

The White House is attempting to distance itself from that shady deal that put a little-known an inexperienced small town power company in charge of restoring Puerto Rico's hurricane-decimated power grid.  Whitefish Power, which just happens to be from the Montana hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, won the US$300 Million contract without any competitive bidding or other scrutiny.  Cue the outrage in and out of Puerto Rico, and by Friday the White House told reporters the "federal government has nothing to do with this contract".  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also said it did not approve the contract, despite fine print on the document claiming it did.

A UN report says Syrian forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad were responsible for the Sarin Gas attack on 4 April that killed 80 people in Khan Sheikoun, a rebel-held town in the north-west of the country.  The paper, compiled by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN's Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) stated, "The panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017."  Syria denies the findings.

A United Nations human rights fact-finding team says that the death toll from the Myanmar government's crackdown on Rohingya Muslims since August was unknown, but "may turn out to be extremely high".  The mission spent time with Rohingya refugees in teeming camps in Bangladesh who told of a methodical ethnic cleansing campaign that included killings, torture, rape, and arson.  "We have heard many accounts from people from many different villages across northern Rakhine state," said former Indonesian attorney general Marzuki Darusman, who led the team.  "They point to a consistent, methodical pattern of actions resulting in gross human rights violations affecting hundreds of thousands of people."  The team says the Rohingya must be allowed to return to their homes in Rakhine state, but only after safeguards are in place to protect them from the government and nationalist mobs.

The US Navy rescued two women and their dogs after a grueling five month ordeal at sea.  Jennifer Appel, friend Tasha Fuiava, and doggies Zeus and Valentine set off from Hawaii in May, bound for Tahiti.  But early on their boat was damaged, the mast was broken, and their engine failed.  In that time, they tried making distress calls for 98 consecutive days, but the calls were out of range.  They fired emergency flares when at least ten ships didn't see them.  Twice the ship was attacked by Tiger sharks.  Finally, a Taiwanese cargo ship happened upon them this week, and the USS Ashland based out of Sasebo, Japan, rescued them on Wednesday morning.