World News Briefs For Saturday, 29 April 2017

Hello Australia!! - North Korea tries another missile launch - Trump and Tillerson anticipate war with North Korea - Brazil shuts down for a general strike - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

North Korea on Saturday attempted to launch a ballistic missile from a site northeast of the capital Pyongyang, and it was reportedly a failure.  "North Korea fired an unidentified missile from a site in the vicinity of Bukchang in Pyeongannam-do (South Pyeongan Province) early this morning," South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, quoting a military source. 

A US military official told NBC that the missile was not a nuclear-tipped missile.

Saturday marks Donald Trump's 100th day of infesting the White House; and to distract from his remarkable lack of any accomplishments, the administration is trying to beat the war drums with North Korea a little harder.  In an interview with Reuters, the orange idiot said:  "There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea.  Absolutely."  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday told a special meeting of the UN Security Council that the US is willing to take military action against Pyongyang for its missile and nuclear weapons program:  "All options for responding to future provocations must remain on the table," Tillerson said.  "Diplomatic and financial leverage or power will be backed up by willingness to counteract North Korean aggression with military action, if necessary."  Tillerson said China should leverage its trade links as leverage, but Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his country is not the key to controlling North Korea.

In that same Reuters interview, Trump revealed his complete disengagement from reality:  "I loved my previous life.  I had so many things going.  This is more work than in my previous life.  I thought it would be easier," he said of being the current occupant of the White House.  Yeah, who ever thought that being leader of the free world would require work beyond twitter and golfing.  This statement seemed to summarize three months of utter confusion over both domestic and foreign policies, as well as the administration's astonishment that it can't just issue a series of executive orders that will be obeyed - which itself betrayed a lack of understanding on how the three co-equal branches of the US government work.

Brazil's cities were in shutdown mode on Friday, as millions stayed home in a national strike against un-elected President Michel Temer's plans to gut pensions.  Protesters set up roadblocks in various cities, including Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Brasilia - where lawmakers will vote on the pension overhaul next week.  Since the coup in the courts last year, Temer's conservatives have the votes to force through the changes.  Also since then, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 14 percent, because conservative economic policies don't work.

The head of the ultra-right Front National party in France has been forced to step down after his holocaust-denying comments from 2000 resurfaced, showing the party cannot seem to get away from its anti-Semitic roots.  Jean-Francois Jalkh expressed doubt about nazi gas chambers during an interview conducted by a professor with more than one conviction on charges of holocaust denial, a crime in France and much of Western Europe.  Jalkh was appointed FN party leader earlier this week when presidential candidate Marine Le Pen stepped aside to concentrate on the second round of the election on 7 May.  Le Pen has reframed the party's earlier flagrant anti-Semitism during the 1970s into Islamophobic and anti-immigrant xenophobia for modern bigots.

Football legend Zinedine Zidane called on France to defeat the "extremist" Le Pen and the National Front. 

And you don't want to mess with that guy.

Seriously, I'd vote for whoever Zidane wanted if he promised not to stare at me.

A Russian opposition activist was blinded in a chemical attack, at least temporarily.  Natalia Fedorova of the social-liberal Yabloko party was leaving her house when a man splashed the substance in her face and ran away. 

"She's had her windows shot at already, and a coffin has been placed at her door," said party spokesman Sergei Mitrokhin.  She had recently been campaigning against property development in a Moscow suburb.  Doctors hope that Ms. Federova's eyesight might recover. 

This comes a day after someone threw green antiseptic dye in the face of anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, temporarily turning his face green - the second time this year that has happened.  Which is the least of what can happen when one opposes Vladimir Putin's plans in Russia.