Hello Australia!! - Turkish air strikes target friends of friends - The US government shuts down - China says it will defend what it claims is its territory - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Turkey launched air strikes on US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria's Afrin province, hoping to oust what Ankara considers to be terrorist groups from its southern borders.  It threatens to open up a new and thoroughly unnecessary front in the Syrian Civil war, with the Kurdish YPG and Syrian Rebels vowing to fight the Turks if attack:  "The YPG and the civilians will defend Afrin to the last moment."  Syria denounced Turkey's "aggression" and "brutal attack", but the Damascus government's Russian benefactors moved its troops away without getting involved.

China is lashing out at the US after the missile destroyer USS Hopper sailed close to one of the military installations that Beijing built in the South China Sea on rocks and reefs that either belong to other countries or are in international waters.  Beijing claims it will take "necessary measures" to "safeguard its sovereignty" - even though an international court in the Hague previously found that China had no historic title over the area.  "All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows," said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan.

The US government has technically shut down, after majority Republicans failed to muster enough votes to pass a last-minute funding measure that would have given lawmakers another four weeks to get their acts together.  There's lots of finger pointing going on, but the Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House -  so, it's on them despite claims otherwise.  The orange clown Donald Trump has sown chaos throughout the process, linking the proposed southern boarder wall and immigration to the process while shifting his positions after few hours.  Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York says Trump has been an unreliable negotiating partner, explaining that working with him is "like negotiating with Jell-O".

While the orange clown claims Democrats are to blame for the shutdown, Trump's own words in 2013 are coming back to haunt him:  "Well, if you say who gets fired it always has to be the top," Trump said to Murdoch's Fox News back in 2013.  "I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top and the president's the leader.  And he's got to get everybody in a room and he's got to lead."  In the short term, a government shut down means that civilian employees of the federal government are furloughed while the military doesn't get paid.

Germany is halting arms exports to all sides of the Yemen conflict, which pits a US-backed, Saudi-led coalition against Iran-backed rebels with several Islamist factions seeking to carve out their own influence.  This is because German government coalition talks are still going on, and Berlin will wait until a new government sets a new policy on the matter.  This impacts Germany's surprisingly large arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which topped a half billion US Dollars in just the third quarter of 2017.  Amnesty International praised the decision and called on other countries to do the same.