Hello Australia!! - Hundreds are arrested protesting a tax on the jobless and under-employed - A nation is appalled as an IDIOT judge man-splains rape - The US shelters a teen blogger who vexed Singapore authorities - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The US says it will investigate after its warplanes were involved in an air raid in Mosul this month in which there were heavy civilian casualties.  US Central Command acknowledges its planes struck an area in west Mosul corresponding to the reports of civilian casualties.  The US is backing up Iraqi troops taking the northern city back from the so-called Islamic State.  Journalists in the Jadideh neighborhood of west Mosul said they saw 50 bodies being pulled out of the rubble on Friday, while residents claim there were still several bodies beneath the rubble.

There is widespread anger in Italy after a MORON judge in Turin acquitted a man in a rape because the woman repeatedly told him, "Enough!" but didn't scream.  Justice Minister Andrea Orlando has asked ministry inspectors to begin looking into the case, which has been dragging the victim through the mud since 2011.  "Certainly, you cannot punish the personal reaction of a woman terrified by what is happening to her," said opposition MP Annagrazia Calabria.  As usual, the defendant claimed the encounter was consensual.

Riot cops in Minsk, Belarus arrested hundreds of people for defying a ban on protests against a hideous law imposing a "social parasites" tax on the under-employed.  That's right, Belarussian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko is stomping people for not being to get by in his shitty economy.  Witnesses said the police were vicious:  "They're beating the participants, dragging women by the hair to buses.  I was able to run to a nearby courtyard," according to demonstrator Alexander Ponomarev.  Earlier, the security force that actually still uses the Soviet-era initials KGB blocked cellphones and hacked the social media accounts of concrete opposition activists. 

Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since 1994, keeping the state repression as he swung the country from the Soviet model to the nationalist right-wing as the Western world looked away.  Widely considered a mentor of Vladimir Putin next door in Russia, he says he will not back down on the regressive tax - although he has suspended it for a year.  Protest leader Mikola Statkevich already spent five years in prison for defying Lukashenko; from his safe-house, he told the US website The Daily Beast: "One dictatorship gives birth to another dictatorship," and, "All of Moscow's acts of political repression were first practiced in Belarus.  The European Union should realize that without the dictator Lukashenko, the world would not have seen the latest actions by authoritarian leader Putin."

The former head of the US CIA (which also actually still uses its Cold War-era initials) James Woolsey alleges that Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn discussed bundling up a controversial Muslim cleric from US soil and shipping him to Turkey to face trial.  Flynn has since resigned the Trump administration over his ties with Russia and his registered as an agent of Turkey - where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames the cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding last year's coup attempt.  Mr. Woolsey told CNN he couldn't confirm that a plot was in place; "But it looks as if there was at least some strong suggestion by one or more of the Americans present at the meeting that we would be able, the United States would be able, through them, to be able to get hold of Gulen, the rival for Turkey's political situation."  Flynn denies it.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is acknowledging his government cannot solve its problems alone and told the nation he asked for help from the United Nations to obtain pharmaceuticals and normalize their prices.  Some hospitals report having only five percent of the drugs they need.  Maduro has blamed his country's economic problems on crashing oil prices and interference from the US and its wealthy allies in his country's conservative opposition. 

China has apparently detained a Sydney educator and is refusing him to return home to Oz.  Chongyi Feng is a vocal critic of China's influence in Australia, a permanent resident of Sydney, and an Associate Professor in Chinese Studies at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).  The ABC reports that Mr. Feng has been refused permission to fly out of Guangzhou airport in southern China, and saying it "wasn't convenient" to say who exactly was blocking him - which is apparently a common euphemism used in China when people are unable to talk freely.  DFAT says it is aware, but: "The Australian Government is able to provide consular assistance only to Australian citizens who have entered China on their Australian passport."

The US is granting asylum to teenage blogger Amos Lee who was twice jailed in his native Singapore for poking fun at zillionaire President Lee Kuan Yew and Christianity.  The 18-year old Lee flew into Chicago's O'Hare Airport in December on a tourist visa but promptly announced he wanted to stay.  Authorities kept him in detention until officials approved his request.  So, to recap - young Mr. Lee fled the country with the thin-skinned billionaire leader and politically powerful religious nutters so that he could take asylum.. in the United States.  Good luck getting health care, Amos! At least Chicago has great Pizza!

Oh, BTW.. while America decided to welcome Amos Lee - an 18-year old without a college education or a job - its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops have been conducting punitive raids in cities from coast to coast, breaking up families and deporting people who've lived in the US for years and decades, serving in its military and contributing to its economy.  The ICE raids have almost exclusively focused on Latino communities of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who do the farming, landscaping, janitorial and maintenance, and other positions that Americans won't do themselves.  Teens and young adults who left Central America as toddlers and grew up as all-American kids are being expelled, often just hours short of completing educational goals.

So you got in at the front of the line, Amos.  What are you going to do with that gift?