Hello Australia!! - Europe takes a big step to save the earth - Australia joins the effort to verify North Korea's intentions - An internationally-famous tourist town that's shutting out tourists - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The European Union is banning three neonicotinoid pesticides that have been definitively linked to the decimation of bee populations around the world.  While agricultural groups are decrying the decision, most others are praising it because without bees agricultural will be gutted and we will all f*cking die because they'll be no damned food.  Seriously.  So stop whinging, farmers.  Environmentalism is all about preserving the human species.  "The Commission had proposed these measures months ago, on the basis of the scientific advice from the European Food Safety Authority," said EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis.  "Bee health remains of paramount importance for me since it concerns biodiversity, food production and the environment."

The new European Commission regulation expands the initial 2013 restrictions.  Almost all outdoor uses of the chemicals imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam are banned, covering the biggest cash crops - including maize, wheat, barley, oats, and canola seeds.  Growers will be able to use neonicotinoids in greenhouses across the EU, although Green groups are suspicious of that because of the potential for leaks and seepage into the water table.  "Banning these toxic pesticides is a beacon of hope for bees," said Antonia Staats from the campaign group Avaaz, which gathered millions of signatures worldwide for a petition against neonicotinoids.  "Finally, our governments are listening to their citizens, the scientific evidence and farmers who know that bees can't live with these chemicals and we can't live without bees."

Anyway..

Australia is sending a P-8A surveillance plane to help monitor North Korean ships and enforce international economic sanctions on Pyongyang.  It'll be based out of the US airbase at Kadena, alongside the Canadian military's planes taking part in the same mission.  This comes just after the leaders of the two Koreas met and promised to work to end the state of war between their countries and to "denuclearize" the Korean peninsula.  Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stressed the need to monitor North Korea's transparency:  "We will be sending a surveillance aircraft to Japan to make sure that North Korea is not trading illicitly," she said.

Myanmar has a new refugee crisis, as 4,000 people fled their homes to escape fighting between government troops and ethnic Kachin rebels.  The rebels are a predominantly Christian minority fighting for more autonomy in the majority Buddhist country.  The military pounding the rebels with airstrikes and artillery, but the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) is better-armed and organized than the Rohingya Muslims in the country's west who were driven over the border into refugee camps in Bangladesh.  Aid agencies want to get in to help refugees as well as people trapped by the fighting, but the government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi is preventing that, just as it prevented help for the Rohingya.  A report to the UN Human Rights Council says Myanmar's Kachin, Shan, and Rakhine states are rife with "human rights violations of the most serious kind, in all likelihood amounting to crimes under international law".

The summit between China's Xi Jinping and India's Narendra Modi broke up with the two leaders vowing to improve communication to avoid military tensions along their Himalayan border.  Troops came eyeball to eyeball on a border plateau and valley claimed by China, but shown on most maps to be part of India's ally Bhutan.  Politely-worded communiques from both nations did not specifically mention the Doklam dispute.  China and India still haven't resolved a nearby territorial dispute that led to a brief border war in 1962.

Venice has installed crowd-control turnstiles and passed new rules to limit the number of tourists who can enter the historic canal city.  Locals have long complained of overcrowding by tourists during the warmer months, leading to the proliferation of graffiti reading, "Tourists Go Home," and "Tourists Are Terrorists."  More than 20 million visitors visit Venice each year, compared to its permanent population of 55,000.

Israel arrested two staffers at a pre-military school after nine girls and a boy drowned during hiking trip in the Negev Valley.  The teens were swept away in the heaviest flooding in the area for several years, but it happened forecasters had clearly warned of the potential for flash floods after torrential rain.  Authorities are warning against more hiking or camping trips in the Negev Valley in the short term.

Labor is vowing to abolish the horribly sexist Tampon Tax if it wins a parliamentary majority in the next election. "It is well and truly time this tax on women was axed," said opposition spokesperson for health Catherine King, who stressed the items are a basic necessity for women.  "What we have proposed is that the offset loss to the states on pads and tampons would be by applied to twelve natural therapies that are sometimes exempt to the GST such as herbalism and naturopathy," she added.  The Greens were already against the GST on women's sanitary items, but the coalition failed to do anything about it last year.

The Japan Sumo Association (JSA) is getting blasted for delaying a decision on allowing women in the ring, known as the "Dohyo".  This comes after a female western Japanese mayor was denied access to the platform alongside her male counterparts, and another incident in which female paramedics were removed from ring where they tried to treat another male politician who suffered a heart attack; in the latter case, junior wrestlers were ordered to spread salt on the dohyo in a ritual purification ceremony to get rid of the girl germs. 

Jaguar cub alert!  Jaguar cub alert!