The UN is concerned by fast-moving loses in Iraq – Japan and China bicker of atrocities – Washington is rocked by Cooter? – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The United Nations Security Council will convene a crisis meeting about the kidnapping of 49 Turkish diplomats and civilians who worked at the consulate in Mosul, an Iraqi city overrun by jihadists with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, sometimes referred to as ISIL).  Dozens of Turkish truck drivers from a nearby petroleum business were also taken.  Turkey is promising retribution if things go badly.  Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says the situation is “totally unacceptable” and is calling on the international community to rally behind Iraq.

The death toll in eastern Ukraine is at least 270 lives lost from fighting between government troops and pro-Russian militants around the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.  Thousands of people are believed to be displaced by the fighting.  Ukraine's new President Petro Poroshenko has ordered the creation of humanitarian corridors so civilians can flee areas of the east hit by conflict.

Rwandan forces and troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo are fighting each other along the border.  Five deaths are reported.  Rwandan authorities have yet to comment on the presumed cause, which was Rwandan troops crossing over, fighting the DR Congo troops, and kidnapping a corporal. 

Japan is protesting to China over Beijing’s efforts to get the 1937 Nanjing massacre and the “comfort women” forced to work in wartime military brothels registered in the UNESCO “Memory of the World” program, which preserves the “documentary heritage” of different periods.  China insists that the submissions are necessary to “remember history, cherish peace and avert similar atrocities from happening again”.  The Magna Carta, the “Diary of Anne Frank”, and Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” are already included in the program.

In Washington, efforts to rebrand the Republican party as something other than a band of fringe, rural, extremist, intolerant yahoos are on hold after the earthshaking primary election loss of Eric Cantor, the second most powerful Republican in the lower house.  Washington was caught off guard, and some corporate-wing republicans are trying to stake out more socially conservative positions.  Cantor is stepping down from his leadership position.  But in Cantor’s rural Virginia district, the loss isn’t so shocking – many saw him as an increasingly out-of-touch Washington insider who only swept into the district during election season, surrounded by bodyguards in black SUVs.

Get this – the political earthquake in Washington might have been set off by the mechanic from the old TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard”.  Ben Jones played Cooter, but after showbiz, he went into politics as a center-left Democrat, and represented Virginia’s 8th district before Eric Cantor.  Jones organized Democrats to (temporarily) switch parties in the primary election, and vote for Cantor’s even loonier right-wing opponent, in hopes that Dave Brat would be unelectable in the November general election.  Certainly, there were more votes cast than usual in that sleepy district, but the Cooter Factor is probably just one in a number of conditions that led to the Republican’s latest headache.  But Cooter says he enjoyed watching as “Eric Cantor got his ass whipped like a rented mule.”

Pakistan sentenced two brothers to 12 years in prison for digging up a dead child and eating the corpse.  Apparently, the two years that Mohammad Farman Ali and Mohammad Arif Ali for a previous incident didn’t teach them a lesson, so 12 years it is.  The conviction is for desecrating a grave, because Pakistan doesn’t have a law against cannibalism.  But it will need one in about 12 years.

Cops in Cuba are investigating the murders of four people apparently trying to flee the country.  Traffickers from Miami regularly help people leave one of the last Communist countries in the world, but this time something went wrong.  Six people are under arrest.

Don’t you hate it when you leave the house expecting good weather, and it ends up raining?  Just think, if you were the absolute ruler of the last Stalinist state on earth, you could really give it to that weather forecaster!  Which is what North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un did.  He dressed down the weather service in a televised visit, complained of poor scientific methods that frequently get the forecast wrong.  Meanwhile in the South, Psy and Snoop Dogg put out a video.