Global News

Happy VD!  Valentine’s Day, that is.  There’s something happening in the mountain where North Korea tests nuclear weapons – Whether its Volcanoes or wildfires, it’s getting kind of hard to breath in Indonesia – Russia takes a bad policy and doubles down – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

A court in Venezuela has ordered the arrest of an opposition leader after violence in Caracas that claimed three lives.  The streets of the capital were calm a day after the trouble, as most people stayed home after the melee.

After holding a fragile coalition government together for ten months of tumult, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta will hand in his resignation on Friday after his Democratic Party backed a call for a new administration – Italy’s third government in a year.

Veteran US sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan have re-filed a US$1 Billion class action lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) for failing to warn them about the massive amount of radiation they were exposed to from the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

On the surface it seems to be a shocking decision:  Belgium’s parliament has, by an overwhelming margin and over the objections of religious leaders, passed a bill that grants children the right to end their lives by euthanasia.

Severe air pollution from China’s factories and coal-fired power plants has made the capital “barely suitable” for living – and that criticism is internal, coming from Beijing’s Social Science Academic Press and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

A march to commemorate Youth Day in Caracas, Venezuela turned violent as supporters and detractors of President Nicolas Maduro battled at the peripheries.  At least two people were shot and killed as the trouble spread out.

This is a really bad week to be a Giraffe named Marius in Denmark.  A second Danish zoo says it is considering euthanizing a perfectly healthy young, male giraffe in its care for what many consider questionable reasons.

Scientists have successfully used high-resolution satellite imagery to count whales from space.  It’s hoped that the new method will revolutionize the way whale populations are estimated and assist conservation efforts.

Women's reproductive rights are about to disappear in Spain – The evacuation of Homs rescues hundreds from a life under siege – The Jade Rabbit is stopped in its lunar tracks – All that and more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

The European Union’s executive body is seeking to limit America’s influence on the future of the Internet, in the wake of revelations of US spying from fugitive US leaker Edward Snowden.

Japan’s nuclear regulator is criticizing the operator of the radiation-spewing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for grossly underestimating the contamination levels in groundwater at the site of the triple-meltdown.

Federal Police and the Customs and Border Protection Service intercepted more than 180 kilos of “ice” – methamphetamines – with an estimated street value of A$180 Million.  The drugs were packed inside a shipment of Kayaks from China.

A date is set for Peter Greste’s trial – Is a big US tech company helping China keep its people in the dark? – And after a year at sea, the castaway is finally home!  All that and more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Russia’s Consumer Rights Protection Society (OZPP) has filed a lawsuit against four pay TV operators for allegedly violating the rights of consumers by dropping the liberal Dozdh network without warning.

Rescuers rushed to the scene of a military transport plane crash in mountainous terrain in Algeria and found only one survivor among the dozens of bodies of dead soldiers and their families scattered among the wreckage.

The US and Italy announced the arrests of 26 people in a major sweep against a Mafia smuggling ring that sought to move weapons and drugs from South America to Italy.  Some of those arrested are associated with some of the biggest crimes families in New York City and Italy.

A South Korean delegation headed out of Seoul early this morning for the cross-border truce village of Panmunjom for talks with North Korea.  South Korea's Unification Ministry said a wide range of pressing inter-Korean issues will be discussed

China and Taiwan today commence four days of their highest-level talks in 65 years, since 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists lost the civil war to Mao Zedong's Communists, fled to the island and declared independence from the mainland. 

Should Schapelle Corby profit from her release from an Indonesian prison where she spent a decade for drug smuggling? – Polio returns to the Afghan capital – A journalist will not recover from injuries sustained in a raucous protest – All that, plus Chopin and Gas Masks in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.