Good Morning Australia!! - The experts believe the planet is closer to self-destruction - Trump causes friction with his neighbor - What has left the US State Department rudderless? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The Doomsday Clock has been set to 30 seconds closer to midnight, putting it at two and a half minutes away from the live-action version of a Mad Max movie.  The Bulletin for Atomic Scientists blames the erratic behavior of White House occupant Donald Trump - who has "made disturbing comments about the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons and expressed disbelief in the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change."  The Doomsday Clock was devised by the scientists who created the first US atomic bomb - today's announcement is the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1953, when the US and the Soviet Union tested hydrogen bombs.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled next week's scheduled visit to the White House, amid outrage in Mexico about Trump's executive order to start building a border wall.  Trump later lied and claimed the meeting was called off by mutual decision.  However, Pena Nieto had already announced his displeasure and said Mexico's 50 diplomatic facilities in the US would become legal assistance centers for immigrants.  Last night, Pena Nieto repeated for the nine billionth time that Mexico will not pay for Trump's idiotic plan, despite the orange clown's insistence.  This marks the highest tension between the North American neighbors in decades.

Several top level US State Department officials are leaving as of Friday.  Although reports differ on whether the veteran and bi-partisan diplomats jumped or were pushed, it leaves glaring holes in the US foreign policy center's management - including in the areas of security, policy, and building.  The US Senate has yet to confirm Trump's pick for Secretary of State, former Exxon executive Rex Tillerson, meaning he's going to be under a lot of pressure to fill those positions.

Despite Israel's informal shunning of France's far-right National Front, the party's general secretary visited Israel and met with top military, government, and ruling Likud party officials.  A Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed it was a private, unofficial visit.  The Front National has a deep history of anti-Semitism and sympathy for the former nazi occupiers of the 1940s, made more troubling by the strong showing that its presidential candidate Marine LePen in the lead up to this year's elections.

Israel for the first time is taking in refugees from the gruesome and lengthy civil war next door in Syria.  Under the plan, about a hundred orphans will get temporary residency status and allowed to stay indefinitely after four years.  They'll live in dormitories to begin with, then be absorbed into the education system, with adoption or foster care also becoming possibilities.  It's a big step for Israel, which has technically been in a state of war with Syria for years and has remained neutral in the current conflict.

A Greek court is refusing to extradite eight Turkish military officers who fled there in a helicopter during last year's failed coup.  The eight deny any involvement, but Ankara accuses them of having links with a group which allegedly tried to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Turkey has arrested thousands in the wake of last July's aborted coup, and fired tens of thousands of public workers - few have received any form of due process.

Mobile video caught the moment a small plane crashed into Perth's Swan River, killing a man and woman on board.  The tragedy prompted officials to cancel the Skyworks show which was expected to attract 300,000 people.

The final death toll in the avalanche that crushed and buried a hotel in Italy is 29 lives lost, now that recovery teams have pulled the last bodies out of the ice and rubble.  Nine people were pulled out alive from the Hotel Rigopiano in the central mountains, including all four children.  Two meters of snow in 72 hours was followed by four sharp earthquakes, causing the ambulance.  The rescue effort was delayed because local officials didn't initially the initial reports of a disaster.

Pakistan pulled a popular TV host off the air after he leveled blasphemy allegations against five missing liberal bloggers and their supporters.  Such accusations have inspired murders several times in Pakistan's past.  Aamir Liaquat Hussain is the host of the public affairs program "This Is Not Acceptable", which probably should have warned authorities that he'd do something nutty.  The five bloggers went missing this month after airing views critical of the military.

Gambia's new president Adama Barrow returned home for the first time since the exit of former despot Yahya Jammeh, who went into exile after two decades in power.  "I am a happy man today," Mr. Barrow told a reporter as jets from the multi-national West African security force roared overhead, "I think the bad part is finished now."  The transfer of power had very narrowly missed becoming a military clash, as Jammeh at first refused to honor the results of last month's elections.