Good Morning, Australia! – Sepp Blatter denies responsibility for the FIFA scandal – Is Putin laying the groundwork for deeper involvement in Ukraine? – A complete idiot finds out the hard way that “Some days the Bear gets you” – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

FIFA President Sepp Blatter says he cannot be held responsible for the massive bribery and corruption scandal at the world football body that he has led for 17 years.  Speaking at the opening ceremony of FIFA’s world congress in Zurich, Blatter said he could “not monitor everyone all of the time”.  Despite this stunning and flagrant attempt to hang his underlings out to dry – and despite increasing pressure from the organization’s corporate sponsors to clean up its act – it’s widely expected that Blatter will be reelected to another term as president on Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree declaring that any troops deaths that occur in peacetime will be kept a state secret.  That conveniently gets around public opposition to sending Russian troops to fight in the civil war in eastern Ukraine, although Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that the decree “has nothing to do with” that.  For months there have been reports of secret burials of Russian troops killed in Ukraine, and opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was gunned down outside the Kremlin shortly before he was to release a report revealing that more than 200 soldiers had died in the Ukraine fighting.

Iraq has exhumed 470 bodies from a mass grave near Tikrit.  Most if not all are believed to be Shiite victims of Islamic State’s occupation of that city, killed in June of 2014. 

An Iranian exile group claims that a North Korean delegation of nuclear and missile experts visited a military site near Tehran last month, and another is to visit in June.  Iran’s embassy in Paris denied the report.  The dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has a mixed record of claims about Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it was correct when it exposed Iran’s uranium enrichment plant and a heavy water facility in 2002.

Researchers could not find any sign of poisoning in the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in the early 1970s.  The Chilean government reopened the investigation into Neruda’s death this year, hoping that the latest forensic tests would reveal new information.  But the evidence was consistent with the original cause of death, advanced prostate cancer.  More genomic tests are still being conducted.  Doubts about Neruda’s death have persisted for decades because he passed days after fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet ushered in a bloody reign of terror that saw the murders of many of the country’s Leftists and intellectuals.

Hospitals are overwhelmed in India, as the death toll from the heatwave reaches 1,500.  Temperatures in some parts of the south reached 47C degrees, and Andra Pradesh state is being hit the hardest. 

The UN World Health Organization is warning against complacency about the West African Ebola Epidemic, noting that the crisis is not over yet.  “We have to keep our guard up,” said WHO’s Dr. Sylvie Briand at a two-day conference at the Pasteur Institute in Paris that will assess progress towards treatments and vaccines for Ebola.  More than 11,000 people have died.

Okay, do you know that expression, “Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you”?  Polish police found the complete and total jackass who climbed into a zoo’s bear enclosure for a wrestling match – he was at hospital, getting his arm sewn up.  Photos posted online show the moron approaching the 200-kilogram female bear named Sebina, and sticking his hands in its mouth.  Witnesses say at some point, he hit her with his fists and Sebina had to defend herself.  Zookeepers found the dumbass’s blood drops in the cage, and they call it a foolish stunt.  Unfortunately, the man faces a rather paltry fine of about A$350 if found guilty of provoking Sebina.

The Prague Zoo in the Czech Republic welcomes a Baby Tapir.  “Stripes” seems like a good name, but we’ll let the Czechs take care of that.