Hello Australia!! - A terrorist siege in Bangladesh is over - Duterte urges Philippine citizens to go ahead and start killing "criminals" without trial - A US state will not be allowed to weaponize religion against LGBT people - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Hundreds of Bangladeshi forces in armored vehicles stormed a cafe in an upscale, international district of the capital Dhaka where gunmen purportedly allied with Islamic State had taken several hostages for eleven hours in an overnight siege.  Police say all of the gunmen have been killed.  At least five were found inside the Holey Artisan Bakery in the Gulshan district which is popular with expats and international diplomats.  It's believed that the hostages inside the cafe included Japanese and Indians, and earlier reports indicated Italians were in there as well.  The siege began hours earlier, with the attackers throwing explosives and firing assault weapons.  This well-coordinated assault marks a dramatic escalation of the kind of singular machete and knife attacks that have characterized terrorist incidents in Bangladesh for the past 18 months.

A US air strike in northern Iraq killed two senior Islamic State figures, according to the Pentagon,the group's deputy minister of war, who oversaw the capture of Mosul in 2014.  It's believed that the Iraqi government will now try to retake Mosul from IS, after liberating Falluja last month.

Aussies are voting in a general election, in which Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull hopes to hold off a challenge from Labor's Bill Shorten. 

Austria's highest court has nullified the recent presidential election and ordered a do-over.  It's believed to be the first Western democracy to do such a thing.  The court sided with the far-right and ironically-named "Freedom" party's claim that mail-in ballots were illegally handled, although there was no evidence that the vote count was impacted.  Former Greens leader Alexander Van der Bellen won the 22 May poll by less than a percentage point, beating anti-EU, anti-immigrant right-winger Norbert Hofer.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte urged Communist rebels to use its "kangaroo courts" to start killing drug traffickers - which is illegal.  Oh, and he made his comments in a meeting with the country's top military brass, none of whom felt compelled to arrest him for instigating mob violence.  Later at a community meeting, President Duterte called on ordinary Filipinos to kill drug addicts - which is also illegal in the Philippines.  So, good luck with that.

A US Federal Judge blocked the deep south state of Mississippi's "religious freedom" law, which would have allowed discrimination against LGBT people based on religious grounds, the day before it was to come into force.  The court ruled the law unconstitutionally favored some religions over others, and would have meant unequal treatment for the LGBT community. 

Mexico's Air Force is flying tons of maize into Oaxaca State, past the highway barricades set up by striking teachers who are angry over the arrest of two of their leaders last month.  The CNTE union is fighting neo-liberal "reforms" to Mexico's education system introduced by conservative President Enrique Pena Nieto.