Hello, Australia! – China’s island-building is eroding security, says the US – Thousands are rescued from the seas as two migration crises unfold – Sepp Blatter survives – The race to save an endangered species from a mysterious plague – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The US is warning that China’s island building in the South China Sea is undermining regional security, calling for an “immediate and lasting halt to land reclamation” work.  Speaking at the Asia-Pacific security forum in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, “Right now, at this critical juncture, is the time for renewed diplomacy, focused on a finding a lasting solution that protects the rights and interests of all,” and insisted US forces would continue to “fly, sail and operate” in the region to ensure the freedom of navigation and overflight permitted by international law.  The US had already confirmed that China placed a mobile artillery weapons system on the artificial islands.

Myanmar’s navy seized a boat with 727 migrants in the Andaman Sea.  The government referred to them as “Bengalis”, its catch-all term for Rohingya Muslims that officials do not recognize as Myanmar citizens.  Myanmar denies responsibility for the Southeast Asian Migrant Crisis, although it’s clear that thousands of the refugees are Rohingyas fleeing oppression in Myanmar.

Italy rescued more than 3,300 migrants on the Mediterranean on Friday in a series of operations – some very close to the Libyan coast, where human traffickers are able to do what they want without fear of the non-existent Libyan government.  In one operation, they recovered 17 bodies from three boats, and rescued 217 people.

Sepp Blatter was reelected to an unprecedented fifth term as president of FIFA, despite the corruption scandal that festered during his 17 year rule and came to a head this week as the US indicted several FIFA officials.  Australia and Europe voted against Blatter, but he was eventually by votes from Africa and smaller nations.

The founder of the illegal Internet drug marketplace “The Silk Road” has been sentenced to life in prison by a US Federal Court in New York City.  31-year old Ross Ulbricht raked in millions of dollars in commissions on drug deals, essentially developing a “blueprint for a new way to use the Internet to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions”, according to prosecutors.  Parents testified at the sentencing hearing of their children who died of drug overdoses from substances purchased on Ulbricht’s “dark web” enterprise.  The Dark Web is part of the Internet unreachable via standard web browsers, chock full of drug dealers, weapons, assassins-for-hire, child porn – in short, the Mos Eisley of the Internet.

Speaking of scum and villainy: The former speaker of the US House of Representatives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a former student to keep secret allegations of sexual abuse, according to sources familiar with an FBI investigation.  Dennis Hastert, a conservative republican and once the third-most powerful man in American politics, did not comment on the reports.  He was indicted a day earlier on charges of hiding US $3.5 Million in cash transactions from the taxman and lying about it.  And sources say prosecutors have identified at least one more victim of Hastert’s alleged sexual abuse from when he was a teacher and coach of a high school wrestling team.  If it’s true, it means Hastert knew he was harboring a horrible secret while pushing the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and later trying to outlaw same-sex marriage.

The US removed Cuba from its list of nations that sponsor terrorism.  It’s clears a major hurdle to opening embassies in the mutual capitals, and clearing away the last vestiges of the Cold War.

Gunmen in Pakistan’s Balochistan province attacked two buses and killed at least 19 passengers.  It’s not clear which armed group of lunatics did it, but the area has suffered a long-run war between security forces and separatists.

Islamic State bombed a Shiite mosque in eastern Saudi Arabia, killing four people.

A mysterious disease has killed more than a third of the Saiga, a critically endangered antelope that lives on the Steppes of Central Asia in and around Kazakhstan.  120,000 animals died in just two weeks. “The scale is absolutely unprecedented,” said Dr. Aline Kuehl-Stenzel, the terrestrial species coordinator of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, an environmental treaty overseen by the United Nations.  Scientists say once the mystery plague hits a herd of Saiga, it killed every animal – 100 percent mortality.

The species was almost wiped out once before, by poachers who took advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union and decimated the species by 95 percent.  But Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan reached an accord to conserve the species, and numbers rebounded to around 250,000 animals.