Japanese voters expected to get stuck with more of the mundane same – This is America today:  Big banks write legislation to deregulate themselves, get it passed, everyone knows it, no one stops it – Terrorist cross-dressing fails – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The death toll from a giant landslide on Java in Indonesia is now 17 lives lost, with at least 91 residents missing.  The ground at the site of the disaster was still unstable, and National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said, “The rain could lead to more landslides.”  Getting earthmoving equipment into Jemblung village has been a chore because of the location.

Voting is underway in Japan’s snap election.  Despite bad economic news before the election, it’s expected that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative ruling coalition will be returned to power because the opposition is so weak.  The world’s third-largest economy has slipped back into recession, despite the grand self-promotion of “Abe-nomics”.

The United Nations world climate talks in Lima, Peru are on the verge of breakdown, according to the US delegation.  They’re divided along wealth lines:  Rich nations want emerging economies to cut more carbon, the poor nations accused the developed world of building their riches at the expense of everyplace else.  Delegates from 190 nations are seeking to agree on the foundation of a UN climate deal to be completed in Paris next year. 

The US Senate passed a horrible, horrible budget deal that keeps the US government from shutting down through September.  This piece of crap legislation was actually copied word-for-word from a wish list drawn up by mega-bank lobbyists, that’s how craven things have gotten up in Washington.  It short, it guts the measures that the US government has taken since 2008 to prevent another worldwide financial meltdown.  It also slashes at college aid for working families and takes billions from local programs to aid the homeless.  Oh, but it has lots of money for war.  And “that left-wing socialist” Obama said he’d sign the ghost of Ronald Reagan’s wet dream into law.

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through US cities in rallies against the police killings of unarmed black men who weren’t doing anything, or at least weren’t doing anything that warranted public execution.  They’re demanding national legislation to crackdown on police violence.  Naturally, the cops played down the number of participants.  For example, New York City cops said only 12,000 marched.  This video of the protest shows more than half a million people marching down an avenue in Gotham.

Thousands marched in Colombia against a possible amnesty for Marxist FARC rebels as part of a peace deal to end five decades of conflict.  President Juan Manual Santos has won two elections on the strength of his plans to end the civil war and bring the FARC out of the jungle and into the political process.  Santos is a center-right president, and his opposition on this issue is generally from the hard right – although with 220,000 people killed in the conflict, there are certainly a lot of survivors who’d like to see justice.

Niger’s Prime Minister is asking the international community for help dealing with a looming food crisis compounded by thousands of people who have streamed across the border from Nigeria.  The refugees are escaping from villages plundered by the murderous Boko Haram terrorists.  Many are women, with common stories of watching their husbands killed, homes burned, and children taken by Boko Haram before being sent into the bush with nothing.

Yemeni security forces shot and killed several suspect al Qaeda militants who were disguised in women’s head to toe burqas.  One of them apparently blew his cover by producing a weapon and shooting as officers were checking their vehicle at a border crossing with Saudi Arabia.  The driver of the vehicle survived the battle and reportedly confessed.