Hello, Australia! – Former PM Malcolm Fraser is dead – A viral video of cops beating a St. Patrick’s reveler sparked outrage – A camper fought for his life when a polar bear grabbed him by the head – Hooray for Sao Paulo! – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser is dead at age 84.  He led Australia from 1975 to 1983, after the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam.  He championed the rights of indigenous peoples, which put him on a collision course with his own Liberal party.  He was also a fierce critic of the Howard government’s treatment of asylum seekers and a supporter of an Australian Republic.  Greenpeace is praising Fraser for banning oil exploration on the Great Barrier Reef and declaring the Capricornia section of the Reef the first stage of a protected Great Barrier Reef marine park. 

Meanwhile, the Abbott government has failed to take the action necessary to avoid the Great Barrier Reef being added to the ‘World Heritage in danger’ list, alleges Greenpeace.  “Rather than doing everything it can to save the Great Barrier Reef, the government is aggressively promoting coal port expansion, which poses direct threats to the Reef and will drive climate change,” says Greenpeace campaigner Jessica Panegyres.

Police in Japan arrested a man in Okinawa for allegedly phoning in threats to US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy.  52-year old Mitsuyoshi Kamiya reportedly confessed, but police are still sorting out his motive.

In a period of flagrantly racist and unnecessarily violent actions by police in America, it takes effort to really stand out.  So when video of the gruesomely bloody Saint Patrick’s Day arrest of black third-year University of Virginia student Martese Johnson went viral, the outrage spread way beyond the student community.  Even Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was taken aback and ordered an investigation.  It’s not only that the kid tried to identify himself to police as they opened a cut on his head that took ten stitches to close – but also that the officers came from some largely unknown “Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control”.  In most of the country, such departments don’t have cops, don’t carry guns, and basically focus on licensing issues.  They sure as hell don’t bloody up a kid for allegedly having a fake ID (he didn’t, btw).  Anyway, Martese hired a good lawyer.

The UN World Health Organization is worried about an expanding measles outbreak in Germany, after the WHO announced plans to eliminate the disease in Europe by the end of the year.  So far, more than 1,000 people have been infected in Berlin.  The outbreak spears to have started with the child of asylum speakers from Bosnia.

Campers on an arctic island belonging to Norway were forced to shoot and kill a polar bear that attacked one of their own.  “It was going for my head,” said Czech tourist Jakub Moravec from his hospital bed, “I used my hands to protect my head.”  The group had traveled to the inhospitable Svalbard Islands, more than 2,000 kilometers north of Oslo, for the best view of Friday’s near-total eclipse.

A baby tiger that leapt to its death from the 11th storey of an apartment in Qingdao, China ripped the lid off of an illegal breeding operation.  The poor little guy was apparently frightened by New Year’s fireworks, and escaped through a gap in his cage on 19 February.  Cops investigating the odd incident came across the tiger breeding operation on the roof of the building.  Three local officials involved have resigned, were fined, and publicly apologized. 

The Tanzanian parliament approved a tough new law forcing employers to prove that a local worker couldn’t have done a job before hiring a foreigner.  It with a wave of Chinese workers that has grown to 10,000 since the 1990s, but also affects workers from neighboring African states like Kenya and Zambia.  Those workers are brought in to fill the skills gap in skilled and semi-skilled jobs Tanzanians aren’t trained to do.

Sao Paulo is stepping up for mothers!  The Brazilian City’s Mayor Fernando Haddad is expected to sign legislation fining anyone who tries to stop women from breastfeeding in public.  It’s believed to be the first ordinance of its kind in the entire world.  The ordinance gained support last year after a series of incidents in which dimwits and prudes tried to shame and scold women feeding their hungry babies – including model Priscila Navarro Bueno, who was accosted by a security guard during a David Bowie exhibition at the Museum of Image and Sound in Sao Paulo .