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Email to friendHello Australia!! - China gets comfortable in disputed southern waters - Argentina's new government will continue a key policy of the political rivals it replaced - A mayor in drug gang country is killed less than a day after taking office - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:
The Philippines is mulling its response to China's test landing of a "civilian" airplane on a runway on Fiery Cross Reef in disputed waters in the South China Sea. "We intend to file a protest in due course," said Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose in Manila. The Philippines is already seeking redress for the Chinese incursion in an international court. Vietnam also lodged a formal protest of the test landing claiming "infringement of sovereignty", but Beijing promptly ignored that protest. China's island-building campaign in waters hundreds of kilometers south of its internationally-recognized maritime border is based on ancient maps and documents that critics say do not hold water under modern-day international laws.
Argentina might have taken a swing to the right, but the new conservative government says it will continue to press the country's claims over the Falkland Islands, which are known as Las Malvinas in Buenos Aires. The Argentine Foreign Ministry released a statement inviting "the United Kingdom to resume as soon as possible negotiations aimed at settling fairly and definitively, the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas (Falklands) islands, South Georgia, South Sandwich islands and surrounding territorial seas". Britain insists it owns the islands, and that was clarified by the outcome of the 1982 Falklands War.
Saudi Arabia's move to cut diplomatic ties with Iran will complicate Western geopolitical goals across the region. The US was counting on even the slightest contact between the Middle Eastern rivals to help end the devastating civil wars in Syria and Yemen while easing tensions in Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon and elsewhere. In the hours before the Saudi announcement, the Reuters news agency anonymous Iranian officials who said that Washington was working on a deal to swap unnamed detainees for Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American Washington Post reporter who was convicted and jailed in Iran on spying charges. The cooperation of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies was a crucial part of the Iranian nuclear deal under which Tehran is already turning over nuclear materials to Russia.
Islamic State apparently found a replacement for the late "Jihadi John". A newly-released propaganda video features a black-clad moron with a British accent waving a gun as he mocks UK Prime Minister David Cameron over the RAF's bombing campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria. Five men in those orange jumpsuits are accused of being spies and killed. The original Jihadi John - a UK citizen whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi - appeared in several similar Islamic State videos before he came out on the losing side of a drone strike in November.
At least six people are dead in an earthquake that struck northeastern India near Myanmar. The magnitude 6.7 tremor damaged or destroyed several buildings, including a newly built six-story building in Imphal.
The governor of Mexico's Morelos state has taken over the local police and says he "will not relent" in bringing to justice the killers of a mayor who was shot dead less than a day after taking office. He did not say which cartel might have ordered the assassination of 33-year old Gisela Mota outside her home on Saturday morning. Police returned fire and killed two suspects and captured three more - two teens aged 17 and 18, and a 32-year old woman. Roman Catholic bishop Ramon Castro Castro said mass in Mota's hometown on Sunday morning. He said the murder could have been "a warning to the other mayors," explaining that, "If you don't cooperate with organized crime, look at what will happen to you. It's to scare them."
The second round of Haiti's long-awaited presidential elections will go ahead later this month, despite an election commission report saying the first round was "stained by irregularities". Voters - or corrupt officials with their thumbs on the scales - will choose a successor to President Michel Martelly. Haiti was already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere before the 2010 earthquake that destroyed the infrastructure and killed 160,000 - 300,000 people.