Hello, Australia! – From Peacekeepers to abusers – A photographer accuses Israel of denying him treatment to save his eyes – Can a few nuts protect you from heart disease and cancer? – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Let’s just start with something cool – Juan Maria Nimo of Buenos Aires staged an AWESOME stunt.  The paraplegic athlete jumped his wheelchair over a parked car to protest arseholes who park their vehicles in front of ramps for the disabled.

United Nations Peacekeepers dispatched to restore order into chaotic situations are far too often taking advantage of hunger and poverty to trade goods for sex.  The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) interviewed hundreds of women in Haiti and Liberia who were used by peacekeepers in this way.  The UN agency’s report says that out of 480 sexual exploitation and abuse claims made from 2008 through 2013, one-third of the allegations involved children.

A Palestinian journalist for China’s Xinhua news agency says Israel is blocking him from traveling to Jerusalem to get medical treatment after being shot with an Israeli rubber bullet.  Photographer Nidal Shtayyeh was hit in the eye with the crowd control projectile during a ruckus near Nablus on 16 May.  He was rushed to hospital in Nablus, and referred to a specialist in East Jerusalem.  Shtayyeh applied three times for a permit to go to the clinic, but Israel’s Shin Bet security service has refused to say why it will not give permission.

A Nobel prize-winning UK scientist is apologizing for astoundingly dumb comments about sex, gender, and the laboratory. At a conference in South Korea, 72-year old Tim Hunt referred to female scientists as “girls”, said they couldn’t take criticism without crying, and accused them of disrupting lab work because male scientists “fall in love with them”.  Hunt resigned from his position at University College London (UCL) and explained that his comments were meant to be “light-hearted”. 

Dementia could be predicted as far as ten years before symptoms appear by the rising levels of a certain protein in blood.  American scientists found the level of protein was significantly lower in patients with healthy brains than for those with frontotemporal dementia, both before and after symptoms developed.  The findings are published in the journal Neurology.

Researchers in the Netherlands say that eating a handful of peanuts or tree nuts a day could protect against death from cancer and heart disease.  The Netherlands Cohort Study has been running since 1986, studying more than 120,000 men and women between the ages of 55 and 69.  Those who ate nuts in moderation died less frequently from respiratory disease, neurodegenerative disease, as well as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.  But if you’re looking for the benefits of nuts, you might want to skip the nut butters – they often contain salts and trans fatty acids that could inhibit the protective effects of peanuts.

A former Chinese official has applied for asylum in the United States.  Yang Xiuzhu is the former deputy mayor of Wenzhou, but also has been sought by investigators pursuing President Xi Jingping’s “anti-corruption” campaign.  She fled to Singapore in 2003 and changed her name, before moving on to the Netherlands and the US – neither of which have extradition treaties with Beijing.