Hello, Australia! – Is Pakistan botching the response to a killer heatwave? – Snakes in the mail – The Dukes of Hazzard “General Lee” is losing an offensive decoration – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Anger is building in Pakistan, over the government’s response to a heatwave that has now killed more than 750 people.  Residents say power cuts force them to restrict the use of air-conditioning units and fans as the thermometers reach 45C degrees.  As a result, at least 744 people are dead in Karachi and 38 died in other areas.  Mortuaries are at capacity, and there are reports of people dying in the streets.

Fire swept through a retirement home for poor people in Mexico, killing 16 elderly residents and leaving 23 moved into temporary arrangements.  This happened in Mexicali, on the border with California.  The residents are mostly older than 75 years old, and are indigent, abandoned, or formerly homeless.  The mayor says the home appears to have been equipped with smoke detectors and a dozen fire extinguishers.

The Ebola Epidemic in Guinea has led to major setbacks in the battle against Malaria – so much so, the death toll of Malaria may actually be worse than Ebola.  A report in The Lancet says some 74,000 cases of Malaria went untreated – mostly because clinics were either closed or Malaria patients were too scared of catching Ebola to seek help.  That’s about twenty times the number of confirmed Ebola cases.  The West African Ebola Epidemic has killed more than 11,000 people, 2,446 of them in Guinea.

The packages from Indonesia were marked “mixed powder”, but they biosecurity inspectors at Melbourne’s international mail facility discovered their true content – live snakes.  Smugglers appear to have intended to sell the snakes as pet or as breading stock.  All 13 serpents were declared a high biosecurity risk and euthanized.

American businesses are rushing to divest themselves of any connection to the confederate flag, after an avowed racist murdered nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina last week.  The three top flag makers in the US separately announced they would no longer manufacture or sell the garish banner associated with Civil War reenactments and white supremacy movements.  And Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the 1980s TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard”, quietly decided to stop making “General Lee” toys with the confederate flag.  Future miniature versions of the 1969 Dodge Charger will still be orange with the 01 numbers, but no flag.

Hungary is thumbing its nose at the European Union and suspending a key rule that requires it to readmit asylum seekers who travel abroad after first entering Hungary.  A government spokesman claims the country is overburdened by undocumented immigration.  The Dublin Regulation is a core principle in handling immigration; it says that the responsibility for examining an asylum seeker’s claims usually lies with the first EU country that the migrant reaches.