Global News

The face of America’s out-of-control gun was arrested after pointing a shotgun at his girlfriend, smashing a glass-topped table and pushing her out of her Florida home.  It’s the latest in a string of troubles involving George Zimmerman since her was acquitted of murdering black teenager Trayvon Martin earlier this year.

Were you sitting there thinking, “How could Toronto Mayor Rob Ford get any worse?”  Because the mayor of North America’s fourth-largest city did his best to answer that question - by knocking down a city councilor and making insane threats to city officials.

Indonesia says Australia needs to “urgently” explain new reports that its intelligence agencies spied on the phone calls of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his first lady and Indonesia’s vice president.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet won nearly twice as many votes as her conservative rival in Sunday’s election.  But she didn’t quite get the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff election Bachelet is expected to easily win.

A cargo train slammed into a row of vehicles at a crossing in Giza south of Egypt’s capital Cairo, killing more than 20 people and leaving at least 28 more injured.

The Nobel Prize winning novelist Doris Lessing died in London at the age of 94.  She dealt with race, ideology, and gender politics in her novels, and 1962’s “The Golden Notebook” is widely considered to be one of the most important feminist novels ever written.

A line of tornadoes and fast-moving, powerful storms slammed the American Midwest, killing at least five people and destroying scores of homes.  Hardest hit is the small town of Washington in Central Illinois, near Peoria and about 170 miles southwest of Chicago. 

A bomb reportedly placed in the basement of a government building on the outskirts of Damascus killed 31 people including four generals loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.  Planting explosives in the basement means Syrian opposition fighters were able to not just breach security, but travel at will within the buildings.

All 50 people aboard a Boeing 737 passenger plane died when it crashed on its second attempt at landing at Kazan International Airport in Tatarstan, southern Russia.  The son of the Tatarstan president and the head of the FSB intelligence service were among those killed.

Help is finally on the way in the Philippines – A suicide bomber strikes just meters away from the scene where one nation’s future will be determined – A Helicopter crashed into South Korea’s swankiest residential tower – That, and a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

President Obama’s rough week closes with some allies turning on him – Crack-smoking Toronto Mayor Rob Ford won’t quit, but lawmakers are acting to neutralize him – And Brazil acknowledges a land reform law is speeding up clear cutting in the rainforest.  That, and a lot more in your CareerSpot World News briefs.

Japan is drastically scaling back its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The new target actually increases its emissions by more than three percent over 1990 levels, and it complicates efforts to forge a global climate change pact at the World Climate Talks going on in Warsaw.

It’s been another banner day for the shame of Toronto, Canada.  Confronted with new allegations of drug abuse and troubling, psychotic behavior, he went on a foul-mouthed triage about performing oral sex on an aide and his wife, who must be just thrilled to be “Mrs. Rob Ford”.  Warning, the following video link should not be viewed by minors and more sensitive readers.  But for everyone else, it’s hilarious!

Officials in Tacloban City say the death toll there is now more than 4,000 lives lost to the Super Typhoon that devastated the central Philippines last weekend.  That is nearly double the nationwide toll provided by the government in Manila.  President Benigno Aquino had earlier sought to play down typhoon deaths in his country, claiming the national death toll would be 2,000 to 2,500.

US President Barack Obama is giving a one-year reprieve to what appears to be millions of Americans whose health insurance policies were being cancelled because they failed to meet the standards of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), colloquially known as “Obamacare”.

Chile’s election takes place this Sunday, and voters are expected to take the country back to the Left by returning the popular and charismatic ex-president Michelle Bachelet to office.  She is promising to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for education and healthcare, and to rewrite the country’s constitution, a relic of the Pinochet fascist dictatorship.

A massive three-year anti-child porn investigation that began with a bust in Toronto, Canada is posting some impressive numbers:  386 children rescued around the world, most of them pre-teens.  And cops arrested 348 suspects – 65 of them in Australia.

Suicide attackers wreak havoc on a religious festival – Halting smuggling makes raw sewage gurgle onto the streets – Russia tries to fill a void – And Macca tries to intervene to help environmental activists.

A US aircraft carrier and its escort of two cruisers are due to arrive off the Philippines to help communities devastated by Typhoon Haiyan, called Yolanda in the Philippines. The USS George Washington will bring the capacity to desalinate large amounts of water – potable water is in short supply in the worst-hit areas.

More children are being diagnosed and treated for Thyroid cancer in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, two and a half years after the Tsunami wave swamped the nuclear power plant leading to the melt-through of radioactive cores in three of the reactors.