Good Morning, Australia! – One of the black boxes from the Germanwings plane crash is yielding some information – Yemen’s government is again retreating from advancing rebels – Clarkson’s out – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Investigators say they’ve been able to recover some audio from the cockpit voice recorder from ill-fated Germanwings Flight 9525, which crashed into the French Alps yesterday.  Fair warning, deciphering it could take a long time.  The unit was badly damaged in the crash that killed all 150 people on board the Barcelona to Dusseldorf flight, including two Australians from Melbourne.  Searchers also say they found the casing of the flight data recorder, but not the contents. 

For now, investigators say they haven’t got the “slightest explanation” for the crash.  The director of France’s aviation investigative agency Remi Jouty said Flight 9525 was flying “until the end” during that eight minute descent from 38,000 feet to the side of the mountain, and it did not break up in the air.

The leaders of France, Spain, and Germany gathered near the crash site to honor the victims. French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy visited a makeshift rescue base near the Germanwings Airbus crash site Wednesday.  Hollande and Merkel flew over the crash site to see the devastation for themselves, then met with rescue workers.  Rajoy also visited the center to be briefed on the grueling rescue operation.

Yemen’s President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has for a second time fled in the face of advancing Houthi rebels, abandoning his palace in the city of Aden as he did when the Houthi released him from house arrest in the capital Sana’a.  Saudi Arabia is massing troops near the Yemen border, but says it is purely defensive and denies that it is planning to intervene in the Yemen crisis. 

A US police officer is charged with criminal homicide after investigators concluded she shot an unarmed motorist twice in the back as he lay facedown on a snow-covered lawn after a traffic stop over an expired inspection sticker.  The defense attorney for Officer Lisa J. Mearkle insists 59-year old David Kassick was combative, and kept reaching for his jacket waist instead of showing his hands.  Kassick had drugs in his system, according to the medical examiner, and the Teamsters’ Union admits he was battling substance abuse problems.  Prosecutors say Mearkle’s stun gun recorded audio and video that belies that claim.

Kenyan authorities shuttered a restaurant and summoned its owners after it emerged the place was barring black customers after 5:00 PM.  Officially, the Chongqing Chinese restaurant in a converted home in Nairobi didn’t have the proper licenses.  The restaurant’s “defense” was that it didn’t admit unfamiliar Africans, because “you never know who is al Shabaab and who isn’t”, referring to the terrorist group that massacred 67 people in an attack on a Nairobi shopping mall in 2013.

The Japanese government is accusing the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of wasting almost A$750 Million spent to clean up after the March 2011 triple meltdown.  Much of it was wasted on the tanks used to store radioactive water that had been used to cool the molten, radiation-spewing cores.  Both underground and aboveground tanks were shoddily constructed, leading to massive leaks of even more radiation into the Pacific Ocean.  A weird, science-fiction-like plan to freeze the ground between the plant and the ocean to create a wall preventing radioactive ground water from seeping into the ocean also turned out to be a boondoggle.

People got off the bus just in time in Brazil’s northern Para state, before it was swallowed up by a massive sinkhole and spit out the other side.  This happened on a dirt road near the cities of Itaituba and Ruropolis.  People exited the bus when it got stuck.  The land gave away beneath, and the bus was sent down a muddy, flood-swollen river.

As expected, the BBC decided not to renew the contract of controversial Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, after he belted a producer in the face because he couldn’t have a steak for dinner.  BBC Director-General Tony Hall said the decision “will divide opinion”, but he can’t make exceptions just because Clarkson is a big star.  “There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations,” Hall said.  Clarkson was already on his last warning following a series of racist incidents.