Good Morning Australia! - NASA announces a major discovery on Mars - A temporary reprieve for at least part of the Arctic Circle - Obama and Putin trade verbal jabs at the UN General Assembly - And more in your CareerSpot World (and beyond) News Briefs:

Scientists at NASA say a new study provides the "strongest evidence yet" that salty liquid water sometimes flows on Mars - not in the distant past, but today.  They used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to analyze streaks that appear on the Red Planet's surface during the warm seasons but disappear when it gets colder.  "Something is hydrating these salts, and it appears to be these streaks that come and go with the seasons," said researcher Lujendra Ojha.  "This means the water on Mars is briny, rather than pure," which works for Mars' frigid surface "because salts lower the freezing point of water".  Researchers are looking at the possibility that the chilly, salty water could somehow sustain some form of life.

German prosecutors are investigating former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn over "allegations of fraud in the sale of cars with manipulated emissions data" related to the scandal over cars that were programmed to misreport emissions data during government tests.  VW brands Audi and Skoda say they have a total of 3.3 million cars fitted with the cheating, lying software.  Meanwhile, the scandal caused VW shares to lose about of third of their value over the past week.

Presidential Guard troops in Burkina Faso have refused to disarm, even though their leader has ended his coup d'etat and relinquished power back to the civilian authorities.  The country's army chief, on the side of the civilian authorities, accuse the guard of trying to intimidate the people carrying out the disarmament.  Interim President Michel Kafando wants the Presidential Guard disbanded.

Russia's ambassador to Poland Sergey Andreyev says he meant no offense when he suggested that Poland was partly to blame for the start of World War II, because Poland didn't allow Soviet troops to freely transit across its land in the 1930s - troops that would later invade Poland and kill thousands.  But in a later interview with Russian media, Andreyev said he is not retracting his remarks and said the Poles misinterpreted them.  Russian-Polish relations are at a low point, and this isn't helping.

US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin aired clashing world views at the UN General Assembly in New York City.  Mr.Obama said that Russia's support of rebels in eastern Ukraine risks greater global instability:  "We see some major powers assert themselves in ways that contravene international law."  As for Russia's increasing military involvement to help Kremlin ally Bashar Al-Assad, Obama said, "When a dictator slaughters tens of thousands of his own people, that is not just a matter of one nation's internal affairs."

President Vladimir Putin took the mic at the General Assembly a few hours later.  "The export of revolutions, this time so-called democratic ones," Putin said, has resulted in "violence and social disaster" instead of spreading democracy.  "I cannot help asking those who have forced this situation, do you realize now what you have done?" Putin asked without mentioning the United states directly. 

Venezuela and its neighbor Guyana have agreed to restore ambassadors to each others' capitals amid a testy border dispute.  The presidents struck the deal with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon before the UN General Assembly.  Venezuela objected to Exxon coming in and exploring for oil in the mineral-rich region west of the Essequibo river - which accounts for about 40 percent of Guyana's territory, but which Venezuela claims was stolen from it in a bad 1899 treaty.

In a surprise announcement, Royal Dutch Shell says it is calling off oil exploration in the Arctic Ocean off of Alaska "for the foreseeable future".  Although the company says there just wasn't enough oil and gas in its test well to justify the expense, "Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the US," said Marvin Odum, president of Shell USA.  "Big oil has sustained an unmitigated defeat," said Greenpeace's John Sauven, among the many environmentalists who oppose sloppy, messy, oft-disastrous offshore oil drilling in the pristine Arctic Circle.