Hello Australia! - Negotiating for peace while putting boots on the ground.. is this really a strategy? - More refugees drown as Europe's indecision started to chafe - Chile accidentally distributes dirty books to grade schools - Is the Republican Party just a bunch of crybabies? - Bismillah!  We just can't let this song go - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Apparently, today is the 40th Anniversary of the release of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody".  Pink did a great cover of it in Australia a few years ago, BTW. 

The US is for the first time putting "boots on the ground" in the Syrian conflict, announcing that around 50 Special Forces troops will "train, advise and assist" vetted opposition groups, such as the Kurdish forces.  US forces already assisted a Kurdish raid on a building, freeing 70 people from Islamic State.  The US-led coalition, of which Australia is a part, has conducted air strikes at Islamic state targets for more than a year.  But for all of the bombs, the opposition has failed to take advantage and make headway against IS - it's hoped the new policy will reverse that. 

The next round of international talks on reaching a political solution to the Syrian crisis take place in two weeks.  Foreign ministers who attended this week's discussions in Vienna agreed to ask the United Nations to start a process that could lead to a ceasefire and new elections.  But there is a divide between the US and its allies which want to get rid of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and Russia and Iran which consider him an ally.  US Secretary of state John Kerry says the violence has gone on too long:  "Four-and-a-half years of war, we all believe, has been far too long," he said, "The time has come to stop the bleeding and start the building." And yes, that sure seems like a weird thing to say if he's sending a bunch of commandos to assist the fighting.

Although the Syrian Civil war is the #1 producer of refugees fleeing to Europe, it is not clear how many Syrians were among the 22 people who drowned in the Aegean Sea when their boats capsized while trying to reach Greek Islands from Turkey.  Authorities say 13 of the victims were children, but at least 138 people were rescued.  Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he felt "shame" over "the inability of Europe to deal effectively with this human drama", and accused the European Union of shedding "crocodile tears" for the drowned children while delaying a solution to the refugee crisis.

The United Nations fired four workers who shared child pornography on UN computers, and sacked a fifth who transported 173 kilos of marijuana in a UN car.  An internal UN report says officials referred the individual cases back to law enforcement in the home countries of the workers.  The paper doesn't specify where the former staff were stationed, or when they were dismissed.

Chile is gathering hundreds of erotic versions of the tale of Little Red Riding hood that were mistakenly distributed to elementary schools over the past year.  A teacher in the remote southern Chilean town of Rio Bueno discovered the mix up.  The collection of short stories called "Little Red Riding Hood Eats The Big Bad Wolf" features some pretty awful stuff, including an encounter between an adult male teacher and a female student, and graphic description of the rape of a 13-year old girl.  "This book can cause irreparable damage to our students," said Rio Bueno Mayor Luis Reyes, who alerted the national education ministry.

At least for now, movie director Roman Polanski won't be extradited to the United States to face up to his child rape conviction he skipped out on in the 1970s.  Krakow, Poland Judge Dariusz Mazur claimed the request was "inadmissible".  Although the 82-year old director had earlier said he'd be there in court for the ruling, he was not.  Afterwards, he did say he was happy that the case was coming to a close - but prosecutors can still file an appeal. 

US Federal Authorities will be releasing some 6,000 people convicted on non-violent drugs offenses.  This comes as part of The Obama Administration's effort to reverse long jail terms for non-violent offenders, who make up about half of the federal prison population.  It's the biggest mass-release of its kind in US history, and up to 46,000 of the country's 100,000 drug offenders could qualify under the US Sentencing Commission's new guidelines.

The US Republican Party will not allow the NBC television network to broadcast a planned presidential candidate's debate in February, after the candidates complained they were treated poorly in a debate earlier this week on the network's conservative financial channel CNBC.  GOP chief Reince Preibus (seriously, that's his name and not a STD or weird eastern European stew made up of goat hooves and root vegetables) complained that the questions asked by moderators were "inaccurate or downright offensive".  In fact, the questions weren't all that bad and fact-checkers found that the conservative candidates lied repeatedly throughout the shyte-show.  NBC says it is "disappointed".