Hello Australia!! - In from the cold, the world lifts economic sanctions against Iran after an historic prisoner swap - An infamous one-eyed terrorist is apparently to blame for the bloodshed at a Burkina Faso hotel - Taiwanese voters turn their backs on Beijing - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Burkina Faso has declared three days of mourning for the people killed in the terrorist attack at a luxury hotel popular with foreigners and diplomats in the capital Ouagadougou.  Gunmen with an Al Qaeda affiliate stormed the Splendid Hotel late Friday, killing 23 people from 18 countries before the siege ended hours later.  "Everyone was panicked and was lying down on the floor.  There was blood everywhere, they were shooting at people at point blank," said survivor Yannick Sawadogo.  Other witnesses said the attackers wore turbans and spoke a language not native to Burkina Faso, a former French colony.  Government forces eventually regained control, killing four terrorists; and it turns out they were advised by US military who were already stationed in Burkina Faso has part of local anti-terror efforts. 

The Burkina Faso attack is being claimed by the group Al-Murabitoun, led by the one-eyed terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar.  America already has a US$5 Million bounty on his arse because of previous atrocities.  Last November, Al-Murabitoun staged a similar attack in Bamako, Mali, laying siege to the Radisson Blu Hotel which resulted in 27 deaths.  In 2013, Belmokhtar's forces captured the Tigantourine gas facility in Algeria, taking more than 800 hostages, 39 of whom were killed.  Belmokhtar's death has been reported prematurely several times, giving rise to the nickname "the uncatchable".

An Australian couple has been abducted in Burkina Faso.  The couple is in their 80s, originally from Perth, but have lived in the town of Djibo since 1972.  The ABC reports that a Malian Islamist group said the couple were in the hands of Al Qaeda-linked jihadists. 

The US and Iran marked an historic easing of tensions on Saturday, when Iran released five Iranian-American prisoners including a Washington Post reporter and a Christian minister;  in return, US President Barack Obama pardoned three Iranian-Americans charged with violating sanctions against Iran, while prosecutors moved to drop charges against four Iranians outside the United States.  The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran had complied with a deal reached last year to rein in its nuclear program.  That triggered the lifting of crippling economic sanctions imposed by the United States, United Nations and European Union.

While President Obama lifted sanctions in Iran, he also declared an emergency in Flint, Michigan over the lead-poisoned water supply.  The backstory is horrific and Kafka-esque.  The conservative state government passed a law giving the Governor the power to appoint "emergency managers" over low-income towns having financial difficulties.  The law has mostly been applied to majority African-American towns, and the democratically-elected local governments are usurped.  Republican Governor Rick Snyder appointed one of these un-elected bureaucrats to Flint, and together they decided in 2014 to reduce Flint's water costs by switching from the Great Lakes to the caustic Flint River.  They also ignored numerous complaints about the foul water quality and health warnings, until the evidence was undeniable.  Meanwhile, hundreds of children are suffering the effects of lead poisoning.  Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for Snyder's resignation, and Flint-born filmmaker Michael Moore is demanding Snyder's arrest.

Voters in Taiwan elected 59-year old Tsai Ing-wen as the country's first Female President in a landslide, marking a shift towards independence from Beijing and away from the conciliatory policies of the defeated Kuomintang party.  Ms. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) favors complete independence from China, and she said "that both sides of the Taiwanese Strait have a responsibility to find mutually acceptable means of interaction that are based on dignity and reciprocity".  That's more easily said than done, because Beijing views Taiwan - which split from China in 1949 - as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.

The Maldives will allow its jailed former leader to travel to London for surgery on his back.  Mohammad Nasheed was a human rights and environmental activist before becoming the country's first democratically-elected president in 2008, but was undone by a coup in 2012.  Incidentally, that's when his back was injured by rough treatment by thug cops.  In 2015, the corrupt government (led by the brother of the dictator he had replaced) sentenced Nasheed to 13 years in prison on trumped up charges of trying to kidnap a judge, a verdict roundly condemned by Western governments and by Amnesty International.  The decision to allow Mr. Nasheed to travel comes after pressure by rights groups and the United Nations over the case.