Hang in there, Queensland and Northern Territory!  As Australia gets battered by Cyclones on two coasts… – Stunning allegations against the mayor of Venezuela’s capital – Germany and Greece are back to the staredown – Indian riflemen kill a man-eating tiger – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Get the latest on Tropical Cyclones Marcia (QLD) and Lam (NT) from the Bureau of Meteorology.

Venezuelan police arrested Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma, after accusations he was involved in a coup attempt against the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro.  Ledezma is a conservative opposition leader who supported last year’s street protests against the Maduro government.  Last weekend, Venezuela arrested eleven people including an ex-military general in the alleged coup plot.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is sentenced to 15 days in jail for the “crime” of handing out leaflets promoting a demonstration on 1 March.  The jail stint prevents him from attending or leading that rally against the authoritarian policies of Russian president Vladimir Putin.  Navalny is urging his followers to attend anyway.

Germany is rejecting Greece’s last-minute request to extend its loan program, putting Europe back into a potentially damaging standoff with Athens.  Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said the request for the six-month extension should be “fully funded while refraining from unilateral action that would undermine the fiscal targets, economic recovery and financial stability” – in other words, money without the onerous and painful strings of forced “austerity” attached.  The finance minister will meet again for another tense round of negotiations when Friday rolls around to Brussels.

France’s Socialist government survived a no-confidence vote after President Francois Hollande unilaterally pushed through some pro-business reforms.  Party leaders said any Socialist who voted for it would be ejected from the party, and none did.

Nigeria claimed its air force killed “a large number of terrorists” in bombing raids on Boko Haram strongholds in embattled Borno State.  The claims have not yet been verified, and in the past Nigeria’s military has grossly overstated its success against Boko Haram.  But the terrorist group is now under pressure from a four-nation military assault to crush its uprising.

Thousands of people celebrated in the streets of Burundi’s capital Bujumbura, after the government released a prominent journalist controversially charged with the murder of three elderly Italian nuns.  Agents took Bob Rugurika into custody a month ago after he broadcast a recorded confession from a man claiming to be one of the killers.  The suspect said he acted on orders from a high security official.  Few, if any, believe the government’s allegations, and a prevailing conspiracy says the nuns were murdered because they became aware of the military secretly training government supporters.

Indian forest guards shot and killed a tiger (video might be disturbing to some) blamed for killing two people – a man in Kerala state and a woman in Tamil Nadu state in the southern part of the country.  They caught up with the man-eater in the Gudalur forest along the border of the two states.  Tigers killed 20 people in India last year – the natural outcome of human encroachment on their traditional range.