Hello, Australia! – What possessed a co-pilot to allegedly crash a passenger jet into the French Alps – Hamas is accused of war crimes – Argentina’s favorite conspiracy theory fails another court test – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

German police searching the residences of Germanwings Flight 9525 co-pilot Andreas Lubitz say they’ve made a “significant discovery”.  Officers say it was not a suicide note.  Whatever it was, it was in the apartment the 27-year old had near Dusseldorf.  They also took a computer and other items from the home he shared with his parents in Montabaur, a picturesque town near Bonn.

What we’re being asked to believe about the crash of in the French Alps seems to defy all that preceded it.  Authorities insist Lubitz locked the pilot out of the cockpit, put the plane on a controlled descent to 96 feet, and allowed the plane to fly into the side of the French Alps.  But everyone who knew him tells of nice guy, a go-getter who had been flying since his teens.  Lubitz told people he loved his job with the Lufthansa subsidiary, and airline employees took to chatrooms to express doubt about the theory of Lubitz deliberately crashing the jet with 150 people aboard, including two Australians.  The only anomalies are the six-month break he took during pilot training and a horrible German tabloid talks about an alleged break-up with a girlfriend.  There is a giant chasm between a case of depression and committing mass murder.

And yet there is that audio from Flight 9525’s cockpit voice recorder in which Lubitz is heard breathing, while in the background Captain Patrick Sondenheimer is heard desperately trying to get back onto the flight deck, while passengers scream.  The French and German investigators seem to be convinced they know what happened, but the question is whether they’ll know why.

Four people are in critical condition after a gas explosion and fire in a building going under rehab in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood of New York City.  Mayor Bill de Blasio says the incident “appears to have been caused by plumbing and gas work that occurred in 121 2nd Avenue”.  The fire quickly spread to three adjacent buildings on 2nd Avenue, two of them eventually collapsing. 

South Korea is confirming that two of its citizens are being held by the North, but can’t say why.  Pyongyang accuses the two of spying on behalf of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and the United States; attempting to use counterfeit money; and spreading “unsound” publications around the public.  Seoul denies the North’s accusations.

Amnesty International says Palestinian militants like Hamas committed war crimes by firing rockets and from Gaza into Israel prior to and during last year’s Gaza War.  The group’s report says armed groups killed civilians on both sides – six civilians in Israel, including a four-year old boy; and 13 Palestinians including eleven children when a Hamas shell landed in a refugee camp.  Although Israel has come under the most criticism for killing almost 2,200 Palestinians – two-thirds of whom were civilians – Amnesty says the militants displayed a “flagrant disregard” for the lives of civilians during the 50-day war.

Mexico marked six months since the forced disappearances of 43 student teachers in Iguala town, Guerrero state.  Parents of the 43 and thousands of supporters marched in the capital to keep pressure on the government to resolve the troubling case.  The 43 were last seen being forced into police vehicles; and there is scant forensic evidence and some confessions claiming that cops and drug gang members killed the students at the orders of Iguala’s mayor. 

Smoke and ash pours from Mexico’s Colima Volcano.

An Argentine appeals court dismissed the controversial case against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.  She had been accused of attempting to cover-up the alleged involvement of Iran in a deadly 1994 bombing at a Jewish community center, but once again the judiciary decided there’s just no evidence backing up the conspiracy theory.  The prosecutor who originally made the accusations died or committed suicide, the final ruling isn’t in on that facet.