Hello, Australia! – Leaders are in marathon talks to halt the fighting in eastern Ukraine – Turns out that killing three people just might be grounds for divorce – A smoker’s dream is a grower’s nightmare – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Urgent talks on ending the crisis in eastern Ukraine are going into the early morning hours.  Fighting rages on in the Donbass region, and the mood was hardly any warmer at the talks in Minsk, where Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin could barely manage a moment of eye contact as they shook hands.  French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought Poroshenko to Minsk with a plan that includes a demilitarized zone several kilometers wide.  A top Ukrainian official insists that they cannot leave Minsk without a ceasefire.

There’s also a rumor going around that the talks were so tense, Putin broke a pen he was fiddling with.  Give him a break on this.  After all, the thing was probably made in Russia.

Six inmates who took their warden and other staffers hostage at a prison in southern Taiwan killed themselves after releasing their captives.  The inmates – including members of a notorious organized crime triad called “Bamboo Union” – were serving long sentences for burglary, murder, and drug crimes. They managed to get into the prison's armory and took four rifles, six handguns, and more than 200 bullets.  They demanded safe passage out of the slam and more ammo, but that wasn’t going to happen.  After a six-hour standoff, the inmates apparently decided to end it.

Colombia’s ELN rebel group freed a Dutch citizen it had been holding hostage since January 2014 to representatives of the International Red Cross and representatives of the Roman Catholic Church.  The kidnapping had not been previously reportedly, and police did not acknowledge it.  The ELN is Colombia’s second-largest revolutionary group after the Marxist FARC rebels.  The FARC are in peace talks with the government to end the insurgency.  ELN has had preliminary discussions but has yet to enter into formal peace talks.

Three workers are dead, six are missing, and ten are injured in an explosion on a Petrobras rig off the coast of Brazil.  The oil workers’ union said the cause was a gas leak.

Nigeria’s military is promising to stay out of the presidential elections late in March, other than to secure polling stations.  Concerns about the army’s role have been building since the government announced the elections would be delayed from 14 February until 28 March – supposedly to give troops time to fight Boko Haram militants.  Critics note that the military hasn’t been able to slow the Islamist terror group in six years, let alone six weeks.  Local media have reported disturbing evidence of collusion between the military and the ruling party of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Western nations are now closing their embassies in Yemen, following the US example.  The UK, France, Germany, and Italy announced plans to close shop after Shiite gunmen from the Houthi group took control of the capital Sana’a and ousted the president.  Since then, the capital has had thousands of people marching both for and against the Houthi.

A court in Belgium sentenced the leader of an Islamist group to twelve years in prison for recruiting young Muslims to leave and fight for terrorist groups like Islamic State in the Middle East.  32-year old Fouad Belkacem didn’t actually fight himself, but rather put up young men to ruin their lives with this crap.  He has previous drug smuggling convictions.

The wife of the man accused of murdering three promising young medical students insists that the motivation was a dispute over a parking space, and not because the three were Muslims.  Nevertheless, Karen Hicks says she is filing for divorce from 46-year old Craig Stephen Hicks, who is charged with three counts of first-degree murder.  Muslims around the world criticized the sluggish media response to the triple murder in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  And the families of the three students insists that the hate crime angle be investigated by police.

Washington State in America’s Pacific Northwest has more pot than it can smoke.  It turns out that too many growers jumped into the market after voters legalized recreational marijuana, leading to a glut that even Seattle can’t smoke fast enough.  Another problem is that growers, processors, and retailers are all taxed separately, which accounts for 75 percent of the price.  For many, it turned out that “I know a guy” is a lot cheaper than the legal stuff.