Hello, Australia! – A plan to create a seventh Australian state emerges – Chile seeks to right a terrible wrong – No lyin’, there’s a beast on the loose in an American city – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Northern Territory could be Australia’s seventh state by 1 July, 2018 under an agreement announced by Federal, State, and Territory leaders.  NT Senator Nova Peris the chance could be a good thing, if it achieves certain benchmarks.  “Aboriginal land rights need to be protected, our children need to be educated, our cost of living needs to be lower and our standard of healthcare needs to be higher,” she said, “That’s what statehood needs to help achieve.”  But detractors – among them Treasurer Joe Hockey – point out that the NT had a referendum on statehood in 1998, and decided against it.

Myanmar sentenced 153 Chinese nationals to life in prison for illegal logging.  Beijing lodged a diplomatic protest over the harsh sentencing.  Authorities arrested the Chinese in January along the porous border, along with more than 400 vehicles and 1,600 logs.  China is hungry for raw materials, and Myanmar’s forests have what China wants.  Much of Myanmar’s jade is also believed to be illegally smuggled into China.

Chile arrested seven former military members in the gruesome killing of a 19-year old American student in an anti-Pinochet protest in 1986.  They doused 19-year-old Rodrigo Rojas and 18-year-old Carmen Quintana with gasoline and set them ablaze.  Rojas, a Chilean-born ex-pat who lived in exile in the US, died within days.  Quintana survived and underwent several surgeries in Canada.  She thanked the former soldier who came forward with information leading to the arrests of the seven. 

Brick rubble will be incorporated into new housing for people in Nepal.  Award winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who won a Pritzger for his signature cardboard tube emergency housing, says he plans to use re-use broken bricks in the rebuilding process.  The rubble will fill in modular frames, which will form the basic structure of houses and row houses.

Police in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in America’s upper Midwest are taking reports of a lion on the loose very seriously.  Three days ago, residents on the city’s north side recorded a mobile video showing a very large “lion-ish creature” stalking in a backyard.  Since then, Twitter has blown up with the hashtag #mkelion.  Unfortunately, people are also starting to panic, and one moron shot a dog that he mistook for a big, giant carnivore.

In Southern California, a rocket scientist picked up a rattlesnake so he could take a selfie with it.  Turns out that the snake really, really didn’t want his photo taken with a stranger – so he chomped down on Todd Fassler’s right arm, leaving him close to death and his arm horribly bruised.  Two hospitals had to contribute their entire supplies of anti-venom to save his life, so bad was Fassler’s condition.  But the real shock came from America’s awful for-profit health care system: THE BILL.  US$153,161.25, the bulk of which is claimed by the anti-venom – you see, US hospitals make a killing on mark-ups on pharmaceuticals and other inflated costs.  It’s not clear if Fassler has insurance, or if whatever coverage he has will pay this bill.  And BTW, Fassler’s bill is about $10,000 more expensive than that issued to another man who was bite by a rattler three years ago.