Hello, Australia! – Iraq digs up a mass grave where Islamic state put its victims – Poland eyes more border protection from its nasty neighbor – For the second time in a week, the World’s Oldest Person passes the torch – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Excavations have commenced at a suspected mass grave near Tikrit, Iraq.  It’s believed that the butchers of Islamic State may have killed and then dumped the bodies of as many as 1,700 Iraqi Shiite soldiers.  So far, a couple of dozen of remains have been recovered from the first pit.  “It was a heartbreaking scene.  We couldn't prevent ourselves from breaking down in tears,” said Iraqi health official Khalid al-Atbi who also asked, “What savage barbarian could kill 1,700 persons in cold blood?”

The al Qaeda-allied al Nusra Front is believed to have kidnapped 300 Kurdish men in Syria’s north, although the group hasn’t taken responsibility.  “They left women and children but they kidnapped 300 men and young people,” said local official Idris Nassan said.  The motive isn’t clear, but the hardline Islamists consider the more secular Kurds to be heretics.

Poland plans to build watchtowers all along its border with Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea.  There will be six of them, 50 meters tall, and staffed to provide round the clock surveillance.   Kaliningrad is heavily militarized, and Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite recently accused Moscow of sending nuclear-capable Iskander missiles there.

Radiation from the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power Plant north of Tokyo has been detected off the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia.  It’s the first time radiation on North America’s west coast has been confirmed to be from Fukushima.  The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says the risk to humans is negligible, because the radiation level over an entire year is less than a thousand times smaller than a single dental X-ray.

At least six people are hurt in a massive chemical plant explosion in Fujian Province in southern China.  Authorities claim there were no leaks from the Goure PX Plant in Zhangzhou. 

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, a center-right friend of the US, is rejecting the Obama Administration’s economic sanctions on Venezuela.  “We always believed that the unilateral sanctions in the long term are counterproductive, therefore we reject them,” President Santos said in an interview with Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.  A month ago, US President Barack Obama labeled Venezuela a threat to US security and slapped Caracas with sanctions in retaliation for charges against right-wing protest leaders.

The title of World’s Oldest Person is passing to the next holder, after just six days.  116-year old Gertrude Weaver from the state of Arkansas in the US died at the senior care facility where she lived.  Last week, the previous title-holder Misao Okawa died in Osaka, Japan at 117.  There are now only three people left in the world known to have been born before 1 January 1900 – and one of them is the new World’s Oldest Person: Jeralean Talley of suburb Detroit, Michigan was born on 23 May 23 1899 – and thus she will turn 116 next month.