Hello Australia! - Europe has a new plan to deal with the  refugee crisis at one of its source - Some prisoners are being transferred out of Christmas Island after the destructive riot - A plane crashes and bursts into flames in an apartment building - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The European Union is ready to offer African leaders billions of dollars to help deal with the refugee and migrant crisis facing Europe, in effect buying their support.  A summit on Malta will for the first time bring African leaders together with European leaders.  The EU hopes to convince the African nations to take back economic refugees and failed asylum seekers.  The fund is hoped to assist African nations overcome regional conflicts and poverty which drive people to seek greener pastures in Europe.

Seven prisoners from the Christmas Island detention center are to be flown off the island and taken to a jail in Perth, leaving behind the damage from the riots at the detention center.  The ABC witnessed part of the process, and reports that the men identified themselves as New Zealanders.  Earlier, NZ's Maori Party alleged that some of the people stuck in indefinite detention on Christmas Island were actually convicted of penny-ante offenses such as shoplifting and traffic infractions.  Immigration Minister Peter Dutton rejected those allegations.  During the rioting, Mr. Dutton said that many of the Christmas Island detainees are hardened criminals.  Detainees rioted earlier this week after an Iranian Kurdish man fled the center, only to be found dead hours later.

Those big wads of cash that the Australian Navy allegedly paid human traffickers to betray a boatload of asylum seekers and take them back to Indonesia has disappeared.  Those smugglers are on trial on Rote Island, but the US$30,000 couldn't be entered into evidence, because it was "unavailable" -  Indonesian police apparently gave the evidence back to the smugglers, who then passed it on to their families.  Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will not confirm if taxpayer money was used to pay off the smugglers.

Syrian troops have ended Islamic State's two-year occupation of a key air base in the north of the country.  It's the government troops first big ground victory after Russia stepped in to provide air support to forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad, a Kremlin ally.  Meanwhile, a Russian plan for a post-war Syria is circulating around offices in the United Nations.  It calls for a constitutional reform process lasting 18 months, to be followed by presidential elections.

The leader of Colombia's FARC rebels has ordered his soldiers to stop buying guns and ammunition.  Rodrigo Londono Echeverri - known as Timochenko - says the move is to demonstrate the Marxist group's commitment to the peace process.  The government at the FARC hope to sign a final peace deal in March, ending five decades of costly civil war.

There were no survivors from the jet that crashed into an apartment building in Akron, Ohio.  It appears that no one on the ground of the rust-belt town were injured, but the plane's owner says there were nine people on board.  The plane - a Hawker 800 - apparently belonged a Florida company called ExecuFlight, which specializes in private corporate charters.