Hello Australia!! - Iran detains ten US Navy personnel and their boats in the Persian Gulf - Israel cracks down on mob action - Obama declares war on Cancer - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Iran says it will "promptly" return ten American Navy sailors taken into custody when their boats drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf.  The two Riverine patrols were traveling from Kuwait to Bahrain when they disappeared from US Navy radar.  The crews, nine men and a woman, were taken into custody by the Revolutionary Guard and brought to the Iranian base on Farsi Island.  US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have been in close contact on the matter.

Israel is charging four men with the mob beating an Eritrean migrant.  In October, a security guard at the bus station in Beersheba mistook Habtom Zerhom for the attacker who shot a soldier, and opened fire.  As Mr. Zerhom lay bleeding on the floor, a prison guard, a soldier, and two civilians kicked him and rammed him with a bench (warning, gruesome video).  The incident exposed the panic Israel felt over a spate of knife attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, all seemingly inspired by the last instead of being planned by some central source.  That wave of violence continues today, with more than 20 Israelis and 149 Palestinians killed.

South Korea is asking for Beijing's help in punishing North Korea for its nuclear bomb test with the strongest of economic sanctions.  China is Pyongyang's only friend in the world, and any dent in their relationship would severely impact its troublesome neighbor.  But China is reluctant to agree to anything that could quickly collapse the Kim regime, something that could send hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring over the Yalu River.  Pyongyang claimed it had exploded a hydrogen bomb on 6 January, although seismic readings indicate the device was no more powerful than North Korea's previous atomic bomb tests.

What North Korea tried to pass off as a "successful" test launch of a missile from a submarine is now being called an expensive "catastrophic failure".  State-run TV showed images of Kim Jong-un - wearing a fedora for some reason - watching the test, which was missile several seconds of continuity.  Analysts at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies say the missile almost certainly blew up after it popped out of the water.  North Korean editors then patched in some file footage of a previous successful launch. 

US President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, a self-assured and optimistic speech that stood in defiance of the pessimism and fear of the Republican presidential candidates who claim that country is going in the wrong direction.  President Obama boasted of strong economic numbers, unrivaled military power, and international polling showing respect for America climbing from the disastrous days of the Bush administration.  "Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change, promising to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears," said Mr. Obama in a thinly veiled reference to the xenophobia spouted by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  He undercut gloomy predictions, saying "anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction". 

Rather than play lame duck, President Obama set out new, ambitious goals.  Channeling President John F. Kennedy's 1960's call to best the Soviet Union in the Space Race, he said the next "moonshot" would be led by vice-president Joe Biden at "mission control" for the United States to find a cure for cancer.  "Last month, (Biden) worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they've had in over a decade," said Obama.  "For the loved ones we've all lost, for the family we can still save, let's make America the country that cures cancer once and for all."