Hello Australia!! - Two are arrested for alleged terrorist writings in Sydney - A Kiwi judge says Kim Dotcom can be sent to America for trial - Steps of Progress in Colombia and Greece - Fears that Japan is trying to rewrite its history again - Christmas Lions, Friendly Boars, and more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Counter-terrorism police arrested two men in Sydney, alleging the suspects were planning to attack locations including Garden Island naval base in Woolloomooloo and NSW police headquarters.  24-year old Abdullah Salihy and 20-year old Mohammad Alamouie are charged with knowingly collecting or making documents connected with terrorism, which are apparently hand-written notes.  Authorities also accuse the two of writing about conducting "guerrilla warfare" in the Blue Mountains.  

Russian air strikes in Syria have killed more than 200 civilians - and Amnesty International says it could be a war crime.  The group says it analyzed 25 Russian attacks beginning with the first on 30 September through  29 November, and found "serious failures to respect international humanitarian law".  The Kremlin hasn't commented on the report, but in the past has denied reports of civilian casualties as attempts to discredit its mission to support its ally Syria.

Another ten would-be migrants drowned when their boat sank off the small Greek island of Farmakonisi, which is near the Turkish coast.  It means that more than 3,700 people have drowned trying to cross the sea to seek asylum in Europe.  Another 13 people were rescued and two are missing.  Those 13 were among 555 plucked out of the sea by the Italian Coast guard and other rescuers.  The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the number of migrants and refugees crossing illegally into Europe by sea and land had passed one million.

A judge in New Zealand has ruled that German internet provocateur Kim Dotcom can be extradited to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering.  The ruling also applies to the other three founders of Megaupload, which had been used to illegally download songs and movies.  If convicted in the US they could face decades in jail.  Dotcom immediately filed an appeal.

Family of cows near Hamburg, Germany adopts a not-so-wild boar.  His name is "Banana".

Over the objections of the powerful Orthodox Church and other grumpy types, Greece's parliament approved legislation granting same-sex couples the right to civil unions.  "This is an important day for human rights," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told lawmakers.  The bill doesn't provide for marriage equality nor same-sex adoption of children; but it resolves property and inheritance issues.  Amnesty International is hailing it as an "historic step", while cautioning that LGBT people still face a "hostile climate" of increasing physical attacks and hate speech "from which the authorities are failing to protect them adequately". 

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a decree to legalize and regulate medical marijuana, meaning that it is fully legal to grow, process, import, and export cannabis and its derivatives for medical and scientific use.  Mr. Santos insisted that the measure "does not go against our international commitments on drug control".  It waves the smoke away from the gray area that medical marijuana used to occupy in Colombian law.

Japan's conservative ruling party has launched a study group to reexamine the country's history, including sensitive topics like the deaths of 300,000 in the Nanjing Massacre, Japan's colonial rule over Taiwan and the Korean peninsula, and post-World War II war crimes trials - which some conservatives and nationalists say didn't happen, wasn't so bad, and were nothing more than victor's justice, respectively.  China and South Korea are wary of this, suspecting that nationalists are trying to further whitewash Japan's 20th century atrocities. 

Students and professors marched in Santiago, Chile to demand education reform.  The government of President Michelle Bachelet is struggling to get a bill to provideuniversity education for all - though opponents successfully went to the Supreme Court, which declared the bill "unconstitutionnal" and "discriminatory".  Cops rolled out water cannons and tear gas, because that's what cops do.

Christmas came early at the Gdansk Zoo in Poland!

Meteor over Las Vegas.  This guy thinks he has it all figured out.  While this guy says it headed west to California.