Good Morning Australia!! - Stability returns to northern Europe, maybe not so much in the south - Aid groups sound an alarm over PNG - Is China backsliding today? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to give up a lot to get her coalition deal with the Social Democrats, but the SDU approved the plan and the political Center is maintaining stable control of Europe's crucial and largest economy.  She gets a fourth term in office; the Social Democrats get control of six key ministries.  It ends six months of political uncertainty after the September elections, during which Merkel's Christian Democrats and the SDU lost seats to the fringes while maintaining enough to form this grand coalition, nicknamed "GroKo" by the local media. 

Italy has voted in a bitterly divisive election in which the anti-establishment but somewhat nebulous Five Star Movement (M5S) seems poised to become the biggest political party.  Bottom line:  No one gets enough for a majority.  M5S is anti-corruption and Euro-skeptic, but believed to be "people-friendly".  The biggest bloc, though probably not big enough to govern,  is expected to be the right-wing, led by 81-year old heinous billionaire slimebucket Sylvio Berlusconi (greeted at the polls by a topless FEMEN protester) whose political career apparently wasn't derailed by his convictions on corruption and pedophilia charges.  The right-wing vote is driven by xenophobia and racism towards 600,000 recently-arrived immigrants from Africa and the Muslim world; instead of being reviled for a far-right politician's drive-by shooting attack on immigrants, people of a certain ugly mindset took it as a call-to-vote.

Aid agencies dealing with the aftermath of a powerful earthquake in Papua New Guinea are calling for help.  The 7.5-magnitude quake and a 6.0 aftershock rattled villages and a large gold mine in Enga province last week, damaging buildings and roads.  Tens of thousands are in urgent need of supplies and many of their towns are cut off.  "The challenge is road access; it's still not accessible to trucks and four-wheel drives," said Udaya Regmi of the International Red Cross.  "Big trucks cannot go there.  It's one of the reasons the food is becoming less and less.  There are no fears of starvation yet but we've not got the full picture."

Syrian troops are in control of about 25 percent of the rebel enclave of East Ghouta outside the capital Damascus.  But the five-hour daily ceasefire called for by Syria's allies in the Kremlin is not working, and the United Nations aid convoy for Sunday could not get through to help the 393,000 people trapped there.  The UN says that the "collective punishment of civilians is simply unacceptable", while a civilian inside the enclave told the BBC that the humanitarian situation is "beyond critical".

China's governing Communist Party opens its 13th congress in Beijing today, and is expected to approve changes to the constitution which will allow President Xi Jinping to serve beyond the customary two consecutive terms.  "This move is another step backwards in the institutionalization of Chinese politics, that Deng Xiaoping began in 1978 and Xi Jinping has been reversing since 2012," said Professor David Shambaugh, a political scientist at George Washington University in the United States, echoing concerns Xi is setting himself up to be president-for-life.

Wrapping up Lunar New Year ceremonies in Tibet.