Good Morning, Australia! – Putin admits his plan all along was to “retake” Crimea – A cop is arrested in French anti-terror sweeps – It’s the video everyone is talking about, and it got an entire American college fraternity suspended – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Before we get to the death, destruction, and racism in today’s news.. Firefighters in Wellesley, Massachusetts rescued a big fuzzy Goldendoodle Dog who managed to get stuck on a branch in the freezing cold Charles River outside Boston. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted he plotted to absorb Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula into Russia long before the referendum that dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s.  In an interview on state-run TV channel Rossiya-1, Putin said he ordered work on “returning Crimea” to begin at an all-night meeting on 22 February – that’s the night Ukraine’s Parliament ousted President pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.  Soon after, gunmen in unmarked military uniforms took over key positions in Crimea with practically no resistance from troops loyal to Kiev in a largely bloodless sweep.

Argentina is demanding that the banking giant HSBC repatriate A$4.5 Billion in funds that Buenos Aires says it helped clients hide offshore.  “HSBC built a platform to help clients evade tax,” alleged the head of Argentina’s tax authority Ricardo Echegaray in a press briefing at Argentina’s Embassy in London.  HSBC claims it is cooperating fully with the investigation.

Is it treason yet?  A group of 47 conservative republican US Senators released an open letter to Iran explaining their intention to sabotage nuclear disarmament talks with Tehran.  They warn that President Obama has less than two years left in office, but the senators (from the party that championed term limits a few years ago) will remain in office, possibly for decades to come, and will work to undermine any deal Iran strikes with the P5+1 group to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.  Although the condescending letter hides behind explaining the differences between America’s branches of government, the 215-year old Logan Act forbids US citizens from conducting their own foreign policy outside the government.

A French Policewoman is among four people arrested in connection with the deadly terror attacks in January.  She’s a convert to Islam and suspected of helping her boyfriend, an associate of gunman Amedy Coulibaly who killed four people at a Kosher food store.  Authorities believe that was part of a coordinated operation with the Kouachi brothers who killed 12 people in the offices of satirical magazine Charle Hebdo on 6 January.

At least 14 people are dead in a US-led coalition air strike on an oil refinery run by Islamic State in northern Syria, near Tal Abyad.  Militants and refinery workers were killed.  Captured refineries and oil fields have played a key role in fuelling and financing IS’s advance across Syria and Iraq.

India charged 42 people in the lynching of a suspected rapist in Nagaland state.  The mob dragged Syed Sharif Khan from jail; stripped, beat, and dragged him through Dimapur; and hanged him.  Hundreds of police are now patrolling Dimapur and a curfew has been imposed.

Officials wasted no time in punishing a college fraternity in America after members were caught on video singing a vile racist song.  It shows all-white members of the University of Oklahoma’s (OU) chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) singing about banning black membership (using the n-word), and lynching.  OU students began protesting the frat house, spray-painting “tear it down” on the walls.  The national SAE suspended the OU chapter’s charter and ordered all members to move out of the house.  The University president and former US Senator David Boren said, “We don’t have any room for racists or bigots on this campus,” and announced an investigation and possible punishments for the perpetrators.