Good Morning Australia!! - Hopes for peace dissolve as the Syrian War creeps towards the five year mark - One of the main benefactors of Syrian refugees is on the verge of giving up - Why are French schools encouraging kids to smoke on-campus? - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura says in order for the Syrian Civil War peace talks to advance, there has to be some sort of change on the ground.  The government and representatives for the Western-approved rebel groups are in Geneva, but the rebels won't talk as long as government troops - backed by Russian air strikes - are attacking their positions.  These talks don't even include the main problems facing Syria, Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front.  The war hits the five-year mark next month; more than 250,000 people have been killed and around 11 Million are displaced, either internally or to foreign countries.

After decades of taking in the Middle East's refugees, King Abudullah of Jordan says, "For the first time, we can't do it any more."  Jordan has been overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing that country's incredibly destructive civil war, and the king says his country is at the "boiling point".  Abdullah is in London to meet with European leaders about getting a big financial aid package to provide Syrians with jobs, which he says is sorely needed if the EU expects him to host the refugees to keep them from migrating north.

Some French schools are allowing students to smoke on school grounds, to keep them from being terror targets should they go catch a smoke break on the street.  Although the Health Ministry frowns upon this, the school administrators' union says individual schools are making the decision on their own.  The union is not trying to make light of the problem of teen smoking - up to a third of French teens have picked up the cancerous habit - but claims enabling teen smoking was "necessary in this particular context to protect against the biggest risks".

Speaking of cigarettes, in Ukraine they like to do it old school.  Authorities arrested a man caught smuggling contraband European smokes carried by horse.  The haul is worth thousands of Euros.  Petty crime, fun video.

The US says North Korea's plans to launch a satellite into orbit this month is an "egregious violation" of a UN ban on missile launches in the country.  Pyongyang announced the launch, will will purportedly take place some time between 8 and 25 February.  North Korea's UN ambassador insists the launch is for "peaceful purposes" and says the US call for even tighter economic sanctions as punishment will make tensions in Northeast Asia even worse.

An Italian actor is in a coma after a hanging stunt during a play went horribly wrong.  Fellow actors say a harness should have caught 27-year-old Raphael Schumacher and the noose should have been fake, anyway.  But a medical student in the audience at Pisa's Teatro Lux theater recognized that Schumacher was in trouble during the performance, and rushed on stage to help free him from the noose.  Police detained the audience and cast for questioning, and are investigating.

Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny will dissolve parliament later today and call for new elections, expected to take place on Friday, 26 February.  Mr. Kenny would like to be the first leader from the center-right Fine Gael party to be returned to office; but it could also be that he wants to lock in whatever support the Fine Gael-Labor coalition still has before it disappears, arguing that stability is better than uncertainty while the economy is still fragile.  Sinn Fein and Fiana Fail (which presided over the economic disaster in Ireland) say the fruits of the partial recovery have not been felt across the economic spectrum.

In Japan, there's only one way to prepare for the terror of fugitive Zebras, and that's by having a guy put on a Zebra costume.  And pretend to escape.

In America, some people consult rodents before making decisions.