A Ukraine Opposition leader is found tortured but alive – Doctors are forced to flee their own hospital as South Sudan fighting spills over – Journalists are targeted in post-coup Honduras – And lots more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Protesters and medical workers in Ukraine are blocking police from entering a hospital where an opposition activist is being treated for grievous injuries.  Dmytro Bulatov was missing for eight days.  He says he was abducted by men with Russian accents and was crucified and tortured, and the video evidence shows he was cut up pretty badly.  Amnesty International described Bulatov's ordeal as a “barbaric act which must be investigated immediately.”  The opposition objects to Ukraine’s government signing a trade deal with Moscow instead of the European Union

Meanwhile, embattled Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich signed into law an amnesty for demonstrators detained during mass unrest and repealed anti-protest legislation.  But after the discovery of the tortured activist and with several others still missing, the opposition is refusing to give up the street protests after two months.  The Defense Ministry is now entering the fray, urging Yanukovich to obey the law and “to stabilize the situation in the country and reach agreement with society.”

The medical group Doctors Without Borders says 240 of its staff have been forced to flee into the bush in South Sudan because of fighting.  A spokesman says the group held on as long as they could at their hospital in the town of Leer, but was eventually routed alongside thousands of civilians.  Government troops and rebels are battling in the ironically named Unity State, one week ahead of the next round of peace talks. 

The Syrian government and opposition ended this week-long round of peace talks in Geneva by trading insults.  A government official said the opposition was immature, and the opposition accused the regime of having no desire to end the bloodshed in the nearly three-year old conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.  Still, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he had seen some “common ground”, and scheduled more talks for 10 February.

At least 36 journalists have been killed, intimidated, or silenced in Honduras, ever since the 2009 coup.  Many of the killed were seen as supporters of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya.  The journalists advocacy group PEN International says much of the violence is carried out by corrupt cops and other “state agents”, and calls on Honduras to reign it in and hold the violators accountable.

The US State Department has knocked down a hurdle for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline to carry carbon-heavy shale oil from the Mordor-like tar fields of Alberta, Canada to a port on the Gulf of Mexico, where it will be loaded into tankers and shipped (most likely) to China.  The environmental impact statement says the 1,700-mile pipeline would not “significantly exacerbate” the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.  Opponents say that’s complete bunk, and warn the pipeline threaten leaks and spills along its proposed route through the US, right over the most important agricultural aquifer.

One of the world’s stupidest cops has been fired in Osaka, Japan.  The 40-year old traffic sergeant forced lower ranking officers to binge on 15 hamburgers at a time to “toughen them up”.  Seriously.  Because he thought they weren’t working hard enough, and nothing makes a man work harder like a belly full of fatty beef.

A fiberglass boat washed up on an remote atoll in the Marshall Islands, on board was an emaciated man from Mexico who says he survived 16 months adrift in the Pacific, surviving on hand-caught fish and turtles, and drinking rainwater.  The man, identified as “Jose Ivan”, is said to be improving.