Terrible brushfires are burning in South Australia and Victoria – Indonesia locates two big chucks of downed AirAsia Flight QZ8501 – Obama clamps sanctions on North Korea – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Firefighters are battling nasty and dangerous bushfires in Victoria and South Australia, where officials warn the conditions in the Adelaide hills are as bad as the Ash Wednesday tragedy most than 30 years ago.  Dozens of homes at Sampson Flat – northeast of Adelaide – are feared to be consumed, and strong winds are pushing the blaze in all directions.  SA Premier Jay Weatherill declared the bushfires a “major emergency” and urged residents in affected areas to leave their homes, because there is no guarantee emergency services will be able to save anyone who stays behind and gets into trouble.

The situation in Victoria is very dangerous as well.  The Moyston fire has blackened some 5,000-hectares.  ABC reports around 150 firefighters were working to control the blaze with the help of water-bombing aircraft.

Indonesian officials are positive they’ve found the place on the floor of the Java Sea where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in bad weather on 28 December.  Bambang Soelistyo of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency says they’ve located “an oil spill and two big parts of the aircraft” at a depth of 30 meters.  That’s raising hopes of quickly locating and retrieving the “black box” flight data and cockpit voice recorders.  Searchers have recovered 30 bodies, two of which were still strapped to their seats;  that leaves 132 passengers and crewmembers unaccounted for. 

It also turns out the AirAsia had absolutely no business flying QZ8501’s Surabaya to Singapore route on Sunday, the day the flight fell into the sea.  Indonesian authorities froze AirAsia’s permission to fly the route.  Meanwhile, Indonesia’s official weather Agency said, “The most probable weather phenomenon is that icing caused the plane engines to be damaged.”

A rust-bucket freighter has made it to the Italian port of Corigliano Calabro with some 450 immigrants, most of them refugees from the Syrian Civil War.  Rescuers had boarded the Sierra Leone-flagged vessel earlier after the crew of likely human traffickers abandoned it in the rough Mediterranean Sea.  Children and pregnant women were among the people on board the Ezadeen, a ship that until recently had been registered as a livestock carrier. 

US Vice President Joe Biden came face-to-face with Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro at the swearing in of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and the two managed not to greet each other with headbutts or try a “one punch”.  Instead, the smiling leaders shook hands and expressed their desire for restored ties.  It comes two weeks after US President Barack Obama signed legislation to impose sanctions on Venezuelan officials accused of violating human rights.

President Obama imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s alleged role in hacking Sony Pictures’ servers, releasing scripts, movies, and embarrassing emails onto the Internet.  The sanctions are designed to further isolate North Korean officials and companies involved in the defense industry.  The FBI insists North Korea is behind the hack, but a chorus of Internet security firms says that is unlikely and instead blames a disgruntled Sony insider.

The outgoing head of the United Nations emergency Ebola mission says 2015 will be the year the West African Ebola Outbreak will be ended.  The virus has killed almost 8,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and a handful of other locations around the world.  Anthony Banbury says the UN Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) mission has accomplished a lot since its establishment in September, but many more months of hard work remain.  Veteran humanitarian official Ould Cheikh Ahmed of Mauritania picks up the job this weekend.

A court in Kenya sentenced a 25-year old blogger to a year in jail for insulting President Uhuru Kenyatta on social media.  Alan Wadi Okenga was also convicted of hate speech for saying that Kenyatta’s Kikuyu ethnic group should be restricted to certain parts of the country.  Although Okenga hasn’t generated a lot of sympathy among Kenyans, he has sparked debate about freedom of speech and what should be allowed online.

Earlier, Kenya’s High Court suspended parts of a new security law that critics say unfairly curtails freedom of the media.  The law is on hold until opposition groups and rights groups have their case against the law decided by the courts.  Kenyatta signed the law, which the opposition says turns the country into a “police state”.

And in quirky Key West, Florida, people and wiener dogs took a stroll in the 10th Annual Key West Dachshund walk.