Hello Australia!! - Trump claims he'll shut the US government for years - Germany's top leaders are targeted by hackers - A celebrated soldier is accused of atrocities - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Hackers obtained and published online the personal information and contact stolen from hundreds of politicians and media figures, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.  The targets were from every political party except the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) - Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said the authorities were working hard to find the perpetrator, and suspicion fell on right-wing groups in Germany and their helpers in Russia.  Although no government systems appear to have been hacked, Justice Minister Katarina Barley said, "The perpetrators wanted to damage our trust in democracy and our institutions." 

The number of people caught trying to sneak into the EU illegally has fallen to its lowest level in five years.  The European border agency Frontex registered 150,000 illegal crossings last year, the lowest amount since 2013.  This was the result of a sharp fall in immigrants crossing the Mediterranean to Italy, where a far right-populist coalition government refuses to allow rescue boats to dock.  Simultaneously, Frontex said arrivals in Spain had doubled for the second year in a row.

Democratic Party Congressional leaders asked Donald Trump not to hold millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Federal workers hostage, as another meeting at the White House failed to solve the budget impasse that has the US government partially shut down.  Trump wants US$5.6 Billion for a border wall, the Democrats aren't going to give it to him.  Trump claims he would keep federal agencies closed for months or years if he doesn't get his way.

A decorated US Navy Seal sniper is charged with murder and nearly a dozen other crimes and atrocities in his eighth deployment to Iraq.  One of the charges involves the stabbing death of a teenage prisoner suspected of being a member of the so-called Islamic State.  Navy Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher plans to plead not guilty, but the prosecution's case involves testimony from some of his fellow Seals, ordinarily a close-knit and closed-mouth bunch.

Five teenage girls are dead after a fire engulfed a room where they were playing an "Escape Room" game.  That happened in the northern Polish city of Koszalin.  "The victims of this tragedy are 15-year-old children, girls celebrating a birthday," said Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski.  A 25-year-old man was also injured in the incident.

Police in India have detained more than 1,300 protesters in Kerala state as Hindu traditionalists tried to shut down businesses in protest of women entering an ancient temple.  This all started after two women sneaked into Ayyappa's Sabarimala Temple early on Wednesday, defying a superstition which bans females of menstruating age from the shrine - a ban the Supreme Court says is illegal.  Another woman entered the hilltop sanctuary on Thursday.  Although the traditionalist rioters have blocked women from the shrine afterwards, the two women who got in said they did  so to advance women's rights.