Hello Australia!! - Taiwan has a massive earthquake, scores of people have been rescued from downed buildings - The UK will defy the United Nations ruling on Julian Assange - Queensland officials confirm Zika in Australia - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

A strong earthquake followed by five aftershocks struck southern Taiwan near Tainan City during the pre-dawn hours, causing widespread damage including several building collapses.  At least one high rise block appears to be completely on its side, and Taiwan TV networks reported that hundreds of people might have been inside.  More than a hundred have been rescued, but more information on the damage will come out as the day progresses.  Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is often rattled by earthquakes.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's standoff at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London did not end with the ruling by a United Nations panel that he is being arbitrarily detained.  The UK and Sweden are ignoring the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which says that Mr. Assange had been deprived of his liberty.  UK foreign secretary Phillip Hammond says the decision is "ridiculous" and says Julian is a "fugitive from justice".  From exile in Russia, US whistle-blower Edward Snowden accused the UK of setting a "dangerous precedent" and writing "a pass for every dictatorship to reject UN rulings".  Julian Assange sought asylum in the Embassy three and a half years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden on what he calls trumped-up sex charges.

An Al Qaeda affiliate claims it will release an elderly Australian.  Al Qaeda in the Islamic region of Magreb (AQIM)  released a statement claiming responsibility for last month's kidnappings of Dr. Ken Elliot and his wife Jocelyn Elliot, both in their eighties.  The Perth natives have for decades operated the only medical facility in northern Burkina Faso, but were abducted on their way to market on 15 January.  The statement says the group will release Jocelyn Elliot unconditionally. 

Police in Cologne, Germany have recorded a record 22 sex assaults on the first night of Carnival.  But they are refusing to comment on the ethnicity of the 190 people arrested, except to call them a "cross section" of the public.  A series of sex assaults outside the city's main train station on New Year's Eve were attributed to recently-arrived asylum-seekers, setting off a a firestorm of criticism for Germany's open-door policy for refugees.  But one incident caught on live TV went viral - three white jackasses made rude gestures and grabbed a female reporter from Belgium.  They weren't refugees, Germany.  Deal with it.

Queensland health officials confirm that a woman who recently returned from El Salvador is recovering from the Zika Virus.  She is in her twenties, was in hospital, but now is back home.  Doctors believe the main carrier of the virus is the mosquito, but more and more eveidence is emergening that it can go from person to person through bodily fluids.  Scientists identified the Zika virus in the saliva and urine of two infected patients, according to the public health research group Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.  Although a link hasn't been firmly established, doctors believe that Zika caused 4,000 cases of birth defects in Brazil since October.

Turkey says 15,000 refugees from fighting in the Syrian Civil War around Aleppo are massing on its border, and 10,000 more could be on the way.  The frontier is shut, and the people are already building shanties in which to bed down.  "Humanitarian organizations are responding to the needs of those displaced, but ongoing military conflict is making access to populations in need increasingly difficult," said United Nations official Linda Tom.

Dozens of people have been rescued from a collapse at an Australian-run gold mine in South Africa, but some workers are still missing.  Vantage Goldfields says there have been no fatalities at the mine near the town of Barberton in Mpumalanga province.

A massive construction crane collapsed in New York City, killing one person and injuring three more as well as causing damage to a long row of parked cars.  Witnesses caught it on video as high winds brought the thing down, blocking Broadway in the Tribeca neighborhood.