Obama delays a Syria attack – Putin wants more proof – New, deadly radioactive hotspots are found in Japan – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

US President Barack Obama has pushed back any attack on Syria by allowing the matter to be put to a congressional vote, which won’t happen until 9 September.  Did he blink?  Maybe.  But the maneuver allows Obama and the rest of the leaders of the G20 nations to gather at Saint Petersburg, Russia this week, without being in a war against host Vladimir Putin’s chief Mideast ally.  It gives the diplomats more time to work Syria for another way for it to accept punishment for the 21 August chemical weapon attack on civilians.  And it gives Obama political cover:  If an attack goes well, he gets the credit; if it goes poorly, he shares the blame with congress.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says if Obama is so sure that the Bashar al-Assad regime carried out the 21 August chemical weapon attack on the eastern suburbs of Damascus, the US should put the evidence on the table before the United Nations Security Council.  Putin doesn’t believe the Assad regime did it, but said he was convinced the suspected chemical attack was carried out by the Syrian rebels as a provocation aimed at drawing the U.S. military into Syria's civil war.

There is outrage in Delhi, after a teenager was found guilty in the fatal gang rape of a woman on a bus last year, but was only sentenced to three years in prison – the maximum sentence for an offender who commits even a heinous crime at 17 in India.  The victim's mother left the court in tears, and told reporters that the teenager should be hanged.  Four other suspects face trial as adults, and hence could face the death penalty if convicted.

New radioactive “hop spots” have been found near the wastewater tanks at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor site in Japan.  The plant’s operator says at least one puts off 1,800 millisieverts of radiation per hour – That’s a potentially deadly dose.  Tokyo Electric Power Company has been forced to admit there are many radioactive water leaks, classifying them as a Level 3 event on the international atomic emergency scale.  That officially makes it the worst incident since three reactors went into meltdown in 2011.

A refrigeration unit in a Shanghai seafood plant leaked liquid ammonia, the fumes killing at least 15 people and leaving eight in critical condition.  China, the world's second-largest economy, has a poor record on workplace safety:  27,000 people had been killed or gone missing in workplace accidents in the first six months of the year.  Beijing says that’s a 14 percent improvement over the same period a year earlier.

Five people are dead and thousands were driven from their homes by a magnitude 5.8 earthquake near the popular tourist area “Shangri-La” in southwestern China.  The temblor triggered landslides, blocked roads, and trapped tourist busses.

Pope Francis has replaced the Vatican Secretary of State, the second most powerful political position in Catholic Church HQ.  78-year old Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had been widely blamed for a series of foul-ups including failing to deal with church sex abuse and financial scandals; appointing a former Communist spy as archbishop in Poland; and not providing former Pope Benedict XVI with the correct background information of a holocaust denier whose excommunication Benedict reversed.  58-year old Archbishop Pietro Parolin of Venezuela takes Bertone’s place, and brings with him administrative and linguist skills.

Much of Peru is under a state of emergency because of unusually cold weather and heavy snowfall.  At least two people have died while 33,000 others are affected by the cold spell, in ways that include lack of home heat and strandings. The heaviest snowfall to hit Peru in ten years has killed tens of thousands of llamas, alpacas, cattle and sheep, and left farmers destitute.  The government says the snow emergency will last at least 20 days.

Suspected Boko Haram fighters ambushed and murdered at least 24 members of a Nigerian vigilante group, and more than 30 more people are missing.  Nigeria’s military is at the point of actually encouraging civilians to form militias to protect themselves from the Islamist rebels.