A giant, forest-clearing mudslide is caught on video – The US spied on some of its most upstanding citizens – Chilling details in the murders of three Israeli tens at the heart of the current unrest in the Mideast – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Hackers in China broke into the computer networks of the United States government agency that houses the personal information of all federal employees.  Thursday’s edition of The New York Times reports that the hackers seemed to target information on tens of thousands of employees who have applied for top-secret security clearances.  It’s not clear how far the hackers got or what information they may have obtained before authorities detected the threat and blocked them from the network.

US Spy agencies eavesdropped on five prominent Muslim-Americans, including a Republican Party operative and former Department of Homeland Security employee.  Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept says the information comes from documents smuggled out of the US by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.  All five are stand-up solid citizens with unblemished reputations who, without their knowledge, were subjected to “secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies”.  The NSA denies ethnic targeting.

Torrential rain is already causing problems before the full arrival of Typhoon Neoguri.  Up in mountainous Nagano Prefecture, a massive mudslide in Nagiso Town killed a five-year-old boy and caused all sorts of damage down the Kiso River.  70 millimeters of rain fell in an hour on the drenched hills.  Southwest to Kyushu, three more people died as Neoguri slammed the southernmost of the four main islands on a trajectory that could take it directly over the rest of the country.

North Korea has turned over to Japan a list of some 30 missing Japanese still living in the country, more than previously acknowledged. Some of those on the list are among the 12 victims of North Korean state-sponsored kidnappings in the 1970s and ‘80s – believed to have been abducted to train spies.  Tokyo has matched about two-thirds of them with domestic records of missing persons.

Iraq discovered more than 50 bodies outside a predominantly Shiite city south of Baghdad.  The bodies had been shot, some were bound and blindfolded.  The victims were men between 25 and 40 years old, although some reports said two children were also found.  Whether they turn out to be Shiite or Sunni, the discovery is raising fears of a return to sectarian violence.

Israeli officials say a police officer caught on video beating up an American teen will face administrative and criminal charges.  The video of Tariq Abu Khdeir getting his face stomped by border guards sparked outrage around the world.  He was in the West Bank for the funeral of his cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was abducted, beaten and burned alive in apparent revenge for the heinous slaying of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank.  Cops said Tariq was part of a group of Palestinians throwing rocks.

Three of six people detained in the slaying of Mohammed Abu Khdeir will be released from Israeli police custody on Thursday.  The other three suspects reportedly confessed to the crime and even reenacted it for investigators.  Meanwhile, a US investigator working with Israel says Jewish teenagers Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’ar, and Naftali Frankel were shot at least ten times with a suppressed, or ‘silenced’, gun – and the killers planned all along to murder the kidnapped kids.  That clashes with the earlier theory that the captors intended to take hostages for a prisoner exchange, but panicked and shot them.  Israel named two Hamas terrorists as the main suspects.

Uruguayan President Jose Mujica says legal sales of Marijuana will be delayed until next year, because of regulation issues.  “We are not just going to say, ‘hands off and let the market take care of it,’ because if the market is in charge, it is going to seek to sell the greatest possible amount,” Mujica said.  Uruguay last year became the first country to make it legal to grow, sell and consume marijuana.