Women's reproductive rights are about to disappear in Spain – The evacuation of Homs rescues hundreds from a life under siege – The Jade Rabbit is stopped in its lunar tracks – All that and more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

A bill to end women’s reproductive rights in Spain is set to pass, after the conservative-controlled parliament put down an opposition challenge.  Opinion polls suggest that up to 80 percent of Spanish voters believe the bill, which critics say reset abortion laws back to the draconian days of the fascist Franco dictatorship, is completely unnecessary; and that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is pushing it to kiss up to his party’s extreme right.  Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon – a conservative Roman Catholic – says, “no right is unlimited.”

More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from the old section of the city of Homs, a rebelled-controlled area of Syria now subject to a touchy cease-fire.  While most of the evacuees are children, elderly, or ill, there is concern for men of military age who will face interrogation from Syrian authorities.  And in Geneva, the latest rounds of peace talks show no sign of ending the 3-year old civil war.

Scientists in California report an advance in the quest for Fusion, the thermonuclear process that powers the Sun and the Stars.  The National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reports that twice last year its experiments produced more energy than was consumed doing them.  It involves blasting laser beams into a little chunk of gold, making it collapse into itself and producing energy – a very miniature atomic explosion.  Should they ever get a handle on it, the process is hoped to be able to generate almost limitless energy.

China’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover is kaput, dying on the moon’s surface in a big setback for Beijing’s ambitious space program.  State-run media reports that the rover “could not be restored to full function,” after running into technical problems last month.

The historic meeting between Chinese and Taiwanese officials this week did not produce any substantive agreement, but rather are significant because of the friendly atmosphere and promises to do it again.  The so-called “Wang-Zhang Meeting”, so named for Zhang Zhijun, who heads the Taiwan Affairs Office for the People’s Republic of China, and his Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Yu-chi, was the first face-to-face encounter between officials of the two nations in 65 years, when Taiwan split off at the end of China’s civil war. 

South and North Korea ended their first high-level talks in seven years at the border truce village of Panmunjom without any progress.  And that’s due mainly to Pyongyang’s objections to upcoming military exercises between Seoul and Washington.  The two sides did agree to ensure that the reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War be held without any hitches, supposedly from 20 to 25 February.

Central African Republic’s interim President Catherine Samba-Panza says she will “go to war” with Christian militias who are slaughtering Muslims in revenge attacks.  The Christians say they are seeking vengeance for atrocities committed by Muslim militias last year, during the disastrous reign of the CAR’s first Muslim president.  Amnesty International has described the situation as “ethnic cleansing” – President Samba-Panza calls it a “security problem”.

The UK Foreign Office is accusing Argentina of “unacceptable harassment and intimidation” after official in Buenos Aires allegedly ordered a cruise ship to remove the British red ensign.  Admiral Lord West of Spithead - a Labour peer, former head of the Royal Navy, and Flaklands War commander – was a passenger on the MS Queen Victoria liner and said he was told about the flag incident by the ship's captain over dinner (blimey!).  The Foreign Office says it condemns any attempts by Argentina “to unnecessarily interfere with the legitimate transit of UK-flagged vessels.”