Oz gets the green light to help arm the Kurds – Israel’s West Bank land grab is not very popular – The bloody dolphin hunt is back on in Western Japan – And much, much more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is giving tacit approval of Australia’s plan to airlift arms to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq for their fight against Islamic State.  Frontbencher Scott Morrison says all of the necessary approvals are in order to use Australian transport planes to deliver the arms and munitions.  Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaking on Sydney Radio 2GB has compared Islamic State to the Nazis of the last century.

Authorities have captured and charged a man in the shooting at a New Zealand south island employment office, in which two people were killed.  After an intense manhunt, police dogs brought down 48-year old Russel John Tully (identified in press reports by a different name yesterday), a former worker in Australia’s mines.  Police say he did not have a license for the shotgun used in the killings.  Not that it would have been better if he had.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron is condemning as “utterly deplorable” Israel’s seizure some 400 Hectares of Palestinian land as revenge for the murders of three Jewish teens in the West Bank in June.  The UN, US, and France are also denouncing it, as is Egypt which just went out on a limb and helped negotiate a truce between Israel and armed groups in Gaza.  Maybe I’m cynical, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s poll numbers have been in a freefall since the latest Gaza War, and then Israel announces a big land grab in the West Bank.. perhaps the two events are linked.  But hey, that’s analysis.

China is accusing British MPs of meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs, after Westminster’s Commons Foreign Affairs Committee made plans to investigate the former British territory’s upcoming leadership elections.  Earlier, Beijing said all candidates in the 2017 poll must be approved by a majority of a special nominating body in the Chinese capital, effectively telling Hong Kong whom it can vote for.  China is putting its foot down with the UK, telling London that it will “brook no interference, either directly or indirectly, from the UK or any other external forces” in “China’s internal affairs”.  At least 20 pro-democracy demonstrators have been arrested in Hong Kong.

Protesters and conservationists are out in force in Taiji, Japan to condemn the annual dolphin hunt.  The event is marked by a mass slaughter as hundreds of dolphins are herded into the secluded bay in Wakayama and butchered.  The Taiji Fisherman’s Union hopes some 1,400 mammals will be killed in the six-month hunt.  The Fisherman’s Union claims dolphin drive-hunting (caution: gruesome video) is an ancient practice, but it’s not – locals who have turned from the barbaric practice say it was invented in 1969.

On a lighter note, here’s Wakayama Prefecture boat cops training to deal with protesters.  Okay then.

South Africa is ruling out military action to stop the coup in Lesotho.  Prime Minister Thomas Thabane fled to South Africa over the weekend, asking for help after the military allegedly seized power over the sacking of the military chief.  Lesotho is a tiny, mountainous, and rural country surrounded on all sides by South Africa – and it’s had several coups since gaining independence in 1966.  South Africa agreed to send a negotiator to the Lesotho capital Maseru and Thabane should be back in town by Tuesday to negotiate an end to the strife.

Spain has returned hundreds of indigenous artifacts to Colombia.  The items had been seized in an anti-drug sweep eleven years ago, smuggled out of the South American country by someone linked to the drug trade.  There are 691 items, some of them dating back to 1400 BCE and of huge cultural and archeological value.