Michael Schumacher improves – The anti-nuclear deal with Iran could be implemented this month – Kim Jong-Un doesn’t get the spirit of the Holiday Season – Fireworks galore and an ill-fated titanic Rubber Duck. 
1 January?  Dang it, I’m still writing 2013 on my cheques.  These are your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Formula 1 racing legend Michael Schumacher is showing slight improvement, but doctors warn he’s far from the path of recovery from serious head injuries sustained in a skiing accident in France.  He remains in critical condition, surrounded by his family and an elite team of neurosurgeons at Grenoble Unviersity Hospital.  Investigators say the helmet that may have saved Schumacher’s life was “smashed in two” by the force of the impact with a large rock.

An Iranian official says Tehran and six world powers have agreed to start implementing the nuclear deal in late January.  This agreement obliges Tehran to suspend its most sensitive nuclear work in exchange for economic sanction relief.  There was no immediate confirmation of the agreement from the six powers – The US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China – or from the European Union, which oversees contacts with Iran on behalf of the six.

The return of an Iranian diplomat from exile in the US signals the Ayatollahs are behind President Hassan Rouhani.  The president’s ally Seyed Hossein Mousavian says he is returning to Iran to stay.  In 2009, he was spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, but was accused by hardliners of espionage for the US.  That was threat enough for him to quit and take a job at Princeton University until the wind changed directions.

The US has released the final three Uighurs, western Chinese Muslims, from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility – but not to China.  The trio will go to Slovakia, which the US thanked for its humanitarian effort.  In all, 22 Uighurs detained as terror threats by the US after the 911 attacks in 2001 have been released to six different countries.

China is blaming religious extremism for a terrorist attack in the predominantly Muslim western Xinjiang province.  Police on Monday shot dead eight people in the attack, close to the old Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang's south.  The violence raised the death toll from clashes there to at least 35 lives lost since November.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is ringing in the New Year with threats that the Korean peninsula would be engulfed by “massive nuclear disaster” if war breaks out there again, and by warning the US it will not be safe in the event of a conflict.  Kim really put the “Should auld acquaintance be forgot” in his New Year’s address – he also referred to recently executed Uncle Jang as “scum”.  Happy New Year to you, too 

Sydney!  Tokyo!  Taipei!  Shanghai!  Dubai!  No, really, Dubai!  Moscow!  London!  Rio De Janeiro!

A giant Rubber Duck that was to have been part of Taipei’s New Year’s celebrations didn’t make it.  Hours before the clock struck midnight and ushered in 2014, the 15-meter-tall yellow duck burst and deflated.  And the thing is, it’s not the first time this has happened in Taiwan.  Another giant rubber ducky from the same series created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman burst and deflated in another part of Taiwan in November.