Happy New Year Australia!! - Protesters attack the US Embassy in Baghdad - Carlos Ghosn explains why he fled Japan's justice system - Good news from the ACT - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Well, no one wanted to start the New Year with tragedy and property losses caused by the bushfires, but here we are anyway.  For more information about bushfires in your state, please click through to these sites:  For Victoria - VicEmergency; South Australia - SA CFS; New South Wales - NSW RFS; Western Australia - EmergencyWA; and Tasmania - TasFire.

Hundreds of protesters managed to breach the heavily-guarded Green Zone of Baghdad to attack the US Embassy compound.  At one point, the mob managed to get through one of the gates, only to be pushed back by Marines with tear gas.  Still, they pelted the compound with rocks and concrete, breaking windows even as high as the prison-like guard tower looking out over the facility.  Donald Trump blamed Iran and said it would be "held fully responsible"; Tehran denied this, and condemned the "audacity" of the US.  This violence follows US bombing raids against Iran-backed militia targets in western Iraq and and eastern Syria, in were retaliation for the militias attacking US targets earlier.

Former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn says he didn't skip jail from Tokyo to hide out in Lebanon; rather, Ghosn says he "escaped injustice and political persecution" in a "rigged system" that brought politically-motivated charges against him.  Ghosn's lawyers in Tokyo say they had no idea that he had sneaked out of the country that held him in jail for 100 days and charged him with corruption, let alone how he managed to pull it off.  Tokyo prosecutors say the fact that he fled is proof of his guilt.  But Ghosn's supporters - apparently more than a few - say the Japanese government and internal rivals at Nissan and Mitsubishi conspired to thwart Ghosn's plan to have Renault take over the Japanese-automakers.  Ghosn arrived in Lebanon yesterday to great surprise around the world - Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Tokyo.

Angola is attempting to recover a billion dollars in what officials claim are ill-gotten gains from the daughter of former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Africa's wealthiest woman Isabel dos Santos.  The owner of the country's cable TV company and several other businesses, Ms. dos Santos says she committed no wrong, but the new government has:  "I discovered that a trial had been held in total secrecy in Angola and the decision taken to issue a freezing order on my assets," went the statement, "There were no lawyers from my side present, nor the directors of my companies.  We were only informed about it after the decision had been taken behind our backs."  Her brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos is on trial in Angola on charges of corruption.  Her father's rule from 1979 to 2017 is generally regarded as extremely corrupt and pocked with human rights abuses against Angolan citizens.

More than two dozen patients are hospitalized with "unexplained pneumonia" in Wuhan city in Central China, and health experts have been dispatched there to determine if a SARS-like virus is to blame.  The government largely covered-up a 2003 SARS outbreak that killed hundreds of people.  This time, Beijing is urging hospitals to treat and report cases in a "timely manner".  Crews are also investigating and cleaning up a seafood market suspected to be connected with the outbreak.

Germany began shutting down the Philippsburg nuclear power plant in Baden-Wurttemberg state in the south, part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's promise of decommissioning all of the nukes by 2022.  Once completed, Germany would be only the second country after Italy to shut down all of its atomic energy stations.

The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) will be 100 percent-powered by renewable energy from today, according to the ACT's climate change minister Shane Rattenbury.   "I think the national debate about energy and climate change is driven a lot by ideology and belief, rather than the basic facts," the Green Party minister told the SBS, "The ACT is proof positive, that if you make the political decision and get onto it, you can actually get this done."  He says Canberra is only the world's eighth major city - and first outside Europe - to make the switch.