Hello, Australia! – A horrific case of bullying in Japan – Chile denies a plea for a peaceful death – Llamas on the Lloose! – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Police in Japan arrested three teenage boys in a gruesome murder case that has transfixed the country all week.  13-year old Ryota Uemura bled to death from several stab wounds shortly before his body was found on the Tama River outside Tokyo last week.  And over days of news coverage of the investigation, details came out of Ryota’s fear of a group of older boys who tried to get him to shoplift, and became increasingly violent when he wouldn’t.  At one point, Ryota confided in a friend that he might be killed.  Japan isn’t crime-free, but the brutality of the attack and the young age of the victim have brought comment from all corners, including the Prime Minister.

South Korea has had its second deadly shooting in a week, in a country that has practically no gun crimes because gun ownership is strictly limited.  A man reportedly used a hunting rifle to shoot and kill three people – including a cop – before he was found dead in Hwaseong City near the capital Seoul.  On Wednesday, a gunman shot and killed three people in Sejong City in the central part of the country before apparently killing himself.  160,000 guns are registered in the country, and that may shrink as the debate over gun ownership heats up.

A court in Germany gave a life sentence to the nurse who admitted to giving lethal drug overdoses to more than 30 patients at the clinic he worked at from 2003 to 2005.  Another 60 patients whom he injected survived.  Doctors noticed something was amiss because “Niels H.” always seemed to be right there to help resuscitate patients in the intensive care unit. 

Chile’s government will not fulfill a teenage girl’s wish to be allowed to “sleep forever”.  14-year old Valentina Maureira has cystic fibrosis – an incurable genetic disorder that makes breathing difficult to impossible, and leads to drastically shortened life spans.  Valentina’s brother already died of it.  She issued a plea on social media to be allowed to euthanized.  A presidential spokesman said that although “it’s impossible not to be overcome by emotion with the girl’s request, it’s impossible to grant her wish,” because it’s not allowed under Chilean law.

Venezuela arrested a police officer in the death of a 14-year old boy who was shot during a riot in the western city of San Cristobal.  Right-wingers were smashing and burning things in protest of the democratically elected Socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, and Kluiver Roa Nunez was hit in the head by a rubber bullet.  President Maduro went on TV to call for an end to the violent protests, which in the past he has blamed on US meddling.  “There is no reason for violent protests.  I make an appeal to our country, and especially the young, to give up violence.  Hatred will not lead to anything,” he said.

The death toll in the Afghanistan snow avalanches is now believed to be greater than 200 lives lost.  And officials warn it could get worse.  One regional governor says the area hasn’t seen this much late season snow in decades.

Europe’s highest court says a US military deserter who is seeking asylum could have grounds to press his claim – but only if he can show he would have been ordered to commit war crimes.  Andre Shepherd also must prove that deserting was his only recourse, as opposed to applying for Conscientious Objector status.  This leaves him only a narrow window to seek shelter in Europe, and he definitely faces prosecution back in the USA.  Shepherd walked away from the US Army 412th Aviation Support Battalion in Germany in 2007 when he was ordered to go fight in the Iraq War, which he considered to be illegal.

An underground water main caused a massive sinkhole in Saint Petersburg, Florida, which led to part of a nearby building collapsing. 

Arizona in America’s desert southwest has its Internet back, after a 15-hour outage.  Vandals hacked – literally, like with a saw – through a fiber-optic cable buried in the rocky desert.  In addition to the Internet black out, ATMs stopped working, police and fire emergency systems were disrupted, and businesses were unable to process credit card transactions.  It’s believed illegal scavengers cut the cable in search of copper wire, which fetches high prices as scrap.

Two fugitives on the lam in Arizona led police and others on a wild chase through a retirement community.. okay, they were just Llamas that got away from a ranch, and American network news spent two hours covering it instead of the once great nation’s spiral into pathetic mediocrity.  But it was funny.  Llamas run fast.

Mosha the three-legged elephant got a new prosthetic leg!  The poor girl was only seven months old and being used in logging in Myanmar when she stepped on a landmine almost ten years ago.  She’s been cared for at the MaeYao National Reserve in Thailand where they’ve crafted five prosthetic limbs for her as she keeps outgrowing the old ones.  Mosha’s story inspired the documentary “The Eyes of Thailand”, which raises awareness of the terror of landmines.