Hello Australia!! - Donors pledge help for Syria as hopes for peace dim - Obama gets behind Colombia's peace process - Another legend is gone and 2016 is a really, really awful year to be a musician or lover of music - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

World leaders met at a conference in London to pledge more than US$10 billion to help fund schools, shelter, and jobs for refugees from Syria's civil war.  UK Prime Minister David Cameron says around US$6 Billion had been pledged to meet immediate needs in 2016, with another $5 Billion coming over the following years until 2020.  But it comes at a time of growing darkness over Syria:  Peace talks in Geneva dissolved before they could get going this week; and 40,000 to 70,000 refugees are marching from Aleppo to the Turkish border, escaping advancing government troops backed by Russian air strikes.

US President Barack Obama will ask congress for nearly half a billion dollars to support the Colombian peace process.  Greeting his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos at the White House, Mr. Obama said the US$450 Million would be slated for removal of land mines, humanitarian projects, and the drug war.  Colombia and the Marxist FARC are on the verge of ending the five-decade old civil war within weeks.

China sacked the governor of Sichuan Province Wei Hong for alleged disloyalty to the ruling Communist Party.  Mr. Wei is one of the bigger names swept up in President Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption and steamrolling of dissent, real or perceived.  No details of corruption were mentioned - but if recent purges set a pattern, we can expect Mr. Wei to be arrested sometime soon.

Beijing's crackdown on dissent apparently snared three booksellers from Hong Kong.  Lui Por, Cheung Chi Ping and Lam Wing Kee went missing months ago, and for the first time the government has acknowledged they were in custody for their links to a publishing house that handles books critical of the Chinese government.  The arrests are causing concern that China is clamping down on free expression in the semi-autonomous city, and phasing out "one nation, two systems". 

Maurice White is dead at age 74, he was the founder and leader singer of the Chicago band Earth, Wind, and Fire which had so many hits in the Funk, R&B, and Disco genres in the 1970s and '80s.  Maurice wrote and sang on such classics as "September", "Shining Star", "After the Love Has Gone", and "Boogie Wonderland".  He died at his home in Los Angeles after suffering with Parkinson's Disease.

A starving and dehydrated Sea Lion pup might have been looking for a free meal, when workers found her hunkered down in a booth in one of the San Diego area's better seaside restaurants.  Entrees at the Marine Room tend to run in the AU$40 - $60 range, so she probably couldn't afford it.  Rescuers took her to a facility where they hope she'll make a full recovery.  Another pup in search of food wound up in a gift store less than a mile away in La Jolla, California, surprising tourists.  El Nino has severely stressed California's Sea Lion population, heating the ocean and impacting their food supply.  Marine Biologists report collecting thousands of Sea Lion pups over the past year - starving, stranded, or already dead.