Hello, Australia! – Former Guantanamo inmate David Hicks wins his appeal – Obama insists the West is not at war with Islam – The search for a missing albino baby ends terribly – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Australian David Hicks has won his appeal of his US terrorism conviction.  The 39-year old was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, where he attended an al Qaeda training camps and actually met Osama Bin Laden, although his lawyer Stephen Kenny insists, “He wasn’t doing anything that was a breach of Australian, international or US law.”  The US jailed Hicks for more than five years in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, where he eventually pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism.  But today that conviction is thrown out, with the US court ruling that Hicks’ activities were not a war crime and therefore shouldn’t have been tried in a military court.  Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australia will not be apologizing to Hicks.

The government of Poland says it will obey a court order to pay more than A$335,000 to a pair of Guantanamo inmates who were tortured at a secret US CIA “black site” in the forests of northeast Poland.  It’s unclear when the two men will see the money:  Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri are still being held at Guantanamo Bay, accused of being top terrorists.

US President Barack Obama says the US and the West are “not at war with Islam – we are at war with the people who have perverted Islam”.  This was an answer to conservative congressional critics and Rupert Murdoch’s media which insist the White house should be blasting “radical Islam”.  Mr. Obama’s logic aims to deny terrorist groups of the religious legitimacy they claim to possess – in other words, “Islamic State” and other terrorist groups do not speak for more than a billion Muslims throughout the world.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to eastern Ukraine.  This comes after Kremlin-backed rebels forced government troops to withdraw from the eastern city of Debaltseve and its strategically important railway hub, in spite of the ceasefire agreed to last week.

UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon says there is a “real and present danger” of Russia trying to destabilize the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, the same way it undermined Ukraine.  Fallon warns the alliance must be ready to counter Russian aggression “in whatever form it takes”.  The Kremlin denies helping the Ukrainian separatists, despite months of photographic evidence showing the rebels tooling around in brand new Russian gear.

Five lawmakers in Turkey are injured after a fist-pumping, chair-throwing brawl in Parliament.  The dispute raged over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bill to grant governors the power to order police to crush protests, use guns against protesters with Molotov cocktails, and to jail protesters who wear masks.  Critics say it’s another move by the power-hungry Erdogan to stifle all dissent and amass all power for himself and his ruling party allies.

Swiss prosecutors raided the Geneva offices of the British banking behemoth HSBC, announcing an investigation into money laundering.  Earlier this month, reports surfaced that the Swiss arm of HSBC helped clients in more than 200 countries avoid taxes and hide hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.  Those clients included drug traffickers, arms dealers and celebrities.

Police in Tanzania have found the mutilated body of a one-year old albino boy, abducted for his body parts.  It comes a month after the government banned witch doctors because they use the severed limbs of albinos in black magic charms that supposedly bring good luck and wealth.  Little Yohana Bahati is the second albino child abducted in two months.  A four-year-old girl is still missing.