Hello Australia!! - Brazil says BHP must start paying for cleaning up the Samarco Mine Disaster - Oz and the US are reportedly near a refugee deal - Europe is getting nervous over Trump - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

A Brazilian court is ordering the Australian and British owners of the Samarco mine to make a US$350 Million payment to help clean up the country's worst environmental disaster.  It's been about a year since the iron ore tailings dam collapsed and released a wave of contaminated water and mud down the Rio Doce, burying the town of Bento Rodrigues and killing 17 people.  Another two are still missing.  Authorities charged 21 people including an Australian with homicide.  BHP Billiton and Vale now have six months to present clean-up plans for the remaining waste.

Australia and the US this weekend are expected to announce a deal to resettle almost 1,300 asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru to our wonderful partner in the northern hemisphere (although you'd probably expect US refugees to start washing up in Oz because of the election).  These people have already been processed on the two island facilities and who have been found to be refugees.  "We'd be very happy with a country like the United States being a place where genuinely-assessed refugees find a home for themselves," said Shadow Immigration Minister Shayne Neumann.  Most officials have been very closed-mouth about the deal, given that crazed anti-immigration bigot Donald Trump is two and a half months from assuming the presidency.  The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) urged the Federal Government to speed up the resettlement of refugees, describing it as a "dire humanitarian situation".

Nauru is scrapping a plan to extend reproductive rights to refugee and asylum seeker women.  Government and opposition MPs balked at legalizing abortions for women in the camp. 

Actor Robert Vaughn is dead of leukemia at age 83.  He's best known for starring as Napoleon Solo in the 1960s spy-themed TV series "The Man From UNCLE"; and for movies like "The Magnificent Seven" and "Bullitt".  But the guy's IMDB page showed he never slowed down and kept playing featured roles on TV and in Movies right up until this year.

Also passed away at age 82 is Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen, best known for writing the award-show staple "Hallelujah".  Sir Elton John said he was "a giant of a man and a brilliant songwriter", while author JK Rowling tweeted the singer's lyrics: "There is a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in."

European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is expressing doubts about the EU's relationship with the US under a Donald Trump presidency.  "We will need to teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works," he told a student audience in Luxembourg.  But speaking earlier to Luxembourg newspaper Le Quotidien, Juncker worred about Trump's apparent lack of knowledge about world affairs: "We are going to waste two years while he tours a world he doesn't know," Juncker said.  Germany, France and the Netherlands all face elections in the new year, with populist and far-right parties attempting to capitalize on chaos caused by Trump's election and the Brexit.

Zimbabwe dropped charges against the professional hunter who led an over-privileged US dentist to kill Cecil the Lion, who was lured out of the protection of Hwange National Park to his death.  The court ruled that charges against Theo Bronkhorst "were too vague to enable to him to mount a proper defence".  Dentist and bow hunter and all-around steaming chunk of stool Walter Palmer was not charged.

The international community is falling short in its commitment to help Haiti recover from Hurricane Matthew, a Cholera epidemic, and the 2010 earthquake. Interim President Jocelerme Privert says losses from last month's hurricane are greater than the country's entire budget.  Malnutrition is getting worse as food stocks disappear, and President Privert doesn't "want to see Haitian people die because of the unavailability of international assistance".