Good Morning Australia!! - The UK and Australia appear to sidestep the US on Israeli settlements - Nobel Laureates call for an end to the killing in Myanmar - Hope for increasingly endangered elephants - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

UK Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the speech given earlier this week by US Secretary of State John Kerry on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  This comes a day after Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop similarly distanced her government from the speech, which criticized Israel's conservative government for failing to stop the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian areas.  Ms. Bishop reiterated that the Australian Government remained "firmly committed to a two-state solution".  But PM May's move seems odd, considering the UK's rumored role in last week's UN Security Council resolution condemning the settlements - The UK apparently helped push the resolution and voted for it - and appeared to be a bid to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration, which is friendlier with Israel's Likud government.

Also appearing to bide his time is Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said he will not expel any US diplomats in response to the US shutting two Russian facilities and booting out 35 diplomats.  "While keeping the right for retaliatory measures, we will not descend to the level of 'kitchen', irresponsible diplomacy," Putin said, using a Russian term for what it sees as petty acts.  The Obama Administration took the measures in response to Russian hacking and other interference in the US presidential election.

Nobel Laureates - including Malala Yousafzai and Archbishop Desmond Tutu - are urging the UN Security Council to do something about "ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya Muslims and "crimes against humanity" in northwestern Myanmar.  In an open letter to the Security Council, Archbishop Tutu and 22 others express frustration that Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi - also a Peace Prize Laureate - "has not taken any initiative to ensure full and equal citizenship rights of the Rohingyas".  They say the violence against the Rohingya approaches the atrocities seen in recent decades in Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Darfur.

A Brazilian police officer has reportedly confessed to murdering Greece's Ambassador to Brazil, 59-year old Kyriakos Amiridis, apparently at the behest of the diplomat's Brazilian wife, who is under arrest.  The cop and the wife, Francoise Amiridis, were allegedly romantically involved.  The ambassador was reported missing on Wednesday, and found dead in a burned out car in a ravine below a traffic flyover outside Rio De Janeiro.

China claims it will ban the ivory trade in its entirety by the end of 2017.  It's believed 70 percent of the world's of the world's ivory trade winds up in China for processing and sale, where prices surpass AU$1,500 per kilogram.  The World Wildlife Fund welcomed the "historic announcement" which signals "an end to the world's primary legal ivory market and a major boost to international efforts to tackle the elephant poaching crisis in Africa".