Hello Australia! - Grim news from hurricane-ravaged Haiti, as the death toll skyrockets - Irony wins this year's Nobel Peace Prize - The Philippines nominates a nazi-lover for UN Ambassador - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The eye of Hurricane Matthew has stayed offshore eastern Florida, thus sparing that US state from major damage.  But information is now trickling in from remote areas of Haiti, and it appears more than 840 people were killed when the category four storm made its direct hit on the impoverished nation earlier this week.  Aerial footage showed entire towns torn to pieces, mostly on the southwestern peninsula where distributing aid will be difficult at best because roads and bridges are washed out.  The historic colonial town of Baracoa in eastern Cuba was also heavily damaged.  The storm is heading towards South Carolina.

The Nobel Committee in Norway awarded the 2016 Peace Prize to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos - five days after a paper-thin margin of his voters rejected the peace deal he had doggedly pursued for years in negotiations with the Marxist FARC militants.  Despite the electoral defeat earlier this week, President Santos says he will not give up on ending the civil war that has killed more than 220,000 and driven at least 7 million from their homes since 1964 - and the Nobel Committee awarded the prize with that in mind:  "There is a real danger that the peace process will come to a halt and that civil war will flare up again," said the committee's Kaci Kullmann Five.  "We hope it will encourage all good initiatives and all the parties who could make a difference in this process in Colombia," she added.

WTF is going on in the Philippines?  The government has nominated TeoDoro "Teddy Boy" Locsin as its United Nations ambassador - apparently aware that his Twitter account is a cesspool of anti-Semitic ranting and raving.  The 67-year old ex-journalist and politician called for a new Auschwitz and a "final solution" to solve the Philippines "drug problem".  The tweets, now scrubbed and apologized for, were in support of whackjob President Rodrigo Duterte's similar comments.  More than 3,500 people with alleged links to drug use or dealing have been killed in vigilante lynchings or extra-judicial shootings by police since Duterte took office and gave the bloodshed his blessing.  More than 10,000 people have signed a petition asking the UN to refuse to certify Locsin.

Meanwhile, Duterte seems to be making good on threats to push his country further away from its long-time military alliance with the US, because of Washington's criticism of Duterte's blood drug war.  Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana - who earlier this week tried to calm the boiling seas - now says joint patrols in the South China Sea have been cancelled; and, 107 US troops involved in operating surveillance drones against Muslim militants will leave once the Philippines acquires those intelligence-gathering capabilities in the near future.  All this while China settles in on new military bases constructed without Manila's permission on Philippine islets and reefs in the South China Sea.

US President Barack Obama formally lifted his country's econmic sanctions on Myanmar, now that the government has had a democratic change and certain reforms have been instituted.  The sanctions were put in place while a military junta ruled the country and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest - she is now de facto leader of the country, with her political party holding a majority of parliament seats. 

A further deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow:  US Secretary of State John Kerry is calling for an investigation in Russian and Syrian war crimes, referring to the bombings of aid convoys and civilians in Aleppo as "beyond accidental".  Speaking alongside his French counterpart Kerry said, "Russia, and the regime, owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children," adding, "These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes."  Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians and aid convoys.

The US and Finland signed a joint defense cooperation pact, hours after Russian SU-27 fighter jets twice violated or came really, really close to violating Finnish air space.  Russia has spent months testing the borders of its far northern neighbors with unauthorized flyovers or border flights interpreted as mild provocations.  Finland is not in NATO, but cooperates with it closely; the new agreement (.pdf link) expands information-sharing, joint training, research, and defence against nuclear and other non-conventional threats.