Hello Australia!! - The highest head to roll in the Catholic church sex abuse scandal - America's failure to control yet another massacre - Voters fear a foul as polls are delayed - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Pope Francis has sacked a prominent former Roman Catholic archbishop and Cardinal over the sexual abuse of minors.  Theodore McCarrick - once the leader of the Washington, DC Archdiocese - is now at age 88 the highest-ranking figure to be removed from the priesthood in modern times.  His punishment is one step short of excommunication, and many lay watchdog groups insist that it is only a small step to address the Roman Catholic Church's global sex abuse scandal.  On Thursday, the Pope will assemble 100 bishops from around the world for a four-day summit to address issues of sexual abuse and its cover-up.  

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is appealing for calm after a last-minute delay to this weekend's presidential and parliamentary elections.  The polls will now take place on 23 February.  Opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar accused the administration of "anti-democratic acts" but also urged patience.  Election officials site murky logistical issues.

The US and Canada are warning their citizens not to travel to Haiti after a week of increasing political instability and violence.  Helicopters are ferrying out more than a hundred missionaries and tourists from those fenced-in "all inclusive" resorts.  Demonstrators are calling for US-backed President Jovenel Moise to resign over soaring inflation and failure to prosecute embezzlement from a program in which Venezuela sent free oil to Haiti to help ease poverty and economic stagnation. 

The gunman who killed five people and wounded five cops in a workplace shooting outside Chicago shouldn't have had a gun.  America's weak background check systems failed to detect Gary Martin's prison record for stabbing a woman in the 1990s.  He obtained a gun owner's card, bought the weapon, but then had the card revoked without anyone making sure he didn't keep the Smith and Wesson .40 calliber weapon used in Friday's massacre at a water valve manufacturer in Aurora, IL.  And nothing the militarized cops did in response - including wearing combat gear, riding in en masse on heavily armored vehicles, locking down the neighborhood - did a thing to stop the carnage because he already had the gun.  It was America's 39th mass shooting this year.

The world media for some reason keeps trying to say that the Yellow Vest protests are dying a little more every week - And yet French police in Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux seemed to feel it necessary to confront the demonstrators with tear gas and water cannons and worse.  A driver injured four people trying to break the protest line in Rouen in France's north.  Protesters battled police at a depot operated by online retail giant Amazon with some throwing stones at police in Toulouse.  The Yellow Vest protests began 14 weeks ago to oppose a gas price hike, and have grown into wider expressions of disillusionment in President Emanuel Macron and his pro-market, neo-liberal economic policies.