Hello Australia! - The results of the canning by-election are in - Volkswagen is caught rigging thousands of cars to cheat - Syria's Assad must go, but when? - And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Andrew Hastie has won the Canning by-election for the Liberal Party, retaining the seat for the coalition government.  "As the incoming Member of Canning, I hope to honor Don's memory with the same spirit of service to the community here," he said of Don Randall whose death in office triggered the contest.  Hastie did not inherit Randall's commanding margin, winning with roughly 55 to 45 percent - a 6.86 percent swing to Labor.

US regulators told Volkswagen to recall about half a million cars that were sold as so-called "clean diesels".  But it turns out that rather than invent a clean technology, VW admitted it programmed the cars on-board computers to lie about emissions.  The illegal system detected when the cars were plugged in for an emissions test, and lowered its scores.  The software trick allowed the cars to emit up to 40 times the legally allowed amount of nitrogen oxide.  The company is now at risk of losing millions and millions of dollars to fines and lawsuits from enraged consumers. The development also "may call into question whether this is a clean technology at all," according to TrueCar.com analyst Eric Lyman.

With rules changing almost hourly at some European border crossings, Hungary and Slovenia allowed some refugees to cross over from Croatia.  This comes after Croatia bused refugees to the borders, one step closer to their ultimate destinations in Germany and Scandinavia.  Croatia says it cannot handle the more than 20,000 people from the Middle East and beyond who flooded into its borders since Wednesday of last week.

US Secretary of State John Kerry says Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad must go, but his departure date can be negotiated in light of the Syrian Civil War and crisis of Syrian refugees in Europe.  Kerry insists that the time is right for a diplomatic solution, now that the Russians are stepping up their support of the Assad regime.  The Syrian Civil war has been going on for more than four years, with Assad's forces fighting various rebels groups - including Islamic State, which controls vast swathes of territory in both Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Malaysian police have arrested a former ruling party official and vocal critic of corruption in the regime of Prime Minister Najib Razak.  Cops stopped Khairuddin Abu Hassan at the airport before he could flew to new York to meet with the FBI.  Mr. Hassan's lawyer Matthias Chang said authorities want to "stop him traveling and maybe to intimidate him".  Najib is under fire after around US$1 Billion disappeared from a public investment at about the time the same amount appeared in his personal accounts.  Najib denies wrongdoing.

Thousands of Roman Catholics and Cuban President Raul Castro greeted Pope Francis upon his arrival in Havana.  It was only nine months that it was revealed that the Pontiff played a key role in reopening US-Cuba relations after 53 years, a role very unlikely to have been played by his two Cold Warrior predecessors.  Francis will spend four days in Cuba and then visit the US.