Good Morning Australia!! - Greta and ScoMo clash on the link from Global Warming to the Aussie Bushfire Crisis - Indians defy Modi's protest ban - The sins of the past might catch up to a deposed despot - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Protesters defied the Indian government's ban on protests against the controversial citizenship law that critics say opens the door to official discrimination against Muslims in the majority-Hindu country.  Most of the 23 deaths linked to the protests and the police response to it have happened in Uttar Pradesh, where 20 percent of the state's 200 million people are Muslim.  "We passed this bill to help the persecuted," claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Delhi, demanding citizens respect the decision.  The bill offers amnesty to illegal immigrants from three neighboring countries if they were fleeing religious persecution - but not if they are Muslim.

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has weighed in on Australia's bushfire and extreme heat crisis.  Decrying the government's apparent reluctance to link the fires that have come so early in the season to the undeniable reality of man-made climate change, Greta tweeted:  "Not even catastrophes like these seem to bring any political action.  How is this possible?  Because we still fail to make the connection between the climate crisis and increased extreme weather events and nature disasters like the #AustraliaFires.  That's what has to change.  Now."  

Back from vacation in Hawaii, Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended his government's response to the fire and praised the firies putting their lives on the line.  But he insisted that stopping coal exports would be "reckless" and claimed setting a stricter emissions target would have no "meaningful impact" on the global climate.  "But to suggest that increasing Australia's climate targets would have prevented these fires or extreme weather events, in Australia or anywhere else, is simply false," Morrison wrote in an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph.

At least the landing was a success.  Boeing Starliner space capsule has returned early from an aborted mission.  NASA sent it up on an Atlas rocket last week, but the capsule failed to reach the proper orbit to meet up with the International Space Station (ISS), and thus it was brought back to earth in White Sands, New Mexico so that engineers can determine what went wrong.

Around 51 people were hurt in a giant 63 car pile-up on a superhighway in Virginia, eastern USA.  Injuries range from light to life threatening.  The cause is under investigation, but there was reportedly ice and fog at the Queens Creek Bridge where the vehicles collided.

Hong Kong police clashed with pro-democracy protesters rallying in support with the Uighur Muslim minority.  After a wave of separatism and a few terrorist attacks, China basically locked down the Uighur's home province of Xinjiang and set-up massive "job training centers" - which critics claim are prison camps specializing in brainwashing internees.  Beijing denies it. 

Sudan has launched an investigation into the previous government's crackdown in the Darfur region from 2003 to the present, which has been termed the first genocide of the 21st century because of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Darfuri men, women, and children.  Former dictator Omar al-Bashir has been overthrown after 30 years in power and was recently sentenced to two years in prison for corruption.  The interim government suggests that al-Bashir could be sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for trial; a decade ago, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.