Good Morning Australia!! - A populist fault appears in Putin's armor - The deadline is about to pass on northern Ireland to form a new power sharing government - 40 cops are beheaded - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

First off, please do heed the evacuation warnings in northeast Queensland as Cyclone Debbie approaches.  The Bureau of Meteorology says the storm will grow to a Category Four, and it will hit Townsville earlier than previously forecast. 

Russian police arrested hundreds of people in the largest anti-government demonstrations since 2011-2012.  Demonstrators chanted, "Down with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin!", "Russia without Putin!", and "Putin is a thief!".  Among those arrested is prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny who managed to urge his followers to stick with the demonstration while stuck in a police van, "Don't try to fight for me," he tweeted, "Our issue today is the fight against corruption."  Navalny called for the protests after revelations that Putin's right hand Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev controlled a multi-billion dollar property empire that included several massive luxury estates located around Russia.  The fact that Navalny's call was heeded in 80 cities despite officials refusing to grant protest permits demonstrates his anti-corruption message is resonating much deeper than the Kremlin would care to admit.  And at least his face isn't green anymore.

Exit polls show Bulgaria's center-right GERB party won snap elections over the weekend.  Party leader Boiko Borisov said GERB was obliged to form the next government, which would make him Prime Minister for the third time since 2009.  Bulgaria is sort of the opposite of many other eastern members of the EU - its conservatives and nationalists want to stick with the European Union, while its Socialists look East for friendship with Putin's woman-hating, homophobic, religious nutter regime.

Carrie Lam is Hong Kong's new leader, which isn't much of a surprise since she was Beijing's candidate.  A total of 1,194 electors cast their votes on Sunday, and critics say that is hardly representative of the city's 7.3 million residents.  Ms. Lam is a pro-Beijing hardliner, which will not endear her to Hong Kong's bubbling democracy movement.

Northern Ireland's power-sharing talks have fallen apart, raising the prospect of another snap election or direct rule from London.  Nationalist and unionist parties have until today to form a new power-sharing government after snap elections earlier this month blocked the unionist's majority in the North for the first time since 1921.  "This talks process has run its course," said Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader Michelle O'Neill.  Sinn Fein collapsed the last Stormont government over a botched green power scheme cooked up by the Unionists. 

Iran hit 15 US companies with "reciprocal" sanctions in retaliation for US sanctions put in by the Trump administration last month.  Churning up the propaganda value, Tehran accused the companies of directly or indirectly helping Israel commit "brutal atrocities" in occupied Palestinian lands.  Some of these companies include missile maker Raytheon and a couple of gun manufacturers who produce Israeli designs who aren't going to do business with Tehran, anyway.

A rebel militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo captured and decapitated 40 police officers before making off with their guns and vehicles.  The Kamuina Nsapu militants are usually armed with machetes instead of guns.  The rebels released six cops because they spoke the local dialect.  This happened in the same area where the United Nations is searching for missing American and Swedish investigators.  

Thousands of people took the streets in cities across Chile Sunday to protest the private pension system known as AFP, a hated leftover from the fascist Pinochet dictatorship of the 1970s and '80s.  The system, designed by a bunch of people-hating neo-liberal economists from the University of Chicago in the 1950s, has been in a free-fall for years but now is paying retirees way less than the country's minimum wage.  "This is a citizen movement and not a political one," said No AFP founder Mauricio Mattus.  "For that reason we also make a call not to attend with political allusions, this is a transversal movement in which everyone can join but is far from having a political tendency."  In other words, old people having food, health care, and dignity in retirement outweighs politics.