Hello Australia!! - The rainforest is burning and blacking out Brazil's biggest city - Italy is on the brink - Moscow gets obstinate about an apparent nuclear accident - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte has resigned, blasting his Deputy PM Matteo Salvini of the far-right fascist League party as an "opportunist" and "irresponsible" for creating a new political crisis for Italy for "personal and party interests".  It's only been 14 months since the last election that put Conte's Five Star Movement into a coalition with the smaller League - but the polls have flipped, and Salvini very clearly wants to exploit the League's growing popularity by forcing snap elections.  Italy isn't yet doomed to return to fascism - Conte's resignation could allow Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio to succeed him as prime minister and simply form a new coalition with the center-Left Democrats - those negotiations are already underway, brought together by Senator and former PM Matteo Renzi.

The European Union has rejected UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's attempt to rip up the Irish backstop, which is the deal written to protect the flow of goods and people over the border separating Ireland from Northern Ireland after the Brexit.  EU countries signed onto the coordinated response just before Johnson was to visit European capitals to try to get them to restart Brexit negotiations, which they've already rejected a zillion times before.  European Council President Donald Tusk took it a step further, accusing Johnson's government of failing to admit that its policies would lead to the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.  A leaked UK government report said that a "hard Brexit" apparently favored by Johnson without new trade deals to ease the way would cause economic and social chaos.

Syrian government forces backed by the Russians closed in on the strategic town of Khan Sheikhoun, deep in the last rebel-held province of Idlib.  The main jihadist group claimed its forces were doing a "redeployment", rather that retreating.  The Syrian Civil War is slowly wrapping up after nearly eight and a half years - the rebels had controlled Khan Sheikhoun for the past five.

Moscow now says it doesn't have to share radiation data with an international monitoring group after four atmospheric monitoring stations went dark following a failed missile test.  Officials previously said the stations merely had technical difficulties.  At least seven people are known to have died in last week's disaster; local officials in northwest Russia and neighboring Norway said radiation levels spiked after the mysterious accident before the Kremlin took control and stopped all internal reporting of it.  

There is cautious relief in Cape Town, South Africa because the reservoirs are 81 percent filled which is well above the average.  At this time last year, they were only at 53 percent capacity and the metropolitan area ran out of water, forcing drastic lifestyle changes of most of its four million residents.  But officials are mindful of climate change and using less water will simply become the way things are done:  "Predictions show that rainfall will decrease further over years to come.  We must therefore continue to use water wisely," said local Environmental Affairs Minsiter Anton Bredell.  "There is a lot we can continue to do as citizens of the Western Cape especially in the area of using water responsibly and reducing water wastage further."

A giant wildfire is burning in the Brazilian rainforest, a place that is supposed to be so wet that such things occur only very rarely.  But the infernos have grown so intense that they blacked out the sky above Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city more than 2,700 kilometers away.  The state of Amazonas has declared an emergency, and the hashtag #PrayforAmazonia is surging on social media.  It's also generating a lot of criticism for far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate change denier who attacked his own government scientists when they reported that Amazon deforestation has increased since he came into office.