Hello Australia!! - The US returns migrant children to a facility known to treat them very badly - Brazil's Supreme Court considers freeing Lula - Ukraine feels betrayed by Europe - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The US has managed to manufacture a full scale crisis at its southern border, one that didn't exist before inauguration day in 2016.  Amid revelations that more than 300 children of undocumented immigrants were being kept in filthy, unsafe, and otherwise deplorable conditions at a facility in Texas, the acting head of US Customs and Border Protection John Sanders announced he is stepping down.  He did not directly address the situation with the children nor make public any reason for stepping down.

A day earlier, lawyers announced the findings of their court-ordered visit to the Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas a few days earlier:  They found filthy, hungry, inconsolable children struggling to soothe one another without any help from the adult agents, no soap or toothpaste, lice infestations, no mattresses to sleep on.  "How is it possible that you both were unaware of the inhumane conditions for children, especially tender-age children at the Clint Station?" asked Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, in a letter to John Sanders before he resigned.  Volunteers and area residents have been trying to deliver donations of diapers, soap, sleeping bags, and stuffed animals for the children - the US Border Patrol are refusing it.

And then on Tuesday, there was word of a cruel trick played on the children and their advocates:  The Border Patrol announced that 300 children were being taken away from the Clint facility - only for agency officials to disclose later that more than 100 children had been returned to the very same troubled station.  When asked why the children had been returned, an anonymous official said it was "because the numbers have been reduced". 

So where are those refugees coming from?  Central America, and especially from Honduras where military police opened fire on student protesters at a university in the capital Tegucigalpa.  The growing anti-government demonstrations are demanding the resignation of conservative, US-backed president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who they accuse of adopting more authoritarian policies.  Because of the crackdown on human rights, violence, and generally awful economy, thousands have fled north to the US.

Meanwhile on Manus Island.. Papua New Guinea officials will charne a Manus Island asylum seeker with Arson and Attempted Suicide after he locked himself in his room and set it ablaze.  30-year old Ravinder Singh was reportedly despondent and "fed up over not being given medical treatment", according to the SBS.   He suffered burns to his face and hands.

Anyway..

Brazil's Supreme Court is deciding whether to free Leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from prison, where he is serving a sentence for corruption and money-laundering charges that he and supporters say were trumped-up.  Supporters say his April 2018 imprisonment was politically motivated to keep him out of the presidential election, which was won by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.  Lula's appeal gained a boost in recent weeks after The Intercept revealed a conspiracy between prosecutors and judges to engineer a conviction against Lula.  

The Council of Europe has restored Russia's voting rights, five years after suspending them because of the war in Ukraine.  The Kremlin described the vote as a "victory for common sense" and advocates - mainly French and German - argued that it was better to have Russia in rather than out so that Russian citizens could still have access to the European Court of Human Rights.  But, Ukraine is furious.  The Ukrainian delegation walked out of the Council of Europe vote and President Volodymyr Zelensky accused his "European partners" of ignoring his concerns.  Russia still occupies the Crimean Peninsula and hold 24 Ukrainian sailors captured in the Black Sea a few months ago.

Governor J.B. Pritzker of the great state of Illinois signed legislation making recreational Cannabis legal, allowing folks to purchase up to 30 grams at licensed dispensaries as of 1 January 2020.  The first year of sales is expected to raise US$57 million in taxes during the first year.  Illinois is the 11th US state to legalize it, and the first to do so by legislative action rather than by a pubic referendum.

Israel's SpaceIL private space exploration company says it will not try a second moonshot after its Beresheet unmanned drone crashed onto the surface of the moon in April.  For some reason, the company claims the crash has been widely hailed as "an exceptional success", and "an attempt to repeat a trip to the moon is not enough of a challenge".  SpaceIL will instead search for a different mission.

Looks like that SpaceX launch with the Aussie weather satellites went well.