Hello Australia!! - A light for hope in the Middle East is snuffed out by Trump's betrayal of the Kurds - It's now believed that hundreds of IS fighters and supporters are on the loose because of the Turkish invasion - China switches to stark threats towards Hong Kong's democracy movement - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Donald Trump on Sunday ordered the withdrawal of almost all remaining US forces from Syria.  It's a stunningly awful development as human rights violations linked to Turkish forces pile up, and now hundreds of Islamic State militants escape from prison - as predicted - and are free to resume their campaign of terror that had been largely stopped by the Kurds who Trump betrayed.  As the Kurds are squeezed by the Turks from the north and Syria's allies the Russians from the south, "We have American forces likely caught between two opposing, advancing armies and it's a very untenable situation," said US acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper on the Sunday morning news shows.  CNN reported that senior Kurdish military official Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, William Roebuck, "You are leaving us to be slaughtered," and suggested his people would have to make a deal with the Russians.  

The Kurds say Turkey-backed gunmen ambushed and murdered a female Kurdish leader in an atrocity on the International Road near Manbij.  35-year old Professor Hevrin Khalaf of the pro-Kurdish Future Syria Party was known for fighting for a more fair and pluralistic society in the midst of the corrupt and religious-reactionary Middle East.  A Turkish Jihadist faction riddled her vehicle with bullets until it crashed, dragged her from it, raped her, and stoned her to death at the side of the road.  The driver was also murdered, as were eight other Kurdish officials and civilians.  Turkey denies having anything to do with the atrocity, while Turkish media boasted of a "successful operation".

The Turkish assault near the key-Kurdish held town of Ein Eissain northern Syria allowed 850 Islamic State militants, families, and supporters to escape from a camp for displaced people near a US-led coalition base.  Jelal Ayaf, a senior official at the camp, said only a few were recaptured and warned that "sleeper cells" had emerged from inside another part of the facility and carried out attacks.  He described the situation as "very volatile".

Moving along..

Tokyo's main airports Haneda and Narita are open again today to try and catch up after scores of flights were canceled in the wake of Typhoon Hagibis.  The human toll is now 33 dead and 19 still missing in flooding and landslides after the most powerful storm in decades to hit the central and western part of the country.  Flooding even occurred on the eastern side of the mountains that run down the center of the main island Honshu, leaving at least ten Shinkansen bullet trains in a yard at Nagano halfway underwater.

China's President Xi Jinping has upped the threatening rhetoric against Hong Kong's protesters, warning of "crushed bodies and shattered bones" for "anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country".  Now in the fifth month, the pro-democracy demonstrations are not attracting as many participants as in the peak days, so protesters are forming into smaller cells to carrying "guerrilla attacks" on Hong Kong cops and pro-Beijing targets.

Uganda's government will reintroduce the vile legislation known as the "kills the gays" bill which would impose the death penalty on LGBTQ people, and predict that this time it will pass.  US evangelicals helped to draft the legislation before it came up the first time in 2014, but pressure from the Obama legislation helped kill it - The US reduced aid, imposed visa restrictions, and cancelled military support, while the World Bank, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands also suspended or redirected aid.  However, there is no such moral leadership in the White House this time around.  

Poland's far-right PiS ruling party came out way ahead in weekend elections, not just cementing but expanding its hold on power.  But in Hungary, opposition candidates beat the far-right government's picks in local mayoral elections in Budapest and eight other cities.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through Berlin to condemn anti-Semitism and the armed attack on a synagogue last week on Yom Kippur.  They carried banners with slogans such as "No Nazis" or "Far-right terror threatens our society."  There was also criticism for police who took seven minutes to respond to the attack by a far-right gunman who killed two people.