Good Morning Australia!! - Is Russia covering up a treaty-busting nuclear blast? - A cop meets justice five years after "I can't breathe" - Another specter knocks on the economy's door - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Four Russian nuclear radiation monitoring stations have gone silent, prompting new concerns that Moscow has something to cover-up after the 8 August explosion at a missile test range that killed seven people.  The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) says the stations are part of the 300 location network of sensors it uses to monitor the atmosphere to ensure no nation out there is testing nuclear weapons.  The two closest to the mysterious explosion near the border with Norway went offline right after the event; another two downwind followed on 13 August.  Russia denies a nuclear explosion took place.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is banning an LGBT group from holding a meeting this week, and Palestinian police are threatening to arrest anyone involved in the gathering.  AlQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society planned to gather in the West Bank city of Nablus.  The group says, "The police claimed it goes against 'traditional Palestinian values,' accusing us as (being) 'foreign agents'," adding that police called "on citizens to complain about any 'suspicious' activities and for the persecution of alQaws staff and activists.  

The New York Police Department finally fired the cop who choked Eric Garner to death five years ago, one of the important injustices that gave rise to the "Black Lives Matter" movement in the US.  Garner was selling loose cigarettes on a street corner on Staten Island on 17 July 2014, and was met with a phalanx of police officers.  One of them, Daniel Pantaleo, put Garner into a choke-hold technique that is expressly prohibited by the NYPD, as Garner begged for his life repeating, "I can't breathe."  A state grand jury declined to press criminal charges, and the federal civil rights investigation didn't finish until after Donald Trump occupied the White House, so no charges there either.  The family had earlier settled the case against NYC for AU$8.7 Million.  

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation adopting the US' strictest standards on when police can use force.  This bill came about after Sacramento police shot and killed Stephon Clark as he stood in his own backyard last year, with officers somehow confusing his mobile phone for a gun.  "As California goes, so does the rest of the United States of America," Newsom said with more than a little bit of wishful thinking.  "We are doing something today that stretches the boundaries of possibility."

A young rape survivor in El Salvador was acquitted at her retrial on charges she had an abortion three years ago.  Now 21-years old, Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez miscarried her pregnancy at 32 weeks; but in El Salvador, poor women are routinely accused of violating the country's total ban on women's reproductive rights when they miscarry, and her doctors ratted her out to police and prosecutors.  She was convicted and served 33 months of a 30-year prison sentence before her conviction was overturned.  The United Nations has already urged El Salvador to change its "draconian" abortion laws.

Another indicator of an oncoming global recession:  Germany's Bundesbank and Deutsche Bank both said the economy contracted on the quarter from April to June, following a similar contraction in the previous quarter.  A recession is declared in back-to-back negative quarters, and thus it appears that Europe's manufacturing powerhouse is in a technical recession.  "The bigger picture is that the trade conflicts and uncertainty are finally starting to hurt one of the most open economies," said Carsten Brzeski, the chief economist for ING bank in Germany.  Last week, the Dow Jones tanked after the inversion of the yield curve, which many economists see as an accurate predictor of recession.

Back during the Cold War, the PTB used to teach people like me that Capitalism and Democracy went hand in hand.  Not so much today in Hong Kong, where the wealthiest people are calling for an end to the pro-democracy protests that have brought business to a standstill, especially in the real estate and tourism sectors.  The wealthiest man in Hong Kong, 91-year old Li Ka-Shing, took out full page newspaper ads calling on the youthful protesters to stop "in the name of love".  The ABC reports that the disruption to business has cost Hong Kong's wealthiest tycoons billions of US Dollars since the protests began in June.