World AM News Briefs For Tuesday, 23 July 2019

Good Morning Australia!! - There has never before been such a crowd demanding a US governor's resignation - Poland accused of stoking violent homophobia - Could Boris be the UK's last PM? - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

Hundreds of thousands of people (maybe a more than half a million?) marched through San Juan, Puerto Rico, demanding the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rossello after the leak of his texts to his cabinet which contained hundreds of pages of heinous misogyny and homophobia.  Yesterday, Rossello stepped down as leader of the New Progressive Party and said he would not run for reelection; today he told a TV news interview "I apologize for all of the things that I have said" in the text messages.  Not good enough - people came out in masses unheard of in the island territory and even in the US.  And when people couldn't get to San Juan, they protested in their home towns, including on horseback in Mayaguez.

People in Hong Kong are demanding answers from their government after mobs of white shirted thugs wielding sticks and rods started appearing in town, attacking pro-democracy groups.  Many suspect the attackers were members of the Triads, the term for Chinese organized crime gangs.  The pattern seems to be a repeat of 2014, when the thugs-for-hire attacked pro-democracy groups to no avail because the movement grew exponentially after that.  This time around, nearly 50 people were hurt.

LGBT activists in Poland accuse the far-right PiS government and the Roman Catholic Church of inciting "a pogrom mood" after far-right criminals attacked the first pride rally ever to be held in Bialystok.  Before the parade, PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski attacked LGBT people as an "attack on the family" and "children", and as a "threat to Polish identity, to our nation, to its existence and thus to the Polish state".  At the parade, Police arrested at least 25 nazi scum, and while the rally went on despite the violence several people in the LGBT community say they now fear for their safety.  "People were throwing bottles filled with piss, firecrackers, stones.  It was a mess, basically, and is still difficult to talk about," said Hubert Sobecki of the campaigning group Love Doesn’t Exclude.  "The police were there to protect us but most were pretty terrified themselves and surprised by the number of fascists."  

South Africa's Supreme Court has ruled that anti-corruption prosecutor Busisiwe Mkhwebane had lied under oath and acted in bad faith.  Her critics accuse her of being an ally of ousted former president Jacob Zuma, who is facing corruption charges, and acting as his agent of revenge.  Last week, she claimed current President Cyril Ramaphosa failed to disclose a campaign donation to Parliament - he says bunk, and asked for a judicial review of Mkhwebane's case.

India's Chanrayaan-2 space mission got off the ground from the Sriharikota space station, after being delayed from last week's scheduled launch.  The plan is to put an unmanned probe on the Moon's south pole - making India the fourth country to successfully make it to the Moon, following the Soviet Union, the US, and China.

Boris Johnson is on the verge of being appointed UK Prime Minister, and Tories are heading for the hills.  Junior foreign office minister Alan Duncan quit rather than serve in a Johnson government - Culture Minister Margot James stepped down last week, and Finance Minister Philip Hammond said he would resign instead of waiting to be sacked by Johnson.  Rebellious Conservative back-benchers warned him to drop any plans for a no-deal Brexit, severely limiting his room to maneuver.  Oh, and new polling says that if/when Boris becomes PM, support for a new independence referendum skyrockets in Scotland, and sentiment for reuniting the six counties of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland grows.  Good luck Boris!

As expected, Donald Trump invited PM Scott Morrison to a state dinner at the White House in September, right before the United Nations' World Leaders Week.