The Cardinals set a schedule, a former Prime Minister sits out his second criminal trial of the week, and Venezuela has a funeral for the late Hugo Chavez.  Saturday morning means news here on CareerSpot.  

The funeral for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was held in Caracas.  The good, bad, and ugly of world leaders attended, with particularly high representation from Latin American and Caribbean governments, many of which Chavez helped bolster with his country’s oil revenue.

Roman Catholic Cardinals have announced that the Vatican Conclave to pick the replacement for retired Pope Benedict XVI begins on Tuesday.  At that point, the doors close and (in theory) the selection process will be kept secret.  Some observers believe the Conclave could pit Italian Vatican insiders, who want a quick decision to draw attention away from the current scandals, against foreign Cardinals, some of whom may want closer scrutiny of doings at the Holy See.

In South Africa, the former lead detective in the Oscar Pistorius case has resigned from the Police.  Hilton Botha made several errors in the initial investigation and was replaced; he’s also facing attempted homicide charged for an earlier incident.  Olympic track star Oscar Pistorius is accused of murdering his girlfriend, model and TV spokeswoman Reeva Steenkamp.

Members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party held their first congress in Yangon, Myanmar.  The National League for Democracy will try to map the way forward as the nation continues its slow shift from a brutal military dictatorship to Democracy.

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Thailand and Vietnam are asking for help battling Rosewood poachers in the north.  They’ve asking Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna's (now meeting in Bangkok) 177 member nations to strictly limit trade in the endangered and highly coveted wood.  The poachers are feeding consumer demand for Rosewood in China.  But while their neighbor Cambodia is exporting thousands of cubic meters of it to China, poachers and smugglers have used Cambodia’s trade as a cover to their own illegal operations.

Former Italian Prime Minister and conservative leader Sylvio Berlusconi is being treated at a Milan hospital for an apparent eye infection.  It prevented him from attending his own trial for allegedly having sex with an underage prostitute.  On Thursday, Berlusconi was sentenced to a year in jail in a separate case, for having one of his newspapers publish a transcript of a leaked wiretap connected to a banking scandal in 2006.