Oscar Pistorius’ fate is decided this week – Hong Kong appears to bide its time with student protests – There’s a quiet revolution going on in America – And much more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The sentencing phase of the oscar Pistorius Murder Trial begins today in Pretoria.  The Olympian and Paralympian faces up to 15 years in prison for culpable homicide, the lesser charge on which the judge decided in the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.  Pistorius never denied pulling the trigger, and for some reason the judge believed his account it was an accident.

One in seven Australians lives below the poverty line, even after more than two decades of economic growth.  The Council of Social Service reports 18 percent of those 2.55 million people are children.  Many of those who’ve fallen behind did so because of out of control housing costs.

At least one person is dead and dozens are hurt as Typhoon Vongfong hit the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan, and was downgraded to a tropical storm.  It’s still expected to dump a lot of rain on the most populated areas.  The national weather agency is warning of landslides, floods, flight cancellations, and all that other storm stuff as it heads for Tokyo.  Meanwhile, Cyclone Hudhud has also been downgraded after slamming into India’s east coast.  Some 350,000 people were evacuated before the storm hit.

Police have begun removing protesters’ barricades in Hong Kong, and it appears to be a careful and cautious exercise.  Cops removed barriers at the peripheries of the Occupy Central protests in the name of resuming normal traffic patterns.  The pro-democracy protests gained some steam over the weekend, but the numbers dropped down again as Monday rolled around.  China has shown no signs of giving in to the protesters’ demand that Beijing allow any candidate to run in the 2017 election for Hong Kong chief executive.

International donors pledged US$5.4 Billion to help the Palestinians rebuild Gaza, exceeding the $4 Billion the Palestinian authority was expecting at the conference in Cairo.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged total transparency and said it would take at least three years to rebuild that which Israeli missiles did destroyed during the August war.

At least ten people were killed and several others wounded when a car bomb parked near a crowded cafe in the Somali capital Mogadishu.  Authorities blame the terrorist group al-Shabab.

Marriage Equality is coming to the USA piece by piece.  A Federal Judge knocked down the Alaska’s ban on gay marriages, ruling it as discriminatory.  That makes Alaska the 30th American state with Marriage Equality as law, and the 11th to achieve in a week.