Americans march for “Justice For Trayvon” – A Russian dissident takes advantage of his temporary reprieve from prison – Patients at an Irish Hospital might have been exposed to an incurable disease that slowly destroys the brain.  Scary stuff in today’s CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Thousands attended peaceful protests across the US, a week after a Florida jury cleared a white judge’s son of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.  The gunman George Zimmerman admitted to following, confronting, fighting, and shooting Martin, and claimed self-defense.  The people taking part in the “Justice For Trayvon” rallies are demanding federal civil rights charges be brought against Zimmerman.  Celebrities such as Jay Z and Beyonce as well as political leaders were also part of the protests.

Five crewmembers of the Costa Concordia have reached plea deals with an Italian court, and will serve prison terms ranging up to two and a half years.  The Costa Concordia shipwrecked on Italy’s Tuscan coast in January 2012, causing the deaths of 32 passengers and crew.  The captain is charged separately, with manslaughter and abandoning ship.

Russian anti-corruption leader Alexei Navalny hit the streets of Moscow to campaign for mayor.  This comes a day after a court allowed him to remain free while appealing his five year prison term on embezzlement charges, which Navalny and his supporters say were trumped up by President Vladimir Putin in revenge for Navalny’s relentless criticism of corruption. 

Dozens of patients of Ireland’s Beaumont Hospital in Dublin may have been exposed to brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) as a result of improperly handled surgical instruments.  CJD is similar to mad Cow Disease, and causes holes to appear in the brain.  There’s no cure and it’s slow and fatal.  Beaumont has disposed of the instruments, as the ‘prions’ that transfer CJD to patients through open wounds survive the sterilization process.

Colombia’s FARC rebels say they’ve captured an American soldier, but are willing to release him to further the peace talks going on the Havana right now.  The Marxist guerrillas are negotiating with the government to come in from the cold and rejoin the nation’s political process.  The soldier is identified as Kevin Scott Sutay, an Afghan war veteran, and the US Embassy in Bogota is demanding his release.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative ruling block appears to be on track for big victories in today’s upper house elections.  It would give him a free hand to further push his “Abenomics”, a mix of big spending and cheap money from the central bank.  But critics say it would also empower Abe to pursue his social agenda of recasting Tokyo's wartime history with a less apologetic tone, and getting rid of the Pacifist pasts of Japan’s post-war constitution.

A man set off a homemade explosive in Beijing International Airport, apparently in revenge for 2005 attack by state security forces that left him disabled and in a wheelchair.  The whole thing was captured on cell phone cameras.  The bomber was the only person injured.

An initial report confirms that insecticide was the contaminant in a free school lunch that killed 23 children in India’s Bihar state last week.  The kids fell ill within minutes of eating and were rushed to hospital, where doctors tried to save as many as possible.  Investigators are looking into whether cooking oil was stored in a vessel that previously contained insecticide.