Three assaults on journalism – Thailand braces for contentious elections – Snowden is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – Bieber again – And a lot more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Australian journalist Peter Greste will go on trial Egypt on charges of aiding members of a terrorist organization. The Al Jazeera reporter has been held in an Egyptian prison for a month.  He’s one of twenty journos facing charges in Egypt after the crackdown on Islamists that followed the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government.  Egypt’s military caretakers have viewed al Jazeera’s coverage as biased towards the Islamists.

Michael Schumacher’s managers are dismissing reports that doctors will soon bring him out of a medically induced coma.  The Formula 1 racing legend suffered a devastating head injury on 29 December when he was skiing off-piste in the French Alps and he hit a rock.  Doctors have declined to give a prognosis.  A month later, he remains in the coma in “stable” condition.

Thailand authorities say 10,000 police officers will be deployed throughout the capital to protect Sunday’s elections.  Opposition anti-democracy protesters are vowing to disrupt the poll, which they are widely expected to lose even if they’d bothered to contest it.  The protesters blocked people from casting ballot during early voting last weekend.

US cops arrested a former Ecuadorean police commander accused of kidnapping and torturing Leftist rebels during the 1980s.  Edgar Vaca was wanted under an Interpol warrant.  He will be sent back to Ecuador for trial.  Prosecutors say the three Marxist rebels were “tortured, beaten, and submitted to particularly sadistic forms of torture, including electric shocks to their genitals”.

Rescuers in southern Peru managed to locate five European tourists who got lost in a hike in rough terrain on the Apurimac River.  The guides were able to lead the lost hikers to safety.  The five were on their way to see some awesome Incan ruins at Choquequirao, reachable only by a two-day hike from the nearest town Cusco, but they lost their way.

Two Norwegian lawmakers are nominating US National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize.  They say Snowden has “revealed the nature and technological prowess of modern surveillance,” and by doing so has contributed to peace.  America’s reaction?  To liken journalists to criminals.  National Intelligence Director James Clapper went before congress to demand that Snowden and his “accomplices” (a word never used in America except to refer to criminals) should return his trove of intelligence secrets to the US.  Last week, Snowden said he no longer had possession of the documents, which are entirely in the hands of journalists.

A conservative US congressman was forced to apologize to a reporter after going into a psychotic rage and threatening to murder him by throwing the man over the railing on an upper level of the United States Capitol onto the marble floor below.  Rep. Michael Grimm from New York’s Staten Island lost it when the reporter asked about campaign finance irregularities, but apparently the idiot didn’t realize the camera and mic were still live.  As a result, the previously unknown legislator is getting ripped in the national media, called a “thug” and having his past tantrums exposed to portray him as someone unfit to serve.  Meanwhile, speculation grows as to which substance has altered Grimm’s brain chemistry from a normal person.  But ultimately, Grimm managed to distract the national conversation from what Republican Party bosses hoped would have been about their reply to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

If there’s a more efficient way than a modern cruise ship to give diarrhea to nearly 700 people at once, I’ve yet to hear it.  The Royal Caribbean “Explorer of the Seas” made port in New Jersey after cutting short a nightmare cruise in which 630 passengers and 54 crewmembers were infected with a suspected norovirus – the worst outbreak in 20 years.  Passengers describe stricken fellow travelers “throwing up in buckets”.  Royal Caribbean is giving passengers a partial refund and coupons for their next fun-filled cruise.

Is America just freaking weird?  An elementary school teacher south of Los Angeles was arrested after authorities discovered 400 snakes in his house, some alive but most of them dead.  Not little snakes – but pythons, two meters long.  Neighbors could no longer stomach the stench of death coming from the home.  The building was also infested with rodents.  53-year old William Buchman apparently fancied himself a part-time snake breeder, but he’ll be charged with animal cruelty.

19-year old teeny-bopper star Justin Bieber turned himself in to Toronto Police to face assault charges.  Cops say the little darling got into an altercation with his limo driver on 30 December, and punched the man in the back of the head while the vehicle was in motion.  Bieber’s lawyer denies the charges.  Last week, Miami Beach cops arrested Bieber for drunken street racing in a rented Lamborghini.  Let’s hope he takes a cruise, real soon.