Islamic State is putting down roots in another continent – The Pope sacks his top cop – A second member of the Rolling Stones extended family dies in a week – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Islamic State (IS) is expanding into northern Africa, according to the head of the US military’s Africa Command.  General David Rodriguez says there could be “a couple of hundred” IS fighters undergoing training at camps in eastern Libya.  The country has been a mess since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, with various factions fighting for power.  Some Islamist militants already declared allegiance to IS earlier this year.  Rodriguez says the camps are in their earlier stages and the US is watching “carefully to see how it develops”.

Sweden’s Leftist Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says he will call for snap elections on 22 March, after his coalition partners sided with the opposition and blocked his budget.  The far-right Sweden Democrats hold only a few seats, just enough to swing votes to one side or the other and emerge as power brokers.  PM Lofven’s party and his Green allies agreed to the snap elections to allow voters to “make a choice in the face of this new political landscape”.  The current government has been in power for less than three months.

A former director of Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras says that kickback schemes are just the way things are done in the country.  Paulo Roberto Costa spoke before a congressional hearing.  Costa was under investigation for alleged corruption, but agreed to name-names and helped uncover a scheme to funnel contract money to ruling party coffers.  President Dilma Rousseff is a former Petrobras chair, and she denies any knowledge of bribery.

Pope Francis has sacked the commander of the Swiss Guards over Daniel Anrig’s stiff, authoritarian style.  A rather terse notice in the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said, “The Holy Father has ordered that Colonel Daniel Rudolf Anrig end his term on 31 January, at the conclusion of the extension of his mandate.”  One rather relieved Swiss Guard didn’t give his name when he told Italian reporters that “this is the end of a dictatorship”.  The Swiss guard is frequently seen around the Pope wearing those boldly-colored medieval uniforms with puffs and plumes and swords – but behind the scenes is a modern paramilitary force with pepper spray, Glocks, and H&K MP5s.

A panel of US health experts failed to decide whether a lifetime ban should be lifted on gay men donating blood.  The outdated ban was born in the AIDS panic of the 1980s.  Some still are worried that a relaxed policy could increase risk of transmission during blood transfusions, while others say that modern testing methods have made that extremely unlikely.  The US Food and Drug Administration doesn’t have to act on whatever the panel says, although it does frequently follow its advice.

Another death on the Rolling Stones family:  Keyboardist Ian McLagan died at age 69 from complications after a stroke in his home in Austin, Texas.  He came up in the 1960s with the British band Small Faces, which later became Faces, pounding the bejeebuz out of Wurlitzer electric piano on the track “Stay With Me”.  Later on, he played keyboards with the Stones, especially known for that electric piano goodness on “Miss You” off of “Some Girls”.  A day earlier, frequent Stones saxophone player Bobby Keys died in Tennessee.