A date is set for Peter Greste’s trial – Is a big US tech company helping China keep its people in the dark? – And after a year at sea, the castaway is finally home!  All that and more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga has arrived back home in El Salvador.  The 37-year old was found washed up on a beach in the Marshall islands two weeks ago, saying he had been lost at sea since December 2012.  He had been dealing with severe dehydration, but Alvarenga had long stopovers in Hawaii and Los Angeles, where doctors had checked his health and ability to continue the trip.

Australian journalist Peter Greste will face trial in Egypt next week, on 20 February.  Greste and some of his Al Jazeera colleagues are accused of having links to the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood, which they deny.  If convicted, Greste may be jailed for up to seven years.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is accused of censoring certain sensitive topic in the Chinese language.  A report in the UK Guardian newspaper says running a search for “Dalai Lama” on Bing in Chinese would produce results from state-run media.  But the same search in English would direct users to the Dalai Lama’s own website and other pages such as a pro-Tibetan independence website.  Searches on other sensitive topics, such as recently convicted former official Bo Xilai.  Microsoft didn’t respond to the report.

13 people were killed in a hand grenade attack on a theater in Peshawar, Pakistan.  One of the grenades blew up the main door, and two more exploded inside the theater as about 80 people were watching a movie called “Yarana,” which means friendship in the Pashto language.  The Pakistani Taliban denied responsibility and condemned the attack.

As South African President Jacob Zuma tried to accent the positive in his State of the Union address, people near Pretoria were engaged in violent protests against the lack of basic services like water and electricity.  At the same time, the Rand is at its lowest since the 2008 crash, the mining industry is paralyzed, and there are questions about President Zuma's 20 million dollar homestead, built at taxpayers' expense.

Penguins!

Hundreds of Okinawans protested the arrival of US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, making it clear they do not want US troops on the island at all.  Kennedy was meeting a local mayor to push a plan to move some 25 thousand US troops to a base to be built on the island’s north end.  The Japanese and US governments back the plan, but the mayor of Nago stands in the way.

Venezuelan journalists took to the streets of Caracas to protest newsprint shortages.  Paper is the latest product to fall into short supply as President Nicolas Maduro’s government withholds the foreign currency the newspapers need to buy newsprint on which to publish.  They accuse Maduro of crippling the industry and impoverishing the political discourse.

President Daniel Ortega is free and clear to run for a third consecutive term, now that Nicaragua’s new constitution has come into effect.  The document approved last month also scraps the minimum required votes for election and allows the president to issue decrees with force of law.  The conservative opposition is not happy with it, and says the reforms were designed to serve the interests of the former Sandinista guerilla president.