China puts a human rights activist on trial – A one-time US presidential hopeful faces decades in prison – FIFA is getting really, really worried about Brazil’s World Cup readiness – And the return of Toronto’s crack-smoking mayor, in your CareerSpot World News Briefs.

China has begun the trial of a prominent human rights lawyer who campaigned against corruption and demanded the public officials reveal their true wealth.  Xu Zhiyong is charged with “gathering crowds to disrupt public order.”  It comes as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that relatives of many of China's political elite – including the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping, and the son and son-in-law of former Premier Wen Jiabao – own offshore companies in international tax havens.

US federal prosecutors are charging the conservative former governor of the state of Virginia with illegally accepting lavish gifts from a businessman while he was in office.  Bob McDonnell was frequently mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2016.  Authorities say McDonnell and his wife took thousands and thousands of dollars in gifts, including a Rolex watch, in exchange for promoting products from the money-man’s dietary supplement company.  The McDonnells deny it.  They face a maximum of 30 years in the slam if convicted.

Toronto’s extraordinarily ridiculous buffoon of a crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford has been caught with his brain cells addled – again.  Ford promised Toronto voters that he’d stop his substance-abusing ways.  But, like his earlier denials of his crack habit, that turned out to be crap.  Ford was caught on video, drunk and swearing in a Jamaican patois.  Toronto is Canada’s largest and most economically important city, and the fourth largest city in North America – but its City Council was forced to strip the oft-blundering Ford of most of his powers, so he can’t hurt anyone. 

Authorities in Italy filed new charges against former senior Vatican cleric Monsignor Nonzio Scarano, already charged with attempting to smuggle more than A$27 Million into Italy.  Now, prosecutors added money-laundering charges onto that.  Under past papacies, the Vatican didn’t cooperate with Italian corruption investigations, but that changed last summer with Pope Francis, who has vowed to fight corruption at the Vatican bank.

FIFA is threatening to drop Curitiba, Brazil as a World Cup host city because of its ill state of preparations for the games less than five months from now.  FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said that work at the Arena da Baixada stadium wasn’t just delayed, it is seriously behind schedule.  That’s the stadium where Australia is supposed to take on Spain.  Six out of Brazil’s twelve World Cup stadiums are not ready.

Argentina is trying to stop the bleeding of its foreign currency reserves by slapping a big tax on items bought from major online shopping sites such as Amazon and eBay.  All such purchases will be subject to a 50 percent tax, the items will have to be picked up at government customs offices, and individual forms will be required for each item purchased.  Sounds like red tape, eh?  Well, Argentina’s reserves of hard currencies dropped by 30 percent in 2013. 

Oh, hell no.  Not even in an emergency.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir is accusing the UN peacekeeping mission of hiding rebels and guns at their camps – a charge the UN denies.  Those UN bases are sheltering something:  More than 70,000 South Sudan civilians trying to escape the fighting between Kiir’s government forces and rebels loyal to his former vice president.  Pressure is mounting on South Sudan's warring parties to reach a ceasefire to end weeks of bitter fighting and atrocities on both sides.

Two members of the Russian punk rock act Pussy Riot will appear at a concert in New York City organized by Amnesty International.  The bill also includes The Flaming Lips, Imagine Dragons, Lauryn Hill, and Tegan and Sara, among others.  Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova spent 16 months in prison for singing a protest song against Vladimir Putin in a Moscow cathedral.  They were granted amnesty in a hastily passed law that Pussy Riot and human rights groups say was a cosmetic gesture meant to pretty-up Russia’s dismal record before the Sochi Olympics.