A disappointing ruling for Peter Greste’s family – Traffickers abandon ship and leave hundreds of people adrift off Italy – There’s mounting evidence of how “austerity” kills humans – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Aussie journalist Peter Greste’s long and winding road to freedom got a little more twisted when an Egyptian court ordered a retrial of his conviction on charges of spreading false news.  His family was hoping the case would be tossed and Greste could return home.  Peter is trying to circumvent the whole thing by asking President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to deport him before the retrial.  Greste and two al Jazeera colleagues have been in prison in Egypt for a year on the questionable convictions.

More than 76,000 people were killed in the Syrian Civil War in 2014, making it the deadliest year in the conflict.  Of the total, 17,790 were civilians, including 3,501 children.  More than 200,000 have been killed in the war since it began in March 2011. 

Italy says a merchant vessel with 400 immigrants and no crew is adrift off the southeast near Puglia.  An Icelandic Coast Guard vessel patrolling the area as part of the European Union’s frontier control mission identifies it as the Sierra Leone-flagged Ezadeen.  The crew – believed to be traffickers – abandoned ship, leaving one of the immigrants to find the radio and broadcast a distress call to Italy.

BTW, the Pope’s New Year’s address railed against human trafficking and slavery.

That break in the weather over the Java Sea where AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed was pretty short-lived.  Heavy seas again stopped divers reaching the wreck on the sea floor, delaying the recovery of the black box flight data and cockpit voice recorders.  Of the 162 passengers and crew on board, nine bodies have been recovered from the water.  The first was identified as 49-year old Hayati Luthfiah Hamid, who was returned to her family and buried in an Islamic ceremony on Thursday.

Shanghai police are denying reports that fake money or coupons tossed from a high-rise window triggered the deadly human stampede at the city’s New Year’s Eve event.  Investigtors say it happened after the stampede.  President Xi Jinping is ordering an investigation into the deaths of at least 36 people, not all of whom have been identified.  Hospital workers are showing photos of the unidentified to people coming around, seeking information on missing family members.

Lithuania switched over to the Euro.

France would love to award its Legion D’Honneur to economist Thomas Piketty, but he does not want it.  “I do not think it is the government’s role to decide who is honorable,” Piketty said.  Piketty is the author of the international best seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, a scathing critique of the unequal distribution of wealth which causes social and economic instability.  He’s proposing a global progressive wealth tax to stop the wealth of the world from being amassed by a small number of people and families (ahem Gina and Rupert, ahem).  Once an ally of France’s ruling Socialist Party, Piketty says France ought to spend less time on awards and more on reviving Europe’s economy.  Although it’s rare for anyone to turn down the Legion D’Honneur, he’s in good company:  Jean-Paul Sartre and radiology pioneers Pierre and Marie Curie also said “Non merci”.

A new study says austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) worsened the West African Ebola Epidemic.  Professors from three leading UK universities authored the study appearing in the medical journal The Lancet.  It says the IMF’s policies forced poorer nations to prioritize debt repayment over sound social spending like healthcare gutted budgets that could have been used to stem the killer virus.  “Under-funded, insufficiently staffed, and poorly prepared health systems” in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia were already acknowledged to be the major reason the outbreak spread so rapidly.  Almost 8,000 people have died since the beginning of 2014, out of more than 20,000 infections.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been sworn in for her second term.  She vowed to extend social programs that have successfully lifted more than 36 million Brazilians out of poverty and solved food insecurity problems.  In her inauguration speech, Rousseff said that education will be her next priority and that corruption must be wiped out.

And the New Year wouldn’t be complete without Lion Dances.  In Hong Kong.