Music legend Joe Cocker is dead – A bin lorry tears through a crowd of Christmas shoppers – Pope Francis stuns the Vatican with harsh criticism for Christmas – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

English soul singer Joe Cocker is dead at age 70, after a battle with lung cancer.  He’s best known for his unique versions of “Feeling Alright”, “With a Little Help From My Friends” (which he performed at Woodstock), “You Are So Beautiful”, and the international smash love song “Up Where We Belong” with Jennifer Warnes.  Sir Paul McCartney joined the praise for Cocker coming in from every continent, saying he’’’ be “forever grateful” to his “good mate” for turning “With A Little Help From My Friends” into a “soul anthem”.

A bin lorry plunged into a sidewalk filled with Christmas shoppers in Glasgow, killing six people and injuring at least seven more, eventually crashing into a hotel near Queen Street Station.  At least one witness said the driver appeared to be having a fit of some sort, but that is under investigation.  Out of respect, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said flags will fly at half-staff at government buildings.

In Nantes in western France, a van ploughed through a crowd of shoppers and crashed, injuring at least ten people.  Police say the driver then stabbed himself.  Some witnesses claimed the driver yelled “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great”), although authorities said that is unclear.  Another driver yelled the same Islamic slogan in Dijon in eastern France one day earlier as he aimed his vehicle at Christmas shoppers, injuring 11 people.  Back in Nantes, authorities have a strict embargo on conjecture about the drivers’ motive.

Suspected Boko Haram militants carried out bombings in two cities in northeastern Nigeria.  The first, at a bus station in Gombe, killed at least 20 people.  Another six people died when the second blast struck a marketplace in Bauchi.  Between the two attacks, scores of people were injured. 

Pakistan is fast-tracking the execution of militants, in reaction to the Taliban’s attack on a school in Peshawar last week.  Some 50 people convicted of terrorism are facing an imminent trip to the gallows, and another 450 are expected to follow in short order.  Amnesty international opposes the executions and says they will do nothing to protect Pakistani civilians from further Taliban attacks.  The act that sparked this is the Taliban’s attack on a school in Peshawar in which militants went from classroom to classroom killing 132 children and more than a dozen adults.

North Korea’s Internet service (available only to the ruling elites) is suffering mysterious (hah) interruptions.  It’s hard to tell exactly what is going on, but some analysts are saying that the hermit kingdom is completely cut off.  It comes days after the US FBI accused North Korea of responsibility for the hack attack on Sony Pictures, which might have been in retaliation for Sony making an anti-North Korea comedy.  But just to throw it out there, some people (who really do know what they’re talking about) say they’re not yet convinced that Pyongyang carried out the Sony hack.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for Sony Pictures now says the movie studio is still considering an Internet release of “The Interview”, the movie that’s apparently at the heart of the hack.  This goes against days of Sony claiming that it would not seek other portals for the movie, after most major American cinema chains refused to carry it because of threats of physical violence from whomever hacked Sony.

The US and western allies overrode China’s objections and added a discussion of North Korea’s human rights record to the Security Council’s schedule.  China is Pyongyang’s only friend in the world and claimed that discussing North Korea’s crimes against its own people would “cause an escalation” in regional tensions.  Australian UN Ambassador Gary Quinlan countered that the Kim Jong-un regime’s “atrocities against its own people have created an inherently unstable state.”

Pope Francis’ gift to the Vatican Curia was a good tongue lashing.  Addressing stunned cardinals and clerics who make up the bureaucracy that run the city-state and the Roman Catholic Church, Francis listed no fewer than 15 major problemsNicaragua   he’d like to see corrected.  He specifically mentioned “Spiritual Alzheimer’s disease”, forgetting salvation and walling themselves off in posh offices;  “Rivalry and vainglory”, known to most of us as “office politics”;  and various other degrees of indifference towards the people and materialism.

A Chinese company began work on the first access roads it hopes will lead to a massive 280 kilometer shipping canal cutting across Nicaragua, one that would dwarf the Panama Canal to the south.  Chinese telecoms magnate Wang Jing is backing the US$50 Billion project, which will also include a free-trade zone and an international airport.  Sort-of Leftist President Daniel Ortega is 100 percent behind the project, which he hopes will vastly improve the fortunes of one of Latin America’s poorest countries.  Environmentalists are trying to block it, saying it will destroy the ecosystem of Lake Nicaragua, the largest freshwater reserve in Central America.