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1 Pentagon teacher: A member of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal secret police who’s been accused of murder taught for more than a decade at the Pentagon’s premier university, despite repeated complaints by his colleagues about his past. Jaime Garcia is charged in criminal court in Santiago with being the mastermind in the execution-style slayings of seven people in 1973. Despite knowing of the allegations, State and Defense department officials allowed Garcia to continue working at a school affiliated with the National Defense University in Washington D.C. until last year. Some Latin America experts said the hirings by the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies reflected a continuing inclination by the U.S to overlook human rights violations in Latin America, especially in countries where it funded efforts to quash leftists.
2 Somalia drone strike: Kenyan official says a drone strike in Somalia is believed to have killed a senior member of the al-Shabab extremist group who allegedly helped plan the 2013 Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi. The official said Thursday that Adan Garar and two others are suspected to have been killed after their car was targeted near the town of Bardhere. Sixty-seven people were killed in the Westgate attack which was carried out by four gunmen from al-Shabab.
3 Albino murders: The U.N. human rights chief said there has been a sharp increase this year in attacks on albinos in East Africa, especially in Malawi and Tanzania, calling the attacks “stunningly vicious.” Six incidents have been reported by the U.N. in Malawi in 2015, compared with only four in the previous two years. The Association of Persons with Albinism in Malawi has recorded 11 attacks since December 2014. Albinos are sometimes kidnapped and killed, fueled by beliefs that their body parts will bring luck.
4 Mercenaries join fight: Hundreds of South African mercenaries are taking part in Nigeria’s military campaign against Boko Haram, operating attack helicopters, armored personnel carriers and fighting to retake towns and villages captured by the Islamist group, a senior Nigerian official said Thursday.
5 Astronauts return: A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russians and an American landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday, ending the astronauts’ nearly six months aboard the International Space Station. The capsule carried Russians Alexander Samokutayev and Elena Serova and NASA’s Barry Wilmore. They blasted off for the space station on Sept. 26. Three other astronauts remain aboard the space station.
6 Yogurt scandal: A ruling Thursday by France’s competition authority makes for rich reading, detailing a web of secret meetings, handwritten charts and phone exchanges over six years to fix prices on many of the yogurt-related goods on French supermarket shelves. Eleven companies were hit with $203 million in fines for the cartel, including Yoplait and Lactalis and makers of most of the store-brand yogurt sold around France.
Chronicle News Services