MEXICO
Panel: Police executed 22
Federal police executed at least 22 people on a ranch last year, then moved bodies and planted guns to corroborate the official account that the deaths happened in a gunbattle, Mexico’s human rights commission said Thursday. One police officer was killed in the confrontation in the western state of Michoacan on May 22, 2015. The government has said the dead were drug cartel suspects who were hiding out on the ranch in Tanhuato, near the border with Jalisco state. The National Human Rights Commission said there were also two cases of torture and four more deaths caused by excessive force. It said it could not establish satisfactorily the circumstances of 15 others who were shot to death.
UNITED NATIONS
Admitting to disease spread
The United Nations is saying for the first time that it was involved in the introduction of cholera to Haiti and needs to do “much more” to end the suffering of those affected, estimated at more than 800,000 people. Researchers say there is ample evidence that cholera was introduced to Haiti’s biggest river in October 2010 by inadequately treated sewage from a U.N. peacekeeping base. The United Nations previously has claimed diplomatic immunity.
Uganda
Rebel leader flees S. Sudan
South Sudan’s rebel leader and former vice president has fled the country and was expected to emerge after weeks in hiding to speak to the press, a spokesman said Thursday, as the United Nations announced it had assisted him on part of his journey. Riek Machar crossed the border into neighboring Congo and was airlifted to the capital, Kinshasa, spokesman Mabior Garang said, adding that he was planning to travel to Ethiopia soon. In a Facebook post, the spokesman said Machar left South Sudan after a “botched attempt to assassinate” him.
ITALY
Turtle separated from twin
Marine biologists in southern Italy have separated conjoined twin loggerhead turtles and released the surviving newborn into the Mediterranean Sea. The release occurred this week along the beaches of Campania where the endangered loggerheads come to nest every year. Fulvio Maffucci of Anton Dohrn Zoological Station said Wednesday there had been only seven known births of conjoined twin loggerheads in the Mediterranean. The smaller twin was dead and significantly underdeveloped compared to the larger twin.
Compiled from wire reports