Good Morning, Australia! – The sentence is more than five centuries in prison for a fascist’s crimes against humanity – A ray of hope for migrants in desperation off Southeast Asia – The death penalty goes down in an unexpected place – And more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

The former spy chief for Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet has been sentenced to 505 years in prison.  The Supreme Court actually tacked on another 15 years to the original 490-year sentence handed down to ex-general Manuel Contreras for crimes against humanity, including the torture and murder of Pinochet’s political opponents.  Three other Pinochet cronies were sentenced alongside the 86-year old Contreras.  Under Pinochet's 17-year rule, more than 36,000 people were tortured and at least 3,200 killed or disappeared.  But Pinochet died before paying for his crimes.

Indonesia and Malaysia are agreeing to temporarily provide shelter to thousands of migrants crammed onto dilapidated fishing boats drifting off of Southeast Asia.  The agreement came at a regional emergency meeting on the immigration crisis, and is on the condition that the international community repatriates or resettles the immigrants within a year.  So far, there’s no plan to go out to sea and find and rescue the rest of these migrants.  There could be as many as 7,000 such migrants out there from Myanmar’s coast to the Malacca Straits.

Islamic State militants have taken full control of the Syrian historic site Palmyra, raising fears they will destroy the priceless ruins while selling off smaller treasures on the black market.  Syrian state TV acknowledged that pro-government forces have withdrawn.  Aside from the cultural losses, it's a big defeat for the government of President Bashar al-Assad because Palmyra lies on a highway that would allow extremists to advance to key government-held areas – including Homs and Damascus.

Israel has killed a plan to ban Palestinians from riding on the same buses as Israelis heading into the West Bank.  Opposition parties and even some pro-settlement conservatives joined with Palestinians in condemning the idea as racist and reeking with the stench of apartheid.  The Israeli Defense ministry implemented the scheme – apparently unbeknownst to the Prime Minister – in response to requests from Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank.

Nine high school students and two adults were killed in central Mexico when their vehicle collided with a trailer that broke off of a big rig truck.

Five of the world’s largest banks agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges in the US, and pay fines totaling US$5.7 Billion.  They are: JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup, RBS, and UBS.  US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said employees used an Internet chat room to rig currency exchange rates, harming “countless consumers, investors and institutions around the world”. 

Lawmakers in the rural, conservative state of Nebraska in the middle of the United States voted overwhelmingly to abolish the death penalty.  Although the motivations weren’t as pure as one would think:  Some lawmakers said that if they can’t trust the government to manage healthcare, then they shouldn’t trust it to decide who lives and dies.  Okay, although one would hope that the immorality of killing and the fact that the death penalty is completely ineffective at preventing crime should have played a role in it somewhere.  Idiot Governor Pete Ricketts is threatening to veto the measure, but lawmakers rejected capital punishment by a margin big enough to override that.