Fighting drugs cartels with torture – Atheism’s “Fifth Horseman” is dead – Phony cell phone towers are spying on calls and texts, and apparently know one knew about it until now – And much, much more in your CareerSpot World News Briefs:

Mexican police routinely use torture to extract confessions according to Amnesty International.  The human rights organization’s new report titled “Out of Control” says that torture complaints in Mexico have risen by a staggering 600 percent in the past decade.  Despite the fact that police torture is outlawed, courts still routinely accept confessions extracted through torture. 

More than 49 wedding guests are feared dead after their bus was swept away in a flood in the Indian portion of Kashmir.  So far, three people are known to have survived and one body was recovered three kilometers downstream.  But the rest are missing, and at least eight more people were killed in other incidents in the flooded Kashmir area.

The fourth US missionary to contract the Ebola virus in West Africa is being flown from Liberia to a hospital in the Middle American state of Nebraska.  51-year old Dr. Rick Sacra is expected to arrive in the special 10-bed isolation unit sometime on Friday.  Sacra apparently is not being treated with the experimental drug ZMapp that has shown promise in other patients – there are no more doses left, and the next batch won’t be ready for months.

The “Fifth Horseman of Atheism” Victor Stenger died last month at the age of 79.  He’s best known for the incindiery quote, “Science flies you to the moon – Religion flies you into buildings”, which made it onto t-shirts, bumper stickers, facebook posts, and heated arguments everywhere.  Stenger was a renowned particle physicist who contributed to groundbreaking work on gamma rays, quarks, gluons, and other stuff I’ve never heard of.  But outside of scientific circles his most popular book was 2007’s “God: The Failed Hypothesis, How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist,” which made it on to The Times best-seller list, and placed him alongside some of the more pop-culture friendly atheist authors like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawson. 

The US Justice Department announced it would conduct a civil rights investigation of the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, the town where a white cop shot and killed an 18-year old black teen after stopping the kid for jaywalking.  The incident was followed by much social unrest, and the area’s police departments were roundly criticized for the militarized response to the protests – cops left their police blues at the station (along with their name tags and badges) to don black commando outfits and camo fatigues, pointed loaded weapons at people, and generally acted like asshat cowboys.  Three cops were fired or forced to retire for their excesses. 

The magazine Popular Science discovered at least 19 phony cellular phone towers in the United States, unaffiliated with any telecomm companies, and often placed suspiciously near military bases.  The mysterious towers can access nearby smartphones and mine them for text and call data.  What is not known, for now, is if there are any more, who put them there, and for what purpose they exist.  Security experts don’t believe it's the National Security Agency, because they can tap into any calls or emails they want to already.

The head of a stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where the ceiling collapsed during a badminton tournament says the ceiling will be rebuilt, along with the venue’s reputation.  It was caught on video, and it’s really amazing that no one was hurt.  Leaders of Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism have already apologized to domestic and international viewers, and the Vietnam Badminton Open 2014 is continuing after moving to a different venue where the ceiling doesn’t fall in on people.

Most of Tokyo’s popular Yoyogi Park is now closed, because of Dengue Fever, the first such outbreak in 70 years.  Officials found more Tiger Mosquitoes with the virus, despite spraying insecticide in breeding areas.  Two TV hostesses who did an unrelated live shot from the Yoyogi Park were infected this week.  Dengue Fever causes painfully high temperatures and intense joint pain, and – in countries with lesser health systems – occasionally death.  Dengue Fever was stamped out in Japan at the end of World War II, even though its Tiger Mosquito host remains endemic.