Students Call for Mexican President to Step Down Within 6 Days

CHILPANCINGO, Mexico – A group of students from a teachers’ training college from which 43 of their colleagues went missing and are presumed dead has called for the resignation of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto within six days.

“President Peña Nieto has six days to resign because the Mexican people want him to, and if he doesn’t, then the protests against him will increase all over the country,” said one of the students in a broadcast from a radio station the protesters had taken over.

The students issued the demand on Sunday after around 100 seized control of two radio stations in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, to air messages demanding that the 43 students who went missing after a night of violence on Sept. 26, be returned alive.

According to the public prosecutor’s office, the students were captured by local police and handed over to a criminal group who killed them and burned their bodies.

“We see that neither the army nor the police are doing anything, so we are going to take action ourselves. And if it is necessary, we will go armed,” said one of the radio transmissions.

Meanwhile, members of the National Popular Assembly, after a meeting at the Ayotzinapa school in Tixtla, agreed to continue with demonstrations to seek the return of the missing students.

In the meeting, over 100 social organizations and unions agreed to launch a national demonstration on Dec. 1, the second anniversary of Peña taking office.

In the region near Iguala, a group of 70 people undertook a search operation Sunday for secret graves at the request of victims’ families, and found seven new graves with the remains of people murdered by criminal gangs in recent years.

DNA samples are expected to be taken on Tuesday, while the search operation is set to continue until Friday.

Gang violence between three criminal cartels has caused hundreds of deaths and disappearances over the last four years.

Saudi arrests four ISIS militants behind al-Ahsa killings

Monday, 24 November 2014

Four ISIS militants suspected behind a deadly shootingearlier this month in the eastern Saudi city of al-Ahsa have been arrested, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The suspects – identified as Abdullah Aal Sarhan, Khalid al-Enazi, Marwan al-Zafr and Tareq al-Maimounu –were part of a “major ISIS cell,” the ministry said.

Three of the suspects were previously arrested and went on trial for terrorism charges, the ministry said, adding that the leader of the group received orders from abroad to target a Shiite congregation hall in the city of al-Ahsa.

The ministry further said that a total of 77 suspected members of the ISIS cell have so far been detained, noting that 47 of them were previously arrested and freed.

Security forces seized during raids documents and electronic equipment that "revealed contact between this terrorist organisation and ISIS abroad," the ministry said.

Seven people were reportedly killed in the deadly shooting. In addition, two assailants and two police members were killed in an exchange of fire.

A Girl I Know - The Lost Tapes by Carolina Hoyos

Suicide bomber kills 40 at volleyball match in Afghanistan

Sunday, 23 November 2014

A suicide bomber walked into a crowd of spectators at a volleyball match in eastern Afghanistan and detonated his explosives vest on Sunday, killing at least 40 people, a provincial official said.

Paktia provincial spokesman Mukhles Afghan said at least 50 more were wounded in the attack in Paktia province, where hundreds had gathered to watch a tournament final.

Magnitude-6.8 Earthquake Injures 14 in Central Japan

TOKYO – A magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit central Japan’s Nagano prefecture and left at least 14 people with injuries of varying degrees of severity, after collapsing several homes and causing water cuts and power outages, the NHK public network reported.

The hardest hit town was Hakuba at 200 kilometers (124 miles) northeast of Tokyo, where the quake’s epicenter was located and where at least five houses were partially knocked down, though the 21 people including a 2-year-old boy who were inside the buildings were successfully rescued by emergency management teams.

Two of them have been admitted to hospital, though the severity of their injuries has not been announced.

In the Omachi district of Nagano city, capital of the prefecture, another 12 people have been sent to hospital emergency rooms, three of them with serious injuries, NHK said.

An army emergency management team has been sent to the area to help with the rescue work and the repair of material damages.

The temblor, which took place at 10:08 local time in the northern part of Nagano prefecture, with an epicenter at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles), has been followed be a series of aftershocks.

NHK has shown pictures taken in Nagano showing houses partially demolished and regional highways on which piles of rocks and trees have fallen.

Japan is located over the so-called Ring of Fire, one of the world’s most active seismic zones, and suffers earthquakes with relative frequency, so that the country’s infrastructures are especially designed to resist the temblors

Arizona’s Arpaio Sues Obama over Immigration Measures

TUCSON, Arizona – Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio filed a lawsuit against U.S. President Barack Obama for his executive order providing protection against deportation for close to 5 million undocumented immigrants.

“We have to understand whether this is constitutional or not, whether his going around Congress is legal,” Arpaio told local media Thursday night after Obama’s announcement.

The Maricopa County sheriff, whose jurisdiction includes Phoenix, is known for raiding local businesses to find and arrest undocumented workers.

“This is going to open the door. Everybody in Mexico, Central America, thinks they will have a free pass when they come into our country because of what the president is issuing,” Arpaio said.

But activists gave little importance Friday to the sheriff’s announcement and said Arpaio was just looking for attention.

“Arpaio will say and do anything to attract attention – he’s one of those public figures who depend on that. Since we began fighting for this we have been sure it’s legal. The president has all the authority to do it, so Arpaio can do what he likes,” activist Erika Andiola told Efe Friday.

Other activists downplayed Arpaio’s lawsuit but believe Republican leaders won’t stop slamming the executive order.

“Some Republic presidents have taken action on immigration by means of executive orders, and we know that this president has the legal authority for the action he is taking,” said Eduardo Sainz of the Mi Familia Vota group.

Arpaio, who still has a lawsuit pending against him for allegedly ordering operations against Hispanics based on racial profiling, said that his lawsuit against Obama will not be paid for with his constituents’ money.

Mexico: Fugitive Police Chief Arrested in Missing Students Case

MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office has confirmed the arrest of a former deputy police chief who is a suspected member of the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and is linked to the disappearance of 43 trainee teachers in the southern state of Guerrero.

Cesar Nava Gonzalez, ex-deputy police chief of the town of Cocula, Guerrero, had been on the lam since shortly after Sept. 26, when police attacked students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School, a nearby teacher’s college, leaving six dead, 25 wounded and 43 missing in the town of Iguala, the AG’s office said in a statement.

Corrupt police officers from Iguala and Cocula detained those 43 students that night and handed them over to the Guerreros Unidos gang, which killed them and burned the bodies to eliminate all traces of the victims, Mexican authorities say, citing statements by suspects in the case.

But the parents of the missing young people say they won’t accept that explanation without solid proof.

Nava Gonzalez went into hiding in Mexico City and later in Colima, capital of that likenamed Pacific coast state, where he was arrested, the AG’s office said.

Family members of the missing students and trainees at the teacher’s college are to meet Saturday to plan their next steps in their search for justice.

Mexican authorities have made dozens of arrests in the case, including detaining the purported head of the Guerreros Unidos cartel and the mayor of Iguala, whose town hall and police force had allegedly been infiltrated by organized crime.

Corrupt municipal police targeted the students, according to some media accounts, after they had seized several buses for use in protests against education reform.

The case has sparked widespread protests in Mexico.