Judge Demands New Plan for Releasing Hillary Clinton Emails

WASHINGTON – A federal judge on Tuesday rejected the State Department’s plan to publish next January the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Judge Rudolph Contreras said Tuesday that he will ask that the emails not be released en masse but gradually and he will require that the State Department establish a schedule for making them public.

In question are some 55,000 pages of emails from the 2009-2012 period.

Clinton turned over those files to the State Department after controversy arose over the fact that during those four years she always used a personal email account and a private server for her communications.

The department’s target date for publishing the emails is Jan. 15, 2016, just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the first important milestone of Clinton’s battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The future publication of these documents comes as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Vice News.

After the judge’s ruling, Clinton said Tuesday that she wants the emails to be released “as quickly as they possibly can” be.

Clinton noted that she has said repeatedly that she wants the emails to be published, although she said that the State Department has its own procedures whereby the process could be delayed.

The former secretary of state urged her former colleagues to review the communications as soon as possible and emphasized that she is certain that they will only serve to prove “the hard work” she did while heading the department.

Clinton acknowledged in March that it would have been “smarter” to use an official email account, and she added that she only erased messages that contained personal communications and not ones related to her work as secretary of state.

Mexican Congressional Candidate Halts Campaign amid Threats

CULIACAN, Mexico – Gerardo Brambila Rojo suspended his campaign for a seat in the Mexican Congress representing the western state of Sinaloa after receiving threats from an armed group, officials of the Citizens Movement party said.

Two armed men went to Brambila’s home and asked him to halt his campaign, state party chairman Mario Imaz Lopez told Efe.

The Citizens Movement reported the threat to the No. 2 official in the Sinaloa state government, Gerardo Vargas Landeros, who ordered protection for Brambila.

“He is the only candidate from the Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, he was president of an irrigation project, president of the Farmers’ Association, he is a good candidate with an excellent profile, a record of social service among the people, he is very well known and enjoys widespread support in the region,” Imaz Lopez said.

The party leader said Brambila was alarmed by the threat and has remained holed up in his home, waiting until he feels confident enough to resume his campaign.

On Tuesday, Sinaloa state legislators from Mexico’s three largest parties demanded that authorities take steps to ensure candidates’ safety.

Sinaloa, the birthplace of Mexico’s first major drug cartels, is one of the most violent regions in the country thanks to frequent armed confrontations among rival criminal organizations.

More than 83 million Mexicans are eligible to cast ballots June 7 to choose 500 federal legislators, nine state governors and hundreds of regional and local officeholders.

Violence has marred the 2015 campaign, with two candidates slain on a single day last week. 

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Wanted: Saudi Arabia seeks eight executioners as beheadings soar

The job may also involve amputations for those convicted of lesser offences, the advert said, and no special qualifications are needed.

According to Saudi Arabia’s official press agency, the country beheaded its 85th victim on Sunday. This compares with more than 90 for the whole of last year, according to an Amnesty International report on the death penalty in 2014.

Most were executed for murder but 38 had committed drug offences. Half were from Saudi Arabia and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea, the Philippines and Sudan.

Diplomats have put the increase in the number of executions down to more judges being appointed, allowing for a backlog of appeal cases to be heard.

A downloadable PDF form for the job says the successful applicants would be paid at the lower end of the civil service pay scale.

30 People Missing in Mexico’s Chilapa Municipality

MEXICO CITY – At least 30 people disappeared during an armed siege of Chilapa de Alvarez, in southern Mexico’s Guerrero state, local residents informed the state’s Human Rights Commission.

Authorities were previously aware of the disappearances of only 16 of the 30, as the families of another 14 had been intimidated into staying quiet, according to local media.

Locals blame the disappearances on the armed group.

Around 300 armed civilians took control of the city on May 9, demanding a stop to spiraling violence in the region in the run up to elections on June 7, when 1,996 representatives, at local, state and federal levels, are due to be elected.

On May 1, a candidate for the position of mayor the city, Ulises Fabian Quiroz, was murdered near Atzacoaloya.

The self-styled “community police” withdrew five days later after reaching an agreement with state and federal authorities

Iran news in brief, 18 May 2015