Foreign
Mexico president signs law for election of judges
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Sunday signed into law controversial judicial reforms making Mexico the world’s only country to elect all its judges by popular vote.
The outgoing leftist championed the constitutional changes that he says are needed to clean up a “rotten” judiciary serving the interests of the political and economic elite.
Critics fear that elected judges could be swayed by politics and vulnerable to pressure from powerful drug cartels that regularly use bribery and intimidation to influence officials.
Lopez Obrador signed the decree in a video posted on social media, calling it a “historic day.”
He was accompanied by president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, his close ally, who will replace him on October 1 following a landslide election win that left the ruling coalition with large majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“We need justice for everyone, for there to be no corruption in the judiciary, for judges, magistrates and justices to apply to the letter the principle that there is nothing outside the law and no one above the law,” Lopez Obrador said.
“It was said that we lived in a democracy, but no, an oligarchy dominated — they were the ones in charge, those at the top, a minority with a facade of democracy,” he added.
Lopez Obrador has frequently lashed out at the judiciary since taking office in 2018 — in particular the Supreme Court, which has impeded some of his policies in areas such as energy and security.
The judicial reforms have sparked diplomatic tensions with key trade partners the United States and Canada, upset investors and triggered opposition street protests.
Last week, legislators were forced to suspend their debate and move to another location after demonstrators stormed the Senate.
Opponents say the reforms — under which even Supreme Court and other high-level judges will have to stand for election in 2025 or 2027 — undermine democratic checks and balances.
Mass election of all judges “does not exist in any other country,” Margaret Satterthwaite, UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told AFP ahead of the law’s approval.
“Without strong safeguards to guard against the infiltration of organized crime (in the judicial selection process), an election system may become vulnerable to such powerful forces,” she said.
The United States, Mexico’s main trading partner, has warned that the reforms would threaten a relationship that relies on investor confidence in the Mexican legal framework.
The changes could pose “a major risk” to Mexican democracy and enable criminals to exploit “politically motivated and inexperienced judges,” US Ambassador Ken Salazar said last month.
Human Rights Watch had urged lawmakers to reject what it called the “dangerous proposals,” saying they would “seriously undermine judicial independence and contravene international human rights standards.”
AFP
Fresh Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to medics.
The casualties on Friday included at least eight people in an apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp and 10 others in the town of Jabalia, among them seven children.
Efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have yet to succeed.
Sources involved in the negotiations told Reuters on Thursday that Qatar and Egypt had resolved some points of contention but key issues remain unresolved.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza following Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of 1200 people and the abduction of over 250 hostages, according to Israeli reports.
Israel states that approximately 100 hostages are still being held, though it is unclear how many remain alive.
Gaza authorities report that Israel’s ongoing campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and displaced the majority of the 2.3 million residents.
Much of the territory has reportedly been devastated by the conflict.
President Biden signed the stopgap funding bill that will keep the government open until March, punting the thornier issues surrounding the nation’s finances to the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
A bloated 1,500-page funding measure was exploded by Trump and his top ally Elon Musk earlier this week as they demanded a pared-down version.
The parties were able to cobble a stopgap bill together Friday evening, which passed the Senate early Saturday morning.
The package funds the government at current levels until March 14, 2025, and includes $100 billion in hurricane relief funds and $10 billion in aid to farmers.
With the stopgap funding only running until March, an almost certain clash is looming between Trump and GOP spending hardliners when Congress reconvenes in January.
“The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open and delivers the urgently needed disaster relief that I requested for recovering communities as well as the funds needed to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” Biden said in a statement after inking the deal.
The post Biden signs bipartisan funding bill to keep government open appeared first on New York Post.
A military court in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday sentenced an unnamed resident of eastern Ukraine’s Lugansk region to 16 years in prison for “high treason,” according to Russia’s FSB security service.
Moscow regularly imposes heavy sentences on individuals it accuses of spying for Ukraine and has consistently imprisoned Ukrainians both in Russia and in occupied territories.
The sentencing coincided with President Vladimir Putin’s call for security services to adopt “tough” anti-terror measures, with a particular focus on military counter-intelligence, as the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine nears its third year.
Putin urged the special services to “identify spies and traitors” and “disrupt the work of foreign security services.”
Prosecutors claimed the accused had passed information about the Russian armed forces to Kyiv’s security services.
The FSB, as reported by Russian news agencies, stated that the man was found guilty of state treason, aiding terrorist activities, and the illegal handling and transport of explosives.
The court ordered him to serve his sentence in a high-security penal colony.
The TASS news agency released a video of the man’s arrest, showing FSB officers stopping a car, dragging a man out, throwing him to the ground, and handcuffing him before taking him to the local FSB headquarters.
The video, filmed by the FSB, featured the man—his face blurred — stating that he had been recruited by Ukraine’s SBU security service in 2016.
Russia frequently publishes confession videos filmed by the FSB after arrests.
Meanwhile, independent Russian media reported that an activist had died by suicide on Thursday in a Rostov detention centre, shortly after being sentenced to 16 years in prison, also in the Rostov region.
The Mediazona website confirmed with prison officials that Roman Shved, a 39-year-old anarchist sentenced for an arson attack on a government building following the Kremlin’s 2022 military mobilisation, had died in the detention centre.
Several social media channels reported that Shved had taken his life just hours after being sentenced.
Russia has prosecuted thousands of its citizens for opposing the Ukraine conflict.
AFP
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