20 STATE OFFICIALS INVESTIGATED IN MEXICO MILITARY SLAYINGS

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- At least 20 Mexico state officials are under investigation in the cover-up of threats and torture of women who were witnesses to the alleged killing of prisoners by soldiers last year, state authorities said Wednesday.

State attorney for Mexico state, Alejandro Gomez, said the officials under investigation include prosecutors, forensic investigators and state police.

On June 30, soldiers killed 22 alleged gang members at a warehouse in Tlatlaya. The army first said they died during a shootout, but it was discovered that some were executed.

Federal investigators have said eight people were killed after surrendering to the soldiers, but the National Human Rights Commission put the number between 12 and 15.

The commission also said the state attorney's office tried to cover up the torture and sexual threats endured by at least two of the three women who survived.

"None have been removed from duty yet because there is a presumption of innocence," Gomez said at a news conference. He said it was not clear when a determination would be made about the officials' involvement.

Argentine president accused of cover-up

A prosecutor investigating a 1994 bomb attack, one of the worst in Argentina's history, has accused President Cristina Fernandez of secretly negotiating with Iran to avoid punishing those responsible.

The bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires remains unsolved, but Argentina and Iran reached an agreement in 2013 to investigate the attack that killed 85 people and wounded 200.

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman in 2013 released an indictment accusing Iran and Hezbollah of organising the blast. Iran denies any involvement.

Nisman on Wednesday accused Fernandez and other senior Argentine officials of agreeing not to punish at least two former Iranian officials in the case.

Five years on, Haiti still crippled by quake – and political deadlock

Haiti marked the fifth anniversary on Monday of the massive earthquake that ravaged an already desperately poor nation, even as it sought a way out of its latest debilitating political crisis.

Five years after the unprecedented category seven quake killed at least 300,000 people and left more that a million homeless, the nation paused for a “Day of Reflection and Commemoration.”

President Michel Martelly led the official tributes, calling for unity to better prepare Haiti for its next challenge, but the government’s three-year failure to organize elections has undermined his authority.

Laying flowers at a monument in Place St Christophe in the still damaged capital, he paid tribute to the sacrifice of Haitian and foreign rescuers who flocked to Port-au-Prince in 2010.

“Five years later, are we ready to face other catastrophes that could strike Haiti?” he asked.

Haiti’s most immediate challenge is not another natural disaster, however, but institutional breakdown combined with persistent poverty.

As of Monday, parliament’s mandate ended with no date set for a new election, raising the prospect that Martelly might be left ruling by decree like the country’s former dictators.

A last-minute accord signed Sunday to resolve the institutional impasse was not ratified by parliament before its authority expired, creating a perilous political and institutional vacuum.

Haiti Takes More Steps to End Political Standoff

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haiti was in a state of political flux following the resignation over the weekend of the country's prime minister because of an ongoing stalemate with opposition lawmakers in the Senate.

President Michel Martelly has not yet announced who he will nominate to replace Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe to run the government of the troubled country, and a presidential spokesman, Lucien Juras, declined in a news conference Monday to name the candidates.

Juras did say, however, that Martelly was addressing the recommendations of an independent commission created by the president to end the impasse over delayed legislative elections.

The recommendations he was carrying out included seeking the resignation of the nine members of the country's electoral council and the release of prisoners who government opponents have said were improperly jailed for political reasons, an allegation the president denies.

Martelly said late last week that he accepted the recommendations of the commission, which include the resignation of Lamothe, who announced he was stepping down early Sunday.

"I made the ultimate sacrifice for the country to move forward and to respect the findings of an independent commission set up by president," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I always said I would be part of the solution to the problem and not part of the problem itself and I kept my word."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry praised Martelly for accepting the recommendations of the commission, describing his acceptance of resignation of the prime minister as proof of his commitment to resolving the impasse.

"The United States urges all parties to reach without delay a definitive agreement on all outstanding issues and to carry out that agreement in good faith," Kerry said Tuesday.

Lamothe predicted it would be difficult to win approval from the Senate and Chamber of Deputies for his replacement, noting that it typically takes about 90 days to approve a prime minister and Cabinet in the politically fractious country.

Lamothe said his 31-month tenure was actually the longest for a prime minister in Haiti and said the country had made significant gains, particularly considering the devastation of the January 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of the capital.

Foreign investment and school enrollment both increased, security has improved and most of the encampments that sprung up for the hundreds of thousands left homeless by the earthquake are now gone.

"The results are there and they are undeniable," he said.

But it was the political standoff with parliament that led to his resignation. Martelly was supposed to call elections in 2011 for a majority of Senate seats, the entire Chamber of Deputies and local offices.

But several opposition senators used parliamentary procedure to prevent a vote authorizing the election while orchestrating a series of protests in the capital to call for the president to resign. More protests were taking place Tuesday around the country despite the resignation of Lamothe and release of some prisoners jailed during the demonstrations.

"We are not making progress with Martelly. He has to resign," said Andre Michel, the leader of one of the parties that make up the opposition, who has accused the president of trying to stack the electoral council with supporters and undermine the Constitution.

On Jan. 12, the terms of the current Senate will expire and the president can sign a decree that will enable the country to hold the elections in the first half of the year, Lamothe said.

Martelly is to leave office in 2016 after a presidential election scheduled for later next year.

The departing prime minister said he has no plans to run for president of Haiti.

"I gave it my soul," he said. "I gave everything I had to move this country forward and I hope the people realize that and I hope that I was able to make a small difference in Haiti's progress."

Remains of One of 43 Missing Mexican Students Identified

The remains of one of 43 Mexican university students who went missing two months ago have been identified, in what is the first concrete evidence in a case that has caused a political crisis in Mexico.

The student’s DNA was identified among charred remains found several weeks ago near a garbage dump, said family and government officials.

Though there was no official announcement Saturday, relatives and fellow students at the Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa said experts had confirmed the identity of missing student Alexander Mora, a teenage farmer whose classmates called him “The Rock” for his determination.

“He was a classmate who was very strong, very persevering toward his goals,” said student leader Omar Garcia. “It’s a big loss.”

The families, who have been in limbo since the students disappeared after a protest in late September, were given the information late Friday by an Argentine team of forensic experts working on behalf of the relatives and with the Attorney General’s Office, relatives said.

The identification confirmed what Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told parents in November: that the students rounded up in a conflict with police had been killed and incinerated by a drug gang.

The fact that there were no witnesses and barely a trace of the 43 young men led parents to discount the story, saying they would keep searching and expected to find their children alive.

“This proves the government's assertion that drug cartel hitmen burned the bodies of the students in this garbage dump. They had confessions but it was hard to prove, but now they know this happened to at least one person,” said FRANCE 24’s correspondent Ioan Grillo.

If all 43 are confirmed dead, it would rank among the worst mass murders in a drug war that has killed more than 80,000 people and left 22,000 others missing since 2006 in Mexico.

The case has sparked domestic outrage and drawn international condemnation, highlighted Mexico's struggle with corruption and undermined President Enrique Peña Nieto's assurances that his security policy was bearing fruit.

'We will find the other 42'

Haiti's Prime Minister Resigns Amid Protests

Haiti's prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, succumbed to domestic and international pressure on Sunday and announced he would resign in a televised address in the middle of night.

"I am leaving the post of prime minister this evening with a feeling of accomplishment," he said.

The announcement came a day after President Michel Martelly accepted the recommendations of a special commission that called for Lamothe's resignation as part of an effort to resolve a long-running political dispute over delayed legislative and municipal elections.

Haiti, the poorest and most unequal country in the western hemisphere, is still recovering from an earthquake five years ago that leveled much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and has periodically been rocked by street protests accusing the government of corruption. 

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators calling for the resignation of Lamothe and Martelly took to the streets in several cities. One man was shot dead by police near the ruins of the presidential palace.

Former President Vasquez Wins Uruguay Election

Tabare Vazquez won back his old job as president of Uruguay in a runoff election on Sunday, extending the decade-long rule of a leftist coalition and allowing it to roll out a groundbreaking law that legalizes the production and sale of marijuana.

Vazquez won comfortably with 52.8 percent support while his center-right challenger, Luis Lacalle Pou, trailed on 40.5 percent, official results showed late on Sunday night.

Lacalle Pou earlier conceded defeat after quick counts showed an easy victory for Vazquez, and thousands of ruling Broad Front supporters streamed through the rain-soaked streets of Montevideo, waving party banners in celebration.

Vazquez, 74, is a respected oncologist who helped heal rifts inside the Broad Front in the late 1990s and led it to power in 2005, ending two decades of conservative rule that followed a military dictatorship.

“I promise to work my utmost but I cannot, should not and do not want to work alone, I want to count on all Uruguayans,” Vazquez told party loyalists on Sunday night.

When he was president from 2005 to 2010, his mix of welfare programs and pro-business policies helped kick-start a decade of robust growth and slash poverty.

Returning to power, he will succeed President Jose Mujica, an ally and former guerrilla whose straight-talking, unpretentious style won him widespread affection in the cattle-farming country of 3.4 million people.

“A third Broad Front government will show the world that Uruguay can be progressive and successful, reducing poverty while boasting an economy performing better than ever,” said pizza chef Richar Martinez, 39, partying in the streets with his son hoisted on his shoulders.

Marijuana law
The son of a union leader who grew up in a working class district in the capital, Vazquez closed his first term with approval ratings hitting 70 percent. Like Mujica now, he was constitutionally barred from holding a second consecutive term.

Vazquez will need to address rising crime and education, both major concerns of voters. He promises to increase spending on schools while cutting wasteful government spending.

He will also oversee Uruguay’s legalization of the state-controlled production, distribution and sale of cannabis.

Vazquez, who lacks Mujica’s folksy charisma, endorsed the cannabis law but was less enthusiastic about it than the outgoing president and has said he might modify it, depending on its impact.

Mujica’s reforms to legalize gay marriage and abortion as well as marijuana cemented Uruguay’s reputation as one of Latin America’s most liberal nations, but upset conservative voters.

Lacalle Pou, 41, had threatened to repeal much of the legislation if he was elected president, but he struggled to connect with working-class and rural voters.

The Broad Front narrowly won a majority in Congress in legislative elections last month, meaning Vazquez will be in firm control when his term begins on March 1.

Missing Students a Symptom of a Larger Crisis in Mexico

Of all the consequences of the Mexican government’s slow response to thedisappearance of 43 students in September, it is the continuing protests in Mexico City and throughout the country that are most revealing of the public’s deep discontent with the current system.

“I think it’s very clear that we’re seeing a huge crisis in human rights in the country,” said Maureen Meyer, senior associate for Mexico and Migrant Rights at the Washington Office of Latin America (WOLA), a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

The case of the missing students – who disappeared on their way to a protest in the southwestern city of Iguala on Sept. 26 – are indicative of that crisis, which involve not only human rights violations but also public security issues in parts of Mexico, Meyer said. It is a crisis that stems from widespread corruption and a lack of political commitment to justice on the part of the Mexican government, especially in some areas of the country, she added. It is also caused, in part, by the United States.

“The carnage south of our border is closely intertwined with US security and trade policies that have intensified rather than stanched the flow of blood in Mexico,” Lauren Carasik, director of the international human rights clinic at the Western New England University School of Law, wrote for Al Jazeera America.

Shared blame

The Mexican government acknowledged in February last year that more than 20,000 people have gone missing in the country since 2007. Human Rights Watch also released a2013 report documenting 250 missing persons cases in Mexico. More than two-thirds were forced disappearances that involved state agents, the report found.

“The full extent of the problem is hard to know,” Daniel Wilkinson, managing director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, told The WorldPost. “What we do know is that there has been a consistent failure on the part of the authorities to investigate and prosecute these cases.”

Mexico's Acceptance of Mass Murder

Mexico is struggling through its deepest crisis in years. The protest movement triggered by the Sept. 26 disappearance of 43 students in the state of Guerrero has unsettled Mexico’s political establishment more deeply even than the student movement of 1968, or the Zapatista uprising of 1994, because this movement touches the entire political spectrum.

“Fue el estado” (“The state did it”) is the slogan on the lips of many. But what this means is unclear.

When the scandal broke out, responsibility was confined to local officials. Obeying orders from Iguala’s municipal president, Jose Luis Abarca, and his wife María de los Angeles Pineda — both leaders in  the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel — police shot and killed six students and captured 43 others.

According to taped confessions, the abducted students were then handed to gang members who later executed them and burned their bodies in a municipal dump.

At first, then, the portion of “the state” that was responsible was the municipal government of Iguala, a town of 118,000 inhabitants, that was run from top to bottom by a drug cartel. Statements issued by one of the students’ alleged killers also suggested the possibility that other nearby state organizations — including the Raul Isidro Burgos Normal Rural School , the teacher-training school that the students attended — were infiltrated by competing drug organizations. Indeed, it appears plausible that municipal governments and police forces of much of Guerrero state are controlled by drug organizations, the more so because the Iguala region is the center of a thriving opium-producing region.

Had this been the only fact uncovered by Iguala’s tragic events, the stain of the massacre might have damaged just the parts of the Mexican state run by drug organizations, and not the legitimacy of the state as a whole. But party politics have turned events into a national crisis.

Mexico President Vows Police Reform in Bid to Quell Massacre Anger

(Reuters) - Embattled President Enrique Pena Nieto on Thursday vowed to simplify Mexico's chaotic police structure and stop collusion between officials and drug gangs as he tried to defuse anger over the apparent massacre of 43 students in September.

Pena Nieto is under growing pressure from protesters to end impunity and brutality by security forces since the trainee teachers were abducted by corrupt police and handed over to a local drug gang in the southwestern city of Iguala on Sept. 26.

The government says the students were almost certainly murdered and their bodies incinerated, but it is still investigating the case that has sparked the biggest crisis of Pena Nieto's two-year rule.

"Mexico cannot continue like this," Pena Nieto said in a speech to an assembly of Mexico's political leaders.

It was his most concerted effort to retake the initiative on an issue that has left his government scrambling for answers.

"After Iguala, Mexico has to change," he added, speaking inside the ceremonial presidential palace in Mexico City whose door was set ablaze by demonstrators earlier this month. "Our country has been shaken by cruelty and barbarism."

Promising a new law to stop the infiltration of local governments by organized crime, Pena Nieto also pledged to reform the penal system and send an proposal to Congress to unify multi-layered police forces in Mexico's 31 states.

Mexico has a plethora of police forces, as hundreds of municipalities, the states and the capital Mexico City each have their own. But poor training and salaries as low as 5,000 pesos ($370) per month encourage corruption.

Mexico: Protests at Admission 43 Missing Students were Massacred

A demonstration sparked by the Mexican government’s announcement that 43 student teachers disappeared by police in the southern city of Iguala six weeks ago were probably massacred in a rubbish dump, ended at the weekend with masked protesters setting fire to the wooden door of the ceremonial presidential palace in Mexico City’s main Zócalo plaza.

The protesters broke away from the otherwise peaceful demonstration as it drew to a close, tearing down the protective metal fences set up around the palace at its imposing door before they set it on fire. Clashes with riot police followed before the square was cleared.

Anger over the disappearance of the students, after they were attacked by municipal police in Iguala on 26 September, has been mounting in recent weeks. Protests have included large marches, and attacks on public buildings and bus stations.

Over time the focus of the protests has moved from the demand for the students to be found to criticism of the government’s handling of the investigation, which it took over from state authorities 10 days after the events.

Many protesters in Mexico City carried handmade banners with the words Ya me cansé (“I’ve Had Enough” or “I’m Tired”), in reference to a comment made by Mexico’s attorney general, Jesús Murillo, at the end of the press conference on Friday.

The phrase has been turned on its head to express public exhaustion with both the violence that has taken hold in many parts of Mexico, where organised criminal activity is protected by corrupt authorities, as well as the federal government’s failure to act against it, which many believe underpins the events in Iguala.

"I've had enough," says Mexican Attorney General in Missing Students Gaffe

An off-the-cuff comment by the attorney general to cut off a news conference about the apparent killing of 43 missing college students has been taken up by protesters as a rallying cry against Mexico’s corruption and drug trade-fueled violence.

During the televised appearance on Friday, attorney general Jesus Murillo announced that two suspects had led authorities to trash bags believed to contain the incinerated remains of the students missing since being led away by police in the southwestern town of Iguala on 26 September.

After an hour of speaking, Murillo abruptly signalled for an end to questions by turning away from reporters and saying, “Ya me canse” a phrase meaning “Enough, I’m tired.”

Within hours, the phrase became a hashtag linking messages on Twitter and other social networks. It continued to trend globally Saturday and began to emerge in graffiti, in political cartoons and in video messages posted to YouTube.

Many turned the phrase on the attorney general: “Enough, I’m tired of Murillo Karam,” says one. Another asks: “If you’re tired, why don’t you resign?”

 Demonstrators set vehicles on fire outside the Guerrero state palace in Chilpancingo after classmates of the 43 missing students attacked the building. Photograph: Jose Luis de la Cruz/EPA

Nurses Strike Over Ebola Concerns, as Death Toll Ticks Above 5,000

Nurses in the United States and around the world participated in a global day of action Wednesday, demanding better training and equipment to combat an Ebola epidemic that has resulted in more than 5,000 deaths.

A day ahead of the protests, America’s largest nurses union, National Nurses United (NNU), estimated that some 100,000 of its members would participate in strikes and vigils to highlight perceived failings in the national response to the Ebola threat.

Highlighting the battle health care workers face in combatting the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new figures Wednesday confirming that the Ebola death toll had ticked above 5,000.

As of the Nov. 9, the outbreak had resulted in 14,068 cases, 5,147 of which have been fatal. The vast majority had occurred in the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. In Sierra Leone, “steep increases” have been noted in recent weeks, the WHO said.

Thirteen deaths have occurred outside those three countries — in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the U.S.

Nurses around the world have complained for months that hospitals expect them to treat infected patients with shoddy equipment and inadequate training. Health care workers in Sierra Leone also participated in the strike Wednesday. More than 400 staff at an Ebola treatment center in the country’s south walked out over unpaid risk allowances, officials said. Similar action has taken place in the past in Liberia, home to the greatest number of Ebola deaths.