International group says it’s ‘incomprehensible’ why 21 of 83 arrest orders were dropped amid investigation into 2014 disappearance

An independent panel has criticized Mexico for withdrawing arrest warrants, mostly for military members, in the investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students, saying there was sufficient evidence to press charges.

The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) said it did not know why 21 of 83 arrest orders were dropped just as investigators were moving forward with detentions, including that of Mexico’s former top prosecutor, in one of the country’s most notorious human rights scandals.

Congress votes to scrap daylight savings and just keep standard time, meaning end to changing clocks twice a year

Pedro López, an office worker in the Mexican state of Veracruz, gets up before dawn, and drives in the moonlight an hour and a half to his job. “Leaving my house in the dark every single day and driving under the moon is horrible, especially in a landscape as beautiful as Veracruz,” he said.

But, for half a year at least, he’ll be driving in the sunlight. Mexico’s congress voted on Wednesday to abolish summer time, and when Mexicans set their clocks back this weekend, it will be for the last time. In March, they will not be turned forward.

Attack in southern state of Guerrero was followed by fatal shooting of lawmaker in neighbouring state of Morelos

Attackers gunned down a mayor, his father and 16 other people in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero on Wednesday, authorities have said.

The state’s attorney general, Sandra Luz Valdovinos, told Milenio television late on Wednesday that 18 people were killed and two were wounded in the town of San Miguel Totolapan. Among the dead were the mayor, Conrado Mendoza, and his father, a former mayor of the town, she said. Two additional people were wounded.

Students were then turned over to commander of the local army base who ordered their killings

Six of the 43 Mexican students forcibly disappeared in 2014 were allegedly kept alive in a warehouse for days, and then turned over to the commander of the local army base who ordered their killings, the Mexican government official leading the Truth Commission said Friday.

The interior undersecretary, Alejandro Encinas, made the revelation with little fanfare during a lengthy defense of the commission’s report, first released a week earlier. At that time, despite declaring the disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col José Rodríguez Pérez.