Amid a soaring number of murders connected to escalating drug gang conflicts, Mexico on Monday launched a system of “virtual” judges who are to respond online and within 24 hours to requests for search warrants, preventive arrests or telephone tapping of organized crime suspects.
The six new “control” judges — five men and one woman — are intended to speed up efforts against crime and work under a cloak of anonymity, Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said.
They will have their headquarters in a high-technology, top-security building in southern Mexico City and the whole country will be under their jurisdiction. They are to respond quickly in favor of or against requests by public prosecutors in relation to organized crime and national security issues,” he said.
The judges are set to each work for 24 hours followed by 48 hours off. Requests, documents and decisions are to be managed online and will go through few hands.
As he launched the program, Medina Mora said it was “indispensable” that requests from public prosecutors and judges’ decisions in the fight against organized crime be kept absolutely confidential.
“[Information leaks] not only endanger the respective investigations, but also put at risk the life and the physical integrity of honest public servants who are committed to the consolidation of the rule of law and the security of all Mexicans,” Medina Mora said.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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