Mexico presidential challenger vows protests after court rejects full recount News
Mexico presidential challenger vows protests after court rejects full recount

[JURIST] Mexico leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [campaign website, in Spanish] has vowed to continue with street demonstrations after the Federal Electoral Tribunal [official website, in Spanish] on Saturday rejected his request for a full ballot-by-ballot recount [JURIST report] of all votes cast in the July 2 presidential election [JURIST news archive], which Obrador lost by less than a percentage point to conservative Felipe Calderon [campaign website, in Spanish]. Obrador slammed the seven judges' unanimous ruling, telling followers that "we're going to continue our movement of peaceful civil resistance…If they refuse to open all the polling stations and count all the votes, it is complete proof that we won the presidential election." Chief Judge Leonel Castillo in turn defended the decision [El Universal report], saying that fraud in the count was practically impossible because the people doing it were chosen at random.

The Mexican government has raised security at Mexico City international airport, power plants, and oil refineries fearing further civil unrest. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

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