HONDURAS
Hernandez announces run
Former first lady Ana Garcia de Hernandez on Tuesday said that she would contest the presidential elections next year, with the announcement just days after her husband’s conviction for trafficking cocaine into the US. “I have decided to launch my pre-candidacy for the presidency of the republic for the National Party,” Hernandez wrote on X in Spanish. The lawyer, whose husband, Juan Orlando Hernandez, served as president from 2014 to 2022, said that she would begin a “crusade for justice” in his defense after he was found guilty of drugs and arms trafficking by a New York federal court on Friday last week.
UNITED STATES
Biden, Trump advance
President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump on Tuesday each won enough delegates to clinch their party nominations in this year’s presidential race, all but assuring a rematch. The results in four statewide elections were essentially a foregone conclusion as Biden and Trump had already seen off all primary challengers. Biden crossed the threshold of 1,968 Democratic delegates needed when he won Georgia, while Trump’s victory in Washington helped him secure the 1,215 delegates needed to earn the Republican nomination.
UNITED STATES
Kennedy unveils top picks
Robert Kennedy Jr on Tuesday told the New York Times that National Football League quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura are at the top of his list as he seeks a running mate for his independent presidential bid. Many states require independent candidates to name a running mate before they can seek access to the ballot, a factor driving the early push for Kennedy to make a pick.
UNITED STATES
House blast claims two
A massive explosion killed two people and destroyed a house in the Pittsburgh area near the Ohio River, authorities said on Tuesday. Aerial images from the scene in Crescent Township in the northwest Pittsburgh suburbs showed smoking ruins with the structure reduced to rubble and some large pieces lodged in trees above. Allegheny County emergency dispatchers said that the blast was reported shortly before 9am. The blast was “severe, absolutely extreme” and “you could feel it in your chest,” Crescent Township Fire Department Chief Andrew Tomer said. Tomer and others at the fire department saw “a column of white smoke up in the air followed by a thick column of black smoke,” he said. The explosion “completely leveled” the home, with arriving units reporting “fire throughout the foundation” and fire along the hillside, Tomer said. The blast also damaged at least two other homes, he said. A private gas well and two propane tanks on the scene were secured, he said. The cause of the explosion was under investigation.
CHINA
Explosion kills two people
A suspected gas explosion at a restaurant yesterday killed two people and injured 26 during rush hour, causing severe damage to buildings, state media reported. The blast occurred just before 8am in a residential area in Hebei Province’s Sanhe, China Central Television said. The explosion was suspected to have been caused by a gas leak at a fried chicken shop, state media reported. “I heard a great big bang ... which scared me stiff,” a seller at a local market said. “Outside, I saw clouds of black smoke.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate