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.”
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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