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.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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