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Honduras still has a long way to go to dismantle the “narco-state” that grew under ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez, jailed this week for smuggling a deluge of cocaine into the United States, experts said. Hernandez, 55, spent years in positions of power cozying up to kingpins from some of Latin America’s most notorious cartels, which placed proxies in state institutions while he pocketed millions of dollars in drug money. Extradited to the United States upon leaving office in 2022, Hernandez was sentenced this week to 45 years in jail for his crimes after prosecutors said he had turned his country...

In 2023, María Corina Machado won the nomination as the Unity Democratic Platform candidate for the presidency in Venezuela. The Maduro government invalidated this election. Edmundo González Urrutia took her place on the July 2024 ballot. According to non-government sources, he got 70% of the votes in the Venezuelan presidential election to 30% for incumbent Nicolás Maduro Moros. However, Maduro declared himself the winner. There were massive public protests against Maduro's usurpation. Thousands were arrested. Maria went into hiding. Edmundo sought and was granted asylum in Spain. Five top aides of the Unity Democratic Platform Party were granted asylum by...

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to US criminal charges as part of a deal that allows him to go free, according to court documents. Assange, 52, was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information. For years, the US has argued that the Wikileaks files - which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - endangered lives. He has spent the last five years in a British prison, from where he has been fighting extradition to the US. According to CBS, the BBC's US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will...

U.S. House Representative Nancy Pelosi has exercised 20,000 call options on Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) common stock, according to a disclosure notice filed Thursday. The call options, which were originally purchased on June 24, 2024, had a strike price of $80 per share. Pelosi exercised these options on June 20, 2025. The transaction value was reported to be between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000, according to the disclosure notice that was filed the same day as the transaction. Broadcom is a global technology company that designs, develops, and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions.

A top adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been relieved of duty following the discovery of several anti-Israel social media posts. U.S. Army Col. Nathan McCormack was removed from his advisory role on Israel-related matters following the discovery of the posts. According to his LinkedIn profile, McCormack served as the Levant and Egypt branch chief within the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s J5 planning directorate. He reportedly posted several inflammatory comments on his X account, including calling Israel a “death cult” and referring to its government as “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies,” according to the Jewish News Syndicate. A...

If you watched Donald Trump's cabinet meeting on Wednesday, you may have seen Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins hold up a photo of the Maude family of South Dakota. I'd heard a little bit about the fifth-generation ranching family before that, but I decided to learn more because I couldn't believe the story Rollins told about how the Joe Biden administration treated them. It's unbelievable. Or maybe it's not, given all we're learning about the last four years. ... Trump Admin is reversing Biden-era failures in 100 days! The U.S. Gov has dropped charges against the Maude family, victims of...

The Stanford Internet Observatory, a small but prominent research group studying abuse on social media platforms, looks to be in crisis, according to a report by Platformer. Some key staff have departed recently, including founding director Alex Stamos and research director Renée DiResta, Platformer reports. A handful of staff have left recently after not having their contracts renewed, and other members have been told to look for other jobs. Platformer describes the turmoil as a “dismantling” of the research group. Stanford Internet Observatory research centers on some of the most pressing types of abuse online, including threats to democracy and...

The following is an excerpt of the book description written for The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century which Professor Harold Hongju Koh published on June 25, 2024.If re-elected, could President Trump, by a single tweet, withdraw America from the United Nations, NATO, and every treaty and international organization to which the U.S. belongs? Or if re-elected, could President Biden gradually take us to war throughout the Mideast—Gaza, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea—by supplying weapons and ordering drone strikes, cybercommands and Special Forces without congressional approval?SNIPThis increasing imbalance of foreign affairs power has intensified across recent administrations of both...

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has subpoenaed three key White House staffers who are allegedly shielding Joe Biden from media scrutiny and doing his job for him amid his cognitive difficulties. “I am issuing subpoenas today for White House staff Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams to appear for depositions,” Comer announced on X on Wednesday. Williams is the Special Assistant to the President and Deputy director of Oval Office Operations, Bernal, the Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to the First Lady, and Tomasini, the Deputy Chief of Staff. “The White House has shielded these...

A federal complaint unsealed on Tuesday in Brooklyn has charged Asif Merchant, also known as “Asif Raza Merchant,” a 46-year-old Pakistani national, with murder-for-hire in connection with a foiled assassination plot targeting a politician or U.S. government officials on American soil. The plot was thwarted by law enforcement before any attack could be executed. Merchant is currently in federal custody in New York, according to the press release. FBI investigators believe that the intended targets of the plot included Trump and other current and former U.S. government officials, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter, per CNN. According...

A Pakistani citizen residing in Canada, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested on Sept. 4 in Canada in connection with a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York. Khan was charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). “The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” said Attorney...

Is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman trying to sabotage Joe Biden’s reelection bid? It’s quite possible. The Saudi leader, known as MBS, has made clear his disdain for President Biden, and his fury over insults lobbed at him by this White House. He is a powerful force behind the current surge in oil prices, which could — if sustained — contribute to Biden’s defeat. Oil prices are soaring — up 19 percent since the start of the year. Since they lag behind crude oil, gasoline prices have only jumped 14 percent so far. But, unless oil markets take a...

15 police officers and several civilians, including an Orthodox priest, killed in terrorist attack in Dagestan. Foreign Ministry: No Israelis or Jews among the victims. X link

“Billions of us will come and kill you.” Thirty minutes after Hamas supporters first set up their operation outside a Los Angeles synagogue, they maced their first Jew. And the Los Angeles police did nothing.Not until an hour into the terrorist rally outside a synagogue, did the LAPD finally step in, pushing back masked Jihad supporters in keffiyeh terror scarves from the entrance of Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) which they had occupied.And then the mob, chanting calls for “intifada” and the destruction of Israel, moved outward to target two smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from...

Robert Fico, the Slovak Prime Minister who was seriously injured in an attempted assassination shooting in May, has said the Trump attack was a “carbon copy” scenario and blamed hostile media and Trump’s political opponents for creating an atmosphere of hate. The populist prime minister of Slovakia, who only recently re-emerged into the public eye after he was shot multiple times in the abdomen by an activist and government critic, said the attempt on President Trump’s life was like a “carbon copy” in a statement on Sunday morning.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The leader of Armenia on Wednesday declared his intention to pull out of a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet nations as tensions rise between the two allies. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a grouping that includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia earlier froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed CSTO summits. Pashinyan said Wednesday for the...

Honduras announced on Friday night the construction of a mega-prison for 20,000 inmates, among more than a dozen measures, by declaring a “security emergency” to combat the overwhelming crime. In a national radio and television broadcast, President Xiomara Castro and other members of the National Defense and Security Council (CNDS) unveiled the “crime solution plan” in response to public outcry over the surge in violence. “Given this declared security emergency, the immediate construction of an Emergency Detention Center (CRE) with a capacity for 20,000 inmates in the unpopulated area between the departments of Olancho and Gracias a Dios (east) is...

China has “enforced maritime management and exercised sovereign jurisdiction” over an uninhabited reef in the disputed South China Sea, planting the country’s flag on the tiny sand bank just kilometers from a key Philippine military outpost. Photographs released by Chinese state-run media on Saturday showed China Coast Guard officers unfurling the flag as part of an effort to effectively seize Sandy Cay reef, which Beijing calls Tiexian Jiao, earlier this month. The reef, located in the flash point Spratly Island chain, is also claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. Sandy Cay also sits just over 3 kilometers from Thitu...

It’s been obvious for years that China has a Potemkin economy, kept alive by slave labor, market bubbles, and government underwriting. it can’t last forever. The latest grim forecast about the economy comes from Peter St Onge, an economist with a much deeper fund of knowledge about and understanding of the Chinese economy than I could have in a thousand lifetimes.The biggest hint that the Chinese economy was in trouble was the demise of Evergrande, a massive property developer in China. The bankruptcy was huge, with the company’s assets valued at a probably inflated $245 billion and debts of $300...

The terrifying face of an alleged Tren de Aragua gangster was revealed on Friday after he was arrested by ICE officers in Denver, Colorado - a sanctuary city. Joel Matos-Nieto, a 23-year-old illegal Venezuelan migrant with a face full of tattoos, has been accused by ICE of being a member of TdA, a gang whose members often have very specific ink. According to pictures shared by ICE's Denver Field Office, Matos-Nieto was arrested on a street in Denver and was seen handcuffed next to an agent with the DEA, which often participates in ICE raids. Since its founding in a...