#juan orlando hernández

[memenewsdotcom]

Former Honduran president guilty of drug trafficking

[almightylolosylolas]

Un operario de las fuerzas especiales de Honduras de los TIGRES holding un cuerno de chivo bañado en oro.

TIGRES are a Honduran special forces team created by former President Juan Orlando Hernández. There are many stories of corrupción among the ranks of these policemen.

[plethoraworldatlas]

On March 8, a Manhattan federal court found Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, guilty of conspiracy to import large amounts of cocaine into the United States over nearly two decades.

Mainstream U.S. media generally framed the ex-president’s trial and conviction as a triumph of justice, a service rendered by the impartial U.S. justice system to the people of Honduras.

The great majority of such accounts, however, ignored and obscured context crucial for understanding Hernández’s rise and rule; in particular, how Washington contributed to both. Though the mainstream narrative around the ex-president rightly connects his tenure in office with massive emigration from Honduras, it has elided the degree to which U.S. influence enabled Hernández’s career and thus partially drove the migration that arose in response.

For roughly two centuries, Honduras, the original “banana republic,” has suffered a deeply unequal relationship with the far more powerful United States. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras and its people have endured frequent American military interventions, U.S.-backed coups, and a corrupt, rapacious local oligarchy closely tied to U.S. corporate interests.

Despite Hernández’s ultimate conviction on U.S. soil, he served Washington for many years as a loyal client. The single most important event in the ex-president’s political career was a 2009 coup, which overthrew center-left president Manuel Zelaya (whose wife, Xiomara Castro, won election in 2021 and currently occupies the presidency). Zelaya raised the minimum wage, subsidized small farmers, and authorized the morning-after pill, infuriating the country’s business elite and, in the last case, ultra-conservative religious leaders. Moreover, to Washington’s consternation, he made overtures toward Hugo Chavez’s socialist Venezuela and sought to convert a crucial U.S. airbase entirely to civilian use.

Joint action by Honduras’ military and judiciary — in a manner the U.S. ambassador called “clearly illegal” and “totally illegitimate” at the time — forced Zelaya to pay for these sins in late June 2009. While the White House’s reaction to the coup initially appeared confused, Washington soon recovered its footing. Even as huge protests raged, the Obama administration played a key role in ultimately compelling Honduras’ people and the region’s governments to acquiesce to the regime change as a fait accompli.

Despite widespread repression by the post-coup de facto government, accounts of fraud, and the condemnation of many countries and international organizations (including the normally deferential Organization of American States), U.S.-endorsed elections in November 2009 received Washington’s imprimatur. In her memoirs (the passage excised from the book’s paperback edition with no explanation), then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained that the U.S. sought to “render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future.”

It was in this context that Hernández catapulted into power. After Porfirio Lobo won the 2009 presidential race, Hernández became President of the National Congress as a member of Lobo’s National Party — an institution historically closely linked to U.S. agribusiness. Lobo was Hernández’s mentor and groomed his protege to succeed him. But while Hernández enjoyed success, the coup’s consequences constituted disaster for ordinary Hondurans.

Political violence and repression became routine. The murder rate, much of it due to cartel-related gang violence, soared — it was the world’s highest for three years running. As the economic situation also deteriorated, and Lobo and his son allied with major narcotics syndicates, a huge surge of emigration swelled out of Honduras, with desperate citizens flooding northward. The total number of Hondurans apprehended at the U.S. border exploded — from less than 25,000 in 2009 to nearly 100,000 in 2014 — reaching 250,000 by 2020.

In Washington’s eyes, however, such concerns took a back seat to longstanding strategic needs: above all, Honduras’ openness to foreign investment and its role as a base for American military power. And, as head of the National Congress, Hernandez was seen as particularly amenable to U.S. desires.

“The State Department loved Hernandez,” according to Dana Frank, an expert on Honduras at UC Santa Cruz. As Lobo’s heir apparent, “he was young and could stay in power for a long time.” Frank cites a 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa asserting that “He has consistently supported U.S. interests.”

The depth of American support for Hernández became clear after his 2013 election to the presidency. Despite credible reports of fraud, his National Party’s control over the counting process, and a wave of threats and sometimes lethal violence against opposition candidates and activists during the campaign, the State Department commended the election as “transparent, free, and fair.”

In 2015, a major corruption scandal centered on the misappropriation of funds from Honduras’ Social Security Institute exploded, prompting unprecedented popular demonstrations against Hernandez and calling for his resignation, “There was a real sense that Hernández could fall,” according to Alexander Main, a Latin America expert at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. Fortunately for Hernández, however, the U.S. swooped in, helping to defuse the unrest by prodding the OAS to organize a local anti-corruption body known as MACCIH.

In that same year, according to Frank, Washington gave an “official green light” to a “completely criminal” power grab by Hernández whereby his hand-picked Supreme Court ruled that he was eligible to run for a second term in clear violation of Honduras’ constitution. Washington’s complacent reaction — “It is up to the Honduran people to determine their political future” — stood in remarkable contrast to 2009, when Zelaya’s mere suggestion that the constitution might be amended to permit a second term served as the pretext for the coup that the U.S. subsequently legitimized.

In Hernández’s 2017 reelection bid, the fraud was so blatant and widespread that even the generally conservative OAS declared the incumbent’s victory an example of “extreme statistical improbability” and called for new elections. The State Department, however, stood by Hernández, prodding Mexico and other OAS members to recognize the results, even as security forces suppressed massive and prolonged protests with live ammunition.

Indeed, U.S. training and funding also proved crucial in the creation of the brutal special operations units Hernández’s government used to terrorize opposition and environmental activists. Particularly significant in the military sphere was the role of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the American combatant command responsible for Latin America. Hernández was a particular favorite of John Kelly, SOUTHCOM’s head during Obama’s second term (and then White House chief of staff for Donald Trump), who, as Dana Frank noted, once referred to the convicted drug trafficker as a “great guy” and “good friend.”

Considering the U.S. relationship with Hernández, it is perhaps unsurprising that U.S. officials seemingly turned a blind eye to his deep involvement in narcotics trafficking. As both Hernández’s recent trial — during which a witness claimed Hernandez had privately vowed to “stuff drugs up the noses of the gringos” — and that of his brother in 2019 showed, the drug trade’s reach into the Honduran government was unmistakable, with numerous high-ranking security officials repeatedly implicated.

CEPR’s Main argues that it was “highly unlikely American officials were unaware” of Hernández’s criminality. Indeed, as a document from his brother’s trial revealed, the DEA began investigating the ex-president as early as 2013. As noted in Hernández’s trial, just weeks after his inauguration in 2014, the agency reportedly obtained video evidence indicating his involvement with major drug traffickers. Even after his brother’s 2019 conviction, when it became apparent that millions of dollars in drug money helped underwrite Hernández’s political career, President Donald Trump publicly praised him for “working with the United States very closely” and for his help in “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened.”

Given all this, the U.S. media’s failure to probe the influence of American policy on Hernández’s career begins to look less like an anomalous oversight and more like a manifestation of structural dynamics that tend to reinforce the notion of American innocence. We can see the same logic apply to the frenzied media accounts detailing “caravans” of Central American migrants headed to the U.S. While mainstream news outlets rightly note the relationship between Hernández’s presidency and increased migration from Honduras, they nevertheless fail to connect the two to the impact of U.S. policymaking. Without Washington’s complicity and assistance, Hernandez might have spent 2014 to 2022 in prison, rather than the presidency. Unfortunately, it was the Honduran people who paid the price.

[thecubanartobserver]

Exposición “Déjà vu”, Colectiva

Exposición “Déjà vu”, Colectiva

25.09.2020 Galería Vallesoy En estos meses, se ha hecho más presente el impacto de la llegada de las nuevas tecnologías al mundo artístico cubano. Este “arte digital” —entiéndase las obras físicas convertidas a un formato digital y no solo las creadas con esta herramienta— presupone nuevos espacios expositivos, esta vez las plataformas virtuales. Múltiples son esas plataformas que hasta ahora…

[bighermie]

Former Honduran President Convicted of Aiding Traffickers Moving Drugs into US | The Gateway Pundit | by Margaret Flavin

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us-embassy-warns-imminent-extremist-attack-moscow-2024-03-08/

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Notificación de no impunidad a jefes de narcoestados de Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua y más

La condena del ex presidente de Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández en la Justicia de EEUU es un aviso para los dictadores del socialismo del siglo 21 Por: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín La condena por un jurado federal de Estados Unidos al ex presidente de Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández por “tres cargos que incluían delitos de importación de cocaína y armas” con acusación de que “abusó de su posición como…

[mariacallous]

U.S. President Joe Biden has defined the fight against global corruption as a “core United States national security interest” and made it an official priority for his administration. Now, he is turning Paraguay into a test case for his policy.

On July 22, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay shocked the country’s political establishment by announcing at a live, televised press conference that the U.S. State Department was sanctioning former Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes, along with his adult children, for their involvement in “significant corruption.” Less than a month later, the Biden administration doubled down by imposing sanctions for corruption on Paraguay’s sitting vice president, Hugo Velázquez, along with his close advisor and associate, Juan Carlos Duarte, and their spouses and children. Cartes, Velázquez, Duarte, and their families will no longer be able to obtain a visa and travel to the United States. A stunned Velázquez—who, until then, was arguably Paraguay’s power behind the throne and a serious contender in next year’s presidential elections—quit the race that same day.

U.S. authorities have targeted former leaders on corruption grounds before, not to mention a plethora of lower-ranking figures. This February, for example, the State Department designated former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. But for the United States to go after the sitting vice president of a friendly country is unprecedented. It is a clear message to Paraguay’s leaders as well as their regional counterparts: Washington will no longer take a passive approach to corruption.

Although the country’s elites have formally embraced democracy since the 1989 overthrow of then-fascist dictator Alfredo Stroessner, they have nonetheless benefited from Stroessner’s legacy: a corrupt power structure complicit with a gargantuan shadow economy estimated to be worth almost half the country’s GDP as well as trafficking in every sort of contraband. Cross-border cigarette smuggling is big business in Paraguay, and brands owned by Tabacalera del Este—known as Tabesa, a manufacturer controlled by the Cartes family—are frequently seized in Brazil. Off-the-books contraband also extends to consumer goods, agricultural products, alcohol, tires, and even pesticides. In an operation last month, Brazilian police seized $190 million worth of goods. All told, the estimated value of goods smuggled from Paraguay is $5 billion annually.

More than 30 years after Stroessner’s departure, Paraguay still ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world. Organized crime and terrorism organizations have converged on its territory, turning its porous borderlands into key hubs for money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorism finance. Paraguayan businesses and the front companies they establish in the United States engage in commodities trading to launder proceeds from these criminal activities. The financial flows frequently go through U.S. banks.

Washington’s action on Paraguay is a warning to corrupt leaders everywhere. Biden’s anti-corruption message is a strong and welcome step—and his administration should follow up with further U.S. action. The most hotly debated question in Paraguay now is whether sanctions, like those on Honduras’ former president, will be followed by U.S. criminal indictments and extradition requests. Paraguay’s public response to the designations after the initial shock has also been focused on whether the United States will stop with the current sanctioned politicians or go after even more. The administration should leave no room for doubt: Corruption in Paraguay goes deep and wide, and Cartes, Duarte, and Velázquez should not be the only people on Washington’s list.

In the past, Paraguay’s leaders had impunity as long as they were politically aligned with the United States. Biden’s predecessors, whether Democrats or Republicans, were well aware of Paraguay’s corruption pandemic yet treaded carefully with its leaders amid mounting evidence of corruption in the highest reaches of the country’s power structure. U.S. investigations into Cartes’s suspected role in smuggling predate his 2013 election as president, but they were likely cast aside as part of a diplomatic deal, according to conversations FP had with a former Paraguayan official close to Cartes and a former U.S. official familiar with the U.S. investigation.

In Paraguay, political meddling to protect the culprits has stalled the investigation of the so-called megalavado case, the largest-ever money laundering case in the country, allegedly worth $1.2 billion. For six years now, the investigation has been hampered with periodic changes of prosecutors, sometimes ordered by Paraguay’s attorney general’s office. Each time, the investigation is set back—and there is no end in sight. Other large investigations into money laundering schemes have also failed to yield indictments or convictions. That was the case with Liz Paola Doldán González, whom the U.S. Treasury Department eventually sanctioned in 2021 for corruption. Doldán was implicated in a tax evasion and money laundering scheme worth more than $500 million. Paraguayan authorities slapped her on the wrist with a tax fine despite the staggering losses Paraguay’s treasury incurred. Of the two other businesspeople also sanctioned in the case, cousins Kassem and Khalil Hijazi, only the former has been extradited to the United States, while no legal action is pending against the latter.

For years, Washington buried any acknowledgement of Paraguay’s corruption in annual State Department reports, diligently flagging Paraguay’s deficient anti-money laundering controls and weak judicial system. The department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report routinely described Paraguay’s corruption as “pervasive.” Yet nothing of consequence happened despite periodic alarms about criminal organizations laundering proceeds from smuggling with the complicity of corrupt officials. U.S. investments in anti-corruption training, capacity-building, mutual assistance, and gentle pressure contributed to much legislative reform as well as to successful investigations, raids, arrests, and extraditions. But the bottom line remained the same: Despite “results in terms of arrests and modest progress toward implementation of new legislation … convictions remain rare.”

Observing corruption was not enough as long as Paraguayan politicians believed their loyalty to Washington insulated them from the duty to govern honestly and transparently. U.S. policy still seemed to reflect the old Cold War-era practice of aligning with unsavory regimes as long as they supported U.S. foreign-policy goals. In September 2019, merely three years before facing sanctions, Velázquez received the red carpet treatment in Washington, where he met members of Congress and visited the U.S. Justice, State, and Treasury departments as well as the CIA. Washington threw its weight behind Cartes when he ran for president in 2013 despite having earlier investigated his alleged criminal activities, including by infiltrating his business with an eye toward prosecuting him.

Given how extensive corruption is across the political spectrum among Latin America’s ruling classes, doing business with criminals seemed to be the only way to get things done with those in power. Their opponents, so this logic goes, are just as bad. Paraguay’s pervasive corruption has shown that this approach has not worked.

After Biden took office, there were clues that patience in the White House was running thin. In April 2021, the Biden administration slapped sanctions on a Paraguayan politician and his wife, and in August 2021, it issued sanctions on three businesspeople, Doldán and the Hijazis, for their corrupt practices. Kassem was even arrested and recently extradited to the United States. But despite this progress, corruption remains rampant, and government efforts to combat it continue to be underwhelming. Investigations have suffered setbacks; judicial processes have languished; transnational criminal activities in Paraguay have spiked; and, most dramatically, there was the recent assassination of a top prosecutor spearheading cases against criminal networks, corrupt politicians, and financiers of terrorism.

Even as the Biden administration has now homed in on Paraguay to showcase its fight against global corruption, the country’s ruling elites are likely still hoping the worst that can happen to them is losing their visas to the United States. The White House needs to show them they’re wrong.

The Biden administration, which clearly aims to tackle corruption well beyond the confines of Paraguay or even Latin America, should not lose sight of the shock-and-awe impact of its summer measures. Relentless, continued focus on Paraguay is therefore essential. Too often in the past, U.S. sanctions, once promulgated, gradually lost their grit as sanctioned foreign nationals were able to adjust and resume their activities as soon as the United States’ Eye of Sauron moved its gaze elsewhere. Velázquez presumably banks on that: After announcing he would end his electoral campaign and resign as vice president, he retracted the latter decision and now plans to serve his full term, which ends in August 2023. Even as a diminished leader, he can hunker down and, for the remaining months of his term, leverage his patronage network to his own benefit. The White House needs to disabuse him of his complacency.

The designations of Cartes, Velázquez, and Duarte offer a clue on where to start. According to the State Department, Cartes “obstructed a major international investigation into transnational crime in order to protect himself and his criminal associate from potential prosecution and political damage.” Duarte, Velázquez’s close associate, “offered a bribe to a Paraguayan public official in order to obstruct an investigation that threatened the Vice President and his financial interests.” Washington needs to ensure that authorities in Asunción pursue serious investigations of these alleged crimes. At the moment, there are still no pending Paraguayan indictments against Cartes, Duarte, or Velázquez.

If the Justice Department can assert jurisdiction, it should. If the evidence for sanctions is sufficient to prosecute Cartes, Velázquez, and Duarte in U.S. courts, indictments should be drafted and extradition requests filed. Sanctions should also target the bribers, not just those on the receiving end. The former’s impunity is equally responsible for systemic corruption, and it is their crimes the politicians seek to conceal.

For far too long, Paraguay’s corruption has sabotaged the course of justice—not least because of Washington’s indifference to its consequences. The Biden administration’s commitment to combat corruption may have just changed that. Let’s hope it stay the course.

[mixi31051976]

Xiomara Castro rompe el tratado de extradición con Estados Unidos y protege a su entorno sospechado por narco - Infobae

[newstfionline]

Friday, June 28, 2024

Even High Earners Worry About Making Ends Meet, US Poll Finds (Bloomberg) Making ends meet is a rising concern for US consumers, including among those who make $100,000 or more a year, according to a survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. More than a third of consumers in the survey said they were concerned about having enough money in the next six months, compared to 28.7% from a year ago.

Ex-Honduran president sentenced to 45 years for trafficking drugs to U.S. (Washington Post) Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced by a U.S. judge on Wednesday to 45 years in a federal prison and an $8 million fine for running his Central American country as a “narco-state” that formed a critical passageway for South American cocaine flowing to the United States. Hernández, 55, who was convicted of federal drug and weapons charges in March, built his political career on millions of dollars in bribes from traffickers in Honduras and Mexico, U.S. prosecutors said. During his two terms as president from 2014 to 2022, they said, he protected key traffickers from extradition and prosecution. He allegedly helped move at least 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. During his presidency, the U.S. government portrayed him as an ally. In 2015, then-vice president Joe Biden hosted him at the White House. In December 2019, then-president Donald Trump praised him for his cooperation, saying the countries were “stopping drugs at a level that has never happened.”

Argentina’s reforms (CSM) Nearly seven months after taking office, Argentine President Javier Milei has begun to tame one of the worst economic crises in Latin America. His spending cuts and currency reforms have drastically cut high inflation. The government has seen its first budget surplus in 16 years. And with a strong mandate from voters, he has made some progress in Congress to pass reforms—despite his party being in the minority. Much still needs to be done, such as reducing nearly $400 billion in foreign debt and privatizing state-owned enterprises. Yet, concludes a paper by the United Kingdom-based Economics Observatory, the changes so far mark “the first time since the turn of the century that Argentina is purposefully addressing the deep-rooted cause of all its economic struggles.” In March, Mr. Milei asked ordinary citizens for their “patience and trust.” The reforms enacted so far have exacerbated hardships. The percentage of people living in poverty has reached the highest it’s been in 20 years (57.4% nationally). Yet two polls this month found that as many as 63% of citizens are willing to stay the course. Their confidence may rest on a willingness of Argentina’s political leaders to work together with transparency. “It was crucial that he showed that he can work with the opposition to get something approved,” Eugenia Mitchelstein, a political analyst at the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires, told The Wall Street Journal. “If everything is a conflict, and no negotiation, he won’t get anything done.”

Thousands of doctors go on strike in England a week before the UK general election (AP) Thousands of doctors in England are staging their 11th walkout on Thursday in a long-running dispute with the government over pay and working conditions, disrupting hospital services just days before the U.K. general election. The five-day strike by junior doctors—those in the early years of their careers—shines a spotlight on the troubles besetting the chronically underfunded National Health Service, Britain’s state-funded public health system, a topic that is a a top concern for voters going to the polls on July 4. Junior doctors, who form the backbone of hospital and clinic care, have been locked in the pay dispute with the government since late 2022. They went on strike for six days in January—the longest in NHS history—and hospitals had to cancel tens of thousands of appointments and operations.

Flatulent cows and pigs will face a carbon tax in Denmark, a world first (AP) Denmark will tax livestock farmers for the greenhouse gases emitted by their cows, sheep and pigs from 2030, the first country in the world to do so as it targets a major source of methane emissions, one of the most potent gases contributing to global warming. As of 2030, Danish livestock farmers will be taxed 300 kroner ($43) per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030. The tax will increase to 750 kroner ($108) by 2035. However, because of an income tax deduction of 60%, the actual cost per ton will start at 120 kroner ($17.3) and increase to 300 kroner by 2035. Livestock account for about 32% of human-caused methane emissions, says the U.N. Environment Program. Denmark’s move comes after months of protests by farmers across Europe against climate change mitigation measures and regulations that they say are driving them to bankruptcy.

Mongolia holds an election Friday (AP) A parliamentary election will be held in Mongolia on Friday for the first time since the body was expanded to 126 seats, adding some uncertainty to a vote that has been monopolized by two political parties and plagued by corruption. The election in a relatively new democracy—the country was a single-party communist state until 1990—comes at a time when many Mongolians have soured on the government, which they see as benefiting business interests and the wealthy. “We have democracy only in appearance,” said Gantamur Dash, who earns money taking photos of tourists at the central square in Ulaanbaatar, the capital. “Only a few are living luxurious lives and the rest of the population is poor.” Mongolia is a sparsely populated country of 3.4 million people in East Asia squeezed between China and Russia. The government has sought to maintain ties with its much larger neighbors while also building new ones with the United States and its democratic allies—a delicate task since the two sides are increasingly at odds.

As Iran’s presidential vote looms, tensions boil over renewed headscarf crackdown (AP) Seemingly every afternoon in Iran’s capital, police vans rush to major Tehran squares and intersections to search for women with loose headscarves and those who dare not to wear them at all. The renewed crackdown comes not quite two years since mass protests over the death Mahsa Amini after she was detained for not wearing a scarf to the authorities’ liking. A United Nations panel has found that the 22-year-old died as a result of “physical violence” wrought upon her by the state. Amini’s death set off months of unrest that ended in a bloody crackdown, and for a time morality police disappeared from the streets. But now videos are emerging of women being physically forced into vans by police as lawmakers continue to push for harsher penalties. Meanwhile, authorities have seized thousands of cars over women having their hair uncovered while also targeting businesses that serve them. But still, many women continue to wear their hijabs loosely or leave them draped around their shoulders while walking in Tehran.

In the searing heat of the Gaza summer, Palestinians are surrounded by sewage and garbage (AP) Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza’s crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands. In the stifling summer heat, Palestinians say the odor and filth surrounding them is just another inescapable reality of war—like pangs of hunger or sounds of bombing. The territory’s ability to dispose of garbage, treat sewage and deliver clean water has been virtually decimated by eight brutal months of war between Israel and Hamas. This has made grim living conditions worse and raised health risks for hundreds of thousands of people deprived of adequate shelter, food and medicine, aid groups say. Hepatitis A cases are on the rise, and doctors fear that as warmer weather arrives, an outbreak of cholera is increasingly likely without dramatic changes to living conditions. The U.N., aid groups and local officials are scrambling to build latrines, repair water lines and bring desalination plants back online.

Israel’s War On Gaza Is The Deadliest Conflict On Record For Journalists (The Intercept) Salman Bashir had been covering Israel’s war in Gaza on the ground for a month when his fellow journalist, Mohammed Abu Hatab, was killed. He threw his vest emblazoned with “PRESS” down on the ground in anguish during a live broadcast. “We are victims on live TV,” Bashir said. Abu Hatab, who worked for Palestine TV, was killed in November in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in an Israeli strike that destroyed his home and killed 11 of his family members. He is among the more than 100 journalists who have been killed in the nine months of the war, marking it as the deadliest conflict on record for reporters—even more than World War II, which lasted six years. The vast majority of journalists—89—were killed in airstrikes. At least 16 were killed while working. At least 56 were killed at home, and most of the time family members were killed with them. The Israeli military said it “only targets military targets” and claimed Al-Aqsa often employs “terrorists” posing as journalists, but did not provide evidence.

‘The People Have Spoken’ (Reuters) Kenyan President William Ruto yielded to protesters’ demands on Wednesday by agreeing not to sign Nairobi’s contentious finance bill. “I run a government, but I also lead people, and the people have spoken,” Ruto said. The concession comes in stark contrast to Ruto’s comments the day before, when he lambasted the widespread protests as “treasonous events.” Nairobi’s proposed finance bill aims to raise $2.7 billion in taxes to alleviate Kenya’s extensive debt crisis. Demonstrators, primarily young people, mobilized in the capital on Tuesday to condemn the legislation, having nicknamed the president “Zakayo” after the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus. Protesters stormed and set fire to part of Kenya’s parliamentary building. Ruto, in turn, deployed the military to assist police in quelling the violence. At least five people were killed, around 200 others injured, and more than 50 protesters arrested. Kenya has the fastest-growing economy in Africa but faces imminent debt default. In total, Kenya owes $80 billion in domestic and foreign public debt, accounting for almost 75 percent of the nation’s entire economic output.

The Vanishing Islands That Failed to Vanish (NYT) On a wisp of land in the Indian Ocean, two hops by plane and one bumpy speedboat ride from the nearest continent, the sublime blue waves lapping at the bone-white sand are just about all that breaks the stillness of a hot, windless afternoon. The very existence of low-slung tropical islands seems improbable, a glitch. These islands, which form atop coral reefs in clusters called atolls, were quickly identified as some of the first places climate change might ravage in their entirety. As the ice caps melted and the seas crept higher, these accidents of geologic history were bound to be corrected and the tiny islands returned to watery oblivion, probably in this century. Then, not very long ago, researchers began sifting through aerial images and found something startling. They looked at a couple dozen islands first, then several hundred, and by now close to 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the islands’ edges had wobbled this way and that, eroding here, building there. By and large, though, their area hadn’t shrunk. In some cases, it was the opposite: They grew. The seas rose, and the islands expanded with them.

[oipolinternacional]

Ex-Honduran president sentenced to 45 years for trafficking drugs to U.S.

Hernández Conspired with Some of the Largest Drug Traffickers in the World to Transport Tons of Cocaine through Honduras to the United States OIPOL & OIJUST Operating in USA / Communication by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ). Wednesday, June 26, 2024 | Cooperation and edition Oipol & Oijust, June 27, 2024.- The former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, 55, also known as JOH, was…

[noticlip]

Condenan al expresidente de Honduras a 45 años de prisión en EE. UU. por narcotráfico

El expresidente hondureño Juan Orlando Hernández recibió este miércoles una condena de 45 años de prisión por delitos de narcotráfico en Estados Unidos.Un tribunal de Manhattan en Nueva York lo había declarado culpable en marzo de conspirar para importar cocaína a Estados Unidos y de poseer “dispositivos destructivos”, como ametralladoras.Los fiscales de Nueva York alegaron que Hernández había…

[novumtimes]

Ex-president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison for cocaine trafficking

A court in New York on Wednesday sentenced former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison after he was convicted of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Anti-Hernández protesters gathered outside the Manhattan courthouse ahead of the sentencing with placards decrying the former head of state’s crimes. The sentence, which also included an $8…

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Juan Orlando Hernández says he was "wrongly accused" at his sentencing listening to on drug and weapons fees.Juan Orlando Hernández, the previous president of Honduras as soon as seen as an vital U.S. ally with a tough-on-crime coverage, has been sentenced to 45 years in jail for his conviction on drug and weapons fees. In March, a Manhattan jury discovered Hernandez, 55, responsible of accepting tens of millions of dollars in bribes to guard U.S.-bound cocaine shipments from traffickers he as soon as publicly proclaimed to fight. U.S. District Choose Kevin Castel handed down the sentence in a Manhattan courtroom on Wednesday. “I'm harmless,” Hernández, 55, who led the Central American nation from 2014 to 2022, mentioned at his sentencing. "I used to be wrongly and unjustly accused." Hondurans inside and outdoors the nation applauded the conviction, celebrating it as a uncommon case of accountability for corruption and deception by a member of the nation's ruling class. In March, the jury discovered that the previous chief, typically identified by his initials JOH, had accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes to guard massive shipments of cocaine sure for the US. Prosecutors had referred to as for a life sentence, arguing it will ship a robust message to different politicians who use their energy to guard highly effective prison teams. “With out corrupt politicians just like the defendant, the kind of large-scale worldwide drug trafficking at subject on this case, and the rampant drug-related violence that follows, is troublesome, if not not possible,” prosecutors wrote Monday. Throughout a two-week trial, prosecutors mentioned Hernández used drug cash to bribe officers and manipulate the outcomes of Honduras' presidential elections in 2013 and 2017. A number of convicted traffickers testified that they bribed Hernández. Testifying in his personal protection, Hernández denied receiving bribes from drug cartels. In the meantime, their legal professionals accused the convicted traffickers of in search of revenge for Hernández's anti-drug insurance policies. JOH's brother, Tony Hernández, was sentenced to life in jail in the US in 2021 on drug fees.