International
Biden and Trump face super tuesday with nominations virtually assured
President Joe Biden and his main rival, former President Donald Trump, are poised for an unusual Super Tuesday, the key day for presidential primaries ahead of the November elections, where both their nominations are nearly guaranteed.
Biden faces no significant opposition within the Democratic ranks as the incumbent president, while Trump enjoys an unusual advantage in the Republican primaries, with only former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley attempting to challenge him with limited success.
Super Tuesday is the day when the most states vote to determine presidential candidates: this year, 15 out of the 50 states, including California and Texas, the largest in the United States.
Democratic and Republican voters also participate in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
Additionally, Alaska holds Republican primaries, while Democrats vote abroad and in the territories of American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
More than 35% of the delegates who will convene at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Democratic convention in Chicago, Illinois, to choose their presidential candidate will be at stake.
Traditionally, Super Tuesday has served as a turning point in the opposition’s candidate selection due to the large number of delegates at stake.
However, Trump enters this day with an air of invincibility, having swept nearly all contests since the Republican primaries began with the Iowa caucuses on January 15.
All his rivals have already dropped out of the race except for Haley, who only managed to defeat the New York magnate in the District of Columbia primaries this past weekend, a victory with little political weight.
Indeed, the big question is whether Haley’s candidacy will survive Super Tuesday or if she will succumb to mounting pressure from her party and donors to throw in the towel.
Realities of Trump and Biden
Furthermore, Trump (2017-2021) faces the polls emboldened after his legal victory on Monday, when the Supreme Court ordered the lifting of his disqualification from the Colorado primaries, a state also voting on Tuesday.
The unanimous ruling also put an end to the attempts of Illinois and Maine to remove the former Republican president from the process.
Meanwhile, Biden prevailed on Super Tuesday in 2020 over his then-Democratic rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, and four years later, he enters this contest with little internal competition.
Since the Democratic primaries began on February 3 in South Carolina, he has only lost two delegates in the internal elections in Michigan, where a protest vote was organized over the Gaza war.
Despite their indisputable advantage, neither Biden nor Trump will mathematically clinch the nomination on Super Tuesday and will have to wait a few more days.
Even in the hypothetical scenario where they secured all the delegates at stake, Biden would still not reach the magical figure of 1,968 needed to secure the Democratic nomination, nor would Trump reach the 1,215 needed.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
International
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Seven inmates were killed and eleven others injured in a violent riot and clash inside a penitentiary in the Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.
The disturbance began on Saturday afternoon at the Social Reintegration Center in the port city of Tuxpan, in northern Veracruz, when inmates staged a protest over extortion and assaults allegedly carried out by members of the criminal group known as Grupo Sombra.
The protesting prisoners clashed with another group of inmates and set fires inside and outside the facility, seizing control of the prison for more than 12 hours.
During the takeover, the rioters released several videos, including one showing four prisoners —believed to be members of Grupo Sombra— accusing them of being behind the violence and extortion inside the prison.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that elements of the Mexican Army, the National Guard, and local police forces managed to enter the prison and regain control. The state’s Public Security Secretariat confirmed that around 9:00 a.m. local time a coordinated operation restored full order and reestablished control of the facility.
Authorities also reported that the fires set by inmates were fully extinguished.
Official figures confirmed the “tragic” deaths of seven inmates and injuries to eleven people, who are now receiving medical treatment in various regional hospitals.
This is the second deadliest riot in Veracruz in the past eight years. In 2018, a violent uprising at the La Toma medium-security prison left seven people dead (six police officers and one unidentified man) and at least 22 injured (15 officers and seven inmates).
The riot follows the kidnapping and killing of retired teacher and taxi driver Irma Hernández, a case that shocked the entire country and was attributed to Grupo Sombra. Images of Hernández kneeling, surrounded by armed men in the municipality of Álamo, sparked nationwide outrage. She was murdered after refusing to pay extortion demands from the criminal organization.
Despite these incidents, Veracruz has not seen a spike in the daily homicide average. In fact, there has been a 1.6% decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2023, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported 3,094 incidents in Mexican prisons —an 18.5% increase from the previous year— resulting in 100 deaths and 892 injuries.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
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