International

Honduras ruling party accepts election defeat by Xiomara Castro

AFP

Honduras’s leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro was headed for election victory Tuesday — making history as the first woman to govern the Central American nation — with her rival from the ruling rightwing National Party conceding defeat.

With just over 52 percent of votes counted, former first lady Castro led with 53.49 percent compared with 33.98 percent for her nearest challenger, the conservative Nasry Asfura.

While Hondurans were nervously awaiting the final election results, Asfura said he met with the LIBRE party candidate and her family to concede and congratulate her.

“I wish that God may enlighten and guide her so that her administration does the best” for Honduras, Asfura said in a video released by the National Party (PN).

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The closely watched poll came four years after presidential elections marred by fraud claims and violence, and the PN was quick to highlight “the climate of peace and tranquility in the country” even though the ruling party was ousted from power.

Washington also hailed the Honduran people and their “free and fair election.”

“We congratulate them and President Elect @XiomaraCastroZ and look forward to working together to strengthen democratic institutions, promote inclusive economic growth, and fight corruption,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted.

Castro’s husband Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a 2009 coup supported by the military, business elites and the political right.

On Sunday, she vowed to lead “a reconciliation government” in a country wracked by violent crime, drug trafficking, rampant corruption and large-scale migration to the United States.

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Castro’s victory would break 12 years of PN rule and four decades of hegemony shared with the Liberal Party.

– ‘Largely calm and peaceful’ –

There have been no reports of violence related to Sunday’s vote, a far cry from the deadly protests that broke out when Juan Orlando Hernandez won a second successive term in a 2017 election that the opposition said was stolen.

More than 30 people died as authorities cracked down on that month-long protest.

The European Union on Tuesday welcomed the “largely calm and peaceful atmosphere” of the latest election, though the run-up was marked by “unprecedented levels of political violence and intense polarization.”

An observer mission on the ground also noted “a number of deficiencies in the institutional management and preparation of the elections,” according to a statement from the office of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

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Vote counting has been slow, with the first half of ballots arriving at the National Electoral Council in digital format while the rest must be physically delivered.

The campaign was bitter, with the National Party trying to attach a “communist” label to Castro and attacking her support for legalizing abortion and same-sex marriage, touchy subjects in deeply conservative Honduras.

In turn, Castro branded Hernandez a “narco-dictator.”

Corruption and drug-trafficking scandals have engulfed Hernandez and many in his inner circle.

Meanwhile, Asfura was accused in 2020 of embezzling $700,000 of public money and the Pandora Papers — a trove of leaked documents exposing offshore accounts — linked him to influence peddling in Costa Rica.

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Some 59 percent of Honduras’s 10 million people live in poverty.

Unemployment jumped from 5.7 percent in 2019 to 10.9 percent the following year, largely because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study by the Autonomous University.

Washington has been keeping a close eye on the election, with Honduras the starting point for waves of migrant caravans trying to reach the United States.

International

FBI Warns of Possible Iranian Drone Attack on U.S. West Coast

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned police departments in California about a possible Iranian plan to carry out a drone attack against the west coast of the United States, according to a report published Wednesday by ABC News.

The warning was issued through a memorandum sent to agencies participating in a Joint Terrorism Task Force, outlining the possibility of a surprise attack involving unmanned aerial vehicles launched from a vessel off the U.S. coastline.

According to the document, intelligence suggested that in early February 2026 Iran may have considered an attack against unspecified targets in California if the United States carried out airstrikes on Iranian territory.

However, the memo also noted that authorities lack additional details about the timing, method, specific targets, or individuals responsible for the alleged plan.

Reports cited by U.S. media indicate that the alert coincided with the start of a military offensive by the administration of Donald Trump against the Iran, a development that has heightened tensions across the Middle East.

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Law enforcement sources with counterterrorism experience told the Los Angeles Times that the warning is part of a routine precautionary advisory based on information from the U.S. Coast Guard.

The sources emphasized that there is no credible indication of an imminent attack and no evidence that Iran currently has the capability to successfully carry out such an operation.

California is home to the largest Iranian community in the United States. According to the Migration Policy Institute, more than half of Iranian immigrants in the country lived in the state in 2019, including around 140,000 people in Los Angeles County alone.

The city also hosts a neighborhood widely known as “Tehrangeles,” where a large Iranian community began settling in the 1960s and continued to grow following the Iranian Revolution.

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International

Trump Says Iran Is Welcome at 2026 World Cup but Warns of Security Concerns

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, said Thursday that the national football team of Iran is “welcome” to participate in the 2026 World Cup, although he suggested it might be safer for the team not to take part in the tournament.

“The Iranian national soccer team is welcome at the World Cup, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for them to be there, for their own safety,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

His comments came a day after Iran’s sports minister, Ahman Donyamali, said that there are currently no conditions for the country to participate in the tournament following the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, during a military offensive launched on February 28 by Israel and the United States.

“After the corrupt government killed our leader, there are no conditions that allow us to take part in the World Cup,” the Iranian official said. He added that the country has faced two wars in the past eight or nine months, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths, making participation in the tournament unlikely.

On Tuesday, the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, met with Trump at the White House.

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Following the meeting, Infantino said that Trump reiterated that Iran’s national team would be allowed to compete in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

“We discussed the current situation in Iran and the fact that the Iranian team has qualified to participate in the FIFA World Cup 2026. During the conversation, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino wrote on Instagram.

International

Iran issues threat to Trump as conflict escalates over Strait of Hormuz

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, threatened U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, warning him to “beware of being eliminated.”

The Republican president had warned on Monday that he would strike Iran “very hard” if the Islamic Republic blocked oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which has effectively been closed since the war began eleven days ago.

“Iran is not afraid of your empty threats. Others more powerful than you tried to destroy the Iranian nation and failed. Beware that you are not eliminated,” Larijani wrote on X.

Earlier, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — the ideological military force of the Islamic Republic — also said their forces would move to block oil exports from the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military offensive against Iran is far from over.

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“Our aspiration is that the Iranian people free themselves from the yoke of tyranny; ultimately, that depends on them. But there is no doubt that with the measures taken so far we are breaking their bones, and we are not finished yet,” Netanyahu said in a statement.