7 h. ago Honduras president alleges ‘electoral coup’ under way amid Trump ‘interference’

Xiomara Castro alleges US manipulation and blackmail as preliminary count shows two rightwing candidates closely tiedHonduras’s president, Xiomara Castro, has alleged that an “electoral coup” is under way in the country’s presidential election, which she says has been marked by “interference from the president of the United States, Donald Trump”.The leftist president also said that “The Honduran people must never accept elections marked by interference, manipulation and blackmail Sovereignty is not negotiable, democracy is not surrendered.” Continue reading...

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7 d. ago Trump tells Honduras ‘there will be hell to pay’ as presidential vote count stalls

Intervention is latest by US president whose preferred candidate, Nasry Asfura, is locked in ‘technical tie’Analysis: Trump’s counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’Donald Trump has accused officials in Honduras of “trying to change” the result of the country’s presidential election, as the release of vote counts was paused with two rightwing candidates locked in a technical tie.The virtual vote count had been slow and unstable before it was interrupted around midday on Monday. The electoral court said a technical problem was to blame and insisted the manual count was continuing. Continue reading...

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1 week ago Trump to pardon drug trafficking former Honduran president saying he was treated 'very harshly and unfairly'

President Donald Trump on Friday made a major intervention into Honduran politics days before the country's presidential election, pardoning a convicted ex-leader.

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2 w. ago BBC ‘too slow’ responding to Panorama Trump edit as senior staff dismiss reports of a coup

Sir Robbie Gibb told a select committee that reports he led an ‘orchestrated coup’ at the broadcaster were ‘nonsense’

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2 w. ago Who can tame Trump? An unlikely candidate is emerging: the Catholic church | Simon Tisdall

Inequality, immigration and civil rights are the battlegrounds on which the church, and some other Christian denominations, are fightingThe supreme court can’t do it – it’s packed with conservatives who owe him their jobs. Congress won’t do it – Republicans slavishly follow his orders, Democrats are ill-led and divided. For today’s White House, the concept of constitutional limits on executive power is a quaint relic. The news media, or sections of it, does its best amid constant legal threats. But, too often, they pay him off. Brave reporters who insist on asking awkward questions are insulted or silenced: “Quiet, piggy.”So who will tame Donald Trump? Who will halt his rolling constitutional coup – his ongoing evisceration of US democracy, civil rights, living standards, global reputation and moral integrity? Voters may try to indirectly rein him back in next November’s midterms (as they did recently in New York and elsewhere). But those elections are a year away. The emergency is ...

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3 w. ago From conscience to platforming Trump: inside the slow death of ‘woke’ ESPN

The broadcaster was once attacked by critics for being too progressive. But that stance appears to have changed for good in Trump’s second term“What happened to the Redskins, by the way?” Donald Trump asked in an interview on the Pat McAfee Show that notably did not stick to sports. His call-in appearance on Tuesday’s program to mark Veterans Day was meant to be a major coup for ESPN, the first time Trump had been interviewed on the network as a sitting president. But viewers could have just as easily been mistaken into believing they were watching Fox News.Trump took his usual shots at Joe Biden, claimed credit for the Department for Veteran Affairs’ high approval ratings and declared victory over the Democrats in a government shut down that dragged on for a depressing 43 days. Rather than push back against the political self-promotion, McAfee cheered Trump on before opening the floor to his lackeys to ask him which NFL coach would make a great president. It was all delivered live ...

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4 w. ago If you care about the BBC, stand up and defend it: this could be the beginning of the end | Polly Toynbee

Replacing the TV licence with a means-tested alternative may help disarm the right of one of its most effective weaponsGotcha! The BBC’s enemies have taken two scalps and inflicted maximum damage. The shock resignation of the director general, Tim Davie, and the head of news, Deborah Turness, make it look as if the BBC accepts that it does indeed suffer from “serious and systemic” bias in its coverage of issues including Donald Trump, Gaza and trans rights. But in this political coup, only the BBC’s sworn ideological foes think a cherrypicked sample of journalistic errors amounts to “systemic” bias.It was indeed a bad mistake to splice together two bits of Trump’s speech; but it needed a quick apology, not a decapitation. The BBC’s chair, Samir Shah, I’m told, tried to persuade Davie to stay to avoid this apparent capitulation to critics: Davie should indeed have stood his ground, not weakened the BBC by walking away.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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