- Saudi crown prince says no Israel ties without Palestinian state
- Canada to further cut international student, foreign worker permits
- YouTube launches new TV-focused tools for creators
- White Sox heading for worst season in MLB history
- China the top challenge in US history: senior diplomat
- Hong Kong democracy tycoon's son warns time running out
- New migraine drugs no better than cheap painkillers: big study
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs again denied bail in sex trafficking case
- Brewers clinch division title as MLB playoff race heats up
- Man City blunted by 'giant' Inter in Champions League stalemate
- US stocks dip despite larger Fed interest rate cut
- Man City held by Inter as PSG pinch win in Champions League
- All Blacks recall Beauden Barrett for Australia Test
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 20, wound 450
- Spurs late show saves Postecoglou blushes at Coventry
- PSG snatch late goal to beat Champions League debutants Girona
- Gittens' late double gives Dortmund Champions League win at Brugge
- Man City blunted by Inter in Champions League stalemate
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- Gauff splits with Gilbert as coach after 14-month run
- Hundreds of thousands at risk in Sudan's El-Fasher: UN
- Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to new sex crime charge
- Venezuelan opposition candidate says letter conceding election was coerced
- Ukraine official claims Russian advance in Kursk has been 'stopped'
- X update allows app to bypass Brazil ban: internet providers
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill 14, wound 450
- US Fed makes aggressive rate cut, weeks before election
- Arsenal's Odegaard faces lengthy injury absence
- India coal expansion risks massive methane growth: report
- China the top challenge in US history, top diplomat says
- US Fed makes larger half-point cut in first reduction since 2020
- Ronaldo's Al Nassr appoint former AC Milan boss Pioli
- Ainslie 'relieved' as British book place in Louis Vuitton Cup final
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- Brazil fires need harsher punishment: environmental police boss
- Boeing to start large temporary furloughs amid Seattle strike
- Fears of all-out war as new Lebanon device blasts kill nine, wound 300
- 'Emergency' declared over falling UK butterfly numbers
- McIlroy outlines threats to golf peace deal
- Stock markets, dollar slip before US rate decision
- Russian advance in Kursk 'stopped': Ukraine official to AFP
- UN members demand end to 'unlawful' Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories
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- Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions
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- Allied war heroes buried in Netherlands... 80 years on
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Honduras: Poor, violent and corrupt
Honduras, which inaugurated Xiomara Castro as its first-ever woman president Thursday, is a small country with idyllic beaches at the heart of Central America's "triangle of death," plagued by gangs, poverty and corruption.
- Gang war, migrant caravans -
More than a million of Honduras's nearly 10 million people live in the United States. Those who remain, suffer one of the highest murder rates in the world outside war zones.
In 2020, there were 37.6 recorded homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. With Mexico, Honduras is also among the most dangerous places to be a journalist, with 92 killed in the last two decades.
Along with neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala, Honduras forms the so-called "triangle of death" plagued by the murderous gangs called "maras" that control drug trafficking and organized crime.
Poverty affects about seven in 10, according to the Fosdeh NGO.
The violence has helped trigger a wave of illegal immigration northward, notably by minors who fear being forced into gangs.
In 2018, hundreds of Honduran children were separated from their parents in the United States under then-president Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" of illegal immigration. He abandoned the practice following a backlash.
- Political instability -
Independent since 1821, Honduras has endured many coups, armed uprisings and conflicts with its neighbors, including with Guatemala in 1880 and the brief so-called Football War with El Salvador in 1969.
An almost uninterrupted period of military rule for nearly 20 years ended in 1982 with the election of president Roberto Suazo Cordova.
Since then, the center-right Liberal Party and right-wing National Party have fought it out for power.
Elected under the liberal banner in 2005, president Manuel Zelaya was overthrown four years later in a military coup backed by the right and the business world after swinging to the left and cozying up to Venezuela's late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Zelaya later created the leftist Libre party which brought his wife, now-president Castro, to power.
Juan Orlando Hernandez, known as "JOH", was first elected under the National Party banner in a disputed 2013 poll and re-elected in 2017. The opposition said the vote was rife with fraud.
- Narco state? -
Hernandez faced violent protests demanding that he stand down after controversial health and education decrees.
His brother Tony was arrested in 2019 for allegedly trafficking 185 tonnes of cocaine to the US, and jailed for life there last year.
Even though Hernandez supported US anti-drug campaigns, traffickers caught in the United States claimed to have paid bribes to the president's inner circle.
He strongly denies the allegations and says drug cartels are trying to get back at him for standing against them.
- Coffee and hurricanes -
Honduras is one of Latin America's poorest countries. Its plight was worsened by the coronavirus and the devastation caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota in 2020.
It is the world's fifth-biggest coffee producer, and the industry is its biggest employer.
It also produces bananas, timber, corn, pineapple, palm oil, rice, beans, prawns and tobacco, and the United States is its main trading partner.
Remittances by emigrants account for nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product.
But endemic and worsening graft has it ranked 157 out of 180 countries on Transparency International's corruption index.
- 'Mayan Athens' -
The ruins of the ancient city of Copan in the west of the country is a UNESCO world heritage site, with some 1,000 buildings gathered around an acropolis.
But the "Mayan Athens" -- which had its golden age from the fifth to the ninth century -- is in a precarious state.
P.Anderson--BTB