Honduras

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro will take her oath of office on Thursday as the country's first woman president with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in attendance, as the Honduran leader faces an early test in a sharply divided Congress.

Harris, who has been tasked by President Joe Biden to lead U.S. policy in Central America's impoverished northern triangle of countries, arrived in the Honduran capital on Thursday morning.

She was greeted by two of Castro's children as well as her incoming foreign minister.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Xiomara Castro is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as Honduras’ first female president, facing high expectations to turn around the deeply troubled country amid uncertainty about whether an unfolding legislative crisis will allow her the support she needs.

Relatively smooth elections and a healthy margin of victory Nov. 28 came as a relief, but political maneuvering in the run-up to Castro’s inauguration has muddled the outlook and distracted from what was to be a hopeful new beginning after the two terms of President Juan Orlando Hernández.

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Honduran lawmakers, in rival alliances, backed two different people as congressional president on Sunday amid disputes between President-elect Xiomara Castro and dissident members of her party, warning of a new political crisis in the poverty-stricken Central American nation.

TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Honduras's incoming government will maintain ties with U.S.-ally Taiwan, two members of the transition team told Reuters on Friday, a day after Nicaragua switched allegiances to re-establish ties with China.

However, one of the team members, Rodolfo Pastor, kept open the possibility that Honduras would recognize China in the future, calling it a new super power and saying the Central American country was studying the matter.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras’ ruling party conceded defeat Tuesday in presidential elections held two days earlier, giving victory to leftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro and easing fears of another contested vote and violent protests.

Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura, presidential candidate of the National Party, said in a statement that he had personally congratulated Castro, despite only about half the voting tallies being counted from Sunday’s election.

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Honduran presidential candidate Xiomara Castro was headed for a landslide win as presidential election results rolled in on Monday, and looked set to put the left back in power 12 years after her husband was ousted in a coup.

Castro, who would be the Central American nation's first female president, has promised big changes in Honduras including a constitutional overhaul, United Nations support in the fight against corruption, and looser abortion restrictions.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Hondurans will choose a successor to deeply unpopular President Juan Orlando Hernández on Sunday in elections that could oust his National Party after 12 years in power.

The candidate most likely to do this is Xiomara Castro of the leftist Liberty and Re-foundation party. The former first lady is making her third bid for the presidency and is the only one of 13 opposition candidates with a chance to beat Hernández’s handpicked successor, Nasry Asfura, a folksy Tegucigalpa mayor.

TEGUCIGALPA, July 9 (Reuters) - Honduran police on Friday arrested five suspects for their role in killing an Italian man, who was lynched by a mob of more than 600 villagers in revenge for allegedly murdering a homeless man, the government said.

The villagers on Thursday attacked 65-year-old Giorgio Scanu with stones, sticks and machetes at his residence in the town of Santa Ana de Yusguare, in the southern Honduran department of Choluteca, the security ministry said.

TEGUCIGALPA, July 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The general manager of a hydroelectric company in Honduras on Monday became the eighth person convicted in the 2016 murder of a renowned environmentalist.

A judge said Roberto David Castillo, a former member of the armed forces who graduated from the West Point military academy in New York, was the “co-perpetrator of the crime of murder.”

The victim, Berta Caceres, was a fervent opponent of the activities of the Desarrollos Energeticos S.A. (DESA) company in indigenous territories in Honduras.

TEGUCIGALPA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of migrants who had been stranded in Honduras, including at least 500 Haitians, have set out on their way to the United States, local authorities said Saturday.

"They already left. (The) Immigration (authorities) helped them," Dinora Sandoval, deputy mayor of the Trojes community on the border with Nicaragua, told Xinhua.

More than a week ago, about 2,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, Africans, and Cubans, sheltered in houses, churches, community centers, and schools in Trojes in eastern Honduras.