Claudia Sheinbaum is set to become Mexico’s first female president in its 200-year history.
Favored to succeed outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum has promised to continue his populist leftist policies. Known for her calm demeanor, the scientist represents a change in style and a break from the male-dominated political culture.
“I promise that I will not let you down,” Sheinbaum told supporters in Mexico City’s Zocalo plaza.
According to the National Electoral Institute, Sheinbaum received between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, with opposition candidate Xóchitl Gálvez receiving between 26.6% and 28.6%, and Jorge Álvarez Máynez between 9.9% and 10.8%. Morena, Sheinbaum’s party, is also projected to maintain its majorities in Congress.
Her two main competitors have conceded the election.
Preliminary results show Sheinbaum leading Gálvez by 28 points with nearly 50% of votes counted.
With both leading candidates being women, Mexico was set to make history.
“As I have said on other occasions, I do not arrive alone,” Sheinbaum remarked. “We all arrived, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters, and our granddaughters.”
Sheinbaum will also be the first person of Jewish heritage to lead the predominantly Catholic country.
She will begin her six-year term on October 1, as Mexico’s constitution prohibits reelection.
Results are expected soon in Mexico’s 2024 presidential election as polls have closed. For the first time in the country’s history, two women lead the polls: Claudia Sheinbaum, a scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator and tech entrepreneur, are the leading candidates. Both women are far ahead in the polls compared to the only male candidate, Jorge Álvarez Máynez.
Claudia Sheinbaum:
Backed by the outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Served as mayor of Mexico City (2018-2023).
Part of the Morena party, which boasts about lifting millions out of poverty.
Promises to build on López Obrador’s achievements but faces questions about her independence from him.
Xóchitl Gálvez:
Represents a coalition of opposition parties.
Senator and businesswoman.
Critical of the current administration’s handling of crime and violence.
Promises better pay for police and stronger democratic institutions.
The campaign has been marred by violence, with over 20 local candidates killed, and two people reported dead in attacks on polling stations in Puebla. Voters are also electing members of Congress, governors in eight states, and Mexico City’s head of government. The winning candidate will take office at the end of September.
Results are expected around 10 p.m. Central Time.
Que Onda Magazine brought you coverage of the Mexican voters in Houston, Texas.
Mexican citizens in Houston line up to cast their votes for Mexico’s presidential elections.
FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) — Drivers in Fort Bend County may want to prepare for this gridlock alert along the Southwest Freeway starting next week.
The Texas Department of Transportation announced it will close the mainlanes of US-59 northbound from FM-762 and Thompson Road to University Boulevard from Friday, June 7, at 9 p.m. to Monday, June 10, at 5 a.m.
Officials said the planned closure is part of the construction of the county’s bridge extension project over the Brazos River.
To get around this, drivers will have to exit through the northbound mainlanes at exit 105 and re-enter the northbound mainlanes at the entrance ramp south of University Boulevard.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — It was a stormy morning and afternoon in SE Texas but we are drying out heading into Saturday evening. We will be keeping a close eye on new development out in West Texas that could potentially impact us late tonight into early Sunday. It does look like the more likely scenario though is that it will miss us and dive more to the south. Tomorrow will be another day where scattered showers and storms will be at play. Some storms could have the potential to become strong to severe with winds around 60 mph being the main threat. Isolated large hail near quarter size and an isolated tornado also cannot be ruled out but those threats are low.
High pressure starts to build back in next week lowering our rain chances.
Could we see more rain this weekend?
It’s possible we could see more scattered showers and storms Sunday. An few storms could become strong to severe. Coverage shouldn’t be as high as what we saw Saturday.
Hurricane season is right around the corner! Anything I should be aware of now?
For starters, tune in to our ABC13 Hurricane Special Saturday at 6:30 PM!
There’s nothing threatening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. What you need to know is that NOAA released its Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook for the 2024 season this week. They are predicting an extremely active season with 17-25 named storms, 8-13 hurricanes, and 4-7 major hurricanes possible.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged by his conviction on 34 felony counts by a New York jury, flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution.
After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.
Some called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.
“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.
On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”
Threats of violence and intimidating rhetoric soared after Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely claimed the vote was stolen. As he campaigns for a second White House term, Trump has baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as corrupt tools of the Biden administration, intent on sabotaging his White House bid. His loyalists have responded with a campaign of threats and intimidation targeting judges and court officials.
“This was a disgrace, this was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt,” Trump told reporters afterwards, echoing comments he often made during the trial.
A 12-member jury found Trump guilty on Thursday of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star’s account of a sexual encounter ahead of the 2016 election. Sentencing is set for July 11, days before the Republican Party is scheduled to formally nominate Trump for president ahead of the Nov. 5 election. Trump has denied wrongdoing and is expected to appeal.
The seemingly star-crossed Boeing Starliner — within minutes of its long-delayed blastoff on the spacecraft’s first piloted test flight — was grounded again Saturday when one of three redundant computers managing the countdown from the base of the launch pad ran into a problem, triggering a last-minute scrub.
Engineers initially were told to set up for another launch try Sunday, at 12:03 p.m. EDT, assuming the problem could be resolved in time. But NASA later announced the team would pass up a Sunday launch try to give engineers more time to assess the computer issue.
The Starliner’s test flight includes rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station. Based on the station’s orbit and the Starliner’s ability to to catch up, the next two launch opportunities after Sunday are Wednesday, at 10:52 a.m. EDT, and Thursday, at 10:29 a.m. NASA said the agency would provide an update.
The Starliner’s crew, commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, came within about two hours of launch on May 6, only to be derailed by trouble with a pressure relief valve in their Atlas 5 rocket, and a helium leak in the capsule’s propulsion module.
Those problems were resolved, and after a few minor snags Saturday, the countdown appeared to be ticking smoothly toward a planned launch at 12:25 p.m. EDT. But 10 seconds after the countdown came out of a planned hold at the T-minus 4-minute mark, the clocks suddenly stopped ticking.
Launches to the International Space Station are timed for the moment the Earth’s rotation carries the pad into alignment with the space station’s orbit, a requirement when trying to rendezvous with a target moving at nearly 5 miles per second. An unplanned hold in the countdown for such missions immediately triggers a minimum 24-hour launch delay.
Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, right, and co-pilot Sunita Williams strap in for launch aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.NASA
Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, builder of the Atlas 5 rocket, said the issue Saturday involved one of three networked computer racks in a building at the base of the launch pad. Each rack features multiple systems, including identical circuit boards that operate together as a “ground launch sequencer,” managing the final steps in a countdown.
The GLS computers manage events like the retraction of umbilicals and the firing of explosive bolts that free the rocket from the pad for takeoff, and all three have to be in perfect agreement for a countdown to proceed.
During Saturday’s launch attempt, the countdown ticked down to T-minus 4 minutes and then entered a planned four-hour hold. When the countdown resumed four minutes prior to blastoff, one of the three GLS circuit boards took longer than expected to synch up with the other two. That was enough to trigger an automatic hold at the T-minus 3-minute and 50-second mark.
With the crew strapped into Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, their Atlas 5 rocket stands fueled for launch.NASA
Engineers planned to begin troubleshooting after draining the Atlas 5 of its liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellants and gaining access to the computer room. A decision on how to proceed depended on isolating the problem and replacing and testing any suspect components.
The launch team, while disappointed, took the latest delay in stride.
“You know when you’re playing a game and you get a bad call, you’re a little irritated at first, or a little frustrated at first, but you immediately focus on the next pitch and that’s what our teams do, they’re focused on the next pitch,” said Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner project manager.
“As soon as we went into the launch scrub and launch turnaround, I looked out into the control room and everybody had their heads down, working the procedures to get ready for another attempt tomorrow.”
Said Bruno: “The disappointment lasts for about three seconds. And then you just immediately get busy and do your job. We’ll be back.”
Whenever it takes off, the long-awaited flight will be the first piloted launch of an Atlas 5, and the first for the Atlas family of rockets since astronaut Gordon Cooper took off just a few miles away on the Mercury program’s final flight 61 years ago.
Likewise, it will be the first piloted flight of the Starliner, Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, an already operational, less expensive spacecraft that has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station, since an initial piloted test flight in May 2020.
NASA funded development of both spacecraft to ensure the agency would be able to launch crews to the outpost even if one company’s ferry ship was grounded for any reason.
Already running years behind schedule because of budget shortfalls and a variety of technical problems that cost Boeing some $1.4 billion to correct, NASA had hoped to get the Starliner into orbit on May 6. But the launch was scrubbed when United Launch Alliance engineers detected trouble with a pressure-relief valve in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage.
The Atlas 5 was hauled off the pad and back to ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility, where the Centaur valve was quickly replaced. But in the wake of the launch scrub, Boeing engineers saw signs of a small helium leak in the Starliner’s propulsion system.
The leak was traced to a flange in plumbing that delivered pressurized helium to drive one specific reaction control system jet in the Starliner’s service module. The leak was characterized as “very small,” but engineers needed to show it would not drastically worsen in flight and cause problems for other thrusters.
After extensive analysis and testing, mission managers concluded the spacecraft could be safely launched as is, saying that even if the leak rate was a hundred times worse than so far observed, it would not pose a risk to the crew or the mission. As it turned out, the leak rate remained within acceptable limits Saturday.
FILE – Cows are seen at a dairy in California, Nov. 23, 2016. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday, April 23, 2024, that samples of pasteurized milk had tested positive for remnants of the bird flu virus that has infected dairy cows. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
Michigan’s health department announced Thursday a human case of bird flu in a dairy worker. It’s the third human case reported to date in the current U.S. avian flu outbreak among dairy cows.
Unlike the previous two cases which only involved eye infection, this patient has respiratory symptoms, according to a statement from Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive with the Michigan health department. The patient had direct exposure to an infected cow and wasn’t wearing any personal protective equipment.
“This tells us that direct exposure to infected livestock poses a risk to humans,” said Bagdasarian.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that its labs tested a sample from the Michigan patient and confirmed it was H5N1 bird flu. The patient had flu-like symptoms, including a cough and eye discomfort. The patient was treated with antivirals and is isolating at home. No other workers or household contacts of the patient have gotten sick so far.
The CDC said that risk to the general public remains low. Like the other two recent cases, this infection came from direct exposure to an infected animal. “There is no indication of person-to-person spread of A(H5N1) viruses at this time,” according to the CDC.
The CDC is monitoring data from influenza surveillance systems, and said “there has been no sign of unusual influenza activity in people.”
Nonetheless, scientists following the outbreak say this human case is troubling development.
“Our concerns about this outbreak are coming true,” says Dr. Rick Bright, a virologist and the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). “The longer the U.S. allows this outbreak to continue, without appropriate measures to stop it, without conducting testing in cows and people, more people will be at increased risk for exposure and infection.”
Bright says it’s a problem that there’s not better sharing of bird flu data in the U.S., and there’s not more testing and precautions to prevent spread. He warns this will lead to more humans infected by animals. And that could eventually lead the virus to adapt itself to spread among humans. “This virus will find a way to transfer more efficiently among humans. This is what happens with a virus like this,” he told NPR.
Both the CDC and Michigan health officials emphasized the importance of protecting farm workers from possible exposure.
Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development director Tim Boring said his department is offering support to dairy farms in need of protective gear. “Proper use of personal protective equipment is the best tool we have to protect farm workers.”
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled against 22 women who suffered complications during pregnancy who had sued the state over its near-total abortion ban.
Why it matters: The state Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s ruling that clarified when abortion exceptions for medical emergencies should be allowed.
Context: The lawsuit, originally filed in March 2023, didn’t seek to overturn Texas’s ban but only to clarify when medical exceptions are allowed under the law.
Critics have said the ambiguity over when exceptions are allow has contributed to confusion among doctors — who can be charged with a first-degree felony if they violate the law.
They have also argued the confusion and possibility of criminal liability endangers the lives of pregnant women, who could denied necessary and potentially life-saving abortions.
How it works: Texas’s ban, one of the strictest in the country, does not include exceptions for rape or incest.
Under it, physicians can perform an abortion only if the pregnant person’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy “poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” The provider must also attempt to save the fetus.
A state district court judge ruled last summer that the state could not prosecute doctors who terminated a complicated pregnancy in their “good faith judgment,” but the order was almost immediately blocked through an appeal by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.
What’s inside: The Texas Supreme Court, which is comprised only of elected Republicans, ruled Friday that the lower court’s ruling was flawed because “all pregnancies carry risks.”
“While merely being pregnant may increase a mother’s risk of death or injury, pregnancy itself is not a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ under the law,” the court said.
“Because the trial court’s order opens the door to permit abortion to address any pregnancy risk, it is not a faithful interpretation of the law.”
Between the lines: The court kept in place the medical exception portion of the state’s ban, saying “Texas law permits a life-saving abortion.”
However, it eliminated an attempt to clarify when a physical condition could kill or impair a pregnant woman.
No matter how the court ruled on Friday, Texas’s ban would have remained in effect.
The big picture: The debate over what medical emergency merits legal abortion is occurring as infant and maternalmortalities have both spiked in Texas.
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — It was a stormy morning and afternoon in SE Texas but we are drying out heading into Saturday evening. We will be keeping a close eye on new development out in West Texas that could potentially impact us late tonight into early Sunday. It does look like the more likely scenario though is that it will miss us and dive more to the south. Tomorrow will be another day where scattered showers and storms will be at play. Some storms could have the potential to become strong to severe with winds around 60 mph being the main threat. Isolated large hail near quarter size and an isolated tornado also cannot be ruled out but those threats are low.
High pressure starts to build back in next week lowering our rain chances.
Could we see more rain this weekend?
It’s possible we could see more scattered showers and storms Sunday. An few storms could become strong to severe. Coverage shouldn’t be as high as what we saw Saturday.
Hurricane season is right around the corner! Anything I should be aware of now?
For starters, tune in to our ABC13 Hurricane Special Saturday at 6:30 PM!
There’s nothing threatening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. What you need to know is that NOAA released its Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook for the 2024 season this week. They are predicting an extremely active season with 17-25 named storms, 8-13 hurricanes, and 4-7 major hurricanes possible.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA — A last-minute issue stopped Saturday’s launch countdown for Boeing’s first astronaut flight.
Two NASA astronauts were secured in the company’s Starliner capsule and ready for liftoff when the countdown was halted at three minutes and 50 seconds.
With only a split second window for liftoff Saturday afternoon, there was no time to resolve the issue, leading to the mission being called off.
The launch had already been postponed for leak checks and rocket repairs.
NASA seeks a backup to SpaceX, which has been flying astronauts for the past four years.
