TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The president of Honduras has announced the creation of a new 20,000-capacity “megaprison,” part of the government’s larger crackdown on gang violence and efforts to overhaul its long-troubled prison system.

President Xiomara Castro unveiled a series of emergency measures in a nationally televised address early Saturday, including plans to strengthen the military’s role in fighting organized crime, prosecute drug traffickers as terrorists and build new facilities to ease overcrowding as narcoviolence and other crimes mount in the nation of 10 million.

Left-wing Castro’s “megaprison” ambitions mirror those of President Nayib Bukele in neighboring El Salvador, who has built the largest prison in Latin America — a 40,000-capacity facility to house a surging number of detainees swept up in the president’s campaign of mass arrests.

Honduran security forces must “urgently carry out interventions” in all parts of the country now witnessing “the highest rates of gang violence, drug trafficking, money laundering” and other crimes, Castro said in her midnight address.

Authorities plan to immediately construct and send dangerous gangsters to a 20,000-capacity prison near the rural province of Olancho, in the country’s east, said Maj. Gen. Roosevelt Hernández, the army chief of staff.

Escalated police raids have driven up the Honduran prison population to 19,500 inmates, crammed into a system designed for 13,000, the Honduran national committee against torture, or CONAPREV, reported last year.

The government has rushed to build new detention facilities. Last year, Castro announced plans to construct the only island prison colony in the Western Hemisphere — an isolated 2,000-capacity prison on the Islas del Cisne archipelago about 155 miles (250 kilometers) off the country’s coast.

The Honduran defense council also demanded that Congress change the penal code to allow authorities to detain suspected gang leaders without filing charges and carry out mass trials, as they do for alleged terrorists.

The raft of measures marked the latest example of Castro’s hard-line stance on security that intensified amid a surge of narcoviolence in 2022, when she imposed a state of emergency to combat the bloodshed and suspended part of the constitution — a page straight from the playbook of Bukele in El Salvador.

Like Bukele’s anti-gang crackdown that has restricted civil liberties in El Salvador, Castro’s tactics have drawn criticism from human rights groups that accuse her government of taking its tough-on-crime tactics too far.

But Bukele’s success in eradicating gangs that once terrorized large swaths of El Salvador has won him admiration across the region, including in Honduras, where a weary public wants to see results.

Last week, Honduran Security Minister Gustavo Sánchez announced that the government recorded 20% fewer homicides in the first five months of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

Yet critics remain skeptical that the Bukele model can deliver results in Honduras, where gangs remain powerful and corruption entrenched, despite the recent drop in homicides.

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — Have you ever controlled a tech device using your tongue? It’s now a reality and is changing lives for those who are paralyzed.

The device, MouthPad, by the company Augmental, is co-founded by Corten Singer, a San Diego native and Point Loma High School’s Class of 2012 Valedictorian and co-captain of the school’s surf team.

The device, first brainstormed in 2019 after Corten and his co-founder had graduated from UC Berkley, officially launched in 2023. It’s now in the mouths of a few dozen people, including Clairemont Resident Mike Hastings.

“Humans are remarkably adaptable,” Hastings said.

He’s had to adapt after diving into a swimming pool at 20 years old and hitting the bottom, paralyzing him from the neck down.

“I can’t move from the neck down, just my shoulder, my fingers and hands, I cannot move,” he said.

Over the last 26 years, he’s tried ways to make his daily tasks easier, and through the decades, he’s seen a lot of technology change.

“Alexa, set volume to 4,” Hastings said Amazon’s voice command system is the best he’s used and he’s used nearly all of them.

The thermostat and lights in his garage, which turned into an adaptive place for him to work and hangout with his friends, are also voice-controlled.

While certain things have become easier thanks to technology, the way he’s used his computer hasn’t changed since he came home from the hospital in 1999.

He’s used a “mouth stick,” it’s a device that looks like a bite guard, attached to a stick that he uses to peck a keyboard and swipe on a trackpad. He said he helped him graduate with two degrees, one in Physics and one in Computer Science, and it’s been the only way for him to do his job in cyber security, because voice commands don’t typically work when you are writing the “gibberish” that brilliant minds call computer coding.

“This stick I have to sit up right to use it,” Hastings explained that if he sits upright, it negatively impacts his blood pressure, and he could only be on the computer for about 45 minutes at a time. He said he has always been worried that he would drop the stick out of his mouth and would have to call someone to pick it up for him. But, it’s been his way of life for years.

And 25 years later, there’s finally something easier.

“Lots of things have come across my work station, but nothing has got me to change from the ‘mouth stick,’ and then the MouthPad came,” Hastings added.

The MouthPad is a track pad on a mouth, which is molded to the user, letting users control devices with their tongue or with their head movements.

Hastings is one of the first 40 people to test it out.

“You can use the computer just as well as anyone else who can use the computer with their fingers and keyboard,” he explained.

“Think of this just like the trackpad on your laptop except this has been transformed into a smaller form factor that rests on the rood of your mouth, so instead of your finger it’s actually the tongue,” Singer said. “A lot of it stars with its roots in accessibility and basically improving quality of life and providing universal and equitable access to the digital world that has grown to be such a huge part of our lives.”

Mike Hastings also helps other quadriplegics and trains them on how to use adaptive equipment, and he said he can’t wait to recommend the MouthPad so more people can use it.

“Humans are very remarkable and the face that they can adapt to any situation so the fact that my body doesn’t move is kind of irrelevant now,” he added.

Augmental is going through a waitlist determining the most needed users first. The cost is around $1,500, but hope to work with insurance companies to get it covered under healthcare policies.

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — Just a day before UCSD kicks off its graduation weekend, Palestinian students organized an unofficial ceremony and celebration off campus.

The group gathered at Balboa Park, celebrating with music, the Palestinian flag, and their cap and gowns.

In a social media post, groups called it the People’s Graduation, which they say was planned in response to UCSD not letting students protesting for Gaza walk at graduation.

However, they wouldn’t answer questions about the students with graduation holds at the event.

“We’re doing it in commemoration of all the students in Gaza who are not able to graduate this year, who are not able to enjoy their lives and go on to glorious futures like these students are,” said Tazheen Nizam, the executive director of CAIR San Diego.

Just last week, students at UC San Diego told ABC 10News that seven seniors who participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment on campus in May had received holds on their degrees and that the school was withholding their transcripts.

ABC 10News was told Friday’s unofficial graduation was to celebrate in a space where they feel safe and secure while honoring students in Gaza.

“So for them to celebrate their heritage and their existence, sometimes they have to go off campus and celebrate their Palestinian identities,” explained Nizam.

UC San Diego declined to comment, telling us it wasn’t a university event. When asked about the degree and transcript holds, they replied with the following statement:

The university’s graduations are set for Saturday and Sunday.