PHILIPPINES
Sara Duterte to run for VP
Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, plans to run for vice president in next year’s elections, the Commission on Elections said yesterday. Sara would be running for the country’s second-highest office, replacing another candidate, the commission announced on Facebook. “This is to confirm that Mayor Inday Sara Duterte through her representative, has filed her Certificate of Candidacy for Vice President under [Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats party],” her spokeswoman, Christina Garcia Frasco, said on Facebook. Her decision came just before tomorrow’s deadline for candidates to make a late entry into the May elections. She was immediately endorsed by the party of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son and namesake of the former president, to be his running mate in the poll.
HONG KONG
Journalist refused re-entry
The territory has refused to renew the visa of an Australian correspondent from The Economist, the publication’s chief editor said, as authorities tighten a crackdown on free speech and dissent. Wong Sue-lin (黃淑琳) is at least the third foreign journalist working in Hong Kong to be forced out in the past few years. Wong, who is not in the territory at present, was refused permission to return to work there, Zanny Minton Beddoes, the London-based weekly’s chief editor, said in a statement on Friday. “We regret their decision, which was given without explanation,” she said. “We urge the government of Hong Kong to maintain access for the foreign press, which is vital to the territory’s standing as an international city,” she added.
TURKEY
Opposition figure’s wife jailed
The wife of prominent jailed opposition figure Selahattin Demirtas has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail over a fraudulent medical report, the Cumhuriyet newspaper said. Lawyers for Basak Demirtas, 44, said in a statement that she was sentenced by a court due to a faulty date on a medical report issued by a doctor in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir in 2015, Cumhuriyet reported on Friday. Selahattin Demirtas, a former pro-Kurdish party leader and one of Turkey’s best-known politicians, has been in jail for nearly five years on terrorism-related charges that he denies. The European Parliament’s Turkey rapporteur Nacho Sanchez Amor wrote on Twitter that “2.5 years of prison for a mere clerical error concerning a medical record is appalling and seems beyond common sense. It just looks so political. It gives the measure of the worrying state of Turkish judiciary.” Basak Demirtas is free pending appeal of her conviction.
UNITED STATES
China ‘threatened firms’
Beijing has in the past few weeks been pushing executives, companies and business groups to fight against China-related bills in Congress in letters to and meetings with a wide range of actors in the business community, four sources familiar with the initiative said. Letters from China’s embassy in Washington have pressed executives to urge members of Congress to alter or drop specific bills that seek to enhance US competitiveness, according to the sources and a letter sent by the embassy’s economic and commercial office seen by Reuters. Chinese officials told companies they would risk losing market share or revenue in China if the legislation becomes law, the letter said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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