Philippine VP Duterte labelled ‘mastermind’ of assassination plot

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Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said that she herself was the subject of an assassination plot. (Reuters)
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Updated 25 November 2024
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Philippine VP Duterte labelled ‘mastermind’ of assassination plot

  • Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols

MANILA: The Philippines justice department on Monday labelled Vice President Sara Duterte the “mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the country’s president, giving her five days to respond to a subpoena.

Duterte is being asked to explain herself in the wake of a blistering weekend press conference where she said she had instructed that President Ferdinand Marcos be killed should an alleged plot to kill her succeed.

“The government is taking action to protect our duly elected president,” Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said at a Monday press briefing.

“The premeditated plot to assassinate the president as declared by the self-confessed mastermind will now face legal consequences.”

Speaking to reporters an hour later, Duterte said she planned to respond to the subpoena.

“I will gladly answer the questions they want to ask, but they must answer my questions as well,” she said.

“We’ll just talk there when I get the subpoena.”

In his first public comments on the matter, Marcos earlier in the day vowed to “fight back” in the face of a threat he called “disturbing.”

The Marcos-Duterte alliance that swept to power in 2022 has collapsed spectacularly in the lead-up to next year’s mid-term elections, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction.

Duterte, who is facing potential impeachment hearings, told reporters early Saturday that she herself was the subject of an assassination plot and had instructed that Marcos be killed should it succeed.

In the expletive-laced press conference, Duterte also singled out first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and presidential cousin Martin Romualdez as potential targets.

“I said, if I die, don’t stop until you have killed them,” she claimed to have told a security team member regarding the trio.

Hours later, the presidential palace said it was treating the comments as an “active threat.”

“That sort of criminal attempt must not go unchallenged,” Marcos said Monday. “As a democratic country, we need to uphold the law.”

“The vice president is not immune from suit. She can be the subject of any criminal or administrative case,” Andres told reporters, adding the subpoena was in the process of being served.

He added that a manhunt was underway for the “assassin” allegedly engaged by Duterte.

Duterte, daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, was Marcos’ running mate in the 2022 presidential election that saw their ticket win in a landslide.

She remains his constitutional successor should he be unable to finish his six-year term.

But she is currently facing an investigation in the House of Representatives, led by Romualdez.

Both Romualdez and Duterte are widely expected to run for president in 2028.

Duterte’s Saturday press briefing came shortly after House officials threatened to transfer her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez — being held for contempt — from the lower chamber’s detention center to a correctional facility.

Lopez has been detained since Wednesday, when she was cited for allegedly interfering in a probe into Duterte’s finances.

Duterte stepped down from her cabinet post of education secretary in June as relations between the two families reached breaking point.

Months earlier, her father had accused Marcos of being a “drug addict,” with the president the next day claiming his predecessor’s health was failing due to long-term use of the powerful opioid fentanyl.

Neither have provided any evidence for their allegations.

In October, Duterte said she felt “used” after teaming with Marcos for the 2022 poll.


France wants Europe cooperation on visas over expulsion of undocumented migrants

Updated 8 sec ago
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France wants Europe cooperation on visas over expulsion of undocumented migrants

  • European countries to cooperate and start cutting back visas available to nationals of countries that refuse to take back illegal migrants expelled by Paris
Paris: France’s foreign minister said Wednesday that he wanted “all” European countries to cooperate and start cutting back visas available to nationals of countries that refuse to take back illegal migrants expelled by Paris.
Jean-Noel Barrot spoke after an Algerian-born man went on a stabbing rampage in the eastern French city of Mulhouse at the weekend, killing one person and wounding several others in what President Emmanuel Macron called an “Islamist terrorist act.”
The 37-year-old suspect was on a terrorism watch list and subject to a deportation order.
France had attempted to expel him multiple times, but Algeria refused to cooperate, French authorities say.
“If a country does not cooperate with the French authorities, I will propose that all European countries restrict the issuing of visas at the same time,” Barrot told broadcaster France 2.
“When we do it on a national level, it doesn’t work unfortunately,” he added.
But if foreign governments cooperate, the European Union could consider reducing customs tariffs for such countries, Barrot proposed.
“It is a particularly powerful lever,” he said.
French authorities are seeking to tighten immigration policies and border controls, in a move emblematic of the right-ward shift in French politics.
“If we want our migration policy to be as effective as possible, there are many things that will be much more effective if we do it at a European level,” he said.
Prime Minister Francois Bayrou was set later Wednesday to chair a meeting on immigration controls.
Bayrou has called for a national debate on immigration and what it means to be French, suggesting that immigrants were “flooding” France.

US and Ukraine near an economic deal with mineral rights but no security promise

Updated 25 min 54 sec ago
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US and Ukraine near an economic deal with mineral rights but no security promise

  • Trump called it a big deal that could be worth a trillion dollars
  • Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of US military support that Ukraine urgently needs

KYIV: Ukraine and the US have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, three senior Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.
The officials, who were familiar with the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One of them said that Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of US military support that Ukraine urgently needs.
The agreement could be signed as early as Friday and plans are being drawn up for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to travel to Washington to meet President Donald Trump, according to one of the Ukrainian officials.
Another official said the agreement would provide an opportunity for Zelensky and Trump to discuss continued military aid to Ukraine, which is why Kyiv is eager to finalize the deal.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he’d heard that Zelensky was coming and added that “it’s okay with me, if he’d like to, and he would like to sign it together with me.”
Trump called it a big deal that could be worth a trillion dollars. “It could be whatever, but it’s rare earths and other things.”
According to one Ukrainian official, some technical details are still to be determined. However, the draft does not include a contentious Trump administration proposal to give the US $500 billion worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv.
Instead, the US and Ukraine would have joint ownership of a fund, and Ukraine would in the future contribute 50 percent of future proceeds from state-owned resources, including minerals, oil, and gas. One official said the deal had better terms of investments and another one said that Kyiv secured favorable amendments and viewed the outcome as “positive.”
The deal does not, however, include security guarantees. One official said that this would be something the two presidents would discuss when they meet.
The progress in negotiating the deal comes after Trump and Zelensky traded sharp rhetoric last week about their differences over the matter.
Zelensky said he balked at signing off on a deal that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed during a visit to Kyiv earlier this month, and the Ukrainian leader objected again days later during a meeting in Munich with Vice President JD Vance because the American proposal did not include security guarantees.
Trump then called Volodymyr Zelensky “a dictator without elections” and claimed his support among voters was near rock-bottom.
But the two sides made significant progress during a three-day visit to Ukraine last week by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia.
The idea was initially proposed last fall by Zelensky as part of his plan to strengthen Kyiv’s hand in future negotiations with Moscow.


South Korea births rose last year on surge in marriage

Updated 26 February 2025
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South Korea births rose last year on surge in marriage

  • The fertility rate remains far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain South Korea’s population of 51 million

Seoul: The number of births in South Korea rose last year for the first time in more than a decade on the back of a rise in marriages, officials said on Wednesday, bucking a trend for a country battling a demographic crisis.
South Korea has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates — a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge.
Seoul has poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability.
The crude birth rate — the number of babies born per 1,000 people — was 4.7, interrupting a continuous downward trend since 2014, according to preliminary data from Statistics Korea.
And the fertility rate, or the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, was 0.75, “up 0.03 from 0.72 in 2023,” it said.
“The number of births in 2024 was 238,300, an increase of 8,300 (3.6 percent) from the previous year,” the report added.
Park Hyun-jeong, an official from Statistics Korea, attributed the rise to an increase in marriages as well as shifting demographics.
“The population has seen a significant increase in the number of people in their early 30s,” she told a press conference.
“This has had a major impact,” Park explained.
“Additionally, many marriages that were delayed due to Covid-19 have now taken place, and this upward trend continues.”
Park said the number of marriages last year had been the most since 1996 — “the highest on record.”
The average maternal age at childbirth in 2024 was 33.7 years, Seoul said, one of the highest in the world.
But the fertility rate remains far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain South Korea’s population of 51 million.
At current rates, the population will nearly halve to 26.8 million by 2100, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Experts say there are multiple reasons for the low birth rate, from high child-rearing costs and property prices to a notoriously competitive society that makes well-paid jobs difficult to secure.
The double burden for working mothers of managing the brunt of household chores and childcare while also maintaining their careers is another key factor, they say.
The South Korean government offers cash subsidies, babysitting services and support for infertility treatment.
But the number of births has until now continued to decline.
Neighbouring Japan is grappling with the same issue — it has the world’s second-oldest population after Monaco and the country’s relatively strict immigration rules mean it faces growing labor shortages.


Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case

Updated 26 February 2025
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Adnan Syed’s murder conviction still stands as he seeks sentence reduction in ‘Serial’ case

  • Syed has maintained his innocence from the beginning, but many questions remain unanswered even after the “Serial” podcast combed through the evidence, reexamined legal arguments and interviewed witnesses

BALTIMORE: Despite documented problems with the evidence against him and an earlier request from prosecutors to clear his record, Adnan Syed will remain a convicted murderer, according to court papers filed Tuesday night.
The decision from Baltimore prosecutors comes ahead of a scheduled hearing Wednesday morning where a judge will consider whether to reduce Syed’s sentence, but this means the conviction itself is no longer in question.
It is the latest wrinkle in an ongoing legal odyssey that garnered a massive following after being featured in the “Serial” podcast over a decade ago.
Syed’s attorneys recently filed the request for a sentence reduction under Maryland’s Juvenile Restoration Act, a relatively new state law that provides a potential pathway to release for people serving long prison terms for crimes committed when they were minors. That request is supported by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates announced Tuesday that his office is withdrawing a previously filed motion to vacate Syed’s conviction in the 1999 killing of his high school ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, who was found strangled to death and buried in a makeshift grave.
“I did not make this decision lightly, but it is necessary to preserve the credibility of our office and maintain public trust in the justice system,” Bates said in a statement.
The original motion to vacate — which was filed by Bates’ predecessor Marilyn Mosby — won Syed his freedom in 2022. But his conviction was reinstated following a procedural challenge from Lee’s family. The Maryland Supreme Court ordered a redo of the conviction vacatur hearing after finding that the family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend in person.
Since the prosecutor’s office changed hands in the meantime, the decision of whether to withdraw the motion fell to Bates.
Instead of asking a judge to again consider Syed’s guilt or innocence, Bates chose a different path. He supported Syed’s motion for a reduced sentence — without addressing the underlying conviction.
Bates said that since his release in 2022, Syed has demonstrated he is a productive member of society whose continued freedom is “in the interest of justice.” He said the case “is precisely what legislators envisioned when they crafted the Juvenile Restoration Act.”
The legislation was passed amid growing consensus that such defendants are especially open to rehabilitation, partly because brain science shows cognitive development continues well beyond the teenage years. Syed was 17 when Lee was killed.
Now 43, he has been working at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative and caring for aging relatives since his release, according to court filings. His father died in October after a long illness.
Bates was facing a Friday deadline to decide on the motion to vacate.
After reviewing the motion filed by his predecessor, Bates concluded that it contained “false and misleading statements that undermine the integrity of the judicial process,” he said in a statement Tuesday.
Attorneys for the victim’s family had argued that prosecutors should address the integrity of Syed’s conviction before the court considered reducing his sentence. Prosecutors “should not be allowed to duck the issue by hiding behind” his motion for a reduced sentence, attorneys wrote in a recent filing.
Syed has maintained his innocence from the beginning, but many questions remain unanswered even after the “Serial” podcast combed through the evidence, reexamined legal arguments and interviewed witnesses. The series debuted in 2014 and drew millions of listeners who became armchair detectives.
Rife with legal twists and turns, the case has recently pitted criminal justice reform efforts against the rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.
When prosecutors sought to vacate Syed’s conviction in 2022, they cited numerous problems with the case, including alternative suspects and unreliable evidence presented at trial. A judge agreed to vacate the conviction and free Syed. Prosecutors in Mosby’s office later chose not to refile charges after they said DNA testing excluded Syed as a suspect.
Even though the appellate courts reinstated his conviction, they allowed Syed to remain free while the case continued.


Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits

Updated 26 February 2025
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Indonesia residents run outside as shallow quake hits

  • The country’s meteorological agency gave a lower magnitude of 6.0 and said there was no potential for a tsunami

JAKARTA: A shallow 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit near the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Wednesday, the United States Geological Survey said, forcing residents to flee outside but with no damage or casualties reported.
The tremor hit at 6:55 am local time (2255 GMT) at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) with the epicenter offshore near North Sulawesi province, according to the USGS.
The country’s meteorological agency gave a lower magnitude of 6.0 and said there was no potential for a tsunami.
Locals in North Sulawesi described the panic when the quake struck.
“I had just woken up when I realized it was an earthquake. It was strong, swaying from side to side,” Gita Waloni, a 25-year-old guest at a hotel in North Minahasa district in the province told AFP.
“Objects inside my rooms rattled. I decided to get out. I was so scared there would be an aftershock while I was inside the lift. All other guests had also fled.”
The vast archipelago nation experiences frequent earthquakes due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity where tectonic plates collide that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
A magnitude-6.2 quake that shook Sulawesi in January 2021 killed more than 100 people and left thousands homeless.
In 2018, a magnitude-7.5 quake and subsequent tsunami in Palu on Sulawesi killed more than 2,200 people.
And in 2004, a magnitude-9.1 quake struck Aceh province, causing a tsunami and killing more than 170,000 people in Indonesia.