TV News LIES

After his arrest on an international criminal court (ICC) warrant on Tuesday, the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, demonstrated an uncharacteristic concern for due legal process. A petition was unsuccessfully filed to his country’s supreme court to stay his extradition, as lawyers challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction, and pleas were made for any trial to take place in a Philippine court.

The relatives of those butchered during Mr Duterte’s brutal and lawless “war on drugs” will struggle to sympathise. Notoriously, many of its victims never got near a courtroom of any description. In 2016, months into a presidency in which thousands of Filipinos suffered summary executions, Mr Duterte readily acknowledged an indiscriminate dimension to the lawless carnage he had unleashed. The deaths of innocents and children, he told reporters, amounted to inevitable “collateral damage” in his mission to clean up the streets.

Given a green light from the top, vigilante gangs and hired hitmen turned the poorer parts of Manila and his home city of Davao into killing zones. Corrupt police were allegedly financially incentivised to shoot suspects rather than arrest them. Only a handful of officers were ever convicted of a crime. Testifying to the Philippine senate last October, the former president offered “no apologies, no excuses” for this reign of terror, during which foreign criticism was dismissed with swaggering contempt and internal opponents threatened and imprisoned.

More...

A Ukrainian delegation set to meet with America’s top diplomat in Saudi Arabia about ending the 3-year war with Russia will propose a ceasefire covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes, as well as the release of prisoners, two senior Ukrainian officials said Monday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about Tuesday’s meeting, also told The Associated Press that the Ukrainian delegation is ready during the talks to sign an agreement with the United States on access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals — a deal that U.S. President Donald Trump is keen to secure.

The officials discussed the confidence-building measures, with no further details, ahead of the Ukrainian negotiating team’s meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jeddah.

Kyiv is trying to repair the damage done when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Feb. 28 visit to Washington descended into an Oval Office argument with Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

More...

Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said leaders should “not give in to bullies” after he was lashed by Donald Trump in a late-night social media post.

Taking to Truth Social platform just before midnight Sunday night in Washington DC, the US president said Turnbull led Australia from “behind” and did not understand China.

“Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind’ never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so. I always thought he was a weak and ineffective leader and, obviously, Australian’s [sic] agreed with me!!!”

The post appears to be in response to an interview by Turnbull with Bloomberg in which he said Trump’s chaotic leadership style would benefit China, to the detriment of the US.

More...