Protesters call for VP Duterte impeachment

Protesters call for VP Duterte impeachment
Around 4,000 people took part in the rally at the People Power monument in Manila on Jan٫ 31, 2025, police said. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 31 sec ago
Follow

Protesters call for VP Duterte impeachment

Protesters call for VP Duterte impeachment
  • Sara Duterte faces three impeachment complaints over alleged misconduct and misuse of millions of dollars in government funds
  • President Ferdinand Marcos himself has urged Congress not to pursue Duterte’s impeachment, calling it a ‘storm in a teacup’

MANILA: Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Manila on Friday, urging the Philippine House of Representatives to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte.
Duterte faces three impeachment complaints over alleged misconduct and misuse of millions of dollars in government funds, but legislators have yet to tackle them just days before Congress adjourns next week ahead of the May midterm elections.
The 46-year-old vice president, who is estranged from President Ferdinand Marcos but remains his constitutional successor in case he is unable to perform his duties, has denied the allegations.
Marcos himself has urged Congress not to pursue Duterte’s impeachment, calling it a “storm in a teacup” that would distract the legislature from its primary responsibilities.
Protesters mostly wearing white shirts held placards calling for Duterte’s removal and chanted “Impeach! Impeach Sara now!” as they gathered beside Manila’s busiest avenue.
Around 4,000 people took part in the morning rally, police said, with authorities deploying 7,400 riot police to keep the peace.
Those numbers were dwarfed by a mammoth rally held on January 13 by a conservative sect that opposes Duterte’s impeachment.
House of Representatives member Percival Cendana, who backs one of the impeachment complaints, joined Friday’s rally and urged his colleagues to move fast.
Every day of inaction “condones the impunity, the abuse of power and the harassment that Duterte is doing to our country’s leaders,” he told reporters.
An impeachment will only proceed if it is backed by a third of House of Representatives members, and an impeached official can be removed from office by a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
“The Filipino people are here, ready to stand for truth and justice. Let’s not fail them,” Cendana said.


US aid agency is in upheaval during foreign assistance freeze and staff departures

Updated 1 sec ago
Follow

US aid agency is in upheaval during foreign assistance freeze and staff departures

US aid agency is in upheaval during foreign assistance freeze and staff departures
  • Current and former officials say they were invited to submit requests to exempt certain programs from the freeze
WASHINGTON: Trump administration changes have upended the US agency charged with providing humanitarian aid to countries overseas, with dozens of senior officials put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off, and a sweeping freeze imposed on billions of dollars in foreign assistance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the pause on foreign assistance Thursday, saying “the US government is not a charity.”
Aid organizations say the funding freeze — and deep confusion over what US-funded programs must stop work as a result — has left them agonizing over whether they could continue operating programs such as those providing round-the-clock nutritional support to extremely malnourished infants and children, knowing that closing the doors means that many of those children would die.
Current and former officials at the State Department and the US Agency for International Development say staffers were invited to submit requests to exempt certain programs from the foreign aid freeze, which President Donald Trump imposed Jan. 20 and the State Department detailed how to execute on Jan. 24.
Three days later, at least 56 senior career USAID staffers were abruptly placed on administrative leave.
Three officials said many of those put on leave were lawyers involved in determining what programs might qualify for waivers, helping write proposals and submitting those waiver requests as they believed they had been invited to do.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A Trump administration directive that aid organizations interpret as a gag order has left them unwilling to speak publicly for fear of permanently losing US funding.
In an internal memo Monday about the staffing changes, new acting USAID administrator Jason Gray said the agency had identified “several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people.”
“As a result, we have placed a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions,” Gray wrote.
A former senior USAID official said those put on leave had been helping aid organizations navigate the “confusing process” to seek waivers from the aid pause for specific life-saving projects, such as continuing clean water supplies for displaced people in war zones.
Others were identified as having been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programming, which the administration has banned.
On Thursday, a USAID human resources official who tried to reverse the action, saying there was no justification for it, was himself placed on leave, according to two of the officials who had viewed internal emails and verified them as authentic. Reporters from ProPublica and Vox first reported the emails on X.
The State Department and White House didn’t respond to messages seeking comment about the staffing changes.
The new leaders at USAID also abruptly laid off contractors who made up about half the workforce in the agency’s humanitarian bureau Tuesday, knocking them out of systems so that some vanished in the middle of videoconferences, the former senior official said. The targeted institutional service contractors do everything from administrative and travel support to grant processing and data analytics.
The staffing changes came three days after the State Department issued guidelines last Friday for implementing Trump’s executive order freezing foreign assistance for 90 days. The department says it’s reviewing the money the United States is spending to ensure it adheres to administration policy.
The guidelines initially exempted only military aid to Israel and Egypt and emergency food programs but also said program administrators and implementors could apply for waivers for programs that they believe would meet administration standards.
On Tuesday, Rubio issued a broader waiver for programs that provide other “life-saving” assistance, including medicine, medical services, food and shelter, and again pointed to the possibility of waivers. Rubio pointed to the broadened exemptions in an interview Thursday with SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly.
“We don’t want to see people die and the like,” he said.
Rubio said there would be a program-by-program review of which projects make “America safer, stronger or more prosperous.”
The step of shutting down US-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the US was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said. “Because otherwise you don’t get your money.”
The State Department said that since the aid freeze went into effect, it has approved dozens of waivers, although many were returned because they did not include enough detail. It said waiver requests for programs costing “billions of dollars” have been received and are being reviewed.
The department did not specify how many waiver requests had been denied but said thus far its actions had stopped more than $1 billion from being spent on programs and projects that are “not aligned with an America First agenda.”
Even with the broadening of exemptions for life-saving care, uncertainty surrounds what US-funded programs legally can continue. Hundreds of thousands of people globally are going without access to medicine and humanitarian supplies and clinics are not getting medicine in time because of the funding freeze, aid organizations warn.

US official vows to ‘fix’ FAA after fatal collision

US official vows to ‘fix’ FAA after fatal collision
Updated 20 min 51 sec ago
Follow

US official vows to ‘fix’ FAA after fatal collision

US official vows to ‘fix’ FAA after fatal collision
  • US Transportation chief Sean Duffy hopes to put out initial plan shortly
  • President Donald Trump has directed an immediate assessment of aviation safety on Thursday

WASHINGTON: US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said late on Thursday he will soon announce a plan to reform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) after a devastating collision between an American Airlines regional plane and an Army helicopter killed 67 people.

“I am in the process of developing an initial plan to fix the @FAANews. I hope to put it out very shortly,” Duffy said on X.

President Donald Trump who has harshly criticized diversity efforts at the FAA, directed an immediate assessment of aviation safety on Thursday.

Earlier, Trump said he had appointed a former senior aviation official as the acting head of the FAA — just one day after the deadliest US air disaster in more than 20 years.

The announcement came after an American Airlines regional passenger jet collided with a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River near Reagan Washington National Airport.

Chris Rocheleau, a US Air Force veteran who worked at the FAA for more than 20 years, was previously chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association. Sources said Liam McKenna, who was the counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, has also been named chief counsel at the FAA.

Rocheleau has been at the FAA since last week, the sources added.

Mike Whitaker, unanimously confirmed as the FAA administrator in October 2023, stepped down early from his five-year term on Jan. 20 when Trump took office and for 10 days the FAA declined to say who was running the agency on an acting basis. Trump has not yet named a permanent candidate to replace Whitaker.

Trump suggested that efforts to boost diversity at the FAA could have been a cause in the crash. At a White House press conference, he harshly criticized Pete Buttigieg, who headed the Transportation Department under President Joe Biden, saying, “he’s a disaster... He’s run it right into the ground with his diversity.”

Buttigieg blasted Trump on social media, calling his comments “despicable.”

“As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch,” Buttigieg said.

 

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized Trump’s comments.

“It’s one thing for Internet pundits to spew off conspiracies, it’s another for the President of the United States to throw out idle speculation as bodies are still being recovered,” Schumer said.

Former aides to Buttigieg say the diversity policy cited by Trump had been a long-standing policy and was in effect during Trump’s first term. Buttigieg could not immediately be reached for comment.

“I am not blaming the controller,” Trump added. He said he did not know if diversity was to blame but vowed to investigate. “So we don’t know, but we do know that you had two planes at the same level. You had a helicopter and a plane. That shouldn’t have happened.”

The FAA is about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets and the agency said in 2023 it had 10,700 certified controllers, about the same as a year earlier.

As well as dealing with the aftermath of the Washington crash, Rocheleau will face key questions in his new role, including when to allow Boeing to boost production of the 737 MAX after a mid-air emergency in January 2024.


‘No happiness’: Misery for Myanmar exiles four years on from coup

‘No happiness’: Misery for Myanmar exiles four years on from coup
Updated 31 January 2025
Follow

‘No happiness’: Misery for Myanmar exiles four years on from coup

‘No happiness’: Misery for Myanmar exiles four years on from coup
  • The exiles in Thailand are among thousands who fled Myanmar when generals ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021, and launched a bloody campaign of violent repression against dissent

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand: Four years after Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, the country is in the grip of a bloody civil war that has driven many of the country’s young across the border to Thailand.
There they scrape by doing hard jobs for little pay — often living in fear of being arrested and sent back to Myanmar.
AFP met three of them in Mahachai, a district of Samut Sakhon in Bangkok’s western suburbs known as “Little Myanmar” for its population of migrant workers.
They told of their experiences and hopes and fears for the future — speaking under pseudonyms for their own safety and that of their families back in Myanmar.“After the coup, I lost all my dreams,” Ma Phyu told AFP.
Before the military seized power, the 28-year-old was teaching young children while studying at university in Yangon with the aim of qualifying as a teacher.
After the February 1, 2021 coup, which ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, the generals launched a bloody campaign of violent repression against dissent.
Resistance has been fierce, led in large part by young people who grew up during Myanmar’s 10-year dalliance with democracy.
Like thousands of others, Ma Phyu chose to flee Myanmar rather than live under the junta, and now cannot return for fear of retribution from the authorities.

This photo taken on January 26, 2025 shows Myanmar migrant workers walking to an outdoor market in Samut Sakhon province. (AFP)

Thailand is home to the world’s largest Myanmar diaspora — 2.3 million registered workers, plus another 1.8 million unofficial migrants, according to the UN migration agency IOM.
Lacking Thai language skills, Myanmar migrants in Thailand are forced into difficult and dirty jobs including construction, food and farm work — often being paid below minimum wage.
Ma Phyu now works from 5:30 p.m. to 3:00 am in a fish processing plant, six days a week, regularly scolded by her supervisors for not understanding instructions in Thai.
Her husband arrived from Myanmar last year and the couple now live in a single-room apartment in Mahachai.
“I can’t stand the smell of fish any more. I feel disgusted at work and it’s the same at home. Nothing changes, I don’t want to live any more,” Ma Phyu said.
“My previous life was full of happiness. If there had been no coup, there would have been a good life for me.”

In a shabby room in a run-down building in Mahachai, Lwin Lwin practices Japanese grammar with five other Myanmar migrants.

This photo taken on January 26, 2025 shows Myanmar migrant worker “Lwin Lwin” learning Japanese at a makeshift school inside a fellow Myanmar worker’s flat in Samut Sakhon province. (AFP)

The 21-year-old, who fled Myanmar without finishing high school, hopes learning the language will give her a way out of a tough existence in Thailand.
“The coup turned my life upside down. I thought I would finish school, go to university and work for the government,” she told AFP.
“But then the coup happened and all my ambitions were swept away.”
Like Ma Phyu, Lwin Lwin works in a fish processing factory in Samut Sakhon and lives in a crowded accommodation block.
“There is no happiness,” she said.
“I never thought I would be working in canned fish factory, but no matter what I feel, sad or happy, I have to work.”

Thura, 25, fled Myanmar after the junta announced in February last year that it would enforce conscription into the military.
Like thousands of others, Thura chose to escape to Thailand rather than fight for a regime he did not believe in, abandoning his dream of running his own garage.
“At first I wanted to join a People’s Defense Force and fight for the revolution,” he said, referring to the civilian groups that have taken up arms across the country to oppose the junta’s rule.
“But I have many siblings and I chose to come to Thailand.”
Remittances from workers in Thailand are a vital lifeline for many families in Myanmar, where the civil war has wrecked the economy.
In 2022 nearly one billion dollars were sent from the kingdom, according to the IOM.
Thura is waiting for his “pink card” — an official document allowing him to work in Thailand — and until it arrives he rarely leaves the one-room apartment he shares with his sister.
“We will be traumatized by this military coup till we die,” he said.
“If there were no coup, young people like us would be eating at home with our parents, brothers and sisters.
“Instead we are apart from our families for many years. It’s not good and I feel sad for us.”
 


Multiple artisanal gold miners, mostly women, buried in landslide in southern Mali

Multiple artisanal gold miners, mostly women, buried in landslide in southern Mali
Updated 31 January 2025
Follow

Multiple artisanal gold miners, mostly women, buried in landslide in southern Mali

Multiple artisanal gold miners, mostly women, buried in landslide in southern Mali
  • Several miners were killed, the governor of Koulikoro region announced on TV, without providing a number
  • In January last year, an unregulated gold mine collapsed in Mali, killing more than 70 people near the capital Bamako.

BAMAKO, Mali: A landslide engulfed a group of mainly women gold miners in Mali, killing several of them, the governor’s office of the Koulikoro region in the West African country said Thursday.
In a statement broadcast on Mali’s national television, Koulikoro’s governor, Col. Lamine Kapory Sanogo, said “the women (gold miners) were numerous at an excavation in search of gold, and the excavation was surrounded by a dike that gave way and water entered with mud and engulfed the women.”
The office of the governor said the landslide at the artisanal gold mine in southern Mali happened on Wednesday. It said several of the miners were killed but did not provide a number.
This is not the first time such accidents have occurred at a gold mine in Mali, which is known as one of the three gold producing countries in Africa. In January last year, an unregulated gold mine collapsed in Mali, killing more than 70 people near the capital Bamako.
In recent years, there have been concerns that profits from unregulated mining in northern Mali could benefit extremists active in that part of the country.
The region of this latest collapse, however, is far to the south of that and closer to Bamako.
“Gold is by far Mali’s most important export, comprising more than 80 percent of total exports in 2021,” according to the International Trade Administration with the US Department of Commerce. It says more than 2 million people, or more than 10 percent of Mali’s population, depend on the mining sector for income.
Artisanal gold mining is estimated to produce around 30 tons of gold a year and represents 6 percent of Mali’s annual gold production.


Donald Trump talks so much that even his White House stenographers are struggling to keep up

Donald Trump talks so much that even his White House stenographers are struggling to keep up
Updated 31 January 2025
Follow

Donald Trump talks so much that even his White House stenographers are struggling to keep up

Donald Trump talks so much that even his White House stenographers are struggling to keep up
  • He’s been speaking nearly nonstop since starting his second term, drowning out dissenting voices and leaving his opponents struggling to be heard
  • Trump’s commentary remains laden with falsehoods, but now that he is back in the presidency, it’s hard to ignore him
  • Kate Berner, who worked on Biden’s communications staff, said Trump’s constant talking helps keep his adversaries off balance

WASHINGTON: The White House stenographers have a problem. Donald Trump is talking so much, the people responsible for transcribing his public remarks are struggling to keep up with all the words.
There were more than 22,000 on Inauguration Day, then another 17,000 when Trump visited disaster sites in North Carolina and California. It’s enough to strain the ears and fingers of even the most dedicated stenographer, especially after four years of Joe Biden’s relative quiet.
Now there are discussions about hiring additional staff to keep up with the workload, according to people with knowledge of the conversations who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The flood of words is one of the most visible — or audible — shifts from Biden to Trump, who craves the spotlight and understands better than most politicians that attention is a form of power. He’s been speaking nearly nonstop since starting his second term, drowning out dissenting voices and leaving his opponents struggling to be heard.
Take Wednesday, for example. During a signing ceremony for legislation to accelerate deportations, Trump, a Republican, talked up his accomplishments, claimed Hamas was using US-funded condoms to make bombs in Gaza, defended his administration’s efforts to freeze federal spending and reduce the government workforce, veered through descriptions of migrant violence and made the surprise announcement that Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be used as a detention center for people who are in the US illegally.
Trump’s commentary remains laden with falsehoods, including baseless allegations about voter fraud and assertions that California water policies worsened the recent wildfires. Sometimes he speaks off the cuff about consequential geopolitical matters, such as a recent suggestion that Palestinians should be displaced from Gaza while the enclave is rebuilt. It can be hard to know when to take him seriously, like when he muses about serving a third term, which the US Constitution does not allow.
But now that Trump is back in the presidency, it’s hard to ignore him.
“He’s dictating the news on his terms,” said Michael LaRosa, who worked as a television producer before serving as a spokesperson for former first lady Jill Biden. “He’s become America’s assignment editor.”

INNUMBERS

24,259 words used by Joe Biden when he spent 2 hours and 36 minutes talking on camera in his first week in office in 2020

81,235 words spewed by Donald Trump as he spoke for nearly 7 hours and 44 minutes last week. That’s longer than watching the original “Star Wars” trilogy back-to-back-to-back, and more words than “Macbeth,” “Hamlet” and “Richard III” combined

(Source: Factba.se.)

Most presidents try to start their terms with a bang, seizing the moment when their influence could be at its peak. However, Trump is in a different league.
Biden, a Democrat, spent 2 hours and 36 minutes talking on camera and used 24,259 words in his first week in office four years ago, according to numbers generated by Factba.se.
Trump’s comparable stats: nearly 7 hours and 44 minutes and 81,235 words last week. That’s longer than watching the original “Star Wars” trilogy back-to-back-to-back, and more words than “Macbeth,” “Hamlet” and “Richard III” combined.
It’s also much more than when Trump took office for his first term eight years ago. Back then, he was only on camera talking for 3 hours and 41 minutes and spoke 33,571 words.
Trump has spent decades practicing the best ways to get people to pay attention to him. As a New York businessman, he fed stories to gossip columnists, added gold plating to buildings and slapped his name on every product that he sold. His efforts reached an apex with “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that beamed him into American living rooms.
“One of the things that has given him the advantage is that he thinks like an executive producer,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican communications strategist. “He’s constantly programming the next hour and trying to keep his audience engaged.”
A sign of what was to come arrived shortly after Trump was sworn in. He delivered an inaugural address and then promptly gave more remarks to supporters that were even longer than his speech. And then he spoke at a downtown arena, where people had gathered for a rally, and later he parried questions from reporters for nearly an hour in the Oval Office while signing executive orders.
At one point, he turned to Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy.
“Does Biden ever do news conferences like this?” Trump said. “How many news conferences, Peter, has he done like this?”
“Like this?” Doocy responded.
“None,” Trump said, answering his own question.
On Friday, Trump presented a tour de force of talking, demonstrating that he’s far more willing to put himself in unscripted situations than Biden was.
He spoke with reporters while leaving the White House in the morning. He talked to them again after landing in North Carolina, then again at a briefing on the recovery from Hurricane Helene, and then again while meeting with victims of the storm.
Trump flew that afternoon to Los Angeles, where he conversed with local officials about the recent wildfires. Before boarding Air Force One to leave the city in the evening, he answered more questions from reporters on the tarmac.
As his travels continued over the weekend, Trump spoke to reporters twice at the back of Air Force One — as often as Biden did for his entire term.
“Transparency is back!” wrote longtime aide Margo Martin on social media.
That’s not the word that Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, would use.
“Being accessible and being transparent are two different things,” she said.
Sometimes more talking doesn’t produce more clarity. One afternoon, Trump told reporters that there were “no surprises” when Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski decided to oppose Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. The next morning, Trump said he was “very surprised” by their votes.
Jamieson worries that the frenzied pace will exhaust people.
“More people will simply check out,” she said. “And that’s a problem. An informed citizenry is an engaged citizenry.”
Kate Berner, who worked on Biden’s communications staff, said Trump’s constant talking helps keep his adversaries off balance.
“By doing so much and saying so much, it is hard for people who oppose him to organize,” she said. “And it is hard for any one thing to take hold.”
But there’s also a risk for Trump, Berner said. If he’s not careful, she said, he could once again start “wearing out his welcome with the American people.”