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MANILA (Reuters) -Boxing star Manny Pacquiao said on Sunday he will run for president of the Philippines next year, after railing against corruption in government and what he calls President Rodrigo Duterte's cozy relationship with China.
Pacquiao accepted the nomination of his political allies during the national assembly of the faction he leads in the ruling PDP-Laban Party, days after a rival faction nominated Duterte's long-time aide, Senator Christopher "Bong" Go https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippine-senator-first-declare-2022-run-presidency-2021-09-08, as its presidential candidate.
That faction nominated Duterte for vice president, a move that critics called a cynical ploy by Duterte to retain power.
Go declined the nomination, but the rift between the Pacquiao and Duterte factions has escalated.
"I am a fighter, and I will always be a fighter inside and outside the ring," Pacquiao, 42, a senator, said in a live-streamed speech during the assembly. "I am accepting your nomination as candidate for president of the Republic of the Philippines."
Pacquiao's faction has not expressed support for Duterte's vice-presidential bid. Duterte is prohibited by the constitution from running for a second six-year term as president.
One of the greatest boxers of all time and the only man to hold world titles in eight different divisions, Pacquiao was mum about his 26-year professional career.
Despite his popularity, Pacquiao trails the front-runners in opinion polls that have been topped consistently by Duterte's daughter https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/duterte-daughter-seek-re-election-mayor-despite-calls-presidency-run-2021-09-16, Sara Duterte-Carpio.
In July, Pacquiao was voted out https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippines-pacquiao-ousted-president-ruling-party-after-row-2021-07-17 as PDP-Laban leader, weeks after challenging Duterte over his position on China and record on fighting corruption, but his ouster was rejected by his faction.
Pacquiao, once a close ally of Duterte, had said more than 10 billion pesos ($200 million) in pandemic aid intended for poor families was unaccounted for, adding this was just one discovery in his planned corruption investigation https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/boxer-pacquiao-backs-corruption-claims-with-missing-public-funds-allegation-2021-07-03.
His anti-corruption crusade comes as the Senate has opened an investigation into alleged overpricing of medical supplies and equipment purchased under the government’s pandemic response programme.
Duterte challenged Pacquiao to name corrupt government offices to prove that the boxer was not just politicking ahead of the election.
Pacquiao countered by warning of jail for corrupt government officials: "Your time is up!"
(Reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz; Editing by Edmund Klamann and William Mallard)
Bond, James Bond will again be played by Craig, Daniel Craig.
The actor, who was a guest on Tuesday night's "Late Show," confirmed to host Stephen Colbert that he will return to the role as the super spy in the upcoming, and yet untitled, 25th Bond film.
"Now, you've been reported to play the role of James Bond again," Colbert said to Craig, who said he has been pretty coy about if he would return. "We could use some good news here. Daniel Craig, will you return as James Bond?"
"Yes," Craig responded with a smile.
This led the audience to cheer and Colbert to get up from his chair and shake Craig's hand.
The actor then explained that he knew for a couple months that he would return, but had been discussing it and trying to figure things out.
"I always wanted to, but I needed a break," Craig said.
Colbert cut Craig off and pointed out that Craig didn't always seemingly want to return to the role once saying that he would rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.
"There's no point in making excuses about it. It was two days after I finished shooting the last movie," Craig said. "Instead of saying something with style and grace, I gave a really stupid answer."
This will be the fifth time that Craig has played Bond. He made his debut in 2006's "Casino Royale" and is considered by some fans and critics to be the best ever to take on the iconic role.
With American racism and black history, there are no happy endings.
I have been a black student of black history for nearly 30 years. Yet, I find myself with a question that feels like a splinter lodged in my nail bed. For all the examples of African American success and American racism reduced, blacks are as far away from the "Promised Land" as their great-great-grandparents were 150 years ago.
White supremacists have killed innocents and terrorised anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, in Portland, and other places while chanting "You will not replace us!" They regularly hold their rallies undisturbed by the police.
All this while police and white vigilantes constantly get awaywith murdering unarmed African Americans and act as stormtroopers when blacks protest
such brutality with "Black Lives Matter". The current black unemployment rate is almost double that among white people and African Americans are still less than six percent of the student bodies at elite universities, although they make up 13 percent of the population.
And yet, whites continue to complain that blacks are to blame, that affirmative action has hurt their job and educational opportunities. This isn't just President Donald Trump's America and the rise of the "alt-right". This is and has been America.
Have I been doing a disservice to myself, my students, and my readers whenever I've presented the history of black people in the United States as a positive one, a tale of success despite slavery, struggle amid Jim Crow, and incremental progress at every step? Have I been on a fool's errand, assuming that one glorious day, America will embrace me and the millions of other African Americans as human equals?
And yet, whites continue to complain that blacks are to blame, that affirmative action has hurt their job and educational opportunities. This isn't just President Donald Trump's America and the rise of the "alt-right". This is and has been America.
Have I been doing a disservice to myself, my students, and my readers whenever I've presented the history of black people in the United States as a positive one, a tale of success despite slavery, struggle amid Jim Crow, and incremental progress at every step? Have I been on a fool's errand, assuming that one glorious day, America will embrace me and the millions of other African Americans as human equals?
Two recent books have confirmed that I and other black historians place far too much hope in a racism-less future. American University historian Ibram X Kendi is one of the few to at least acknowledge the limitations of black progress throughout American history.
As Kendi eloquently wrote in his National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning (2016), the long "history of racist ideas shows ... upwardly mobile Black folk have not persuaded away racist ideas or policies." Yet, even with his sobering conclusion drawn from 400 years of American history, Kendi still infused the future with hope beyond his evidence. "No power lasts forever ...There will come a time when racist ideas will no longer obstruct ... when we will gain the courage to fight for an equitable society," Kendi ended.
Maybe so, though Kendi presented nothing throughout his book to support this prayerful conclusion. For me, Kendi came so close, and yet backed away, from the ugly truth of American racism's permanence.
Emory University historian Carol Anderson also committed herself to the same faith beyond the historical record in her 2016 bestseller White Rage. She explained that in the 150 years since Emancipation, the "trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement," leading to racist backlashes in both policy and in everyday dealings with white folk. "The truth is, white rage has undermined democracy, warped the Constitution," and "squandered billions … on baseless incarceration," Anderson added. But despite everything, Anderson also found reason for hope. "Full voting rights for American citizens … quality schools, and policing and court systems in which racial bias is not sanctioned by law - all these are well within our grasp," Anderson said.
Based on who or what? Dylann Roof? Ferguson? Whether it's job discrimination, voting rights, mass incarceration, or white resentment, all are working as the Founding Fathers - those propertied, slave-owning elites - and their political descendants intended.
After all, the formula for ginning white rage has been racial oppression and economic insecurity at least since the US Civil War. Anderson is yet another historian who, like me, has ignored her own evidence, hoping for a sign, any sign of her "within-our-grasp" dream.
Patricia Williams in her The Alchemy of Race and Rights showed a quarter-century ago what many black historians have failed to acknowledge. The story of blacks in the US has always been somewhere between a bittersweet symphony and a heroic tragedy.
"To say that blacks never fully believed in rights is true. Yet it is also true that blacks believed in them so much and so hard that we gave them life where there was none before; we held onto them, put the hope of them into our wombs, mothered them and not the notion of them ..."
An America without the material and psychological advantages that racism has provided whites, while also disadvantaging blacks, would cease to be.
And if more African Americans become successful in the America that is, this nation with its history of racial, economic, and gender-based discrimination, would this really be the utopia black historians have hoped for? Or, would it merely mean that blacks of such prominence would be partakers in a system of American oppression, the beneficiaries of "a timeless, formless futurism" that would only reflect a toxically racist past, as Williams put it? Is this what black historians like me, Kendi, and Anderson have been asking African Americans to believe in and achieve? How wrong have I been?
"Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value," Atlantic correspondent and MacArthur "genius" Award-winner Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in Between the World and Me. But the African American experience is more than just the physical and constant fear and apocalyptic despair, of whites exploiting, raping, maiming, and killing black bodies.
It is an experience of the spirit and mind, a history of an inspirational, maybe even delusional faith in a mythical America. What can blacks do in a nation that will ultimately never change, in an America forever committed to a racial and gendered caste system?
Maybe African Americans should emigrate. Maybe for some, a bloody revolution is a way out. Maybe incremental progress is the best blacks should ever hope for. Still, even with symbolic victories and the faith of blacks past and present, it would be easier to build a faster-than-light spacecraft than to expect a nation built on racial and sexual oppression to one day turn the corner.
Donald Earl Collins is an associate professor of history at University of Maryland University College. He is also the author of Fear of a "Black" America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Police slaughter dozens of suspected drug dealers and arrest more than 100 in raids near the capital, Manila.
Police killed at least 32 suspected drug offenders in a series of raids near Manila, in the bloodiest night of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.
Senior Superintendent Romeo M. Caramat Jr. said 67 operations in various parts of Bulacan province Tuesday saw police kill dozens, while 109 others were arrested.
Police also claimed to have seized more than 200 grams of methamphetamine, 786 grams of marijuana, assorted firearms, grenades and ammunition.
Bulacan, a province of about 3.29 million people, has recorded numerous arrests and killings of drug suspects in recent months, police records showed.
Duterte has vowed to protect police who kill drug suspects under suspicious circumstances.
Government figures show that since Duterte took office last year up to July 26, more than 3,000 "drug personalities" have been killed in gun battles with police.
More than 2,000 others died in drug-related homicides, including attacks by motorcycle-riding masked gunmen and other assaults. Human rights groups report a higher toll.
Despite warnings by human rights groups that Duterte may be overseeing a crime against humanity, the leader remains widely popular in the Philippines.
He won a landslide victory in presidential elections last year after promising an unprecedented war on drugs in which tens of thousands of people would be killed.
Meanwhile in neighbouring Indonesia, Amnesty International said on Wednesday police were taking a leaf out of Duterte's "war on drugs" and have killed 60 suspected drug dealers so far this year, compared to 18 in all of 2016.
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SPORTS A total of more than €1.3bn will be shared among the clubs in the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League - we explain how the money will be distributed from winners to first qualifying round.
UEFA has issued its UEFA Champions League revenue distribution system for the forthcoming campaign. The estimated gross commercial revenue from the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League, 2017/18 UEFA Europa League and 2017 UEFA Super Cup will be approximately €2.35bn.
Of that estimated gross commercial revenue, the total amount available for distribution to participating clubs in 2017/18 will be €1,718.7m – of which €1,318.9m will go to clubs in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Super Cup, and €399.8m to clubs in the UEFA Europa League.
In addition, of the estimated gross amount of €2.35bn, some 12% (or €282m) will be used to cover organisational or administrative competition-related costs, and 8.5% (€199.7m) allocated to solidarity payments.
What it will mean for the 32 clubs in the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League group stage is a guaranteed minimum fixed payment of €12.7m each, to be boosted by bonus payments of €1.5m per win and €500,000 per draw in the group stage.
The teams competing in the round of 16 will further increase their base payment by receiving an additional €6m fee, with the quarter-finalists then picking up €6.5m apiece and the semi-finalists pocketing €7.5m each.
The UEFA Champions League winners themselves can expect to receive €15.5m and the runners-up €11m.
A club could therefore collect, at best, €57.2m, which does not include play-off allocations or market pool share.
The group-stage, performance-related and qualification payments combine to make a fixed total of €761.9m. On top of that comes an estimated £507m in variable – or market pool – payments; these are distributed according to the proportional value of each television market represented by the teams taking part in the UEFA Champions League (from the group stage onwards), and are split among the different clusters of sides competing from the same national association.
Five influencing factors determine the exact market-pool payment that a team will be entitled to: actual final amount of money in the market pool; actual composition of the 2017/18 UEFA Champions League field; number of clubs from that team’s association; these clubs’ respective rankings in the previous season’s domestic championship; and these clubs’ performances in the forthcoming UEFA Champions League.
Meanwhile, the 2017 UEFA Super Cup winners will be the recipients of €4m and the runners-up €3m.
Which all amounts to a net €1,268.9m for clubs in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Super Cup in 2017/18, in keeping with the revenue distribution system adopted for UEFA’s 2015–18 commercial cycle.
Every domestic champion club that does not qualify for the group stage will receive a solidarity payment of €260,000 in addition to the amounts due for participation in the qualifying rounds (which only teams not qualifying for the group stage are entitled to): €220,000 (for the first qualifying round). €320,000 (for the second), €420,000 (for the third; for eliminated sides only). Clubs going out in the play-offs pick up their first and second round payments, plus the abovementioned €260,000 .
(Note that all net revenue from the three club competitions – including from ticket sales and hospitality packages for the three finals – is centralised and then reallocated.)
Theresa May has said it is important to condemn far-right views "wherever we hear them" as she was asked about Donald Trump's response to clashes in the United States.
The PM said: "I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them."
President Trump has faced criticism for blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A woman was killed when a car hit people opposed to a far-right rally.
The UK prime minister added: "I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them."
She was speaking on a visit to Britain's new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, in Portsmouth, her first engagement since her summer holiday.
Asked about Mr Trump's response to the Charlottesville incidents, she said: "As I made clear at the weekend following the horrendous scenes that we saw in Charlottesville, I absolutely abhor the racism, the hatred and the violence that we have seen portrayed by these groups.
"The United Kingdom has taken action to ban far-right groups here, we have proscribed certain far-right groups here in the United Kingdom.
"And there is no equivalence."
'Moral authority'
After widespread criticism of his initial response, Mr Trump had condemned white supremacist groups on Monday.
But at a press conference on Tuesday, he said there was "blame on both sides".
"You had a group on one side that was bad," he said.
"You had a group on the other side that was also very violent. Nobody wants to say that. I'll say it right now."
Leading figures in Mr Trump's Republican party have reacted angrily to his latest comments, with House Speaker Paul Ryan saying: "White supremacy is repulsive.. There can be no moral ambiguity."
Two of Mrs May's ministers, Sajid Javid and Sam Gyimah, attacked Mr Trump's response in Tweets on Wednesday.
"The 'leader of the free world' loses moral authority when he cannot call fascism by its name," Mr Gyimah wrote.
'Shame'
Mr Javid said he had learned as a child that neo-Nazis were "bad" and anti-Nazis "good" and it was "pretty obvious".
And Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson tweeted: "The president of the United States has just turned his face to the world to defend Nazis, fascists and racists. For shame."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn echoed Mrs May's insistence there is no equivalence between fascists and their opponents as he criticised Mr Trump.
Speaking on a visit to Cumbria, he said: "I can find nothing decent about anything the KKK or Nazis say or have ever said.
"Surely for goodness sake have we not learnt the lessons of what happened in the earlier part of the 20th Century, surely we have learned the lessons of the brave people that marched from Selma to Montgomery, there can be no return to those days.
"I hope president Trump will recognise he is the president of the United States. And that includes all of the people of the United States."
State visit
A number of Labour MPs have called on Mrs May's offer of a visit with state honours for Mr Trump to be withdrawn.
Shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith tweeted: "A state visit by #DonaldTrump would shame this country and betray all we stand for. Theresa May should revoke the invitation immediately."
Nottingham South MP Lilian Greenwood said Mr Trump's comments were "sickening" and a "new low".
Senior Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said the visit should be postponed until 2020 - after the next US presidential election - and should have as its centrepiece the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim fathers arriving in America.
He told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "I think that's the right way forward out of what is undoubtedly going to be a very difficult situation and very probably a very big public order problem as well.
"It then becomes much more about the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim fathers, rather than Donald Trump.
"And I think it then respects the relationship between our two nations and you take the element of Donald Trump as far as you can out of the visit."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said it would be "completely wrong" for Mr Trump's state visit to the UK to go ahead.
"Donald Trump has shown he is unable to detach himself from the extreme right and racial supremacists," he added.
At least 600 people are still missing following a mudslide and flooding that devastated parts of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, a spokesman for the president has told the BBC.
President Ernest Bai Koroma has declared seven days of mourning while pleading for "urgent support".
Nearly 400 people are confirmed dead after a mudslide in the Regent area and floods elsewhere in Freetown on Monday.
The Red Cross has warned it is a race against time to find survivors.
Presidential spokesman Abdulai Baraytay told the BBC that bodies were still being pulled from the mud and rubble.
However, a planned a mass burial of victims on Wednesday to free up space in mortuaries has been delayed, the BBC has learned.
The BBC's Martin Patience, who is in Freetown, said workers there say they have been overwhelmed by the scale of this disaster. He described the rescue effort so far as "chaotic".
Abu Bakarr Tarawallie, a Red Cross official, said rescuers were "racing against time, more flooding and the risk of disease to help these affected communities survive and cope with their loss".
The British International Development Secretary Priti Patel said the UK already had "pre-positioned vital aid supplies" in Sierra Leone, while the United Nations said its local teams had mobilised and were supporting rescue efforts.
"Contingency plans are being put in place to mitigate any potential outbreak of waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
At the scene: Emotions reaching a crescendo
The scene at Connaught mortuary was gut-wrenching. Bodies were lying on the floor because the mortuary had run out of space. There were hundreds of them, and I lost count of the number.
Expect more raw emotions when families go to identify the corpses.
My own emotions have reached a crescendo and I am finding it hard to sleep.
While at the scene of the disaster, even though the sun shone brightly, I was drenched in tears to the point that I went to the washroom.
The emergency workers thought it was for reasons of hygiene, but it was to wash away my tears.
Officially, a rescue operation is under way, but it is more like a recovery operation. Only corpses are being retrieved, and ambulances are taking them to the over-crowded mortuary.
Meanwhile, the community is still coming to terms with the scale of the horror.
Ben Munson, who works for the charity Street Child in Freetown, said the stories he was hearing on the ground were "horrific".
"One lady who our Street Child team was working with was inconsolable," he told the BBC. "She had injuries on her arms and her face and she was eating the food that we were handing out, but wasn't able to speak.
"My team later managed to sort of calm her down and she explained her story, and she was pulled out of the rubble after the disaster had happened and unfortunately she had lost all of her children and her husband."
Homes in the hilltop community of Regent were engulfed after part of Sugar Loaf mountain collapsed following heavy rain early on Monday. Many victims were asleep in bed when disaster struck.
President Koroma fought back tears as he toured Regent on Tuesday and said the devastation was "overwhelming us".
"Entire communities have been wiped out. We need urgent support now," he said.
He urged people to stay away from the affected areas.
"This tragedy of great magnitude has once again challenged us to come together, to stand by each other and to help one another," he said.
Flooding is not unusual in Sierra Leone, where unsafe housing in makeshift settlements can be swept away by heavy rains.
The rains often hit areas in and around Freetown, an overcrowded coastal city of more than one million people.
Bond, James Bond will again be played by Craig, Daniel Craig.
