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Zero HedgeGeneral

Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor Indicted In "Biggest Bribery Scandal In State History"

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, a Democrat, was indicted by an Oahu grand jury on Friday on charges of criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery, and falsifying candidate committee reports. The charges stem from an alleged 2022 scheme, dating to her time as a powerful state lawmaker, to steer state money toward COVID-19 …

· Tyler Durden
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Jerusalem PostGeneral

High Court of Justice clears publication of Border Police officer's name in fatal shooting case

The High Court of Justice on Sunday permitted the publication of the name of a Border Police officer, Hananel Sabag, who is charged with reckless homicide for fatally shooting his friend, IDF soldier Yosef Chaim Rabuch, outside his home in Kiryat Arba, in October 2025.

· JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Manila TimesGeneral

Why the prosecution is failing in VP Sara’s impeachment trialTHE impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte plods on with the public watching in exasperation, as there is no sign of improving its snail-like pace; its erroneous, vexing and incorrigible rulings by the presiding officer, competing with the unremarkable parade of worthless prosecution witnesses, who, instead of truthful testimonies, provide evasive and worthless narratives that distort and obfuscate the circumstances that surrounded the vice president’s controversial remarks. So far, the three prosecution witnesses, presented to prove Article IV of the impeachment complaint charging VP Sara for the impeachable offense of betrayal of public trust — Senior Agent Mark Calilung, Regional Director Jeremy Lotoc and Director Melvin Matibag, all from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) — have not proved the case of the prosecution. Calilung was presented to prove the authenticity of the video containing the online conference of VP Sara, where she uttered the remarks the prosecution regarded as grave threats and inciting to sedition, which formed the basis of the impeachable offense of betrayal of public trust. In the first place, the said conference is not in dispute nor were the utterances made there; hence, Calilung’s testimony on this matter is unnecessary and useless. His other testimony touched on the investigation he conducted at that conference. Instead of favoring the prosecution, he highlighted the fact the inquiry he made was superficial and merely for show. He limited his investigation to four participants, i.e. news reporters and a blogger. He disregarded getting information from the other reporters present to determine the environment under which VP Sara’s remarks were made. Calilung did not coordinate with the Presidential Security Group as to whether the vice president’s statements constituted a threat to the life of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., nor did it coordinate with the Armed Forces of the Philippines to evaluate whether her remarks constituted a threat to national security. Additionally, Calilung was called to the witness stand as an expert witness on cyber libel. It turned out he only trained for two weeks — hardly a training experience required of a witness before qualifying as an expert witness in a particular field. This witness could not also answer directly the questions of the defense counsel on cross-examination, dodging these — a trait that understandably and unsurprisingly characterized the manner of responses by the other two NBI witnesses. One of them, Lotoc, was nowhere an improvement on Calilung as a witness. He effectively sunk further the prosecution’s case as he validated Calilung’s testimony that the NBI’s first and second investigations were not thorough and merely pro porma. Both Calilung and Lotoc admitted that they did not investigate the threat against VP Sara’s life, apart from sending her an invitation to provide their agency information on the threat — which she declined — despite the continuing visible threat, in addition to the oppressive acts committed against her, her family, her staff and her allies, especially the withdrawal of her trusted security personnel, whose circumstances triggered her outburst, calling out the people for help on the imminence of her physical obliteration and seeking justice for her planned assassination, as well as unmasking her would-be perpetrators. Lotoc, using his being a lawyer to full extent, hewed and dodged as he avoided answering directly the questions from the cross-examiner. He came out as an unreliable witness when he admitted that he was facing serious criminal charges of arbitrary detention and unlawful arrest at the Office of the Ombudsman, including crimes involving moral turpitude, such as theft, robbery and perjury. Both Calilung and Lotoc admitted that there were no reported seditious acts committed by various groups as a consequence of VP Sara’s allegedly seditious remarks and grave threats against President Marcos, nor was she present at anti-government rallies advocating to overthrow the government. The third prosecution witness, Matibag, whose political somersaulting qualifies him as a political operator, thereby exposing his dubious political loyalty to a cause, is a patently biased witness. He admitted to writing three vicious, disparaging articles in the Daily Tribune against VP Sara. His wife is a member of the House of Representatives who voted to impeach the vice president. He cannot, therefore, say anything good against the respondent and would certainly testify against her, and in fact he did, with gusto. Despite the relentless propagandizing of the prosecution team inside the impeachment court, inadvertently aided by the erroneous rulings of the presiding officer, as well as the constant black propaganda dished out in public by its allies in Congress, its case against VP Sara and obsession to remove her from office and disqualify her from running in the 2028 presidential elections has not gained a foothold, simply because there is no constitutional basis for the articles of impeachment. Not even a foolish rant from a member of the impeachment court notorious for advocating the necessity of bending or breaking a law could help the prosecution’s losing cause. This law bender railed against his colleagues for standing up and defending themselves from malicious innuendo and evident intimidation coming from a prosecution witness and a government official who foisted the filing of cases against two senator-judges, necessarily impugning their integrity. He doesn’t even know the function of the impeachment court, which is to hear a case filed against an impeachable officer and to decide it in accordance with the law and evidence presented before it. One begins to wonder what sins have the people committed to deserve a harebrained politician, and what graver sins they have committed, to deserve failed governance from those they have placed in power.

THE impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte plods on with the public watching in exasperation, as there is no sign of improving its snail-like pace; its erroneous, vexing and incorrigible rulings by the presiding officer, competing with the unremarkable parade of worthless prosecution witnesses, w…

· Salvador S. Panelo
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Manila TimesGeneral

Why the prosecution is failing in VP Sara’s impeachment trial

THE impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte plods on with the public watching in exasperation, as there is no sign of improving its snail-like pace; its erroneous, vexing and incorrigible rulings by the presiding officer, competing with the unremarkable parade of worthless prosecution witnesses, w…

· Salvador S. Panelo
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Manila TimesGeneral

Margaroli, OMI-JKG win P470M license plate dispute

Calamba City — Annabelle Arcilla Margaroli and her foreign business partner, Marinus Harinck, have won a seven-year legal battle after the Quezon City Regional Trial Court dismissed an interpleader case involving ₱470 million worth of imported blank license plates and radio frequency identification (RFID) systems in…

· Roselle Aquino
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Manila TimesGeneral

Castro to Baste: Marcos had no hand in Duterte arrest

MANILA, Philippines — The International Criminal Court (ICC) had former president Rodrigo Duterte arrested and detained at The Hague, Netherlands for crimes against humanity because of complaints filed against him by the victims of his bloody war on drugs, Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary Claire Cas…

· Bernadette E. Tamayo
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The AgePolitics / NSW

Five Liberal MPs supported a factional deal. Now it’s at the centre of a corruption probe

Five current NSW Liberal MPs voted for a factional deal to replace sitting members of the Hills Shire Council while they were on the party’s powerful state executive – a decision likely to be central to an anti-corruption probe into fugitive property developer Jean Nassif’s links to Liberal powerbrokers.

· Michael McGowan
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
Middle East EyeGeneral

UN expert Albanese says Khan's removal 'lines up neatly with fight to neutralise Netanyahu's warrant’

The UN's special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories on Saturday said the removal of International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan cannot be read in isolation from the campaign to overturn the arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

· Middleeasteye
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report
The Jerusalem PostGeneral

A-G asks High Court to strike down 'discriminatory' haredi draft enforcement freeze

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has asked the High Court of Justice to strike down a law suspending enforcement against ultra-Orthodox (haredi) yeshiva students who fail to report for military service, arguing that it leaves their duty to enlist intact while removing the consequences of refusing.

· SARAH BEN-NUN
Neutral · 0/100 Factuality 100/100
Original report

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