Daily News Highlights – June 7, 2016 Edition

Two independent United Nations experts slammed Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte for his statements on media killings. Duterte said, “Just because you’re a journalist, you are not exempted from assassination if you’re a son of a bitch.” UN’s special rapporteur on summary executions Christof Heyns said a message like this “amounts to incitement to violence and killing.” David Kaye, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression said that Duterte’s words can be a “signal to potential killers that the murder of journalists is acceptable in certain circumstances and would not be punished.”

Read more on UN experts on Duterte.

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte claimed he will not give press conferences until the end of his term after press briefings yielded statements that caused an uproar among journalists and women advocates. A video posted by a TV5 reporter showed Duterte saying, “No. I’m sorry. I’m really going to boycott.” When asked until when the boycott would stand, Duterte said, “Until the end of my term.” Earlier, Duterte’s executive assistant Bong Go told media that there would be no more press briefings with the incoming president so mistakes would be minimized.

Read more on Duterte’s reasons for ‘boycotting’ media.

Harlin Abayon failed to reclaim his position as congressman of Northern Samar on the last session day of the 16th Congress. He was escorted out of the plenary hall by the sergeant-at-arms. Abayon won the 2013 congressional race, but his rival Raul Daza filed an electoral protest seeking to annul the votes due to alleged electoral fraud. The House Electoral Tribunal ousted Abayon and installed Daza, but the decision was reversed by the Supreme Court. House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr said last week that the House leadership did not receive the SC decision.

Read more on Abayon’s failed efforts to regain post.

Philippine National Police said there was no drug dealing during the CloseUp Forever Summer event that left at least 5 dead, despite claims made by some partygoers. Chief Police Senior Superintendent Manuel Lukban said, “We can prove that those victims… took drugs outside of the event. There was no reported selling of drugs inside the event.’ Lukban said the drugs must have been sold before the party via social media. Organizers admitted they did not give much attention to the possibility of drug dealing during the party.

Read more on police saying no drugs were sold in Close Up party.

In an interview with Rappler’s Maria Ressa Monday, Globe Telecom CEO Ernest Cu explained why internet in the Philippines is slow. Cu said that fixed line networks in the Philippines were not built out completely when mobile companies started laying down the groundwork for internet access. The “telco monopoly” from decades past, Cu said, was responsible for the “inferior fixed line network,” and that mobile companies had to deploy internet connectivity without adequate support from fixed line networks. As Filipinos embraced mobile data, lines became saturated.

Watch the full interview with Globe CEO Ernest Cu

An average of the 6 last polls put “Leave” at 51% against “Remain” at 49% in the lead-up to the June 23 membership vote on whether Britain leaves the European Union. The “Brexit” vote balance tipped in favor of “Leave” following the 3 latest polls, which showed a growing number of Britons want their country to become the first in history to break away from the EU. The pro-EU camp says world economic growth will take a hit if Britain votes to quit the bloc. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government backs remaining in the EU.

Read more on Brexit poll trends.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has enough number of delegates to win the Democratic Party’s nomination, making history as the first woman to be the presumptive nominee of a major US political party. The Associated Press reported Clinton secured the 2,383 delegates needed to be the presumptive Democratic Party’s nominee for the November 8 election, a day before the last set of primaries. The June 7 contests include delegate-rich states of California and New Jersey. Last Sunday, Clinton won the Puerto Rico primaries, which NBC News said put her past the 2,383 mark. 

Read more on Hillary Clinton’s presumptive Democratic nomination.

Boxing legend and Philippine senator-elect Manny Pacquiao bought into a Singapore-based mobile gaming company. Pacquiao, who is also the world’s second highest-paid athlete in Forbes Magazine’s 2015 list, snapped up a small stake in Gtoken, a platform that publishes crowdsourced mobile games, for an undisclosed amount. The parties formally inked the deal in the boxer’s hometown General Santos City in southern Philippines over the weekend. Now valued at $60 million (P2.774 billion), Gtoken has over a million users to date across Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and China, according to a company statement. 

Read more on Pacquiao’s gaming startup.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts were hacked. A group called OurMine Team claimed it got the passwords for Zuckerberg’s accounts from a recent LinkedIn password dump. Password and username data from around 100 million LinkedIn users were leaked online last May. It appears Zuckerberg used the same password for his Twitter and Pinterest accounts as his LinkedIn password. Twitter and Pinterest already restored Zuckerberg’s accounts and took down the offending messages. Twitter also suspended OurMine Team’s Twitter account. 

Read more on Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts.

Sex education? There’s an app for that. New York-based artist and designer Peiying Feng aimed to teach the public about various sexually transmitted diseases through a smartphone game called Tap That as part of her thesis project. According to Feng’s portfolio, the game features players as guardian angels for sexually active people fighting an in-game monster intent on eating the human charges by infecting them with STDs. Feng said she was inspired to build the game due to the inadequate amount of sex education in the places she’s lived in.

Read more on Tap That.