It’s a big win for the mayor of Makati. The Court of Appeals extended indefinitely the restraining order it issued stopping the suspension of Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin Binay Jr. In a resolution, the appellate court’s 6th division granted Binay’s plea for a writ of preliminary injunction against the Ombudsman’s order preventively suspending Binay and other city officials over the allegedly overpriced Makati City Hall Building II. The court ordered the Ombudsman and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to “respect and preserve the status quo.”

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The United States military is doubling the troops it is sending to the Philippines later in April – more than 6,000 – to join war games organized by the chief of the military command in charge of the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea). This is more than twice the number of troops who participated in the exercises in 2014. On its 31st iteration, the Philippine-US war games are designed to improve interoperability between the two militaries. It is scheduled this year from April 20 to 30 and will be held in various areas including the Wescom area.

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Fierce clashes continued to rage between rebels and loyalists in southern Yemen, leaving more than 140 dead in 24 hours, as the Red Cross faced delays to urgently needed aid deliveries. More than a third of those slain in the past 24 hours – 53 – were killed as rebels tried to seize a port in the city, which sits on an extinct volcano jutting out into the sea. Relief workers have warned of a dire situation in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, where a Saudi-led coalition is waging an air war on the Iran-backed Huthi Shiite rebels. The fighting has drawn in an array of armed groups including the Huthis, pro-Hadi militia, army units loyal to Saleh, southern separatists, Sunni tribes and Al-Qaeda militants.

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The global network of overseas Filipino workers Migrante International is dissatisfied with the Aquino government’s efforts to save Mary Jane Veloso, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) sentenced to death by firing squad in Indonesia. Migrante believes Veloso’s case was not thoroughly investigated and that she suffered a mistrial. The 30-year-old mother of two was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death in 2010 for attempting to smuggle 2.6 kilograms of heroin into Indonesia. Indonesia has been criticized for rejecting appeals of foreign governments to spare their citizens on death row, while making similar requests to other countries where Indonesians face the same fate.

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An Indonesian court on April 6 rejected the appeals by two Australian drug smugglers facing imminent execution. The pair were sentenced to death in 2006 for trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia and recently had pleas for clemency rejected by Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who has taken a hard line against traffickers. The court said that it did not have the authority to rule on Jokowi’s rejection of clemency appeals because this was the president’s prerogative.

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Turkey on April 6 blocked access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube over the publication of images of a Turkish prosecutor killed by leftist militants during a hostage standoff last week. The order blocked a total of 166 websites, including the 3 Internet giants, which published the images. Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz and his two captors were killed after a shootout at a courthouse in Istanbul on Tuesday. Images from the scene while the siege was going on circulated on social media.

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It’s “a story of journalistic failure that was avoidable. The failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking.” This was the conclusion of an 8,000-word report into a discredited Rolling Stone story on campus gang rape by the Columbia Journalism Review. Rolling Stone magazine withdrew and apologized for the story. The magazine that has a reputation for its investigative work said it was wrong to have trusted the alleged victim’s version of what happened in September 2012 at a University of Virginia frat house.

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The Philippine Bureau of Immigration defended its decision to offload 3 Filipino competitive DOTA gamers, saying their “employment” visas required an overseas employment certificate (OEC) before travel. Three members of Team Rave, which bagged $150,000 (around P6.6 million) in the DOTA 2 Asian Championships, were asked to disembark from their plane on April 3 due to lack of OECs. An immigration official said the E-6 Korean visa that they were carrying was “a working visa issued for those who are seeking to make profit through entertainment, sports, and the like.” They should have gotten an OEC from government, the official added.

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The world’s oldest person, Gertrude Weaver, died on April 6 at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in Arkansas. She was 116. Weaver was pronounced the world’s oldest person on April 1 after the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan, according to a KATV report. Weaver died due to complications from pneumonia, KATV added.

Read the full story on KATV.

If their staredown at the pre-fight press conference didn’t affect enough emotion, the one for their official commercial should certainly get people’s adrenaline going. The official Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao commercial was released at midnight April 7 on various social media networks, showing the two fighters meeting face-to-face in their ring attire with the MGM Grand in Las Vegas off in the horizon. Pacquiao showed his Roberto Duran-esque snarl while Mayweather appeared calm and subdued (and noticeably larger than Pacquiao).

Watch the video on Rappler.