Foreign ministers from the world’s 7 most industrialized countries assailed China’s artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea. In a statement Wednesday, April 15, foreign ministers from the Group of Seven or G7 called for a binding Code of Conduct in the disputed waters and supported the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. The ASEAN document signed in 2002 is intended to counter provocative actions in the South China Sea. In a statement Thursday evening, the Department of Foreign Affairs welcomed the G7 foreign ministers’ declaration.

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Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, also Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines president, asked his Indonesian counterpart to “implore the president of Indonesia to commute the harsh sentence meted out on Mary Jane [Veloso] and to allow her children to grow up in the loving embrace of their mother.” In his April 14 letter to Jakarta Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo, president of the Indonesian Bishops’ Conference, Villegas reiterated the bishops’ rejection of the death penalty. He said the 30-year-old Filipina on death row, convicted for drug trafficking, “may not have been properly and completely understood by the trial court.”

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Vice President Jejomar Binay and Senator Grace Poe are within striking distance of each other in the latest Social Weather Stations top-of-mind survey published in Business World. Asked to name up to 3 people who they believe would be the “best leaders to succeed” President Benigno Aquino III, 36% of the 1,200 respondents chose Binay, while 31% chose Poe. Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte registered 15%, up 10 points from his previous 5% rating in December 2014. Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas tied Duterte after dropping 4 percentage points from the previous survey.

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Cambodia marks 40 years on Friday, April 17, since the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh, ending a civil war but marking the start of a tyrannical rule led by Pol Pot that killed an estimated two million Cambodians. The Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh at gunpoint, forcing one of the largest migrations in recent history into rural labor camps and instigating countless murders. In August 2014, two surviving Khmer Rouge leaders were given life sentences for crimes against humanity. They have appealed their cases.

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A related story is on CNN.

Italian police arrested 15 Muslim migrants after they allegedly threw 12 Christians overboard after a religious row. They allegedly attacked the Christian passengers from Nigeria and Ghana on a boat headed for Italy. In a separate incident, at least 41 migrants drowned after a small inflatable vessel carrying refugees sank in the Mediterranean on Thursday, April 16. Four survivors told Italian police their vessel, which was headed for Europe, sank not too far away from the Libyan coast. The International Organization for Migration said about 10,000 people had been rescued off Italy since Friday alone, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

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More details are on the BBC.
A related story on the 41 migrants who drowned is also on Rappler.

Suspected pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles was brought to the Correctional Institute for Women early Thursday, April 16, two days after she was judged guilty of serious illegal detention. Escorted by members of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, she was transferred to the women’s prison from Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City at past 1 am. She was sentenced to a jail term of up to 40 years after she was found guilty of illegally detaining relative and former assistant Benhur Luy, who turned whistleblower on the misuse of lawmakers’ funds.

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Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Thursday, April 16, said criminal charges will soon be filed in court against those responsible for the death of 35 members of the Special Action Company (SAC). The 55th SAC belonging to the Philippine National Police Special Action Force was the main blocking force in “Oplan Exodus,” the operation that targeted Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan. De Lima however said she will review the 224-page joint report submitted by the National Bureau of Investigation and the National Prosecution Service, and direct the filing of charges as recommended, should these be warranted.

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Prince William and his wife Kate are expecting their second child this April. While Kate’s delivery has not been announced, parking in the area of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, central London has been suspended until April 30 for a “special event.” This has given rise to speculations about the timing of Kate’s delivery. A press pen has been built outside the hospital where the couple’s first child, Prince George, was born in 2013.

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The popping sound that accompanies the cracking of knuckles comes from the creation of a “gas-filled cavity” within the synovial fluid, the substance that decreases friction between joints. Greg Kawchuck, a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada and lead author of the study, said, “As the joint surfaces suddenly separate, there is no more fluid available to fill the increasing joint volume, so a cavity is created and that event is what’s associated with the sound.” Findings, according to researchers, could aid new research on the harm or benefits of the activity.

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Enough of abusive, menacing tweets. Twitter has tripled the size of its team responsible for protecting users, resulting in a 5-fold increase in the speed of response to complaints. Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde said in a column published in the Washington Post, “We need to do a better job combatting abuse without chilling or silencing speech.” Twitter is also taking steps to curtail the use of anonymously created accounts that intimidate specific people.

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