Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday denounced the daughter of former U.S. president Bill Clinton for criticizing him over a joke about rape, and questioned whether she was just as outraged by her father’s affair with a White House intern.

Duterte was incensed by Chelsea Clinton tweeting at the weekend that he was a “murderous thug with no regard for human rights”. Duterte’s rape remark came during a speech on Friday aimed at reassuring soldiers that he would take full responsibility for any backlash to martial law, which he imposed last week on Mindanao island. He said he would not tolerate abuses but joked that if any soldier was to rape three women, “I will admit it, that’s on me”. The firebrand leader is notorious for comments that are deemed offensive by some, but are taken lightly by many Filipinos.(reuters)…[+]

A powerful bomb hidden in a sewage tanker exploded in the morning rush hour in the center of the Afghan capital on Wednesday, police said, killing at least 80 people, wounding hundreds and damaging embassy buildings.The victims appeared mainly to have been Afghan civilians.The bomb, one of the deadliest in Kabul and coming at the start of the holy month of Ramadan, exploded close to the fortified entrance to the German embassy, wounding some staff, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said. Pictures showed the embassy building with its windows ripped out.

One Afghan security guard was killed and others were likely among the dead, Gabriel said. A spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry said the bomber’s target was unknown. “Such attacks do not change our resolve in continuing to support the Afghan government in the stabilization of the country,” Gabriel said.(reuters)…[+]

U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to follow through on a campaign pledge to pull the United States out of a global pact to fight climate change, a source who was briefed on the decision told Reuters, a move that should rally his support base at home while deepening a rift with U.S. allies abroad.(reuters)…[+]

USA – White House communications director Mike Dubke is leaving the administration, he said yesterday, amid swirling speculation about a possible Trump staff shakeup.

He told CNN yesterday he submitted his resignation on May 18 but offered to stay until the end of President Donald Trump’s foreign trip. A final day has not been set, Dubke said. “It has been a privilege to serve this president”, Dubke said in a phone interview.

Dubke said he had a good conversation with the President after submitting his resignation. He declined to discuss the turmoil inside the West Wing, only saying he was resigning for a number of reasons.  Dubke had been in the process of divesting from Crossroads and Black Rock Group, two communications firms at which he worked before joining the administration, and was nearing the point when he would have had to complete the divestiture, a friend said.(CNN)[+]

USA – Venezuelans are furious with Goldman Sachs for buying the country’s government bonds last week, which critics say gives a lifeline to an incompetent government that is starving its people. Goldman confirmed the purchase yesterdaymorning after the Wall Street Journal first reported it.

Goldman stands to make a nice profit from the purchase. It allegedly paid just 31 cents on the dollar, or $865 million, for bonds that were originally worth $2.8 billion. In other words, it got a huge discount on the bonds that pay a high return. Goldman Sachs defended its action, saying it bought the bonds, issued in 2014 by state-run oil company PDVSA, with the hope that life in Venezuela will improve. The value of the bonds would then rise too. (CNN)[+]

JAMAICA – Trinidad and Tobago will host a two-day Caribbean preparatory meeting for the Fourth Regional Intergovernmental Conference on Ageing and the Rights of Older Persons.The June 1-2 meeting will precede the Fourth Regional Intergovernmental Conference on ‘Ageing and the Rights of Older Persons’ in Latin America and the Caribbean to be held in Asuncion, Paraguay from June 27-30.

The Chile-based Economic Commissioner for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said that it is facilitating the review and appraisal exercise within the region in keeping with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Resolution regarding the third regional review and appraisal of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (2002) in 2017 to be followed by a global review by the United Nations Commission for Social Development in early 2018.(Jamaica observer)[+]

JAPAN   –  Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group will start a venture next month to create new businesses using “fintech,” an executive said, joining a global race in financial technology that threatens to unsettle traditional players.

Japan’s second-largest lender by assets said there were already 20 projects in the pipeline for the venture, utilizing blockchain technology and artificial intelligence programs in areas such as farming and travel. Daisuke Yamada, Mizuho’s chief digital innovation officer, said the challenges were cultural as well as technological, as truly new business models required a break from Japanese banks’ conservative, overly risk-averse attitudes.

For that reason, he said the bank would limit its stake in the yet-to-be named venture to less than 15 percent, though Yamada would be its president and the bank would send staff.(Reuters)[+]

US  –   Former U.S. President Barack Obama told an audience in Berlin that prosperous nations could not hide behind a wall to shield themselves from the turmoil and poverty afflicting other countries.

Speaking in a panel discussion on democracy with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in front of 70,000 people at a spot where the Berlin wall once stood, Obama spent 90 minutes talking about international and U.S. issues without once mentioning his successor Donald Trump. But in what appeared to be a reference to Trump’s vow to build a wall along the border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs, Obama said the world was shrinking due to globalization and technology. It was not possible to stay isolated from troubles abroad, he said.

“If there are disruptions in these countries, if there is bad governance, if there is war or if there is poverty, in this new world that we live in we can’t isolate ourselves,” Obama said. “We can’t hide behind a wall.”(Reuters)[+]

EGYPT  –    Egypt has blocked access to at least 21 news sites critical of the government, notably the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera, Huffington Post’s Arabic-language site HuffPost Arabi and the independent website Mada Masr.

The state-run news agency Mena announced late on Wednesday that 21 websites had been blocked because they were “spreading lies” and “supporting terrorism”. The full list of banned sites was not provided, but Mena added that legal action against the outlets was forthcoming. Al-Jazeera, which is partially owned by the Qatari royal family, has been frequently singled out as an enemy of the Egyptian state since the overthrow of former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.

Qatar previously backed Morsi’s leadership, prompting the arrest and detention of journalists from Al-Jazeera following his ouster. Mada Masr was not reportedly included on this list, but access to its site inside Egypt is currently blocked without use of a virtual private network, or VPN.(The guardian)[+]

AFRICA  –  More wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it by more than $40bn according to research that challenges “misleading” perceptions of foreign aid.

Analysis by a coalition of UK and African equality and development campaigners including Global Justice Now, published today, claims the rest of the world is profiting more than most African citizens from the continent’s wealth. It said African countries received $162bn in 2015, mainly in loans, aid and personal remittances. But in the same year, $203bn was taken from the continent, either directly through multinationals repatriating profits and illegally moving money into tax havens, or by costs imposed by the rest of the world through climate change adaptation and mitigation.

This led to an annual financial deficit of $41.3bn from the 47 African countries where many people remain trapped in poverty, according to the report, Honest Accounts 2017. The campaigners said illicit financial flows, defined as the illegal movement of cash between countries, account for $68bn a year, three times as much as the $19bn Africa receives in aid.(The guardian)[+]