MANILA, Philippines -  President Rodrigo Duterte has broken with his predecessors and finally ordered the burial of Ferdinand Marcos, the infamous former Philippine president who died 27 years ago, in a cemetery reserved for war heroes and eminent individuals.

• The interment has been provisionally scheduled for Sept. 18, according to the Philippine Star newspaper.
• The disgraced former president is accused of plundering billions in public funds and grave abuses of human rights.
• "We are a divided nation," Duterte said on Sunday, arguing that the former dictator is "qualified" for an honorable burial. "The family has that right to bury their father or husband because he was president of the Republic of the Philippines, and he was a soldier at one time".

The Marcos family has kept the former president unburied until its long-standing request that he be laid to rest in the Heroes' Cemetery is granted. Duterte's predecessors all refused permission due to opposition from his surviving victims during the martial law years.

NEW DELHI,India -  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday his government had built more than 20 million toilets and brought electricity to thousands of villages as he delivered an Independence Day report card.

From the ramparts of Delhi’s 17th-century Red Fort, Modi vowed that his administration was on track to meet its pledge of providing power and toilets to every household across the world’s second most populous nation.
Modi drew praise in his first August 15 speech in 2014 as he tackled often taboo issues such as sexual violence and a lack of toilets, promising to build one for every household within four years.
“Today I can say that in such short time, more than 20 million toilets have been built in India’s villages and more than 70,000 are free of open defecation,” Modi said to loud applause.

• Open defecation has long been a major health and sanitation problem in India, where almost 594 million people  nearly half the population  defecate in the open, according to UNICEF. 

Modi has stressed the need to clean up India since storming to power in 2014 and has repeatedly urged every household to have a toilet to end the spread of disease and illnesses such as diarrhoea.

Last year’s speech saw Modi set a 1,000-day deadline for every village in India to get electricity, urging state governments responsible for power to ensure every community is finally linked to the national grid.

“We’re nearing 70 years of independence and these poor villages were forced to live in the 18th century all this while, but we promised to make the impossible possible,” Modi said.
“Today I am proud to say that even though we haven’t even completed half of those 1,000 days yet, we have already brought electricity to 10,000 of those 18,000 villages.”
Government figures released last year showed more than 300 million people in India the world’s fastest-growing major economy still had no access to electricity. Per-capita electricity consumption is barely one third of the global average.

Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) have been dealt a blow after FIFA revoked Malaysia's hosting rights for the 2017 FIFA Congress, where the voting for the 2026 World Cup was also scheduled. 
An apparent issue of getting travel visa for delegates from certain countries has resulted in Malaysia losing hosting rights of the 2017 FIFA Congress.

The national body have kept mum on the matter but are expected to make an announcement after an executive committee meeting on Monday. FIFA awarded Malaysia the rights in December 2013.

Among the reasons given by FIFA include a possible difficulty in delegates from certain countries – including Israel – in obtaining necessary travel documents.

Malaysia and Israel do not have political ties and its citizens are not able travel freely between the two countries. 

• Conspiracy theorists, however, believe FIFA's decision was also influenced by turbulence in Malaysian football over the past couple of weeks. 
• Four Johor Darul Ta'zim players suddenly quit international football last month, prompting club owner Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim to say the players were fed up with FAM's way.

Tunku Ismail Sultan Ibrahim also alleged the national body of corruption, leading to involvement of Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin(photo). 

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte publicly linked more than 150 judges, mayors, lawmakers, police and military personnel to illegal drugs Sunday, ordering them to surrender for investigation as he ratcheted up his bloody war against what he calls a "pandemic."

 Duterte promptly relieved members of the military and police he named from their current posts and ordered government security personnel to be withdrawn from politicians he identified in a nationally televised speech.

He also ordered gun licenses of those named revoked. 
"All military and police who are attached to these people,I'm giving you 24 hours to report to your mother unit or I will whack you.
I'll dismiss you from the service," Duterte said in the speech at a military camp in southern Davao city. He said that the list of politicians, judges and law enforcers given to him by the military and police might or might not be true, but that he had a duty to disclose to the public how the drug problem had become so pervasive.

• "The list of names, which Duterte said included some friends, has been validated by authorities but did not contain details of the officials' alleged involvement to the drug trade or offer any evidence. 
• Some names were incomplete, while others had no rank or government position. They included eight judges, as well as five retired and current generals. 
• The rest were mostly town mayors and police officers. One retired general, Vicente Loot, has been previously named in public by Duterte and has denied any wrongdoing. 
•  "It's a pandemic," said Duterte, a former mayor of Davao, where he built a reputation for his crime-busting style that allegedly involved extrajudicial killings. 
• Duterte's latest salvo ups the ante in his war on drugs, which has already left more than 400 suspected dealers and pushers dead and more than 4,400 arrested in more than a month since he took office.

• But Duterte has dismissed their concerns and has openly threatened to kill crime suspects, assuring law enforcers that he would defend them if they face lawsuits while battling criminality. 
• Church leader Archbishop Socrates Villegas issued a statement, read in churches Sunday in his northern district, expressing deep concerns over the killings of drugs suspects and lamenting a lack of widespread outrage over the deaths. 
• "Is not humanity going down to the dregs when bloodthirsty humans encourage the killers and ask for more blood?" Villegas said. 
• "Will you kill me again and again on social media for saying this?" Vice President Leni Robredo, who is on a trip to the U.S., said media can do a lot to help raise awareness on the need to stop the killings. 
•  "There have been a few voices already out there against extrajudicial killings, but I think that public outcry is not there yet," Robredo said. 
• "I think all of us should do our share in making sure that this has to stop." 
• Duterte also attended the wake of four soldiers who were killed in two clashes with communist rebels last week in the gold-mining town of Monkayo in southern Compostela Valley.

Three of the soldiers were killed by a land mine blast, the military said. Duterte criticized the rebels for using land mines, which have also killed civilians. 

PARIS, France - A Catholic priest has been dragged out of Mass by Paris police in an evacuation of a church marked for demolition, according to reports.

Protesters barricaded themselves inside the church of St Rita last night. Dozens joined a sit-in protest this morning against the demolition of the church. 

It is to be replaced by a parking lot and housing, a decision which has angered many parishioners and other locals.

Since 2015, the church has been used by priests of the Institut du Bon-Pasteur. Mining work has started in preparation to knock down the church. 

Dominique Philippe, a priest of the Gallican church, which has previously used St Rita’s although the Gallicans are not part of the Catholic Church, has said that if the demolition plans go ahead, priests will have to celebrate Mass on the street. 

St Rita is known as Paris’s “animal church”: pets are allowed in, and the church holds a Mass at which pets, including camels and parrots, are encouraged to come for a blessing. 

MANILA: Philippine police commandos clashed Wednesday with armed bodyguards of a town mayor linked to illegal drugs, killing six, officials said, in the latest violence that has left more than 400 suspected drug criminals dead since President Rodrigo Duterte took office.

Regional police chief Elmer Beltejar said police were patrolling near the house of Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. in the central town of Albuera when they were fired upon by the mayor’s bodyguards. 

• The police fired back, killing six bodyguards. 
• The clash came a day after Espinosa surrendered to national police chief Ronald dela Rosa. 

Authorities allege he has been protecting drug dealers, including his son Erwin, who has not surrendered. 

Duterte took office June 30, and since then 402 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in clashes with police, national police records show.

At least 4,418 others have been arrested. 

Duterte, a former prosecutor and mayor of southern Davao city, where he built a reputation for tough anti-crime methods, won the presidential election earlier this year on a promise to end criminality and corruption in the first three to six months of his presidency.

He encouraged police and even ordinary citizens to shoot suspected drug dealers if they resist arrest, and promised cash rewards if they turn in drug lords.

The moves have sparked alarm among human rights groups, with the New York-based Human Rights Watch saying Tuesday it had signed a joint letter with more than 300 organizations urging the International Narcotics Control Board and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to urgently condemn and call for a halt to the killings.

“International drug control agencies need to make clear to Philippines’ President Roderigo Duterte that the surge in killings of suspected drug dealers and users is not acceptable ‘crime control,’ but instead a government failure to protect people’s most fundamental human rights,” said Phelim Kine , Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director.

Philippine Sen. Leila M. De Lima, in a speech Tuesday decried what she called the “do-it- yourself justice” system under the Duterte.