Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Let's Do The News! (January 10, 2017)


- A denial of service attack has kept the website of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines offline since Monday night. "We do not know by whom but this we can say – whoever are responsible for this attack are enemies of press freedom and of free expression," the group said in a statement on its Facebook page. The mainstream media by some supporters of President Rodrigo Duterte for being biased against him and his administration and this is not the first time that journalists and journalists' groups have been hit online.

- According to Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, Vice President Leni Robredo is not involved in an e-mail group allegedly planning to oust President Rodrigo Duterte. Over the weekend, archives of supposed e-mails in a Global Filipino Diaspora Council Yahoo! Group between group members and supposed members of the Office of the Vice President circulated on social media. The supposed emails have been dubbed "LeniLeaks". Robredo denies everything, of course.

- The image of the Black Nazarene was returned to the minor basilica known as Quiapo Church, around 0345 hours local time after a 22-hour procession around Manila. The procession known locally as "traslacion" of the image pulled on a carriage left the Quirino Grandstand at 0520 hours on Monday, the start of the annual crowded Roman Catholic celebration.

- People in Nigeria have marched the 1,000th day since Boko Haram Islamic extremists abducted hundreds of schoolgirls. In April 2014, the extremist group took over 200 girls from their school in the western African nation, threatening to traffic them as slaves.

- A US Navy destroyer has fired warning shots at Iranian military boats at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Officials at the US Defense Department say that 4 boats from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps approached the USS Mahan at high speed on Sunday. Pentagon officials say that the Iranian ships ignored US radio warnings and came within about 800m of the US ship.

- Two aging nuclear reactors near New York City will be shut down by the next four years. The state of New York and Entergy, the operator of the reactors have agreed to take the two operating reactors at Indian Point nuclear power plant offline. The reactors were first licensed for operation in the mid-70's. The two reactors combined can produce over 2,000 megawatts of electricity.

- Russia condemned the recent US intel report which concludes that President Vladimir Putin ordered cyber-attacks to help Donald Trump win the US presidential election. Last week, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that Putin ordered cyber-attacks against computers used by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's team.

- The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported arrested an executive of Volkswagen on charges of conspiracy to defraud US regulators by altering emissions data. Reports told of the arrest of Oliver Schmidt, who headed the automaker's regulatory compliance in the US from 2014 to March 2015.

- In addition to US President-elect Donald Trump drawn flak by Meryl Streep's Golden Globe awards speech (and countered it via one of his infamous tweets), the mixed martial arts community got offended from her speech as well. Bellator MMA president Scott Coker wrote her an open letter inviting her to attend a fight to prove that MMA is art, as Streep opposed aside from American football as said from her speech.

- A new Biohazard/Resident Evil stage play will be running at Tokyo's Zepp Blue Theater Roppongi from the 10th to the 26th of February, and in Kobe's Shin Kobe Oriental Theater from the 4th to the 5th of March. Ryusei Yokohama, Yuki Fukumoto, Reo Shimura, and many others will star in the original stage play based from the hit survival horror franchise.

TTFN!!!

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