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Trump to appear in court to face charges
WASHINGTON, DC— Don- ald Trump is expected to appear in court today
(Manila time) to answer charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, a case that will cast a dark and volatile cloud over the 2024 White House race for which he remains the presumptive Republican nominee.
The arrest and arraignment of the former president will take place in a federal courthouse within sight of the US Capitol that was stormed by his supporters on January 6, 2021, in what prosecutors say was the culmination of the alleged plot.
The 77-year-old Trump is expected to enter a plea of not guilty at a hearing set to begin at 4:00 pm (4 am in Manila) before magistrate judge Moxila Upadhyaya.
The accusations that Trump and six unnamed coconspirators plotted to upend the 2020 election is the former president’s third criminal indictment since March, and the most serious of the cases threatening to derail his 2024 White House bid.
Special counsel Jack Smith unveiled a 45-page indictment of Trump on Tuesday charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States and attempting to disenfranchise American voters with his false claims that he won the November 2020 election.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud,” the indictment said.
Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor at the Hague, linked Trump’s actions following his loss to Democrat Joe Biden directly to the attack on the Capitol, which he called an “unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.”
“It was fueled by lies,” Smith said.
“Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government -- the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Trump is already scheduled to go on trial in Florida in May of next year on charges that he took top secret government documents to his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida and refused to return them.
The twice-impeached former president also faces criminal charges in New York for allegedly paying election-eve hush money to a porn star.
Trump, who spent Wednesday playing golf at his Bedminster, New Jersey club, has pleaded not guilty in the documents and hush money cases and accused prosecutors of seeking to thwart his presidential bid with “fake” indictments.
“This unprecedented indictment of a former (highly successful!) president, & the leading candidate, by far, in both the Republican Party and the 2024 general election, has awoken the world to the corruption, scandal & failure that has taken place in the United States for the past three years,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform. AFP
AFP sues Musk’s X over copyright
PARIS—Agence France-Presse has launched a copyright case in France against social media giant Twitter, recently rebranded X, part of a global struggle to get tech firms to pay for news.
Media groups have long argued that their stories and images bring value to platforms like X, Facebook and Google, meaning they should get a slice of the profits.
Their cause was boosted by a 2019 EU law that allowed for payments for sharing content under a regime called “neighboring rights,” and Google and Facebook eventually agreed to pay some French media outlets.
But AFP has accused X, owned by billionaire tycoon Elon Musk, of a “clear refusal” to engage in discussions on neighboring rights.
Aug. 4, 11 & 18, 2023)
EXCEPTIONAL LEADER. Pope Francis greets the faithful after celebrating vespers at the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon, during his fiveday visit to attend the World Youth Day gathering of young Catholics, on Thursday. The 86-year-old underwent major abdominal surgery just two months ago, but that has not stopped an event-packed 42nd trip abroad, with 11 speeches and around 20 meetings scheduled. AFP
Pope says ‘anguished cry’ of victims must be heard
LISBON, Portugal—Pope Francis has said the “anguished cry” of victims of clerical sexual abuse must be heard as he began a visit to Portugal, where a recent report found thousands of cases spanning decades
Addressing the clergy at Lisbon’s vast Jeronimos Monastery on Wednesday, the pontiff said some people viewed the Church “with disappointment and anger” due to “the scandals that have marred her face.”
These scandals “call us to a humble and ongoing purification, starting with the anguished cry of the victims, who must always be accepted and listened to,” he added.
A report released in February by an independent commission concluded that at least 4,815 children had been abused by clergy members, mostly priests, in Portugal since 1950.
The inquiry—similar to audits elsewhere in Europe and the Americas—concluded that the Church hierarchy had “systematically” tried to conceal the abuse.
Before those findings, top Portuguese church officials maintained there had been only a few such cases.
The results of the inquiry have tainted the institution in the Catholicmajority country and led the Portuguese Roman Catholic Church to apologize to the victims.
A July poll by Lisbon’s Catholic University of Portugal found 68 percent of all Portuguese felt the Church’s image had deteriorated.
According to the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference and a local organizing committee, Francis will meet abuse victims privately, though it has not yet been included in the official program.
A support group for victims has put up three large billboards in Lisbon close to places that will host events attended by the pope to denounce clerical sexual abuse.
The billboards read: “4,800+ children abused by the Catholic Church in Portugal.”
The pope, who was elected by his peers in 2013, has told bishops around the world they must adhere to a policy of “zero tolerance” for clergy who sexually abuse children. AFP
AFP said in a statement it had lodged a case with a judge in Paris to force the platform to hand over data that would allow the French news agency to estimate a fair level of compensation.
“As a leading advocate for the adoption of neighboring rights for the press, AFP remains unwavering in its commitment to the cause,” the statement said. AFP
Trudeau, wife of 18 years announce separation
OTTAWA, Canada—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he and his wife of 18 years, Sophie GregoireTrudeau, are separating.
In a post on Instagram, the prime minister said “that after many meaningful and difficult conversations, we have made the decision to separate.”
A statement from his office added the couple have signed “a legal separation agreement.”
It said the public can expect to continue seeing them and their three children together as “they remain a close family” and both parents will be a “constant presence in their children’s lives.”
But they asked for privacy ahead of a family vacation scheduled for next week.
Trudeau and his wife, a former entertainment reporter, were childhood friends and reconnected in 2003 while cohosting a charity ball.
They soon started dating and married in 2005 in Montreal.
They have three children together: Xavier, 15, Ella Grace, 14, and nine-yearold Hadrien.
The separation is the first for a Canadian prime minister since Trudeau’s late father Pierre Trudeau, who split from Margaret Trudeau in the late 1970s and eventually divorced in 1984 during his final months in office.
In his 2014 memoir “Common Ground,” the younger Trudeau recalled that the “dark drama” at home and his parents’ eventual divorce had been hard on him. AFP
