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L awrence J ournal -W orld - USA TODAY SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2016
Duterte: God told me to stop cursing
Philippine leader says conversation happens while flying home from Japan Kim Hjelmgaard @khjelmgaard USA TODAY
Tough-talking Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says he’s calling it quits on all the profanities and colorful sobriquets aimed at everyone from the pope to President Obama because, well, the man upstairs threatened to crash his plane. While sleeping on a flight to his hometown of Davao City after wrapping up a state visit to Japan late Thursday, Duterte said he was awoken by a voice in his head who said: “‘If you don’t stop the epithets, I will bring this plane down now.’ And I said, ‘Who is this?’ So, of course, ‘it’s God.’ ” After God had a little unexpected word with him, Duterte, 71, said he — the lower-case one — promised not to “express slang, cuss words and everything.” Duterte recounted the exchange after arriving in the Philippines. When his vow was met with applause, he cautioned: “Don’t clap too much or else this may get derailed.” The vulgar-tongued president who has drawn comparisons to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump because of his foul mouth has called the pope a “son of a b----” for caus-
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is known for rough and tough talk and actions.
ing traffic problems on his 2015 visit to the Southeast Asian country of 100 million. He has used similar language, since recanted, about Obama after Washington raised concerns about Duterte’s use of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines’ war on violent crime, illegal drugs and corruption. Duterte has previously pledged to halt his use of obscenities. Before taking office in June, he said he was savoring his last opportunities to be a “rude person” and that “when I become president, when I take my oath of office … that will be a different story. There will be a metamorphosis.” It didn’t last long. In addition to his swipes at the pope and Obama, he has leveled invective at his political ri-
vals, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, human rights advocates, the European Union, Islamic extremists and many others. “Many Filipinas are beautiful, but all of you there in the human rights commission are ugly,” he said Thursday when asked whether he had a message for Kylie Verzosa, a 24-year-old Filipino beauty queen who was crowned Miss International 2016. During a visit to China last week, Duterte announced he was seeking a “separation” from economic and military ties with the United States, including a withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed there. However, he later clarified that to mean he wanted the Philippines to pursue its own independent foreign policy more closely aligned with Beijing and Moscow. “America has lost,” he said in China. “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world — China, Philippines and Russia.” Duterte mostly behaved himself during his trip to protocolconscious Japan. There were fears he might chew gum in front of Japan’s emperor as he did when he walked — hands in pockets — into a signing ceremony with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But the emperor canceled the meeting after his brother died.
FBI news boosts Trump camp v CONTINUED FROM 1B
the GOP nominee said of the development. In his statement, Podesta demanded that the FBI director “provide the American public more information than is contained in the letter” to lawmakers. “Upon completing this investigation more than three months ago, FBI Director Comey declared no reasonable prosecutor would move forward with a case like this and added that it was not even a close call,” Podesta said in a written statement. “In the months since, Donald Trump and his Republican allies have been baselessly second-guessing the FBI and, in both public and private, browbeating the career officials there to revisit their conclusion in a desperate attempt to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “We have no idea what those emails are and the director himself notes they may not even be significant. It is extraordinary Corrections & Clarifications USA TODAY is committed to accuracy. To reach us, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones at 800-8727073 or e-mail accuracy@usatoday.com. Please indicate whether you’re responding to content online or in the newspaper.
PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER
John Zidich
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Patty Michalski CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER
that we would see something like this just 11 days out from a presidential election.” In July, Comey announced that while Clinton and her aides during her tenure as secretary of State had been “extremely careless” in the way they’d handled classified information, he recommended that no criminal charges be filed. Soon after, the director testified before skeptical Republican lawmakers to explain the bureau’s recommendation, which had been adopted by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “We’re mystified and confused by the fact pattern you laid out and the conclusion you reached,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told Comey, who was unequivocal in maintaining that the conclusion of investigators was not a close call. “There is no way anybody would bring a case against John Doe or Hillary Clinton for the second time in 100 years based on those facts,” he told the House panel on July 7. Trump has cited the closed FBI probe as evidence that the election was “rigged” against him, and at a recent debate said that, if he’s elected president, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton. Following Comey’s announcement Friday, Republicans blasted the Democratic presidential nominee. “Hillary Clinton has nobody but herself to blame,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. “This decision, long overdue, is the result of her reckless use of a private email server, and her refusal to be forthcoming with federal investigators,” Ryan said in a statement, adding that he was again calling for Clinton to no longer
receive classified briefings, a traditional courtesy afforded major-party presidential nominees. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the timing of the decision, so soon before the election, demonstrated “how serious this discovery must be.” House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a statement said the decision “reinforces” what his committee “has been saying for months: the more we learn about Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server, the clearer it becomes that she and her associates committed wrongdoing and jeopardized national security.” Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said in a statement that “without knowing how many emails are involved, who wrote them, when they were written or their subject matter, it’s impossible to make any informed judgment on this development.” She added: “The FBI has a history of extreme caution near Election Day so as not to influence the results. Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of attempting to “misrepresent” the FBI’s work. “Sadly but predictably, Republicans are doing their best to ... warp the FBI’s work to serve their partisan conspiracy-mongering against Hillary Clinton,” Pelosi said. In his New Hampshire speech, Trump suggested the rest of his message for the day would not matter as much, given the FBI announcement. “The rest of my speech is going to be so boring,” he joked. Contributing: David Jackson in Manchester, N.H., and Gregory Korte in Washington.
2-star general’s death a suicide, Army says Rossi, 55, becomes highest-ranking soldier ever to take own life Tom Vanden Brook @tvandenbrook USA TODAY
WASHINGTON The Army acknowledged Friday that Maj. Gen. John Rossi committed suicide July 31, making him the highest-ranking soldier ever to have taken his own life. Rossi, 55, was two days from pinning on his third star and taking command of Army Space and Missile Command when he killed himself at his home at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. Investigators could find no event that triggered Rossi’s suicide, a U.S. government official with direct knowledge of the investigation said. It appears Rossi was overwhelmed by his responsibilities, said the official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation. Rossi himself talked in March about suicide at a conference on preventing troops from killing themselves. He held up a card from his wallet with photos of 10 soldiers who had died under his command at Fort Sill, Okla. Four had committed suicide. Rossi led the event by reading the reports of recent suicide attempts to soldiers at the event, according to the Army’s website. He told the conference he received reports of four soldiers per week thinking about or attempting suicide. “We are ultimately
Maj. Gen. John Rossi
U.S. ARMY
responsible for soldiers both on and off duty,” Rossi said. In a separate statement Friday, Rossi’s family asked for privacy and called on soldiers with emotional problems to seek help. “To all the other families out there, to the man or woman who may be facing challenging times, please seek assistance immediately,” according to a statement released on the family’s behalf. The Army, the armed forces and its veterans have struggled with the scourge of suicide since the 9/11 terror attacks and the wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 20 veterans a day kill themselves, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, putting them at 21% higher risk compared with civilian adults. The suicide rate for active-duty troops was similar to that of civilians in 2014, according to the most recent data released by the Pentagon. The Army’s rate of 23.9 suicides per 100,000 soldiers was the highest among the services.
Clinton holds financial lead in homestretch Trump’s campaign coffers a fourth of that in Democrat’s bank, latest filings show Fredreka Schouten and Christopher Schnaars USA TODAY
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each unloaded a barrage of spending during the first weeks of October, but Clinton retained an enormous financial advantage as the two sprinted to Election Day. Each presidential candidate spent about $50 million between Oct. 1 and 19, reports filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission show. But Clinton, the Democratic nominee, headed into the election’s homestretch with $62.4 million in stockpiled cash in her campaign account, nearly four times the $15.9 million Trump had remaining in the bank as of late last week. Trump had total receipts of $30.5 million this month, a big drop from his September fundraising and well short of Clinton’s $52.8 million haul during the first 19 days of October. Although the Republican nominee often touts his plans to inject $100 million of his own money into the contest, the new filings show Trump is far short of that goal. He has invested about $56.1 million so far. His only donations to the campaign in October: a little more than $30,600 for in-kind contributions. Their biggest expenses: Advertising. Clinton spent about $33 million during the first 19 days of October on media WASHINGTON
CHIP SOMODEVILLA, GETTY IMAGES
By their Oct. 19 debate, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each spent about $50 million for the month.
buys and digital ads. Trump’s report shows $19.3 million in “placed media” with another $14.2 million going to his Texas digital firm, Giles-Parscale, for online advertising and digital consulting. The Trump campaign also spent more than $2 million on campaign swag — the hats, T-shirts and mugs that are popular with supporters and help drive small donations to the campaign. In recent months, Trump has used his newly opened Washington, D.C., hotel as a backdrop for public appearances. On Wednesday, he stepped off the campaign trail to attend the grand opening of the Trump International Hotel, just a few blocks from the White House. Thursday’s filings show his campaign is among the hotel’s customers. It recently paid the hotel $13,431.88 for facility rental and catering.
Kevin Gentzel
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Transgender rights reach Supreme Court v CONTINUED FROM 1B
representing him in court. “While I’m disappointed that I will have to spend my final school year being singled out and treated differently from every other guy, I will do everything I can to make sure that other transgender students don’t have to go through the same experience.” Twenty-three states, including North Carolina and Texas, have challenged the administration’s right to interpret its own regulations without legislative action or judicial review. And several conservative justices have argued
in the past that agencies have no such power. The court refused Friday to take up that broader issue as part of Grimm’s case. By agreeing to hear the case now, the justices likely are hoping that a ninth colleague will be confirmed by the time the case is heard. But with Senate Republicans blocking President Obama’s nomination of federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland, that is far from guaranteed. If the court goes forward with only eight justices, it could produce a tie vote that leaves the lower court’s decision intact. That would be a victory for Grimm and the ACLU but with-
out national precedent. The battle over so-called bathroom bills has played out in many states as conservative lawmakers seek to force students to use facilities that correspond to their gender at birth and transgender students fight for the right to follow their gender identity. Grimm’s case is based on the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection as well as Title IX, a federal law that bars sex discrimination in education. The Education Department invoked that law when issuing its guidelines in May, threatening federal enforcement — including the loss of
federal education funds. The Virginia lawsuit had been decided by two federal courts by the time the administration weighed in. Since then, about two dozen states have filed suit against the guidelines. In August, a federal judge in Texas sided with school districts opposed to the directive, preventing the Education Department from implementing its guidance nationwide. Judge Reed O’Connor said federal agencies exceeded their authority under the 1972 law banning sex discrimination in schools. That case is now pending before another federal appeals court.