A foul-mouthed former Philippine president who jailed political rivals, insulted the pope and claims to have hired “death squad” gangsters is running for re-election in his hometown in a desperate bid to strengthen his scandal-hit political dynasty.

Labeled “Asia’s Trump” by some commentators due to his unorthodox leadership style and bombastic rhetoric, Rodrigo Duterte is aiming for a perhaps even more unlikely political comeback than Donald Trump’s seismic return to the White House.

Duterte, 79, wants to return as mayor of Davao City, on the southern island of Mindanao, where he held power for more than two decades before leading the archipelago nation between 2016 and 2022.

His return to politics is about more than a personal quest for power, analysts say – it’s an attempt to shore up support for his family against the Philippines’ other famed political dynasty – the Marcoses, who have an opposing vision for the country, particularly its relationships with the United States and China.

In a political culture dominated by clan-based alliances, the Marcoses and the Dutertes made a vow of unity when Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, ran for vice president alongside Ferdinand Marcos Jr. – son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who died in exile in 1989 after a brutal 21-year reign.

The duo won a landslide victory in 2022, but not even halfway through their term the alliance is disintegrating as Duterte-Carpio faces calls for her impeachment for alleged corruption, which she denies.

The Marcos-Duterte fallout has since descended into public tirades and name-calling – a hallmark of Rodrigo Duterte’s years as a straight-talking, filter-free president.

Richard Heydarian, senior lecturer at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines, says the older Duterte has entered the political maelstrom to bolster his family’s defenses as they fight battles on several fronts.

“The Dutertes are at their most vulnerable moment in almost a decade,” he said.

Death squads and a war on drugs

Duterte soared to power on a promise to replicate on a national scale his anti-crime crackdown in the family’s stronghold of Davao, winning the 2016 presidential election in a landslide.

In the years that followed, more than 6,000 people were killed in his war on drugs, according to police data, though independent monitors believe the number of extrajudicial killings could be much higher.

Many of the victims were young men from impoverished shanty towns, shot by police and rogue gunmen as part of a campaign to target dealers.

The bloodshed prompted an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a monthslong House of Representatives inquiry, as well as a separate Senate inquiry led by the cousin of the current president.

In a House hearing Wednesday, Duterte declared that he was finally ready to face the ICC, even urging prosecutors to “hurry up” and “start the investigation tomorrow.” In typically combative fashion, however, he also told the 12-hour long hearing that he would kick any ICC investigators who came to the Philippines to face him.

Duterte’s fighting talk comes after the former president made a stark admission to the Senate inquiry last month during his first public appearance in the investigations.

Before an audience of millions watching on television and online, Duterte told lawmakers he hired a “death squad” of gangsters to kill criminals while mayor of Davao City, 600 miles (965 kilometers) from the capital Manila.

“I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not police, they were gangsters.”

But in the same hearing, Duterte distanced himself from claims he directly ordered his national police chiefs to carry out extrajudicial killings during his time as president. He also said he told police officers to “encourage” suspects to fight back, as legal cover for the killings.

Duterte’s attempts to fend off criticism come as his daughter fights calls for her impeachment over claims she misappropriated funds from both the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education.

Lawmakers in September deferred the approval of budgets to her office as allied political clans at odds with the Dutertes demanded more transparency and accountability over her public spending.

Heydarian, the analyst, said Duterte’s decision to run for Davao mayor marks an attempt to keep the family politically relevant, and is likely an acknowledgment that he may not have what it takes to run for a seat in the national legislature.

His return to Davao may also serve to support his sons – incumbent Davao mayor Sebastian Duterte and congressman Paolo Duterte – who are contesting the Davao election but are viewed as “out of touch” with locals, Heydarian said.

“It’s always foolish to underestimate the Dutertes given their almost fanatical base in certain parts of the country, but I think it would also not be foolish to think that the Dutertes are also now facing an existential crisis,” Heydarian said.

From unity to animosity

The Marcos-Duterte alliance was always an unlikely one. But major cracks appeared in January, when Rodrigo Duterte called Marcos a “drug addict” and threatened that the president could be removed from power.

Months later, Vice President Duterte-Carpio resigned as education secretary, a departure seen by analysts as a sign that the relationship between the country’s top leaders was beyond repair.

In October, Duterte-Carpio aired a litany of grievances against the president in a two-hour livestreamed press conference, saying she “wanted to chop his head off.” She said the Marcoses “used her” to propel themselves to victory in the 2022 election.

At one point, Duterte-Carpio spoke about Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – the late patriarch and longtime dictator. She said she had become so incensed by the attacks on her that she wanted to dig up his body and “throw it in the West Philippine Sea.”

Despite this, Duterte-Carpio told reporters she does not regret running for vice president under Marcos. “They can drag me to hell,” she said. “And when they get there, I will be the president of hell.”

Marcos insisted he thought he and the vice president were friends.

“I always thought that we were,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in September. “But maybe I was deceived.”

His son, Sandro Marcos, entered the fray, saying in a rare statement that he “cannot remain silent” as the vice president “threatens to exhume a former president and behead an incumbent one.”

At the heart of the feud is geopolitics, specifically how the Philippines should balance its relationships with China and the US, according to Ranjit Singh Rye, an assistant professor of political science at the University of the Philippines.

The incumbent Marcos administration has leaned more closely toward Washington – the Philippines’ oldest and closest ally – particularly strengthening its military alliance, in a move that reverses Duterte’s pro-Beijing tilt for investment in infrastructure.

Cozying up to China is believed to have led to the nefarious proliferation of the gambling and online scams industry, with alleged links to Chinese organized crime, under Duterte’s administration.

The leaders’ split views on the Philippines’ geopolitical standing ultimately divided the Marcos-Duterte alliance, according to Rye.

“The differences are irreconcilable because they both represent a different vision of where the Philippines needs to go and how the Philippines needs to be governed,” Rye said.

Home turf survival

When Duterte filed his candidacy in Davao, he was met by a roaring crowd of supporters. “I want to serve you. Davao is better than yesterday,” he told reporters, implying its current progress was due to his past iron grip.

The midterm elections are not until May 2025 but politicking and campaigning in the Philippines starts punishingly early, and thousands of local posts are up for grabs across the country of just under 120 million people, from district councilors and mayors to lawmakers.

Cleve Arguelles, a political scientist and head of polling firm WR Numero, said the outcome could shape the political landscape for years to come.

In Davao, five members of the once-mighty Duterte clan are facing off with familiar rivals.

Along with Sebastian, who will be his father’s running mate, Rodrigo’s eldest son Paolo is seeking re-election to Congress and two of Paolo’s sons are running for other local seats. Political pundits are saying that at least one Duterte may make a bid for the presidency in 2028.

“The Dutertes are not just joining this race as regular players. This is a fight to the death. This is for their political survival,” Arguelles said.

The Dutertes’ biggest challenger in Davao is the Nograles clan, reigniting a decades-old family rivalry.

The late Prospero Nograles remains the only person from Mindanao to have served as the nation’s House speaker. Though he only held the role for two years until 2010, the patriarch of the Nograles family built formidable ties with influential lawmakers and entrenched political elites across a decades-long career in local and national politics.

Now, the next generation of Nograles politicians is running against the Dutertes in their shared hometown.

Karlo Nograles is running against Rodrigo Duterte for the mayoralty while his sister, Margarita, a lawyer and rising TikTok influencer, is challenging Paolo.

Karlo Nograles has said people in Davao “deserve a chance to have real, meaningful and lasting change” – a message that could sway a portion of voters, Arguelles said.

“If the Dutertes lose the ballot in their home turf, it’s a sign that they have not been able to defend themselves from attacks on several fronts,” Arguelles said.

A lingering problem for the Dutertes is their relationship with Pastor Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, a self-styled “appointed son of God” and founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church, who is wanted by the FBI for alleged sex trafficking.

Quiboloy is a close supporter and spiritual adviser of Rodrigo Duterte, who regularly appeared on a church-linked media network when he was mayor of Davao and was accused by lawmakers of concealing Quiboloy’s whereabouts.

The church leader was arrested in September after a weeks-long standoff involving nearly 2,000 officers who surrounded a sprawling church compound just outside Davao International Airport – a massive operation for which Marcos took credit.

Despite all the controversies and alleged links to extrajudicial killings and suspected criminals, Duterte has told Davao voters that a vote for him is a vote for order.

Eight people were killed and 17 others injured in a stabbing attack on a college campus in eastern China on Saturday, police said — the latest in a recent spate of attacks that has shaken a nation long used to low rates of violent crime.

The attack took place around 6:30 p.m at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in the city of Yixing, according to a police statement. A suspect was detained at the scene, it said.

The statement said the suspect was a recent graduate who was motivated by “failing (an) exam, not receiving a graduation certificate, and dissatisfaction with internship compensation.” An investigation is ongoing.

The attack is the latest mass casualty incident to hit China — a country of 1.4 billion that has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, partly due to its strict gun controls and powerful mass surveillance.

Last Monday, 35 people were killed after a car plowed into people who were exercising in the southern city of Zhuhai in the country’s deadliest known attack on the public in a decade. Around 40 others were injured.

As news of that attack spread, censors swooped in to take down online videos of the attack and moderate social media discussions

In October, police arrested a 50-year-old man after a stabbing attack near an elementary school in Beijing injured five people, including three children.

In September, three people were killed and 15 others injured in a knife attack at a suburban supermarket in Shanghai.

Also in September, a bus crashed into a crowd of students and parents outside a school in Tai’an city in Shandong province, killing 11 people and injuring 13 others. Chinese authorities did not reveal whether that incident was accidental or deliberate.

This story has been updated with additional infomation.

The wreck of a US warship sunk in a World War II battle dubbed one of the bravest ever stands by a US Navy vessel has been found in the depths of the Pacific, US and Australian officials announced Monday.

Known as the “dancing mouse” due to its slippery movements in that final, fatal fight with the Imperial Japanese Navy, the destroyer USS Edsall went down off the coast of Australia in 1942, under the command of Lt. Joshua Nix.

“Joshua Nix and his crew fought valiantly, evading 1,400 shells from Japanese battleships and cruisers before being attacked by 26 carrier dive bombers, taking only one fatal hit,” US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy said Monday in announcing the find of the Edsall’s wreck.

Speaking alongside Kennedy, Australia’s chief of navy, Vice Adm. Mark Hammond, said the wreck was found with the help of advanced hydrographic survey capabilities aboard naval support ship MV Stoker.

Hammond also praised the Edsall crew for fighting a string of battles to help protect Australia during the early days of World War II before the vessel sunk on March 1, 1942.

On that day, a Japanese carrier-based plane spotted the US destroyer around 200 miles south-southeast of Christmas Island, according to an account of the Edsall’s final battle on the website of the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

Japanese Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo was reportedly “incensed” that the US warship was spotted within 16 miles of his forces and ordered them immediately to intercept, according to the NHHC account by director Samuel Cox.

The old US destroyer – Edsall was commissioned in 1920 – and its 4-inch guns would prove to be no match for the newer Japanese fleet with bigger guns and dozens of aircraft carrying 500-pound bombs.

“Nix’s position was hopeless from the moment Edsall was sighted,” Cox wrote.

But the captain of the US destroyer didn’t give up.

“As a last gesture of defiance, like the famous cartoon of the little mouse flipping the bird at a huge screaming eagle, Lieutenant Nix chose to make a fight of it,” Cox wrote.

He had the destroyer lay a smokescreen, execute course changes and change speeds to evade the Japanese shells while launching torpedoes that narrowly missed one Japanese warship.

After seeing Edsall evade more than a thousand 14-inch and 8-inch shells, Japanese commanders ordered dozens of dive bombers from their three aircraft carriers to strike, according to Cox’s account, which he wrote was derived from Japanese sources.

At least one hit Edsall, and the ship began to lose its ability to maneuver.

“With fires raging and the ship settling and losing way, Lieutenant Nix pointed the bow of Edsall at the Japanese surface ships in his last act of defiance” and ordered ship abandoned, Cox wrote.

The Japanese warships then turned their big guns on the disabled destroyer, finally sinking it.

But Nix’s maneuvers drew the respect of Japanese witnesses, Cox wrote.

“According to a Japanese observer, Edsall performed like a ‘Japanese dancing mouse’ (a popular domesticated pet in Japan, also known as ‘waltzing mice’ or ‘whirler’ for its manic and bizarre movements),” the US naval historian wrote.

‘Don’t give up the ship’

Following the announcement of the wreck’s discovery, officials were effusive in their praise of Nix.

“The commanding officer of Edsall lived up to the U.S. Navy tenet, ‘Don’t give up the ship,’ even when faced with overwhelming odds,” the US chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said in a statement Monday.

“The wreck of this ship is a hallowed site, serving as a marker for the 185 U.S. Navy personnel and 31 U.S. Army Air Force pilots aboard at the time, almost all of whom were lost when Edsall succumbed to her battle damage.”

While most of those aboard the Edsall died at sea that day, some were rescued from the water by the Japanese and taken prisoner.

After the war’s end, six decapitated bodies found in graves on Celebes Island (now Sulawesi, Indonesia) were identified as those of Edsall crew members. Five more bodies found in the graves were not identified but were believed to be those of US pilots who had been aboard the ship, according to Cox’s account.

He called the story of the Edsall “one of the most gallant and valorous actions in the history of the U.S. Navy.”

Historian and author Trent Hone cited Edsall’s ultimate battle as “the most courageous independent action by a US Navy surface ship in combat,” in a 2020 survey by the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine.

Franchetti said Monday that the story of the Edsall, both in its defense of Australia in 1942 and in the cooperation shown by the two allies in finding the wreck this year, shows the strength of that trans-Pacific alliance.

The discovery highlighted the current AUKUS partnership, between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom, she said.

“A key component of AUKUS is the development of the most cutting-edge underwater technologies of the type that enabled the discovery of Edsall in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, something not possible just a few years ago,” Franchetti said.

That ability helps “ensure our collective capability to preserve the peace, respond in crisis, and win decisively in war, if called,” she added.

Weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic have been hailed worldwide as revolutionary for medicine. In the United Kingdom, the government is hoping they might also improve public finances, eyeing their use to help unemployed people re-enter the workforce and ultimately save money on health care.

“For many people, these weight-loss jabs will be life-changing, help them get back to work, and ease the demands on our NHS [National Health Service],” British Health Secretary Wes Streeting wrote recently in The Telegraph newspaper.

Streeting added that obesity is “placing significant burden on our health service,” costing the NHS £11 billion ($14 billion) annually and leading people to take an average of four more sick days each year, which hurts the economy.

To counter that, the government is funding a five-year trial of the weight loss drug Mounjaro, or tirzepatide, in conjunction with the drug manufacturer Eli Lilly, which will collect data on participants’ quality of life and changes to their employment status and sick day use.

But the proposals have sparked backlash from healthcare professionals, who say that new pharmaceutical treatments have resulted in massive demand that the country’s public health system can’t cope with.

Additional measures to prevent obesity in the first place are desperately needed, health experts say.

Fierce debate on obesity solutions

There’s no question about the issue of obesity in the UK – at least 29% of adults in England are obese, as are 15% of children between the ages of 2 and 15, according to the latest Health Survey for England, which used 2022 data.

Obesity is the second most common cause of preventable death in England, after smoking, according to government health data. It’s also a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, liver disease and several cancers.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that his government needs to “think differently” about how to reduce pressure on the country’s national health care system, overburdened amid staffing shortages and funding pressures. Part of that new thinking is exploring weight loss drugs.

Yet obesity experts and healthcare professionals say that because the health system is already overloaded, drugs are hard to administer at scale and solutions need to go much deeper.

“The idea that this is the solution to obesity is a complete fantasy. We still need to prevent as many cases as possible,” said Alfred Slade, government affairs lead at the Obesity Health Alliance, a coalition of organizations that work together to reduce the condition across the UK.

The OHA has crunched the numbers on existing weight loss drugs like Wegovy, the brand name for the appetite suppressant semaglutide. The conclusion? It’s nearly impossible to make it widely available.

Currently, about 4.1 million people living with excess weight meet the criteria to get Wegovy through England’s national healthcare system. But fewer than 50,000 people per year will actually receive the treatment due to underfunding for NHS services and staffing levels, even with additional financing in the coming years, according to the alliance, citing NHS estimates.

To improve access, the government is also expanding the use of the drug Mounjaro, or tirzepatide, for obesity patients in addition to Type 2 diabetes patients. The health ministry claims that up to 250,000 people with the greatest need could receive it over the next three years.

The alliance says it’s not clear how the government will pay for the drugs, or how it plans to fund “wraparound support” that is essential alongside these prescriptions, such as dietary advice and physical activity support to ensure patients don’t lose muscle mass as well as fat.

The government trial studying links between weight loss drugs and employment is also raising alarm bells among healthcare experts, who argue that medical need should always be the driving factor behind prescriptions.

“Obesity management services should be available to all who could benefit but where prioritization has to be made, this must be done based on clinical need not the potential economic output of the patient,” wrote Jack Doughty, a senior policy officer at Diabetes UK, in a blog post.

The UK’s health ministry has been clear that the NHS will continue to treat people based on clinical need and not prioritize those who are unemployed.

Early prevention translates to ‘huge’ cost savings

A key issue with weight loss drugs is that they are “dealing with the symptom, not the cause” of obesity, according to Martin White, professor of population health research at the University of Cambridge. Experts argue you need to tackle both.

“It’s a whole population problem, not a small number of individuals,” White said. “We have to work out ways to change the context or the environment that is leading people to eat that many excess calories.”

One way is to implement stronger taxes on unhealthy products.

For example, the UK’s tax on sugary soft drinks has already resulted in manufacturers reducing the amount of sugar in sodas, and studies indicate that price increases are deterring some consumers. There are growing calls to tax food products with sugar and salt in a similar way.

Experts are also calling for stronger marketing regulations to prevent unhealthy foods from being advertised to children. In October 2025, a watershed law that prevents junk food advertising before 9 p.m. on TV, streaming services and online will come into force in the UK.

Another policy solution is to require healthier food to be served in public-sector facilities, like schools, hospitals and prisons. White said that kind of intervention could also be applied to the private sector, if offices and corporate caterers are required to serve healthier food.

In schools, experts say there are also problems with implementing the existing regulations for healthy food, which is another area that could benefit from more oversight and investment. For example, one government report has called for more funding to widen access to free and nutritious school meals.

“Increasingly, what we’ve seen is that kids are starting to put on weight from a very early age,” White added. “But if you can prevent it really early, then the cost savings in terms of health care become huge.”

Of course, changing an entire food system is harder than prescribing a drug. But tackling an obesity problem that impacts roughly one-third of British adults will require multiple solutions, across all sectors of society.

“There is no such thing as a silver bullet for obesity,” the Obesity Health Alliance emphasized.