- Senator Antonio Trillanes IV cornered former Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service Chief Colonel Niel Anthony Estrella during the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's hearing regarding the shipment of smuggled shabu from China.
- President Rodrigo Duterte revealed why former Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Judy Taguiwalo was rejected by the members of the Commission on Appointments last August 16. During a press conference, the President cited that Secretary Taguiwalo has been accused of exploiting the fund of the 4Ps, also known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, to aid the rebel group New People’s Army.
- The House of Representatives is preparing enough budget to implement House Bill 5633 or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act by June 2018.
- The Illinois state became the 10th state in the United States to legalize the "automatic voter registration" alongside the District of Columbia.
- Civil rights groups kicked off a week of planned local events earlier to express support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is now under threat by the Trump administration.
- The BMW i3 has now been improved for 2018 model year with new design, new choice of power outputs, and the sporty new i3s variant.
2018 BMW i3
2018 BMW i3s
- The Death Note madness doesn't stop from last week's Netflix movie release as it will spawn a 12-hour audio drama based on the anime series, translated in either English or German, due next year.
- A certain TV station in Nagoya ends their Sunday morning anime block after four decades.
- Game of Thrones' Kit Harington stars in the upcoming three-part drama inspired from the infamous 1605 Gunpowder Plot, titled Gunpowder, due to air on the BBC this fall.
- President Rodrigo Duterte headed the celebration of National Heroes Day this Monday. During the celebration at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani, the President personally awarded the Medal of Kalasag under the Order of Lapu-Lapu to 120 soldiers and six police that were killed while fighting the Maute Terror group in Marawi City, Lanao Del Sur.
- The city of Houston, Texas, has been devastatingly flooded due to Hurricane Harvey, forcing residents of the fourth most populous U.S. city to flee in boats or hunker down in anticipation of several more days of “unprecedented” rainfall. The most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in half a century came ashore late on Friday and killed two people as of now.
- A Jakarta court has sentenced a female would-be suicide bomber to seven and a half years in prison, the first time a woman has been convicted in Indonesia for planning such an attack.
- The mother of singer-songwriter Jake Zyrus, Mrs. Raquel Pempengco, says that the story presented in last Saturday's episode of Maalaala Mo Kaya is downright false.
- A Volkswagen engineer has received a much harsher sentence for his role in the diesel scandal and has been slapped with a 40-month sentence and a US$200,000 fine for his role in the emissions scandal which has blighted the German automaker group over the past two years.
- Hanamaru Kunikida joins the DreamTech LoveLive! Sunshine!! figure lineup, starting at 14,800 Yen plus tax and delivery and arrives this January.
- Hokuto no Ken goes Ryu ga Gotoku as Hokuto ga Gotoku was teased and arriving on the PS4 this 2018.
The recent episode of BBC America's Top Gear America is all about a blast in the past.
Bill Fichtner arrives at Charlotte Motor Speedway to have a dose of NASCAR action and learn of its dirty history, until the arrival of Tom Ford and Antron Brown prompted them to recreate the first NASCAR race in history in this very place, with a slight twist involving the use of 1980's cars.
With Bill in a Buick Regal, Tom in a Pontiac Grand Prix, and Brown in a Ford Thunderbird, the boys are recreating a piece of NASCAR history with hillarious results.
Tom, meanwhile, goes Fast and Furious as he drives the legendary Nissan R32 Skyline GT-R, a JDM car you can legally import one in the United States because it passed the 25-year rule. When handed to The Stig, it set a 1:21.72 lap time.
Singer Aaron Carter is this week's celebrity guest and he set a 1:25.87 lap time round the track.
Then, a military vet who became a technician for an Audi dealership got a chance to ride with The Stig in the Audi R8 while setting a 1:09 lap time round the track.
As summer draws to a complete end, the best of Formula One returns to Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps for the ongoing 2017 season of the Formula One championship where the difference between victory and defeat is just one straight line away in this technical racetrack.
Following Lewis Hamilton's pole position since qualifying rounds, he managed to fend off Sebastian Vettel of Ferrari at the start of the race and kept on going all the way to his 58th career win, his fifth win of this season. Daniel Ricciardo of the Red Bull Racing team, meanwhile, placed 3rd after an intense three-wide battle between Kimi Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas for the podium finish.
Of course, being Formula 1, there are troubles occurred and the drivers who couldn't make it to the end because of mishaps are Fernando Alonso of McLaren-Honda, Red Bull's Max Verstappen, and Sauber's Wehrlein.
With Hamilton's win, the gap between him and Vettel is now seven points. 220 vs. 213. Next race is on Italy on the 3rd of September.
King Felipe VI of Spain is one of the hundreds of thousands of people in Barcelona who became part of that weekend's solidarity rally against Islamic extremists who killed 15 people in the twin attacks that plagued Spain last week.
He was the first Spanish sovereign to join a march since the monarchy was re-established after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.
Since the 17th of August, 2017, a group of 12 Islamic extremists have been blamed for the twin attacks in and around the Spanish city of Barcelona, killing 15 people and left hundreds hurt. The Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Eight are confirmed dead while the remaining four have appeared in a court in Madrid.
King Felipe has reigned Spain three years since his father, King Juan Carlos I, abdicated.
Suzuka Circuit is the venue of the sixth round of the 2017 Autobacs Super GT and as summer draws to an end, the heat of the battle rages on for the best of the Super GT drivers.
In this scorching race before summer ends, the winner of the GT500 class is the #64 Epson Modulo NSX-GT, driven by Kosuke Matsuura and Bertrand Baguette, bringing the team its first SUPER GT victory since 2007. In the GT300 class, meanwhile, the #65 LEON CVSTOS AMG, driven by Haruki Kurosawa and Naoya Gamou, wins the race.
Race highlights:
The next race is on Thailand on the 8th of October.
A boxer against an MMA fighter, quite an unlikely match to see this coming but it happened as the undefeated boxing superstar, Floyd Mayweather Jr., engaged on a so-called dream match against a UFC mixed martial arts titan Conor McGregor in a controversial match in Las Vegas.
Photo: Reuters
This is the first time the MMA fighter entered the boxing scene as McGregor had high hopes that his strength will bring Mayweather down to his knees but he didn't as the tenth round blow put an end to McGregor's, forcing the MMA giant to forfeit.
By winning this match, Floyd Mayweather Jr,'s undefeated record is now up to 50 straight wins, surpassing the record set by the legendary Rocky Marciano for most wins without a loss or draw.
Following Mayweather's controversial win, the heavily fatigued McGregor is unhappy with Mayweather's performance, claiming "he's not fast" but "he's not powerful" either.
In addition to the MILLION THE@TER GENERATION lineup, there's also the brand new M@STER SPARKLE range in celebration of the release of the brand new THE IDOLM@STER Million Live Theater Days app game, now available to download on the App Store and Google Play. This is the first installment of the range and let's get to know more about it.
In this first installment of the all new M@STER SPARKLE range inspired from the Theater Days app game, the idol highlights of this installment are Momoko Suou (Keiko Watanabe), Yuriko Nanao (Miku Ito), Fuka Toyokawa (Rie Suegara), Tsumugi Shiraishi (Saki Minami), and Mirai Kasuga (Haruka Yamazaki), each performing a brand new song you can expect on this range as well as on the app game later on.
There are a total of eight M@STER SPARKLE installments and with the first one now out, expect more to come in this range but in the meantime, feel free to listen to these new songs in the first installment of this new range and be sure to download THE IDOLM@STER Million Live Theater Days on the App Store or Google Play. Contains in-app purchases.
The recently-launched Forza Horizon 3 HOONIGAN Car Pack marks the start of a collaboration between the Forza franchise and Ken Block's motorsport lifestyle brand, HOONIGAN, famous for their "KILL ALL TIRES" mantra.
The cars showcased in the HOONIGAN Car Pack are famed for their tire-shredding action and if you want to live the dream of being one of the best of the HOONIGAN stars, you got to be ready because the way these cars behave is so out of control like a box of Airheads Extremes and it takes some expert-level skills to master these bewitchingly customized cars made for the blokes who love to kill all tires.
Of course, with so many HOONIGAN cars to choose from on this pack, let's try and pick the cars from this pack that tickles my fancy.
Hert's Twerkstallion is one of the HOONIGAN cars that tickles my fancy. While this RX-7 looks like a boss car from the Kaido Battle games, the Twerkstallion is all about letting all its horses run wild whilst covering itself in a cloud of tire smoke. When Hert drove this car for last year's drifting competition, he got a Corvette engine jammed in the front of his horse but for this year, he's reverting back to the good old rotary engine. The one we had in this pack is last year's Twerkstallion with a V8 engine in question but feel free to change whatever engine you may like to cater to this horse's desire when it comes to killing its tires.
Another one of the top picks of the HOONIGAN Car Pack is the Tri 5 By Fire Gasser. It's actually a Chevy Bel Air and it's been hunked up by a man name Jon Chase and it happens to be one of the fastest accelerating rear-wheel drive cars in the game and the only car that was designed to be able to drag its bumper while doing a wheelie. Pretty cool, huh? But don't be fooled though because even though it's fast on the straights, it's a lot tougher to handle than lifting a washing machine in a very tight house you lived in and that sounds like a challenge.
Another one of the Donut Garage's greatest hits is Brian Scotto's Napalm Nova. It's a 1972 Chevrolet Nova customized for one major purpose; to kill all tires courtesy of its AME GT Sport sub-frame that makes this Nova fun to drive through the twitchy bends while retaining its drag racing capability, making it a well-balanced muscle for the intermediates.
And one of my favorites in this car pack needs no explanation because this is Ken Block's Hoonicorn. You know? The one you saw in one episode in Top Gear when Matt LeBlanc takes Block on a field trip around London while this Hoonigan drifts this specially-prepped Mustang on the British capital.
There are many Hoonigan cars to try out on this pack and each has its own party piece to lash out with the guests if you can pull them out from their bags if you fully know each of the Hoonigan cars, there's one combo made specifically for these cars; the almost impossible Fruit Salad combo. No joke. It says so in the achievements so if you got what it takes to pull off the extremely difficult Fruit Salad combo, then you need to be creative because, between you and me, I don't know how to pull this off so you have to improvise something for the time being.
In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the best of the best from HOONIGAN's Donut Garage. Oh, and here's one for you; if you pre-ordered Forza Motorsport 7, not only you'll get the Hoonigan Car Pack on FH3 for free but you can also have that car pack in FM7 on launch day. That's buying once, hoon twice! Talk about great value, eh?
HOONIGAN! Sorry, it's starting to sound like Hogan's Heroes out there, only covered in smoke-filled burnt rubber this time because feel free to enjoy Hoonigan's Heroes, wherever you'll take it on.
The Netflix live-action film adaptation of Death Note has arrived and before you sulk around that this film is just another fine example of how Americans ruin the good of anime in the same way what Dragonball Evolution and Ghost in the Shell did to others, whatever that is, let's take a quick reference on the live-action horror films inspired from the cult classic manga.
The live-action Death Note films, shown in 2006, were split into two films. The first one went out in the first half of 2006 with the second half, titled Death Note: The Last Name, on the second half of that year. Let's start with the first half of the Death Note film, where it stars Tatsuya Fujiwara as the protagonist Light Yagami and Kenichi Matsuyama as antagonist L. Light, an honor student whose father is part of law enforcement, is aware of the rampant rise of criminal activities across Japan until one fateful day, he picked up an ominous notebook called the Death Note. Sealing his fate with a Shinigami (death god) Ryuk, Light's rise of power as the fearsome Kira caught the attention of L and the other law enforcement agencies, thus the deadly battle of the brains commences.
Death Note: The Last Name, the continuation of the previous film, was launched in the second half of 2006 and in addition of Tatsuya Fujiwara and Kenichi Matsuyama reprising their roles as Light and L, among many others, it introduces Erika Toda as Misa Amane, another Death Note user. The sequel packs more plot twists than the original and the endgame is quite a shocker to behold, making it an enjoyable film to watch it over and over again.
L: Change the World, serves as the epilogue of the second Death Note film when it strike cinemas in the first quarter of 2008. Following L's decisive victory against Kira, which led to sacrificing his own life to plot Kira's downfall, the legendary detective only has a few days left to live and while L spends his last days on earth, he faces against a group of eco-terrorists and an old ally who crossed the line while protecting the two children who holds the key to salvation.
Last 2016, in celebration of the Death Note films' 10th year, a rather unnecessary sequel went out to honor such occasion. Titled Death Note: -Light up the New World-, this film is a decisive battle between a cyber-terrorist who follows the footsteps of Kira and a detective who bears the same name as L's assumed name in the past.
And now, here we are. Present day. Death Note returns as an Americanized live-action film available exclusively on Netflix. It stars Nat Wolff as Light Turner, Keith Stanfield as L, Margaret Qualley as Mia Sutton, and Willem Dafoe as the voice of Ryuk, among many others. Feel free to sulk around about this film but once you watched it, expect the things that you saw on the film that will make you relate in today's times.
Lee Jae-young (otherwise known as Jay Y. Lee), the heir of the Samsung Group, was found guilty Friday for his part in a sensational corruption scandal that led to the ouster of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Lee, aged 49, had been in detention since February, was sentenced to five years in prison, far less than the 12 years special prosecutors had asked for but still a shocking turn of events even after last year's political crisis.
Lee was found guilty on all five charges such as bribery, embezzlement, illegal transfer of assets abroad, concealing criminal proceeds, and perjury. All the charges related to the corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of Park Geun-hye as president in March.
