Tony Lopez

Donald Trump is running away from Iran. He has just been defeated, by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and by a ghost, Iran’s proclaimed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, assassinated by Israel on the first day of war, Feb. 28, 2026.

On June 13, 2026, at 5:21 p.m., Beijing and Manila time, China's latest large language artificial intelligence model was released by Z.AI, formerly

Bad news: the Philippines will be slow in adopting artificial intelligence and its improvements – artificial general intelligence and artificial general superintelligence.

With her trial to begin on July 6, 2026, a heat wave has struck the camp of Sara Zimmerman Duterte, the first Philippine vice president to be impeached twice, by huge numbers, by members of the House of Representatives.

The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte begins Monday, July 6, 2026. It will last from two to three months, probably much shorter, with 153 witnesses – 57 for the prosecution, 96 for the defense. At one witness per day and three hearings per week, expect 51 days, less than two months of court battles.

Three recent developments make me optimistic about the future, as a Filipino and as a citizen of this world.

Amazing, the cynicism that greeted the World Bank’s July 1, 2026 upgrade of the Philippines into an upper-middle income country, with a Gross National Income per capita of $4,850 – $214 more than the $4,636 threshold in 2025.

Finance Secretary Frederick Go sent me a primer on what it means for Filipinos for the Philippines to be upgraded by the World Bank into an upper-middle income country.

I never thought I would see Michael “Mike” Tan Defensor, 57, behind bars, holding the cold steel bars of a suburban detention facility where inmates wear a bright orange t-shirt emblazoned with PDL – person deprived of liberty.

Banking has a facility called a character loan.