Globe Trot: Filipinos elect Donald Trump wannabe

PHILIPPINES: Voters actually elected Donald Trump wannabe Rodrigo Duterte president.

NIGERIA: Beneath the civility, Nigerian and British heads of state are having a blowup over who’s most corrupt.

Today the U.S. House holds important hearings on the role of the United States in battling (or not) Boko Haram, the most violent Islamic movement in the world.

SYRIA: ISIS executed a 7-year-old boy for blasphemy on a soccer field. The incident has been confirmed by multiple sources now.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: A drama is underway in Kinshasa, with the United States threatening to impose sanctions on the war-racked country if President Joseph Kabila stays in power beyond his electoral mandate, amid an ongoing sham trial directed against his opponent.

JAPAN: U.S. President Barack Obama will become the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, the site of the atomic bomb blast that ended World War II. The May 27 visit will not include an apology, according to deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

People are still talking about last week’s New York Times profile of Rhodes. Besides his bold assertions of lying to get the Iran deal, I got stuck on the fact that the architect of current U.S. policy was on 9/11 writing short stories about losers in garden apartments. It helps to explain a lot.