The Philippine House of Representatives has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte for a second time, threatening her plan to run for president in 2028.

Monday’s vote moves the impeachment process to the Senate for trial, where if convicted, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte will be disqualified from holding public office.

The 47-year-old is leading early surveys to replace her ally-turned-bitter foe, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The case against the vice-president stemmed from her alleged misuse of public funds and public threats against Marcos, his wife and his cousin, the former House speaker.

Duterte was impeached on the same grounds in 2025, but the Supreme Court blocked it on a technicality before the

senate trial could start.

The case was revived this year. Last week, a House committee that looked into the evidence against the vice-president ruled that there was sufficient grounds to impeach her.

Duterte described the case as “nothing more than a scrap of paper” in a formal written response. She refused to appear in the committee hearings which she said had been politically motivated.

After the impeachment vote on Monday, Duterte’s defence counsel said in a statement that “the burden now rests on the accusers to substantiate their claims” according to the law.

Monday night’s impeachment vote served as a barometer of Marcos’ support in the House. 257 of the 290 lawmakers in attendance voted to impeach Duterte, more than the one-thirds required to advance the case to trial.

But unlike in the House, a conviction in the Senate is uncertain, if a trial does start and runs its course.

In Philippine politics that is dominated by patronage and dynastic alliances, House members, who are elected per legislative district are friendlier to the incumbent president, compared to senators.

The country’s 24 senators are elected on the national level and the Senate is a traditional springboard for those hoping to run for president or vice-president in the future.

In the 2025 mid-term vote, where half of the Senate was elected, candidates allied with Duterte fared better than those who ran under Marcos’ coalition.

But the outcome of an impeachment vote will be difficult to predict under the country’s multi-party system with shifting alliances.

A car bombing at ⁠a police post, followed by an intense firefight, has killed at least 21 officers ⁠in northwestern Pakistan, according to police and security sources.

An alliance of armed groups known as the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late on Saturday.

[Aljazeera]

A person has died after jumping an airport perimeter fence in the US state of Colorado and being struck by a Frontier Airlines plane, according to authorities.

Denver International Airport said the unusual incident occurred late Friday, after the unidentified individual gained access to the tarmac.

It said the “pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway”.

A brief engine fire followed the collision, which was put out by emergency responders, according to the airport.

It said that 12 of the 231 people on board suffered minor injuries, with five hospitalised.

The airport said investigators had examined the fence line where the individual entered and “found it to be intact”.

It added that the struck individual “is not believed to be an employee of the airport”.

“We are extremely saddened by this incident and express our sympathies to those involved,” the airport said.

Both local authorities and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were investigating the incident.

Airport safety in the US came under renewed scrutiny earlier this year amid a prolonged shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which temporarily left both Transportation Security Agents (TSA) and air traffic controllers working without pay.

While instances of people being killed on airport tarmacs are rare, Friday’s incident came a day after a Delta employee was killed after an airport vehicle struck an airbridge at Orlando International Airport.

In March, two pilots were  killed after an Air Canada Express plane crashed into a fire-rescue vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York.

About 225,000 people travel through Denver International Airport a day.

[Aljazeera]