When the first reports emerged, no one could be entirely sure what had happened, and that uncertainty was perhaps the most difficult part. A private aircraft carrying foreign nationals had reportedly gone down in the Philippines, and the news spread quickly, triggering immediate worry for the safety of everyone on board. The initial reports suggested that the plane had crashed in a rural area, and local disaster officials were said to have confirmed the incident. In those early moments, families and friends of the passengers and crew were left in a state of painful suspense, waiting for answers while fearing…

In an age when a single social media post can travel faster than an official court ruling, it is not surprising that a video claiming former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s International Criminal Court case had been dismissed quickly caught fire online. Posted on October 30 by a Facebook page called Noel Weng Acido, the video’s thumbnail suggested, in partly obscured text, that the “ICC case dismissed” and that the “evidence of Trillanes” had been exposed. The caption went further, insisting that this was not fake news: three ICC judges, it said, had thrown out Duterte’s case because the evidence supplied…