MANILA, May 17 — The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest ex-president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal.

The International Criminal Court last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “co-perpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder”.

Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him.

“By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of the law,” the government’s chief lawyer, Solicitor-General Darlene Berberabe, said in a filing that asked the court to dismiss Dela Rosa’s petition.

“Until he submits himself to lawful authorities, he must be deemed a fugitive from justice and should not be allowed to seek any relief from the courts,” said the document, dated May 16 but only made available to the media on Sunday.

Dela Rosa’s current whereabouts were unknown after he discreetly left the Senate building on Thursday.

The justice department said Friday the ICC warrant would only be served once the Supreme Court resolves Dela Rosa’s Supreme Court petition – unless he tried to flee abroad in which case he would be detained.

The court made no immediate comment.

Dela Rosa has said the ICC warrant was illegal since the Philippines pulled out in 2019 from the treaty that created the tribunal.

Berberabe argued that withdrawal from the treaty “does not relieve a state party from cooperating in proceedings already initiated before the ICC”.

The ICC prosecutor launched an examination of the Philippine drug crackdown in 2018.

The bloody campaign, launched by Duterte after being elected president in 2016, left thousands dead, many of them drug users and low-level narcotics peddlers, according to human rights monitors.

Duterte was arrested in March last year, flown to the Netherlands on the same day, and is detained in The Hague awaiting trial.

Dela Rosa served as national police chief from 2016 to 2018.

After retirement, he was elected to the Senate in 2019 and retained his seat in last year’s midterm elections. — AFP

Order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition

The supreme court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition . It was kicked off last year by Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent supreme court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the Republican party.

A 2023 supreme court decision banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions

The US Department of Justice on Thursday accused Yale University of illegally considering race in admissions to its medical school – the second institution to face discrimination allegations by the federal agency this month.

In a letter to a lawyer for Yale, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said a justice department investigation found that Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to the medical school than white or Asian students, despite having lower grade-point averages and lower test scores.

Louisiana had sued the FDA in a bid to curtail the regulatory agency’s rules on prescribing mifepristone remotely

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

The US supreme court upheld nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Thursday.

Louisiana sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October in a bid to curtail the regulatory agency’s rules on prescribing mifepristone remotely, arguing that it interfered with the state’s ban on abortion.

If state’s house passes bill, redrawn map could could give state Republicans a 5-1 congressional majority

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

On Thursday, the Louisiana state senate voted 27-10 to pass a new congressional map that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts. The resulting map could give Louisiana Republicans a 5-1 congressional majority.

The supreme court’s recent decision in Louisiana v Callais, a case that centered on the state’s congressional maps, severely weakened the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The fallout from the decision was swift, with several other southern states calling special sessions to pass redistricting maps that would limit Black voting power.