MikeLigalig.com

Last week end Happy with her family visited us together with some friends too.


Natinga si Isabella nganu nilihok man ang teddy bear

Mom and Steven

Nisali-at pod si Isabella pakugos


Thanks for the gift Steven and Sandy

COPENHAGEN â€" Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympics after winning a landslide victory over Madrid in the final round of voting among International Olympic Committee members on Friday.

Carlos Osorio, general secretary of the Brazilian bid, told Reuters: "Overwhelming, spectacular, unbelievable."

The Brazilian delegation broke into singing their "Marvelous City" song, all waving flags and hugging each other.

The announcement, which was delayed by several nervous seconds as IOC president Jacques Rogge struggled to open the envelope, left Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and much of the rest of the Brazil bid team in tears of joy. "Like in every competition there can only be one winner," Rogge said.

"Tonight I have the honor to announce that the Games of the 31st Olympiad are awarded to the city of Rio de Janeiro," Rogge said.

In the final round of voting, Rio polled 66 votes to 32 for Madrid.

Carlos Nuzman, Rio bid leader, hugged President Lula, both in tears and said: "We did it, we did it."

Former tennis champion Gustavo Kuerten, a bid ambassador, said: "This is an amazing result. We are going to be working from tomorrow to make it happen. Brazil will do the best it can from this great opportunity."

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told Reuters: "Rio was a great candidate. We put up a great fight."

In an astonishing start to the voting, Chicago, the odds-on favorite, went out in the first round, despite receiving unprecedented support from United States President Barack Obama and the first lady.

Obama had become the first sitting U.S. president to address an IOC session.

Tokyo followed them out in the second round, leaving Madrid and Rio to slug it out in the final round.

Rio will be the first South American city to host the Games.

MANILA - Are the successive natural calamities affecting the country somewhat related to the "sins" of the Arroyo government?

Jaro Archbishop and outgoing president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Angel Lagdameo suggested the connection, in a statement Friday entitled “Year 2009 Typhoons, Are they God’s hints” and published in the CBCP website.

“We are challenged to open our hearts to God’s warning signs. Should we not at least ask ourselves if all the corruption and lies, the loss of integrity and the mounting 'destruction of morality and moral values' in the present government and the present calamities: is there a connection? Is God not giving us 'hints' regarding the future and even the coming elections?” Lagdameo said.

A staff close to Lagdameo said the prelate wondered whether the calamities were intended to open the eyes of Filipinos to corruption in government. “Where are the billions of calamity funds, where did our taxes go?” Lagdameo asked, while visiting a Church relief center.

Lagdameo, a critic of the Arroyo administration, said the natural calamities befalling the country should not be viewed as God’s punishment but as a consequence of allowing “moral evil” to persist.

“In the destruction wrought by typhoons, we must see not so much God 'lifting His hand to punish' but moral evil having its 'trail of harm and ruin' because we have destroyed God’s world,” he said.

Corrupting prelates

Arroyo’s presidency has been rocked by controversies one after another, from corruption to electoral fraud. Her critics in the CBCP also accused her of corrupting many prelates with financial help to the dioceses.

The CBCP chief issued the statement as supertyphoon Pepeng threatened to bring another trail of destruction a week after Ondoy dumped record-level rains in Metro Manila and nearby provinces.

Citing the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, Lagdameo said there appears to be some “deep connection between moral evils (the reign of sin) and the calamities that descend on a people.”

He urged the public to pray the rosary, repent and do penance.

“We are impelled to pray that the Lord save our country from further calamities due to typhoons, floods, drought, volcanic eruption and other calamities occurring in increasing number and intensity,“( abs-cbnNEWS.com)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"(UPDATE) Exiled Filipino communist leader Jose Maria Sison has been taken out of the terror list of the European Union, INQUIRER.net learned Wednesday.

Sison’s “inclusion in the EU terror list is cancelled,” said his lawyer Jan Sermon in a long-distance phone interview.

This after a top European court ruled Wednesday that the European Union had based its move on legal procedures in the Netherlands -- where Sison has lived since 1987 -- assessing his eligibility for refugee status, instead of basing it on a "terror" probe.

"The national decisions relied upon by the (EU) in order to freeze the applicant's funds did not relate either to the instigation of investigations or prosecution or to a conviction for terrorist activity, contrary to the requirements of (EU) law," the Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance said.

Sermon said the court also annulled an EU decision to freeze the assets of Sison for alleged "terrorist activity."

Sison, 70, is the founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), and its armed wing the New People's Army (NPA), which have been waging a Maoist rebellion in the Philippines since 1969.

He has been living in exile in the Netherlands, and in 2007 was arrested and accused by the Dutch authorities of ordering the killings of two former NPA commanders over ideological differences.

Asked how much his assets are worth, Sison said, “Maliit lang naman yun (It’s not much), but the main thing is the social benefit that was taken from me since August 2002. That would be substantial.”

Peace talks between the Philippines and the CPP-NPA have been suspended since 2003, shortly after the European Union placed the group as well as Sison's name on its list of foreign terrorists.

Sison's assets were frozen and the Dutch authorities have also frozen his pension. Philippine authorities said the move had also resulted in a freeze on foreign funding to the rebel movement.

While the Dutch government has rejected his bid for asylum, it has not returned Sison to the Philippines due to threats to his life.

Sermon said that with the ruling “the unjust labeling stops, and he can start traveling.”

Sison told INQUIRER.net that he might travel to the United States, which has also tagged him as a terrorist, and perhaps go on a lecture tour there.

If the US continues to tag him as terrorist, Sison said he “can sue for slander. Maghahabol ako doon (I can run after them there). I will consult with my American lawyers.”

Asked about the CCP and the NPA, which are also on the EU and US terror lists, Sison’s lawyer Sermon said these groups did not go to court. “Only Joma Sison applied,” he said. With a report from Agence France-Presse from Brussels.

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"Manila policemen were preparing murder charges on Wednesday against a young man who admitted he killed and then beheaded his 59-year-old employer in Quiapo over the weekend because he had not been paid his wages for two weeks.

According to Chief Insp. Erwin Margarejo, chief of the Manila Police District homicide division, Srejan Sia, 24, a stay-in helper at Bernadette Eatery on San Rafael Street, Quiapo, Manila, is facing murder charges for the death of his employer, Jimmy Preston, 59.

Policemen at the Plaza Miranda Police Community Precint in Quiapo were shocked when the suspect surrendered to them on Tuesday night with a plastic bag containing the bloated and severed head of a man.

Senior Insp. Rodolfo Samoranos, the precinct commander, said the suspect later admitted to him that the head belonged to Preston and added that he was the one who killed the victim.

The suspect then led them to the victim's house where they found the victim's headless body, police said, adding that the latter's penis and ears were also cut off.

Police added that the victim could have been dead for several days already as his body was already bloated and was starting to decompose.

The headless body of the victim was found inside the bathroom wrapped in plastic sheet and lying in an improvised bath tub. Police also recovered two knives and a hammer believed to be used in the killing.

At the police station, Sia, who spoke in broken English and appeared restless, said he killed his employer because he had not been paid for the past two weeks.

Prior to the victim's death, the suspect said he was asking for his salary but the victim refused, resulting in a heated argument between them.

The suspect said he first hit the victim on the head with a piece of wood before he decided to cut off his penis, ears and then the head using a machete.

"I cut his dick and ears because I want them to blame the dogs," he said, adding that he later decided to surrender the head of the victim to the authorities.

"I don't know where to bury him so I surrendered his head," the suspect added.

Police said the suspect appeared mentally ill.

Meanwhile, some relatives of the victim told police that many of his personal belongings and an undetermined amount of cash were missing.

Police said they are looking into reports that the victim had a romantic relationship with the suspect.

The suspect is now detained at the MPD headquarters( Inquirer.Net)

Daily Advice:

" A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. "
 
  And  whats yours? Well you share?

Pag open nako sa TB karon buntag abi ko og nasalaag ko kay lahi naman ang color, og settings tanan, na egnoy tawn ko gipuan ko og pangita asa rato show unread posts since last visit  og show new replies to your posts. Pastilan tua raman diay sa tupad sa ako avatar, mo post na unta ko kay mangutana ko og hain rato..

Thanks Mike for making TB more beautiful!

Good Job Mr Admin.

A million-dollar home in an affluent town in California is now at the center of a controversy in the Philippines.

The home, which is valued at US$1.3 million and located along Beach Park Boulevard in Foster City, is allegedly owned by Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo.

Rep. Arroyo is the eldest son of President Arroyo and First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

Vera Files, a group of investigative journalists claimed that Rep. Arroyo failed to include the said property in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net (SALN) worth in the last two years.

However, Arroyo said his SALN includes the beach park property as part of his business interests and financial connections.

Arroyo said that the property "is registered under Beach Way Park LLC, in which I am a shareholder and which I declared in my SALN."

Data from the San Mateo County Assessor's Office shows otherwise. Arroyo’s wife, Angela, is listed as the only owner and not a corporation as the congressman claims.

Philippine law requires public officials to declare property owned by their spouse.

"The claim of another person is that it is owned by a corporation but actually based on the proof here, based on the evidences it is owned by the individual…that should be recognized not the one he's saying or claiming,” said Rey Satorre, Daly City Planning Commissioner.

Ric Bareng of the National Alliance of Filipino American Real Estate professionals said the Assessor's Office sometimes makes errors but never on ownership.

"There are so many people that validate and verify data so everybody knows that whoever is buying the property is the person legitimately supposed to own the property. So, I've never seen it happen. Somebody is not able to provide the name of the person or the parties involved in the purchase of a home that could be grounds for major liability and major lawsuit,” Bareng said.

The Philippine House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability is now investigating the Arroyo family's assets in the US.(ABS-CBN news)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"An 18-year-old housemaid filed a criminal case against her former employer, the brother of business tycoon Lucio Tan.

Mary Jane Sollano filed the case before the Justice department for maltreatment, illegal detention, slavery and frustrated homicide against Mariano Tan, his wife Aleta and children Maximilian and Fayette.

In her three-page affidavit, the victim detailed the “physical and mental abuses” she suffered in the hands of the Tan family in their Quezon City residence from July 2004 up to August 10.

Sollano said she and the other house help were “not allowed to use the telephone or cell phone, talk to fellow house helpers, laugh, sit in their (family's) chairs, look
outside the window, watch TV, eat at any time, sleep or rest before our tasks were completed, and read any material or write.”

She also claimed that Tan’s wife slapped her in the face repeatedly.

“In my five-year stay in their house, I was not allowed to go out. They even threatened me that they would do something bad if I ask for help from outside,” Sollano claimed.

She said she tried to escape when she sought permission to go to her province but was not allowed to leave. She added Tan’s wife and Fayette even took nude photos of her.

“When they were not yet satisfied, they would hit me with steel or slippers, and threaten me that they would show my nude photos to other people or bring me to a nightclub owned by Ate Aleta's friend,” she alleged.

Sollano, who had been working for Tan's household for five years and two months, was rescued by operatives from the Quezon City Police District, CHR and DSWD last August 10.

The complainant was joined by lawyer Al Parreno in filing the complaint before the office of State Prosecutor Edna Valenzuela.

Submitted with the complaint were affidavits of representatives from police, Commission on Human Rights and Department of Social Welfare and Development and other persons present during the rescue.

Sollano's parents - fearing she was dead - only learned of their daughter's whereabouts from a fellow maid Aljane Bacanto, who escaped the Tan's household recently.

The father then sought the help of provincemates and private lawyers who then brought them to the CHR to seek assistance from authorities
(Inquirer.net)

A massive rescue effort was under way Tuesday after a young child was found among the wreckage of a downed Yemeni jet off the coast of Comoros in the Indian Ocean.
"One child is alive and we hope to find more," Yemenia Airways chairman Capt. Abdulkhalek al-Kadi told CNN. The child has been taken to a hospital.

The French Navy is sending ships and a plan to help Yemeni authorities try to find any more survivors, he said.

The Yemenia Airways flight went down early Tuesday, carrying 153 people en route to the island nation of Comoros from Yemen's capital, Sanaa.
A reconnaissance plane spotted traces of the Airbus A310-300 in waters off the town of Mitsamiouli early Tuesday, said Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim. Comoros is located off the coast of east Africa, between Tanzania and Madagascar.

Al-Kadi blamed the crash on bad weather, noting that there were "high seas and windy weather" at the time.

It is the second crash involving an Airbus jet in a month. On June 1, an Air France Airbus A330 crashed off Brazil while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, France. All 228 aboard are presumed dead. The cause remains under investigation.

Former pilot and aviation analyst Capt. John Cox said there are no similarities between the two incidents.

"These are two dramatically different airplanes flown by two different airlines," Cox told CNN's "American Morning."

"The accidents happened at two different regimes of flight. And Airbus has hundreds of millions of hours flying safely. I don't believe that ... we can draw any conclusions because the manufacturer was the same in these two very different types of accidents."

At first, Comoros officials said there were no signs of survivors among the dead bodies floating in the choppy waters. But then rescuers found the young child.

Cox said it reminded him of the 1987 crash of Northwest Flight 255 in Detroit, Michigan in which only a 4-year-old girl survived, while 156 others died.

"This has come up before and it's where the toddler was seated (during the impact) that allowed them to survive," he said."It's a miracle and I'm glad ... the toddler is safe. I'm just saddened for the loss of everybody else," he added.

The Yemeni crash occurred as the plane approached the Hahaya airport in Comoros' capital, Moroni. The plane tried to land, then performed a U-turn before it crashed, Nadhoim said. Officials did not know why the plane could not land, he said.

There were 142 passengers and 11 crew members aboard, Yemenia Air officials said.

Flight 626 left Sanaa Monday at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) for what was expected to be a four-and-a-half-hour flight. The airline has three regular flights a week to Moroni, off the east coast of Africa, about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) south of Yemen.

The crash occurred about 1:30 a.m., Nadhoim said.

An official at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris said there were 66 French passengers aboard.

There was no indication of foul play behind the crash, the official in Yemen said.

Yemenia Air had used the jet since 1999 on about 17,300 flights, Airbus officials said. The company said it would assist in investigating the crash.

"The concerns and sympathy of the Airbus employees go to the families, friends and loved ones affected by the accident," the company said in a statement.

In the wake of the Air France crash on June 1, United States accident investigators have been probing two recent failures of airspeed and altitude indications aboard Airbus A330s.

One flight was between the United States and Brazil in May and the other between Hong Kong and Japan in June. The planes landed safely and there were no injuries or damage, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.(Cnn.news)

MANILA, Philippines -- Senators warned President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that she might suffer the same fate of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya if she does not stop her allies from pursuing Charter change.

On Sunday, Honduran soldiers arrested Zelaya ahead of a referendum on constituional amendments that was seen to pave the way for the lifting of term limits.

LikeZelaya, Arroyo is allegedly backing the move of her allies in the House of Representatives to rewrite the 1987 Constitution to extend her stay in power.

“If she and her allies insist on an illegal con-ass (constituent assembly) this may be the last straw that will break the camels back,” Senator Francis Pangilinan said in a text message.

“Our people are not blind nor dumb. They have seen the abuses such as the fertilizer scam, the ZTE-NBN deal and the' “Hello Garci' controversy that have been exposed this past years. Our people will refuse to roll over and die while those in power desperately try to cling to power illegally,” Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan was referring to the alleged diversion of P728 million in fertilizer funds to Arroyo's 2004 campaign kitty, the alleged overpice of a botched telecoms deal between the government and Chinese firm ZTE Corp., and alleged rampant cheating in the 2004 elections.

Senators Panfilo Lacson and Francis Escudero did not also rule out the possibility that the Honduras coup could happen in the Philippines.

“Let the fate of ex-Honduras President serve as a serious warning to PGMA (Arroyo's initials). She should not push her luck too hard. Baka ubos na swerte niya, hindi niya lang alam [Her luck might run before she know it],” Lacson said in a separate text message.

Escudero agreed, saying, “The possibility is always there but lets not wish for that in our country, not for GMA's sake but for the sake of our country. Our people and our economy.(inquirer.net)

This news makes me cry and it happends a week ago here in Denmark 

A one-year old girl was  left in a car at his father's job in Lyngby last 25th of this month.
The girl was later found dead, and police immediately set a very thorough investigation underway.
The forensic examination revealed on that night  that the girl apparently died of dehydration because she stayed in a warm and enclosed car, inform the head of investigations at Nordsjællands Police, Flemming Poulsen.

Forgot to hand over

- The father apparently forgot to hand over the child in an institution on that morning, and he drove forward to work . The husband  was asked by his wife to deliver both their daughters, one and three years old on that morning at the day care and  kindergarten. The three-year-old was delivered at the kindergarten, but the youngest daughter did not go to her day care, but rather were seated in child seat in the car, while the father went to work.
The alarm on the little lifeless girl came to 112 at 15.42 on that day , an ambulance was immediately sent off, and police came to the company where the father work.

The tragedy was discovered when the mother in the afternoon came to the institution to pick-up the girl, who was not there, and was told that she had not been delivered in the morning.
She then contacted the father, but at the time it was too late.

The father, which is 29 years, was arrested, suspected of being the cause of death. He was released later in the evening and handed over to crisis psychologists at Rigshospitalet.

At 12:30 noon the baby is still alive says the witness

Witness sees the baby in the baby carrier and trimmed about it, say police, but he does nothing. Yet he goes back later but the car sit was empty,so he just thought that the baby was taken by the parents already. He found nothing  into the car so he  think nothing more about it, until he hears about it in the media,so  he contacted the police immediately, says DR News reporter. According to  Nordsjællands Police,the child has been successfully climb out of the auto carrier and she is found dead on the floor of the car.
Witness is deeply shocked and very felt so  badly, according to the  police.

CEBU CITY, Philippines â€" A couple was allegedly shot by their neighbour after an argument over garbage, police said.

The suspect, Isaac Peñalosa Orandain, 39, allegedly shot Lyndon Son, 45, as he was leaving his house in Mactan village, Lapu-Lapu City at 5:30 a.m. Saturday, said Senior Police Officer 2 Rolito Jumao-as.

Orandain also allegedly shot Son’s wife, Maria Melinda, 44, who rushed out of their house after hearing gunfire, Jumao-as said.

The suspect escaped after the incident, he said.

The wife was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital due to a gunshot wound to her chest, while her husband expired at around 7:30 a.m., the police officer said.

The night before the shooting, Orandain reportedly had an argument with the couple over garbage scattered in his backyard, Jumao-as said.

Police learned that the Son and Orandain families had a long standing feud and had been engaged in public fights that had to be settled through the intervention of village officials.(Inquire.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"A young man was found dead on the ledge of the sixth floor of an 18-story condominium located at the corner of Panay and Timog Avenues in Quezon City at dawn on Wednesday.

Case officer Police Officer 2 Rodel Tumangday identified the victim as Benjie Peralta, 18.

The policeman, however, said it was still too early to tell how Peralta died.

"We still have to determine how his body reached the sixth floor when he was supposed to be at the building's penthouse,'' Tumangday said.

A man who identified himself as William Jose told the police that Peralta was an ABS-CBN talent.

But Bong Osorio, ABS-CBN corporate communications head, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that they were still trying to verify if Peralta was their talent.

Tumangday said the building security guard’s report showed that before his death, the victim was in the penthouse, located on the 18th floor of the Tower B of Victoria Tower. With him were four persons identified as R. A. Carlos, Lucky Mercado, a certain Jeff and a woman named Abigail.

"We are looking for these people to ask them about the incident, but they all fled from the scene,'' he added.

Part of the footage taken by the building’s closed circuit television camera showed a man running from the unit at around 2:15 a.m.

Tumangday said they were still waiting for the results of the autopsy conducted on the victim’s body.

When found, Peralta was sprawled on a ledge on the sixth floor. There was a cut on his arm and his neck seemed to be broken. Surrounding his body were pieces of broken glass.

The police officer, however, said he could not yet say if the broken glass came from the penthouse because they had not examined the unit at the time.

"The unit was locked when we arrived and no one had the key to it,'' Tumangday added.

The victim's uncle, Gary Garcia, said he suspected foul play in his nephew’s death.

"We want to know who were with him in the unit because it's most likely they were involved because they fled from the scene, instead of helping him,'' he told reporters at the Quezon City Police District headquarters in Camp Karingal.

Meanwhile, the victim's former girlfriend, Vanessa Inamoto, also showed up at the police headquarters and said that Peralta had suicidal tendencies.

“When we broke up, he threatened to slash his wrists,” Inamoto said.(inquirer.net)

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippinesâ€"(UPDATE) The thought of her baby daughter strengthened her will to escape from her Abu Sayyaf kidnappers. And on Saturday night, Leah Patriz finally did.

Patriz, 29, was still having a hard time recounting her ordeal when she faced reporters on Sunday, but said her daughter occupied her thoughts during her captivity of more than four months.

"Siya ang nagbigay lakas at inspirasyon sa akin na maging matatag at makatakas (She gave me the strength and the inspiration to be steadfast in my desire to survive and escape)," she said.

An earlier report by Agence France-Presse said her kidnappers, suspected Abu Sayyaf members, freed her. It quoted Senior Superintendent Salik Macapantar as saying pursuit operations by police and military forces pressured the gunmen into leaving her behind.

Patriz’s release came four days after Abu Sayyaf militants also on Basilan island freed Sri Lankan peace activist Umar Jaleel, who was seized the same month as the Filipina.

Patriz and two other colleagues, Ahmad Sali Iliang and Nashra Mujain, were kidnapped in Sumisip town on February 3. They are collectors of the micro-finance firm Kasanyangan Foundation Inc.

Mujain escaped during the abduction while Iliang was freed on February 6.
Sensing that her six abductors had been feeling tired the past two weeks, Patriz planned her escape.

"Nagplano na ako. Bahala na. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, ito na ang pagkakataon ko (I made plans. I told myself this is my chance)," Patriz said.

On Saturday night, her captors were already in "deep sleep" at 8 p.m.

Patriz then placed all her thingsâ€"paper, bags, shoes, and even a water container on her hammockâ€"hoping her kidnappers would mistake the pile for her sleeping form.

Leaving her slippers under the hammock, Patriz walked barefoot to her freedom.

Basilan Vice Governor Al Rasheed Sakalahul said Patriz walked for five hours.

An old man, whom Sakalahul identified as Halikil, found Patriz asking for help.

Halikil brought Patriz to Sumisip Mayor Haber Asarul's house in the village of Manggal.

"Sa ngayon hindi ko talaga alam kung sino ang dapat pasalamatan. Hindi pa rin ako makapaniwala na malaya na ako. Parang nananaginip pa ako (At this point, I still don't know whom to thank. I still cannot believe I'm free. It's as if I'm in a dream)," Patriz said.

Basilan Governor Jum Jainuddin Akbar said no ransom was paid because Patriz escaped.

Akbar said authorities have been doing everything to rescue two remaining kidnap victims in the province.

Still in the hands of their captors are fishermen Ronnie Nabie and Renante Saquen of Tuburan town, and Eugenio Vagni, a 62-year-old Italian Red Cross worker kidnapped on the nearby island of Jolo in January along with a Filipina and a Swiss colleague. The two other hostages were freed in April.

The Abu Sayyaf is blamed for the country's worst terrorist attacks, including bombings and high-profile kidnappings. It is on the US government's list of wanted foreign terrorist organizations.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"A 2.2-hectare property in the city of Campbelltown, New South Wales will be developed to become the Rizal Park in Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

In her report to DFA Secretary Alberto Romulo, Consul General Eva Betita said the Rizal Park will be situated in what used to be an empty reserve owned by the city government.

This decision to build the park started in 1988, when a group of Filipino-Australians and friends petitioned the city council of Campbelltown to name it Rizal Park.

Later, in 2006, a group of five Filipino-Australian associations called the Rizal Park Movement banded together to convert the reserve into a park.

In June 2007, Campbelltown, a prosperous industrial-agricultural town that hosts the third largest concentration of Australian-Filipinos numbering of about 4,108 people, formally designated the Rizal Park reserve into a park that will be funded by the city council.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave A$120,000 for the initial construction of the park, to include a playground and picnic facilities for use by the general public. The Campbelltown city council will provide another A$140,000 for further improvements.

The construction plan for the park was presented to Campbelltown Mayor Russell Matheson, Betita, Rizal Park Movement chairperson Lourdes Kaiser, Knight Commander Maximilio Lopez of the Knights of Rizal, and members of the Filipino-Australian Community in Campbelltown last May 29.

The Rizal Park Movement plans to further improve the park with tree planting and landscaping and the construction of shade structures, barbecue facilities, car parking, and a cycle way. The Order of the Knights of Rizal in New South Wales has also committed to commission a statue of Dr. José Rizal to be placed prominently in the area.

The Philippine consulate general in Sydney has been assisting the Rizal Park Movement’s project through endorsements and gathering support from other Filipino-Australian associations throughout the state of New South Wales.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines--The global economic downturn, which has pulled the Philippines down to its slowest growth in a decade, will result in the country’s failure to meet its poverty-reduction goal by 2010 and is expected to increase the number of poor Filipinos.

Millennium Development Goals, to which the Philippines and other member-countries of the United Nations are signatories, call for the eradication of extreme poverty by 2015.

Consistent with this goal, the Philippines set a target of reducing poverty incidence to 17-20 percent of Filipino families by 2010 from 26.9 percent in 2006.

Economic officials, however, admitted that the global crisis, considered the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, has made the poverty-reduction goal of the Philippines and other countries virtually impossible to achieve.

Diwa Guinigundo, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas deputy governor and a former economics professor, for one, said the timetable for bringing down poverty incidence to 20 percent or less by 2010 and eradicating extreme poverty by 2015 should be adjusted.

“There is scope for delaying the goals. The crisis has led to the destruction of wealth, thus affecting consumption levels,” Guinigundo said Friday.

He noted that with the Philippine population growing faster than its economy, per capital income was naturally reduced.

Per capita income, a rough measure of the income of individuals in an economy, is the total output of the economy divided by its population.

Per estimates, annual per capita income in the Philippines stood at $1,400 as of 2006. Government data show the population growth rate at 2.1 percent.

In the first quarter, the Philippine economy, measured in terms of its gross domestic product [GDP], posted an annual growth of 0.4 percent in real terms, its lowest in 10 years.

GDP, the most common measure of an economy, is the sum of the value of goods produced and services rendered within an economy in a given period.

The Philippine economy’s lackluster performance veered the country off track from meeting its growth target of between 3.1 and 4.1 percent for the full year, and is in fact feared to signal a recession in the months ahead.

Economists blamed the slowdown on the plunge in exports, which were badly hit by anemic global demand. The United States and Europe, drivers of the global turmoil, are two of the Philippines’ biggest export markets.

As a result of dwindling incomes, some export-oriented firms were reported to have reduced their workforce.

The National Economic and Development Authority said earlier the economy needed to grow by at least seven percent over several years in order to reduce poverty significantly.

Hope of attaining poverty reduction was high in 2007, when the Philippines grew 7.2 percent, its biggest in three decades.

However, the economy failed to sustain the robust growth and expanded by only 4.6 percent last year because of worsening global conditions. Much slower growth, if not a contraction, is even expected this year because of the lingering effects of the global turmoil.

Officials said, however, that measures were being taken to arrest the economic downturn.

The BSP has implemented a series of rate cuts to bring down bank lending rates, which is expected to spur business activity.

The government also committed to boost public spending in the months ahead to help create jobs and increase aggregate income.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- Police arrested two women on Friday for allegedly disposing of a male fetus at the Sto. Niño parish church in Tondo.

MPD Tondo Station 2 policemen nabbed Lourdes Felipe, 26, of Sangandaan Street in Caloocan City, and Teresita Posadas, 38, of Fugoso Street in Sta. Cruz, Manila, and turned them over to the custody of the homicide section.

The two women were allegedly in the act of throwing away the aborted fetus -- between five and six months premature and wrapped in a plastic bag -- inside the compound of the Sto. Niño de Tondo Parish Church on Ortega Street in Tondo, when they were spotted by police officers Roberto Benitez and Jessie Martinez.

Felipe and Posadas were accosted by the policemen, who grew suspicious of the women’s presence in the compound at the unholy hour of 3:45 a.m.

An inspection of the plastic bag revealed an aborted fetus, which prompted the officers to take the women into custody.

After the women were turned over to the homicide section, Felipe reportedly informed investigators that the child was hers and that she had paid Posadas for the abortion.

Posadas, she claimed, told her that they could dispose of the fetus inside the church compound.

Both women were being held at the MPD homicide section pending the filing of an abortion charge against them at the prosecutor’s office.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"Flowers and kisses.

That’s what Michelle would give her mom, Cristy Arroyo, 44, on Mother’s Day.

Not this year. Cristy’s youngest daughter lost her three-year battle with leukemia. She was only 15.

At noon last Sunday, the respirator was finally removed. Michelle and Cristy held hands. A few minutes later, Michelle let go of her mother’s hand.

Cristy said: “She really made sure her father was home safe before she left us.”

Even from her hospital bed, Michelle sought to save her father Roger, 46, who was captured by Somali pirates last year by writing a letter of appeal to his captors. The pirates reportedly berated Roger when they received her appeal.

The Inquirer ran a story on Michelle’s appeal. It also caught the attention of Kenya-based volunteer group Ecoterra International that offered to relay Michelle’s plea, through its Somali members, to the captors.

Last February, Roger and his fellow crew members were released after more than three months of captivity.

Despite her illness, Michelle remained strong, Cristy recalled. She taught taekwondo to children in their neighborhood in Antipolo City even after her painful chemotherapy sessions.

In her hospital bed, Michelle painted colorful flowers, and was preparing for her first one-man show to raise funds for her expensive treatment and medication for leukemia.

Cristy said she lost a “sweet, loving and thoughtful” daughter who always slept in her arms.

“I am proud to be her mother,” she said during the last night of Michelle’s wake on Friday. “I am thankful the Lord gave her to me.”

Fighting for life

Cristy first discovered Michelle had leukemia in October 2005. Two types of cancer cells were poisoning her blood.

It broke the young girl’s heart. She wanted to become a fashion model. Instead, she had to undergo treatment and started losing her hair. It was more painful for Cristy, who kept asking: “Why did it have to be my daughter?”

While her two sisters excelled in academics, Michelle’s heart was in sports. She earned medals in taekwondo and played volleyball.

Cristy knew she had to be strong for Michelle. Through her mother’s guidance, Michelle fought for her life. Being a black belter, she gave free taekwondo lessons to children in their village. She remained with the Church choir. She continued her hobby of cooking and just last year, took an interest in art. She painted flowers with bright colors.

Michelle’s courage earned the love of the nurses who took care of her at the Seamen’s Hospital in Manila. Using her camera phone, she took videos of her painful bone marrow extraction procedures to show to her father and friends.

Father captured by pirates

Her condition worsened in November 2008. Around the same time, Cristy learned that her husband Roger was among the 18 Filipino seamen on board oil tanker Chemstar Venus that had been seized by pirates off Somalia.

Cristy was beside herself with worry. She had to buy expensive medicines for Michelle. She had to seek help for her husband. She worried about her eldest daughter Rochelle, 19, who worked at a call center and would come home late. She also looked after her second daughter Christelle, 18, who was still in school.

“I did not know what to do,” Cristy said.

Feeling alone and desperate, she thought of ending her problems by jumping into the tracks of the Light Rail Transit (LRT). But what would happen to her children?

Faith kept her strong

She found strength in her faith.

“I prayed for healing,” Cristy said. “I thanked God that despite everything I was going through, I was healthy.”

While her body was getting weaker, Michelle’s heart remained strong. Just as her father Roger was determined to come home for her, Michelle was also determined to stay alive until his safe return.

Last December, Michelle wrote a letter appealing to the pirates to set her father free. Cristy e-mailed her daughter’s letter to the Cancer Warriors Foundation, which had been helping the family finance Michelle’s expensive medication. The e-mail circulated online until a reader forwarded it to the Inquirer four days later.

Prayer of surrender

They were still celebrating Roger’s safe return in March when Cristy again rushed her daughter to the hospital. Michelle was suffering from extreme headachesâ€"the cancer cells had reached her brain.

In the next three weeks, mother and daughter continued to pray. One day, Cristy opened her prayer book and saw “a prayer of surrender.”

She left the room and cried. Was God trying to tell her something?

Cristy went to the chapel. “I asked the Lordâ€"if He wants to take my daughter back, please don’t let her suffer anymore.”

Letting go

Although Michelle could not talk because of the respirator on her face, she used her cell phone to send text messages to her family, her doctor and the nurses. She requested for the removal of her respirator.

The doctor said they would remove the respirator if she could sustain breathing on her own. Last Sunday, they took her off the respirator.

Although she had lived a short life, the wake for Michelle was unusually crowded. It was attended by her friends and teachers, her choir mates and neighbors, even her nurses. They all told Cristy how deeply her daughter had touched their lives.(inquirer.net)

Dear Mother
I can never explain the ways I've felt
Growing up without you, playing the cards I was dealt.
There were always many things I wanted to say
My dreams and new thoughts that came each day
I wish I could take back some of the skeptical things I've said
To be more respectful, listen, be positive instead.
At times I felt you were never listening to what I would say,
So I'd get angry and react in the wrong way.
I understand that it took some time for me to change my ways,
I prayed for this each night and even some days.
Although you'd never see the true feelings I'd hide
I love you very much, deep down inside.
Always my mother, and never my friend, so you could not see,
The angry little girl that lay within me
Notice how I've changed each and every day
I've grown to follow your footsteps, but in a different way.
Although I'm quite unsure of where the road might lead,
If you stay by my side I promise to take heed
I am your child and I love you dearly
Thanks for all you've done mom truly and sincerely
To me you’re very special like no other,
Loving, caring, and concerned, my dear mother


I miss you a lot


From your far away daughter,
Bulak

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"(UPDATE) The Department of Health (DoH) has advised boxing icon Manny Pacquiao to postpone his plan to come home from Los Angeles, California this Friday, as a precautionary move to prevent the spread of the Influenza A(H1N1) virus here.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III urged Pacquiao to move his arrival to Tuesday next week.

“We'll convince them [to postpone their arrival]. I don't want to imagine they will not agree,” Duque said.

Duque said the World Health Organization has reported a "third-generation human-to-human transmission" of the virus in Los Angeles, citing the case of a Mexican who infected another individual, who in turn contaminated a third person.

In the meantime, Pacquiao, his family and entourage should go on a strict “self-quarantine” starting Wednesday and for the next five days, the health chief said.

"Since Manny Pacquiao is in Los Angeles ... it is better to be conservative," he said. "Part of our message to them is that beginning today, they shouldn't be going out anymore. They should impose self-quarantine."

Should they develop fever and other flu symptoms during this five-day self-quarantine period, they should have themselves checked in a hospital. If they would not develop any flu symptoms, they could come home, he said.

Self-quarantine means Pacquiao and his family and entourage should stay in their homes or apartments in Los Angeles and that they should not receive guests.

“Manny is unique because people would like to welcome him. We don't want this to be a cause of unnecessary spread [of the virus],” said Duque.

Pacquiao, his wife, mother and others in his entourage drove from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to celebrate his second-round knockout victory over Hatton in a light welterweight bout Sunday.

The government declared a "national day of celebration" on Friday to welcome Pacquiao back. Weather forecasters, however, predict it could also be a rainy day in Manila from an approaching storm.

Duque said 10 people have been under observation for swine flu in the Philippines since May 1 and five of them have already been cleared of the virus.

Of the remaining cases, two are Filipinos who returned separately from Ireland and the United States, two boys aged 9 and 12 from South Korea and a 26-year-old woman from Britain. They are under observation at different government health facilities.

Duque also said he will chair a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, starting Thursday of health ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus those from Japan, China and South Korea.

He said the health ministers will try to craft a binding resolution on pandemic preparedness and action plans to be submitted to the world health assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 18.(Inquirer.net)

We attended a birthday party last good Friday,and when i walked inside the party room i got surprised when iv seen these faces

A Blooming Sheila incharge for the grill



Ligaya frying the spring rolls


A pose for our future mom to be.


Here we goes.


And these are all the people during the party.

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"A Filipino was killed and another Filipino was injured in a rocket attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan 11 days ago, the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed Tuesday.

In a statement, the DFA identified the fatality as Norbert Malana Hobayan, who died from wounds suffered after being hit by rocket fire inside Kandahar Airbase, Afghanistan last March 20.

Another Filipino, Rolando Tricenio, who was injured in the same incident, is still recuperating at Kandahar Airbase.

At the same time, the DFA reiterated the total ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq, Nigeria, and Lebanon.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs reiterates its advisory to the public not to travel to or seek employment in Afghanistan due to the unstable and volatile security situation in that country,” the statement said.

The DFA’s Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs (OUMWA) has verified the information with Hobayan’s employer, Recon International, and has informed his family of the incident.

Recon International, in coordination with the Philippine embassy in Islamabad, is facilitating the repatriation of Hobayan’s remains.(inquirer.net)

California octuplets believed to be the nation's second live-born set were "doing very well" one day after their birth, and aside from some oxygen assistance, all the babies were breathing on their own, doctors said Tuesday.

The babies' mother, who is recovering from her Caesarean section, has not been able to visit the babies in their incubators, but is "very excited" when hospital staffers bring her pictures, said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, director of neonatology for Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, California, where the octuplets were born.

"They had a very good night," Gupta said of the babies -- six boys and two girls, ranging in weight from 1 pound 8 ounces to 3 pounds 4 ounces. "Their vitals remain stable. They were sleeping comfortably."

Their mother, who hospital officials said wants to remain anonymous, will likely be able to visit her babies later Tuesday night or Wednesday, he said.

Two of the babies were on ventilators, or breathing tubes, in the hours after their birth, but those tubes were removed Monday night, Gupta said. While some of the babies are receiving oxygen through their noses, most of them are breathing by themselves, he said.

Gupta said four of the babies will begin feedings Tuesday, and feedings will be increased once the newborns' tolerance improves. "They are kicking," he said. "They are doing amazingly well."

The babies have not been named yet, said Dr. Harold Henry, the hospital's chief of maternal and fetal medicine. Asked if the babies' mother was aware of the publicity the births have generated, he said, "To some degree, yes."

Doctors initially believed the woman was carrying seven fetuses. She was put on bed rest at 23 weeks, and delivered the babies at 30 weeks. A team of 46 doctors, nurses and other staff prepared for the births over that seven-week period.

"We were extremely well-prepared for this delivery, except for one small surprise," said Dr. Karen Maples, chief of obstetrics and gynecology for the hospital.

During the delivery Monday, doctors were taking the babies out one by one, naming them for a letter of the alphabet and giving them to an assigned nurse, she said. After "G," the team thought they had all the babies, but "I said, 'Well, now we have H, everyone,'" she recalled.

"The G nurse became the H nurse, and took it over to the F doctor ... it just went seamlessly."

Multiple ultrasounds only found seven fetuses, she said. Asked how the eighth was missed, she said, "It is just a matter of positioning. The space is rather limited."

Asked if there was a search for a ninth baby, Maples said, "Absolutely."

The babies' mother was awake during the operation, and was "sort of counting with us as the babies were coming out," said Dr. Jalil Riazi, chief of anesthesiology. "Once we went up to number eight, she as well as the rest of us were very surprised."


He said the mother was "a wonderful patient. We were very lucky to be able to take care of her ... she's doing very well today."

Gupta refused to comment on the babies' chances of survival, since "we've never had eight babies born at 30 weeks." Single babies born at 30 weeks face "very, very good" odds, he said. With multiples, even twins, he said, "we expect them to do a lot worse than these babies are doing."

The hospital has not answered questions about whether the mother had fertility treatments.
Gupta said Monday the first three to seven days will be critical for the octuplets, saying they could be in incubators for six to eight weeks and hospitalized for 10 weeks.

Preliminary research indicates this is the second set of live-born octuplets in the United States, according to the hospital. Eight babies believed to be the United States' first set of live octuplets were born in Houston, Texas, in 1998. One of the infants died days after birth; the seven other siblings recently celebrated their 10th birthday, the Houston Chronicle reported last month.
(CNN:com)

A medical technician fatally shot his wife, five young children and himself Tuesday after claiming in a note to a TV station that he and his wife both had just been fired.

The shocking killings underscored the psychological toll that the down economy may be taking on some unemployed workers, as police urged those facing tough times to seek help rather than resort to violence.
Police identified the man as Ervin Lupoe on Tuesday. They did not release the names of the children.
Police said the child victims were an 8-year-old girl, twin 5-year-old girls and twin 2-year-old boys.

Lupoe removed three of the children from school about a week and a half ago, saying the family was moving to Kansas, the school principal told KCAL-TV. Crescent Heights Elementary School Principal Cherise Pounders-Caver said nothing seemed to be troubling Lupoe at that time; she did not ask why the family was moving.

"No words can describe this tragedy. There is no way to comprehend this unspeakable act," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told reporters on Tuesday. "I daresay that no one I know could understand what would drive anyone to take matters in to their own hands in such a lethal manner."

Police said they were alerted by KABC-TV that they had received a faxed letter from Lupoe indicating that he and his wife had been fired from their jobs at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center and intended to kill themselves and their children.

The hospital confirmed that Ervin Antonio Lupoe and his wife, Ana, also a medical technician, worked at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles.

"We are deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of the Lupoe family," it said in a statement.

Lupoe also called 911 and told dispatchers that he had found his family dead in their home, police said.

"Today our worst fear was realized," said Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner. "It's just not a solution. There's just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this."

"He was going through some critical situation at the job, that's what he described in that two-page letter, ongoing problems at the job, and that's what prompted him to take his own life and his family, from what was said in the fax letter," Garner said.

Garner said a note was found in the home, but it was not clear if it was what had been faxed to the TV station.

Officers rushed to the two-story home in Wilmington, near the Port of Los Angeles, shortly before 8:30 a.m., apparently within minutes of the killings. Garner said the officers could still smell the gunshot residue.

The bodies of the girls and the father were in one bedroom. The mother and boys were in another bedroom.

Although the fax asserted that the woman was involved, police Lt. John Romero said, "It is apparent that the suspect in the murder is the male adult."

KABC reported that the man claimed in the fax that a medical center administrator rebuffed them when they showed up to work, told them to file a union grievance and said, "You should have blown your brains out."

The man wrote that they filed a grievance but nothing was done and two days later they were fired, KABC said.

"They did nothing to the manager who started such and did not attempt to assist us in the matter, knowing we have no job and five children under 8 years old with no place to go. So here we are," the note said.

At the bottom of the note, the man wrote, "Oh lord, my God, is there no hope for a widow's son?"

"Obviously we're in the midst of an investigation. The police department is working on developing evidence on this and we'll know more about how and why this happens," Villaraigosa said.

"If you need assistance, if you're looking for a helping hand, know that we're ready with open arms and open hearts to guide you through this tough stretch to see that everyone emerges form this crisis with their livelihoods and their lives in tact," he said. "Unfortunately this has become an all too common story in the last few months."

This is the third mass slaying of a family in Southern California since fall.

On Dec. 24, Bruce Pardo, 45, dressed up as Santa Claus and invaded a Christmas Eve party at his ex-wife's parents' home in suburban Covina, opened fire with a gun and set the house ablaze with racing fuel. Ex-wife Sylvia Pardo and eight relatives were fatally shot or burned. Pardo later killed himself.

In October, a 45-year-old unemployed financial manager despairing over extreme money problems shot and killed his wife, three children, mother-in-law and himself in their home in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

Karthik Rajaram wrote in a suicide letter he felt the honorable choice was to kill himself and his family instead of just himself, police said.(FoxNews)

The move to reimpose the death penalty gathered more steam in Congress after another lawmaker filed one more bill reviving capital punishment in the wake of increasing heinous crimes in the country.

The latest measure, House Bill 5714, was filed by Muntinlupa Representative Rozzano Rufino Biazon on Monday in response to the worsening drug crisis highlighted by the case of the “Alabang Boys.”

Senate Majority Floor Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri had filed a similar bill in the upper chamber.

Earlier, Manila Representative Bienvenido Abante filed HB 4882 reviving the death penalty in reaction to the string of bloody bank robberies a few months ago.

Biazon said the Constitution did not abolish the death penalty but it gave Congress the discretion to impose capital punishment for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes.

Biazon’s bill would impose the death penalty in cases covered by Republic Act No. 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

“The non-imposition of the death penalty in cases covered by RA 9165 only emboldens those involved in this illicit industry that destroys the family, takes the lives of its victims and wreaks havoc on Philippine society,” Biazon said, noting that life imprisonment was hardly a deterrent to drug trafficking.

“There have been instances where the illegal drug trade was ongoing even if the convicted trafficker was behind bars,” he said. (inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines â€" A 12-year-old boy was killed on night when he tried to shield his father from a knife-wielding man in Alabang, Muntinlupa City.

Christopher Romualdo, a Grade 6 student, died while he was being taken to a hospital due to the numerous stab wounds he sustained all over his body.

The man who stabbed him â€" Michael Dumacay, 51 â€" was in turn killed by his intended victim, Joseph Romualdo, 43, the boy’s father.

SPO1 Roberto Pareño, case investigator, said that at around 6:30 p.m. Monday, Joseph was drinking with his neighbors in front of his house in Ilaya, Purok 6, when he shouted invectives at Dumacay for no apparent reason.

Pareño added that Dumacay, who was walking home from work, hurriedly left the area but returned after a few minutes, accompanied by several unidentified men.

Armed with a 12-inch knife, Dumacay lunged at Joseph and started a free-for-all, the police investigator said.

Upon seeing the incident, the boy ran to his father and shielded him from Dumacay using his body. As a result, he ended up taking most of the knife thrusts intended for his father.

“When Joseph saw his bloodied son, he took the knife from Dumacay and stabbed the assailant,” Pareño said in a police report.

He added that they later placed under arrest the boy’s father who was confined at the Alabang Medical Center for stab wounds.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines--Two male fetuses were found outside a videoke bar and near an underpass at least an hour apart Sunday morning in Manila.

The fetuses were each placed inside an ice cream bucket with the umbilical cords still attached and the placenta intact.

PO1 Gerry Amores of the Manila Police District (MPD) homicide section said that the first fetus, some five to six months premature, was discovered at around 8:30 a.m. Sunday in front of the Lerma Underpass at the corner of Lerma and R. Papa Streets, Barangay (Village) 464 in Sampaloc.

Amores said that the fetus was found by 464 village watchman Enrique Gatdula, who noticed the plastic bag containing the blue half gallon ice cream bucket with the dead infant inside.

The fetus was brought to the Universal Funeral Homes for safekeeping.

The second fetus -- also five to six months premature -- was left in front of the Atmosphere videoke bar along Taft Avenue in Malate.

Amores said the fetus was discovered at around 9:45 a.m. by Firebird security agency guard Ramil Batotoc detailed at the Enrica Building beside the bar and a certain Mario Hisma. The two noticed a transparent plastic bag marked "SALE" left near the bar and decided to inspect the package.

The case investigator said the two saw the fetus placed inside a red plastic ice cream bucket covered with a red plastic bag.

Batotoc and Hisma turned over the fetus to the MPD homicide section and gave their statements about the discovery.(inquirer.net)

A lovers' quarrel almost ended in tragedy in the Chinese city of Kunming Friday, caught on camera by a passing photographer.

An unidentified man held a woman said to be his girlfriend out of a third floor window for more than two hours as police tried to talk him down.

He finally agreed to leave the building, but took the woman with him as a hostage, holding a knife to her throat as crowds gathered in the street around the building in the Yunnan provincial capital. In the end, specialist hostage negotiators persuaded the man to give himself up.

Bizarrely, there was a similar, although apparently unrelated, hostage-taking incident in Kunming on December 19, 2005 .

Indeed, Kunming seems to have quite a reputation for hostage-taking, including an incident earlier this month in which a knife-wielding man injured three women before taking a nurse hostage in the French-owned Carrefour supermarket.

That stand-off lasted more than four hours before police tempted the man out with a bowl of soup â€" and a sniper killed him with a single shot to the temple.
(The foxnews)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) Despite the global economic crisis, growing political tension, the armed conflict in the south, and steep commodity prices, nearly seven in ten Filipinos believe the country is not hopeless while five of 10 say they would not migrate to another country even if they had an opportunity.

According to a Pulse Asia Inc. survey conducted from October 14 to 27, 68 percent of respondents, asked if they agreed with the statement that "This country is hopeless," said they disagreed. Thirteen percent agreed while 18 percent were undecided.

Asked if they would migrate to another country if given the chance, 54 percent disagreed, 20 percent agreed, while 24 percent were undecided, the independent survey showed.

The study had a margin of error of +/-3 percent and a confidence level of 95 percent. It polled 1,200 adults nationwide.

Disagreement with the statement that the Philippines is hopeless was highest in Mindanao (78 percent), followed by the Visayas (72 percent), Metro Manila (69 percent), and Luzon (62 percent).

On the other hand, agreement with the statement that the country is hopeless is highest in Luzon (15 percent), followed by Metro Manila (14 percent), the Visayas (13 percent), and Mindanao (6 percent).

The percentage of the population that would rather stay in the country than migrate abroad was highest in Luzon (61 percent), statistically tied with Mindanao (60 percent), followed by the Visayas (43 percent), and Metro Manila (35 percent).

On the opposite side, those who would opt to migrate was highest in the Visayas (35 percent), followed by Metro Manila (28 percent), Luzon (15 percent), and Mindanao (14 percent).

Across social classes, 72 percent of the ABC bracket, and 69 percent from the D bracket said they did not agree the country is hopeless.

More people from the D bracket (53 percent) than from the ABC bracket (35 percent) said they would prefer to stay in the Philippines.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita welcomed the survey results, saying: "This shows that Filipinos are very nationalistic and they are hopeful that their lives will get better here, rather than migrate."

"In other words, there are very high hopes things will be much better here than abroad," he said.

The year 2008 saw inflation shoot up to record highs as world crude prices soared. The government's economic team also moved to set in place measures to cushion the impact of the global economic crisis, which is expected to fully affect the country early next year.

On the political front, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo survived yet another impeachment attempt on charges of massive corruption in the botched $329-million national broadband network contract and the P728-million fertilizer fund scam.

In Mindanao, fresh fighting erupted between government forces and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels erupted in August as formal peace talks bogged down.(inquirer.net)

ILIGAN CITY, Philippines -- (UPDATE 6) Explosions rocked two shopping centers here Thursday afternoon and two women were seen on the malls’ videos planting the bombs, which killed a number of people and injured several others, authorities said.

Military and police said the two people were killed and 47 injured in the blasts at the Unicity shopping center at 1:35 p.m. and at the nearby Jerry’s Shoppers Plaza 10 minutes after. Both stores are on Aguinaldo Street.

The bombs, improvised explosive devices, exploded at the baggage counters at the entrance of the establishments, police said.

Superintendent Dimacuta Sanggacala, spokesman of the Lanao del Norte police, corrected the earlier report he relayed to INQUIRER.net that six people had been killed, saying that some of those whom they thought were dead were seriously hurt.

Sanggacala also the wounded were being treated at the Sanitarium City Hospital and Dr. Uy City Hospital.

Lieutenant Esteffani Cacho, Western Mindanao spokesperson, said two people were wounded and an L-300 van was damaged in the explosion at Unicity while two were killed and two others hurt in the second blast at Jerry’s Shoppers Plaza.

She added that the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team and the K9 unit of the 403rd Brigade had been deployed to the blast sites.

An Associated Press report quoted Lieutenant Colonel Agane Adriatico, a military spokesman, as saying Muslim rebels were to blame for the attacks.

In an interview 403rd Infantry Brigade chief Colonel Nicanor Dolojan said initial findings indicated the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were crafted out of mortar rounds, which he described as the “signature” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Dolojan said the motive of the attack was to “sow terror” in the city and possibly divert the military’s focus from offensive operations against MILF units the military has been targeting for attacking civilian communities in central Mindanao in August.

“We are still trying to evaluate [and] we are still trying to assess [the] situation…what is really their intention. But our [offensive] operation [will] still continue,” Dolojan said.

Sanggacala said footage obtained from the closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) of both establishments showed the bombs were planted at the baggage counters by women whose faces were covered with veils.

Sanggacala said although they have not identified the perpetrators, these were “acts of terrorist groups.”

He said scene of the crime operatives (SOCO) were searching the area for more victims.

Sporadic clashes between government troops and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an 11,000-strong rebel group fighting for self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's south, erupted in August after the country's top court scrapped a preliminary peace deal.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines â€" A 32-year-old teacher from Iligan City killed her 5-year-old son by poisoning and then hanged herself inside a hotel in Quezon City, the city’s homicide police chief reported Thursday.

Supt. Marcelino Pedrozo said that based on the suicide note left by Cheryl Buhion-Casan, she decided to kill her son, Brylle, and take her own life due to depression, when she learned that her husband was involved with another woman.

Pedrozo said the suicide note was found on the desk near the hotel bed.

Police also said that the note indicated that they just recently arrived in Manila to supposedly spend Christmas as a family.

Pedrozo said the victim’s husband refused to take them and informed her of the other woman.

The letter also said the husband refused his wife’s plea to let her and their son to stay in his house here, Pedrozo said.

The bodies of Casan and her son, police said, were discovered by the hotel staff at around 12:45 in the afternoon on Wednesday.

“The hotel staff decided to open the victims’ door when no one answered their repeated knocks,” he said.

He added that based on the investigation, the victims just arrived from the province and checked into Sogo Hotel in Novaliches on Tuesday morning.

He further said the child was found lying on the bed with his mouth frothing.

The initial report of the Scene of the Crime Operatives said “the boy could be poisoned or had been given a drug overdose.”

The mother was found hanging in the comfort room with a nylon rope looped around her neck and with the other end tied to the iron shower.(inquirer.net)

NEW YORKâ€"Eleven journalists were killed in Iraq in 2008, making it the deadliest country in the world for the press for the sixth straight year, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Thursday.

The New York-based group said 41 journalists were killed worldwide in direct connection to their work in 2008, down from 65 last year. It said it was probing another 22 deaths to determine whether they were work-related.

"More than 90 percent of those killed were local journalists covering the news for local, regional, and international news outlets," the CPJ said.

The CPJ said the 11 deaths in Iraq in 2008, while down sharply from the 32 deaths recorded in both 2007 and 2006, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history.

In addition to the 11 journalists killed, the CPJ said two media workers, both drivers, also died in Iraq this year.

The CPJ quoted journalists and analysts as saying the drop in the media death toll in Iraq was consistent with an overall improvement in security conditions in the country this year. They said a declining Western media presence also contributed to the drop in deaths in Iraq.

The press freedom watchdog said all of the journalists killed in Iraq in 2008 were local reporters working for domestic news outlets.

It said that since the March 2003 US-lead invasion 136 journalists and 51 media workers have been killed in Iraq.

South Asia was particularly deadly this year with 13 journalists killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and India, the CPJ said.

It said three reporters died in Thailand and another three in fighting between Georgian and Russian forces over the disputed region of South Ossetia.

The CPJ reported journalist deaths in the following countries or territories in 2008: Afghanistan (2) Bolivia, Cambodia, Croatia, Gaza Strip, Georgia (3), India (4), Iraq (11), Mexico, Pakistan (5), Philippines (2), Russia (2), Somalia (2), Sri Lanka (2), Thailand (3).(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"What does a mother who is on death row in a foreign land wish for this Christmas?

Still thinking of her four children, Cecil Armia-Alcaraz, the English language tutor convicted in October of robbing and killing her Taiwanese job broker, wants assistance for her kids' education and the release of her diary to her family.

Alcaraz expressed her wishes during a recent visit by Overseas Workers' Welfare Administration (OWWA) head Carmelita Dimzon, Labor Attaché Liddy Rasul-Tanedo, and Susan Ople of the Blas F. Ople Policy Center to the Yan Chao Detention Center in Kaoshiung, Taiwan.

Dimzon agreed to grant the first wish: her children -- Shallom, 20, Jerome, 18, Aaron, 16, and Ephraim, 14 -- will be given scholarships. On top of that, she wants to help Alcaraz's brother, who acts as the boys' guardian.

"We want to give full assistance to her family. I already sent OWWA officer to go to Liliw, Laguna to ask them to come over the OWWA offices in Pasay City for profiling to see what they really need. They might not be inclined to go into business, and if we give them a livelihood project that requires entrepreneurial skills, we might have a problem," she said.

"We want to give a comprehensive assistance so that the children's daily needs are also assured," she added.

Ople said the Ople Center would also offer Alcaraz's children the opportunity to enroll in the Microsoft-sponsored Tulay program which provides free computer classes to overseas Filipino workers and their families. The program is in partnership with OWWA and through a grant given to the foundation named after the late Foreign Affairs Secretary
Blas F. Ople.

Quoting Alcaraz, Ople said the single mother has been keeping a diary since she came to Taiwan and wants to share its contents with her family to fill the gap of 10 years that they had spent apart.

"Gusto ko po sanang maibigay ito sa mga anak ko, kapatid ko, at kung maaari pati na sa buong mundo (I would like to give this diary to my children, my brother, and to the whole world)," Alcaraz told Ople, Dimzon, and Tanedo.

Ople said Alcaraz would also like the world to know that she led a happy life in Taiwan with her American boyfriend before the tragedy. She called the slain job broker her best friend.

Alcaraz, who faces death by firing squad if her appeal is rejected, said she hopes that the media would also cover her appeal.

She said her diary will have to be translated to Chinese first before the authorities allow its release.

Alcaraz, who initially confessed to the crime, later retracted and denied committing the crime. She said she only withdrew money from the victim's ATM on the instructions of two Chinese men who threatened to drag her boyfriend into the case.

However, the police have yet to uncover any leads linking two Chinese men to the crime.

Her boyfriend later reportedly committed suicide on his return to the United States.

Both Alcaraz and her American boyfriend were the victim's clients. The broker helped both secure jobs as English tutors in Taiwan, where Alcaraz also previously worked as caregiver.

The court that sentenced Alcaraz cited a security video that captured the dumping of the body near the city harbor and another video showing Alcaraz withdrawing money using the slain broker's ATM card hours after the victim already died.(inquirer.net)

BANGKOK, Thailand â€"  Thailand's ailing king, a pillar of stability during his six decades on the throne, failed to attend celebrations marking his 81st birthday Friday as many Thais feared his fading from the scene could deepen the turmoil that has plagued the country for three years.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej was scheduled to take part in a birthday ceremony at the Grand Palace's throne hall but it was canceled due to an illness that also prevented him from delivering his annual birthday speech Thursday, local media said.

The Royal Palace said in a statement that Bhumibol was suffering from a fever and was being given liquid food.

Many Thais had been eagerly awaiting his address in hopes it might point a way out of political turbulence that in the past two weeks has included a seven-day seizure of Bangkok's two airports by anti-government protesters and the ouster of the government. The capital's Suvarnabhumi International Airport officially reopened Friday, but was operating at only about 50 percent capacity.

Early Friday, hundreds of Thais gathered on a field outside the ornate, walled palace to give alms to 282 Buddhist monks as a way of conveying their best wishes to the king.

"The conflict between the groups will linger on and hurt the country's economy and reputation for years," said Jiraporn Chaoprayoon Yamamoto, a social worker
"I think with his majesty the king's weak health condition and the political conflict that divides Thais in two, Thailand's future is bleak," she said. Like many Thais, she said she was praying for the king's recovery.

On Thursday, Princess Sirindhorn said the king was weak and suffering from bronchitis and inflammation of the esophagus but that his "condition is not serious."

The king's last public appearance was Tuesday when he looked haggard while inspecting royal troops. He spoke briefly, reading hoarsely from a text, and seemed barely able to keep his head up.

Last year, the king was hospitalized for more than three weeks for symptoms of a stroke and a colon infection. He also has a history of heart trouble.

Although a constitutional monarch, Bhumibol built up his great power through decades of work on behalf of the poor, charisma and political astuteness.

His 56-year-old son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, has nowhere near the king's talents, stature or moral authority. There is concern that Vajiralongkorn, who has married three times and fathered seven children, will have difficulty living up to Bhumibol's record of diligence.

Sirindhorn, 53, who could technically also succeed her father, is talented and highly popular but said to lack political savvy. There is also almost no historical precedent for a woman becoming the country's ruler.

The royal crisis could not have come at worse time for Thailand, as it struggles to recover from an anti-government campaign by the People's Alliance for Democracy.

It started with mass protests in late 2005 to oust then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was removed in a 2006 military coup amid accusations of gross corruption and attempting to undermine the monarchy. The coup is widely believed to have been backed by the palace.

Thaksin's supporters won elections held in December 2007. But the protest alliance rejected the outcome, saying the new government was a proxy for Thaksin, and began another round of agitation that culminated with the seizure of Bangkok's two airports.

The alliance _ backed largely by the urban middle class _ ended its airport siege after a court Tuesday ousted the government for voter fraud in the last elections.

Although international flights have been partially restored, the crisis has knocked out the lucrative tourist industry and will also hit hard at other economic sectors.

Deep, potentially explosive, divisions in Thai society also remain. A new government is likely to still include Thaksin allies and the pro-monarchy alliance has vowed to return to the streets if it does.

"Thaksin was seen as a competitor to the throne. His popular regime was seen as dangerous to the monarchical institution in a longer term," said Thongchai Winichakul, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin.

The king and monarchy as an institution have been key elements in the political upheaval of recent years although much has been carried out in the shadows, given the secrecy and reverence surrounding Bhumibol as well as strict laws punishing those who speak against royal family members.

Insulting the monarchy, known as the crime of "lese majeste," carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

On Thursday, Reporters Without Borders called for the release of Australian author Harry Nicolaides, who faces a lese majeste charge. The group said Nicolaides has been held in prison since August on a charge related to a book published three years ago in which he referred to the way an unnamed crown prince treated one of his mistresses.

Meanwhile, the government, headed by acting Prime Minister Chaowarat Chandeerakul, is to continue next week searching for a new prime minister to be presented to Parliament for approval.

Also, work crews were working to restore Government House, the prime minister's seat, which had been badly damaged during a 97-day occupation by protesters. Loyluen Bunnag, an official in the prime minister's office, said he hoped some staff could begin work there Monday.

Local television stations showed the prime minister's room vandalized and valuables missing. Police also found explosives and weapons hidden in the rubble, the stations said.
(The foxnews.com)

NESKOWIN, Ore. â€"  A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea.

Scott Napper had taken 22-year-old Leafil Alforque to Proposal Rock near Neskowin Beach to pop the question at a place that got its name from couples ready to marry.

Napper and Alforque had been dating since they met on the Internet in 2005.

But Alforque had arrived in Oregon on a visa from the Philippines just three days before the fateful trip to the coast.

Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket.

About 10 feet from the rock, a wave about 3 feet high suddenly came toward them.

"I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it," Napper said.

By the time he turned to find Alforque, only 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, she had been caught by the receding waters.
"She was about 30 feet away, getting swept away," Napper said.

The 45-year-old Silverton man tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight, and when he looked up again she was gone.

"That's the last I saw of her," he said in an interview Wednesday, breaking into tears.

Emergency personnel called by a someone on the beach arrived within minutes. His own phone no longer worked after being exposed to the water.

Along with rescuers, he searched for any sign of Alforque.

"I yelled for her," he said. "I was praying to God."

At one point, he saw someone wearing red â€" the color of her jacket â€" on the shore signaling for him. But he quickly realized it was a rescuer.

Thick fog and dangerous water conditions hampered the rescue efforts before the search was suspended on Monday.

Her 25-year-old sister, Nova Alforque, said the family hopes the body can be recovered.

"My mother is always crying, day and night," Nova Alforque said by telephone from the Philippines. "She wants my sister back. Even if she is dead, she wants her body to bury."

The Tillamook County Sheriff's Office is routinely checking the beach and looking for possible witnesses, said Sheriff Todd Anderson.

Police don't suspect foul play, he said.(foxnews.com)

TIJUANA, Mexico â€"  The bodies of nine decapitated men were found in a vacant lot in Tijuana Sunday, part of a wave of violence that claimed at least 23 lives over the weekend in this border city plagued by warring traffickers, authorities said.

The heads were discovered in plastic bags near the bodies in a poor neighborhood of Tijuana, across from San Diego, Baja California state police said in a statement. Three police identification cards were also found at the site.

The statement gave no motive for the killings, but they came as Mexico's drug cartels wage a bloody fight for smuggling routes and against government forces, dumping beheaded bodies onto streets, carrying out massacres and even tossing grenades into a crowd of Independence Day revelers â€" an attack that killed eight people in September.

More than 4,000 people have died so far this year in drug-related violence in Mexico.

Across Tijuana on Sunday, attacks by gunmen killed five people in addition to the nine beheaded bodies.

State police said nine more people were killed in attacks on Saturday. In one, gunmen killed a 4-year-old child in an attack on a grocery store.

Baja California has suffered a rising wave of homicides, which officials blame on a struggle between rival cells of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.

The Arellano Felix cartel emerged in the 1980s as a drug trafficking powerhouse across the U.S. border from San Diego, but has been weakened in recent years as leaders were killed or captured.

Last month, police arrested Eduardo Arellano Felix, the alleged leader of the cartel. Authorities say his nephew, Luis Fernando Sanchez Arellano, has taken over the cartel's operations and is fighting contenders.

President Felipe Calderon on Sunday vowed his government would never negotiate with drug lords no matter how much the violence escalates.

Since taking office on Dec. 1, 2006, Calderon has sent more than 20,000 soldiers to battle drug trafficking across Mexico, helping to seize of 70 tons of cocaine and 3,700 tons of marijuana, he said.

"We know that the results are far from what society demands, but that's why we'll keep fighting these criminals across the country," Calderon told a meeting on Sunday marking his first two years in office.(foxnews)

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY, Philippines -- At least eight people are in serious condition while scores were injured when a stampede marred a provincial convention of rural health workers at the Abueg Gymnasium of the Palawan National High School Friday.

Over 2,000 people, mostly government health workers and provincial government officials attending the convention, were inside the gymnasium when someone reportedly shouted a bomb was about to explode, triggering the stampede.

“First there was an electrical spark that caused a noise in the back section of the gymnasium. Then I heard someone said there was a bomb. Then suddenly everybody was running towards the exit,” barangay (village) captain Emma Padul of Bohol, Dumaran told reporters in Filipino.

Records of the Provincial Hospital, where the victims were brought, indicated at least 54 people were injured.

Dr. Eduardo Cruz, acting provincial health officer, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net), however, that they are still consolidating patient records, while admitting that they have confined at least eight of the victims, including a 4-year old child, for close observation.

“We cannot determine so far how many persons were exactly wounded as we are still consolidating the records. But we have so far eight patients who are under close observation,” Cruz told the Inquirer.

Cruz, who was presiding over the 6th annual convention of the Palawan Barangay Health Workers, said he was seated in front of the assembly when he saw people at one side of the gymnasium beginning to panic.

“I was far from where it happened, but I noticed from one side of the gym that people started to run,” he said.

The gymnasium has a seating capacity of over 5,000 people, according to school officials.(inquirer.net)

BANGKOK -- Thai premier Somchai Wongsawat replaced the national police chief Friday amid a mounting standoff with protesters occupying Bangkok's airports, an official order from the prime minister said.

The statement did not give a reason for the dismissal of Police General Patcharawat Wongsuwan, saying only that the country's top policeman had been "ordered...to move to the prime minister's office."

"The prime minister appointed Police Major General Prateep Tanprasert, the inspector general, as acting national police chief," it said, following days of demonstrations that have blocked all air traffic to the capital.

Meanwhile, protesters occupying Bangkok's main international airport have agreed to hold formal talks on Saturday with Thai authorities following initial contacts, a police commander said.

Hundreds of police had also moved into position outside Suvarnabhumi international airport but it was "not for a crackdown", regional police deputy commander Major General Piya Sorntrakoon told Agence France-Presse Friday.

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat declared a state of emergency around Suvarnabhumi and the domestic Don Mueang airport late Thursday, saying that the anti-government protesters were holding the country hostage.

"The PAD [People's Alliance for Democracy protest movement] agreed to talks on Saturday," said Piya, after officials said earlier that initial overtures had been conducted over the telephone.

The talks would involve the governor of Samut Prakarn province where Suvarnabhumi is located, a representative of Airports of Thailand, the chairman of the national Human Rights Commission and the media.

A PAD leader earlier said that demonstrators would "fight to the death" against any attempt to evict them from either airport.

The protesters are calling for the resignation of the government elected in December, saying it is a corrupt proxy for former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

Thailand's powerful army chief on Wednesday urged Somchai to dissolve parliament and hold fresh elections but the premier refused, deepening fears of a bloody end to the airport siege.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) The wives of the two Filipino chefs who had been trapped in the hotel that was attacked by terrorists in Mumbai, India late Wednesday night have been reunited with their husbands, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Esteban Cornejos.

Another Filipino who was hurt has been flown out of that country, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Friday.

In an overseas phone call by INQUIRER.net, Maria Bugarin, deputy chief of mission in the Philippine embassy in New Delhi, also said the Filipino who was hurt during the attacks left India this morning and made “an expressed request [for us] not to give out his name.”

Earlier in the day, the Philippine embassy in New Delhi told INQUIRER.net that the wives of the chefs at the Oberoi hotel, one of the terrorists’ targets, were "not hostages."

The chefs and their wives are safe and out of harm's way.

The two Filipinas were visiting their husbands and staying in the hotel when the attacks happened.

Asked if they sounded scared, Bugarin said: "I'm sure that they have some anxieties, but our fellow Filipinos are lending them moral support and the hotel management is keeping in touch with them."(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- The Constitution should not be tinkered with, at least until President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ends her term in 2010, members of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said Friday.

"This is not the time for a change especially during the time of this administration because there is self interest [involved] and it is not too good for the country. So if there are moves [toward Charter change] I don’t think, this is my personal opinion, I don’t think the CBCP will support it," said Malolos Bishop Jose Oliveros, chairman of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Bioethics.

Archbishop Oscar Cruz, a known critic of Arroyo, warned of probable protests should the administration push efforts to change the Charter. He said he belongs to some 50 groups he expects will start discussing the issue.

"They are pushing for a con-ass [constituent assembly], do you expect us coming out now? No, but I have a group of 50 religious social and civil movements and I'm sure they are all over the communications line now calling for emergency meetings," Cruz told INQUIRER.net in a phone interview.

He accused Malacañang of being "very decided and seriously committed" to have Arroyo’s term extended beyond 2010, when her constitutionally mandated six years end, and noted what he called "the confluence of events" that indicated this supposed intent.

Earlier this week, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile replaced Senator Manuel Villar as Senate president. The on Thursday, reports said Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, the President’s son, had secured between 120 and 150 signatures on a resolution calling on the Senate and the House to amend the Constitution by convening as a constituent assembly and voting jointly, not separately.

"Malacañang controls Congress, Malacañang now recently got the Senate presidency, and Malacañang is counting on the Supreme Court being staffed by all GMA [Arroyo’s initials] appointees except the incumbent Chief Justice who has an independent judicial mind," he said.

He added Press Secretary Jesus Dureza's prayer at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, in which he wished Arroyo would continue ruling beyond her term, was also a sign.

Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez seconded Cruz's opinion and called on the public to be vigilant.

"Well my personal stand is, this is again one of those moves trying to prolong the term of the incumbent president. I hope people become aware [about] the move in the House and it is up to the people," Iniguez said.

Although Iñiguez acknowledged the "Constitution is not perfect" and that there is "always room for amending [the] Constitution," it should not be done while Arroyo is in power.

"Wrong timing in our thinking because there are very ripe speculations government will make use of constitutional amendments for own purposes," he said in a phone interview.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- At least 781 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have been laid off in Taiwan and returned to the country since September after their employers started declaring bankruptcy or retrenching workers as the global financial crisis hit the island-nation, a non-government organization (NGO) said.

Eden See, who assists OFWs in Taiwan’s multinational work force for the NGO Hope Workers' Center, said as of last Sunday, her organization had helped 581 Filipinos get their employers to shoulder the air fare for their return to the Philippines.

She said another NGO has monitored 200 OFWs who have returned home.

See said this number only represents the migrant workers in the Chung Li and Tao Yuan districts in Taiwan.

"This only represents the migrants who have come to us for assistance. There could be more who went home on their own or approached other Church-based groups for help," she said.

Some, she said, have also opted to just ride out the crisis there in Taiwan.

She said that while the work contracts for Taiwan specify that employers do not need to shoulder air fare in case of bankruptcy, they were able to negotiate for free transport home for many of repatriated OFWs.

See, who is in Manila, met with officials of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on Wednesday.

She asked POEA officials to ensure that Taiwan employers who have retrenched OFWs be disallowed from "recycling" and "selling" the unused portion of the three-year contracts.

She explained that some employers and "manpower brokers" (recruiters) are able to make money from this scheme because the law allows them to charge placement fees worth around P85,000 to P100,000 for the unused potion of the contracts, or P65,000 if the unused portion is less than one year.

"Some OFWs are lured into paying these placement fees because they are shown these existing job contracts," she said.

See said they have assisted OFWs who have been in Taiwan for only two months after paying P120,000 in placement fees.

"They raised that amount by going into debt and now that they've been retrenched, they cannot pay their debt back," she said. "It's sad and unfortunate that for ones so young, they are already burdened by debt."

According to Jackson Gan of the Federated Association of Manpower Exporters, many Taiwan companies have resorted to cost-cutting measures like shifting and doing away with overtime.

He admitted that job contracts for new hires are not being filled because of the global financial crisis, which is hitting export-dependent Taiwan very hard.

Gan said there are currently about 90,000 OFWs in Taiwan.(inquirer.net)

NEW YORK -- John McCain, in his first media interview since the US presidential election, joked Tuesday that he'd slept -- and cried -- "like a baby" since his defeat.

"I've been sleeping like a baby: sleep two hours, wake up and cry, sleep two hours," McCain said on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno.

Appearing a week after losing to Democrat Barack Obama, the Republican senator looked rested and was relaxed enough to make light of his defeat.

He pointed out that his home state of Arizona had now produced four failed White House candidates.

"Arizona may be the only state in America where mothers don't tell their children that some day they can grow up and be president," he quipped.

The first thing he and his wife Cindy had done on the day after losing, he said, was go out to buy coffee, but "not the newspaper."

The failure had been "tough" on his family, McCain said, but he only wished Obama well. "I salute... president-elect Obama."

Asked why he lost, McCain dead-panned: "a personality flaw." He then went on to insist that he had no hard feelings and that the chance to run for president had been an "incredible honor."

"I'll never forget it, so many of those wonderful experiences," he said.

He also stayed faithful to his controversial pick for running mate, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.

Critics said that choosing the inexperienced Palin showed bad judgement by McCain. But he described her as "a marvelous person" and part of "the next generation of leadership in our party."

He added: "I couldn’t be happier with Sarah Palin."

McCain said he was looking forward to returning to his job in the US Senate, dismissed another possible White House run in 2012 and said he was not interested in second-guessing himself over possible mistakes made during the campaign.

The senator and Vietnam veteran said "the last thing Americans want is a sore loser."

McCain, famous for his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was invited on the Jay Leno show to mark Veterans' Day and the audience was packed with serving members of the military.
(inquirer.net)

LONDONâ€"British Prime Minister Gordon Brown voiced outrage Wednesday at the brutal abuse of a baby boy and a local authority's failure to spot his fatal ordeal, as the case escalated into a political row.

The child -- identified only as Baby P -- was 17 months old when he died in a blood-spattered cot in August last year, having spent much of his life being used as a punchbag.

Social workers, police and health professionals failed to save him despite 60 visits over eight months, during which he suffered more than 50 injuries.

The local authority -- Haringey Council in north London -- is the same one that failed to stop the death of eight-year-old Ivorian Victoria Climbie, a child abuse case that similarly shocked Britain in 2000.

"I believe I speak for the whole country that people are not only shocked and saddened but horrified and angered," Brown said in stormy exchanges with opposition leader David Cameron in his weekly parliamentary grilling.

"This tragedy that has arisen because of violence and torture of a young child, where three have already been found guilty, raises serious questions that we have to address."

An urgent, nationwide review of child protection services has been ordered.

Two days before Baby P died, a doctor failed to spot he had a broken back, eight fractured ribs and was paralyzed from the waist down.

He had been punched so hard he swallowed a tooth. The attack, causing a neck injury that affected his breathing, was probably the fatal blow, England's Old Bailey central criminal court in London heard.

Among his other injuries, Baby P's ears were torn, fingernails and fingertips were missing and his lips were ripped.

The 32-year-old partner of the child's mother was found guilty Tuesday of causing or allowing the death of a child. The man, who kept knives and Nazi memorabilia, was described in court as "sadistic -- fascinated with pain." He cannot be named for legal reasons.

He was cleared of murder charges as jurors could not agree who caused all the baby's injuries.

The child's 27-year-old mother, who also cannot be named, was described in court as a "slob" who covered up the abuse, pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child.

Jason Owen, 36, of Bromley in southeast London, their house guest, was convicted of the same charge.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"At least three people died after a Filipino allegedly went berserk, stole a company bus and rammed at least four vehicles in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, according to reports reaching the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila.

Foreign Affairs spokesman Claro Cristobal said the Philippine embassy in the kingdom’s capital Riyadh was still confirming the report of the incident. He said the Filipino involved would get assistance from the government.

The ABS-CBN-Middle East Bureau identified the Filipino as Regour de Padua, 32. It quoted co-workers, who recalled how he woke up Tuesday morning, dashed out of their barracks and commandeered the company’s bus, then full of passengers, that was awaiting its driver. The co-workers said De Padua, who arrived October 5, had been sleepless on Monday night and behaved strangely.

The online editions of the Arab News and Ozak dailies quoted police saying the suspect as being under the influence of an “illicit substance.” Ozak claimed the suspect went berserk after receiving a call from his girlfriend who told him she was leaving him.

The reports said De Padua drove the bus around the city and slammed into at least four vehicles, injuring dozens. Reports said the three fatalitiesâ€"a mother and her two daughtersâ€"were passengers of a white Toyota Corolla that collided head on with the wayward bus as it plied the opposite lane of Al-Haramain Road.

De Padua and two other persons who were in the bus were injured and brought to the hospital. De Padua was later placed under police custody.

The collision, which took place near the airport, resulted in a massive traffic jam.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE 2) Forty persons, including 11 children, are confirmed to have died when a ferry boat capsized off Masbate province early Tuesday afternoon, a police official said.

In a phone interview, Senior Superintendent Reuben Sindac, Masbate provincial police director, said the M/B Don Dexter Cathlyn was five kilometers from shore in Dimasalang town when a squall capsized it past 1 p.m.

As of posting time, Sindac said that of the 11 children, four were infants. Of the 29 adult dead, 25 were women.

Police have yet to identify the victims.

Sindac said the ferry, which was bound for Bulan town in Sorsogon, was barely 20 minutes into its voyage when the incident occurred.

Coast Guard and police rescue teams were able to recover the manifest of the ferry, which showed it had 119 passengers.

There was no mention of how large a crew the ferry had.

As of posting time, coast guard officials were able to rescue only 76 passengers.

Rescue operations for the missing passengers are continuing.(INQUIRER.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) An employee of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) died when she reportedly jumped from the 15th floor of an office building in Makati City Thursday noon for still unknown reasons, a police official said.

Chief Inspector Dennis Macalintal, chief of the Makati City police Station Investigation Division (SID), in a phone interview, identified the victim as Dalisay Gatab, 39.

Quoting two eyewitnesses, both PLDT workers, Macalintal said Gatab reportedly jumped to her death from the Ramon Cojuangco Building on Makati Avenue at 12:15 p.m.

Louelle Christine Cruz reportedly saw Gatab jump from the 15th floor women’s comfort room, while Charito Nodalo saw Gatab sending and receiving text message on a cell phone in the comfort room before she jumped.

Macalintal said their initial investigation showed Gatab's office was not at the Cojuangco Building but at another PLDT department in a nearby building.

Based on the two witnesses' accounts, Macalintal said police were likely to rule out foul play.

However, he said investigators who recovered the cell phone of Gatab found all stored text messages had been deleted.(inquirer.net)

TOKYOâ€"A Japanese woman died after she was turned away by seven Tokyo hospitals in labor and suffering a brain hemorrhage, officials said Wednesday, voicing outrage at the state of the country's medical system.

An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old woman across Tokyo earlier this month as her family doctor tried to get a hospital to accept her, officials said.

But seven hospitals, including general clinics, refused to accept her because they did not have night-duty obstetricians or gynecologists, they said.

She was finally accepted by the Bokuto hospital in Tokyo's eastern Koto ward where she gave birth via a Caesarean section and underwent brain surgery. But she died of cerebral bleeding three days later.

"We are now investigating the case as it is still unknown if her death was caused by the delay in taking action," said a spokesman for the Bokuto hospital.

It was also not clear whether the hospitals were aware that the victim was suffering from a brain hemorrhage when they turned her away.

The Japanese government's spokesman voiced outrage about the case, the latest incident involving a death due to a shortage of hospital care for pregnant women.

"It was extremely regrettable and I think it's a big problem," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told a news conference.

"We will pursue the cause of the case and take necessary measures" to prevent similar incidents, Kawamura said.

Japan boasts universal health care but has faced an acute shortage of doctors. Fewer people are entering the medical profession, which has gruelling hours but is not as lucrative in Japan as in many other countries.

Osaka, Japan's second city, last year reported 3,800 cases in which ambulances had to call multiple hospitals to ensure treatment.

In one widely reported case in Osaka, an 89-year-old woman died of a heart attack after her local fire department spent two hours contacting 30 medical facilities to take her in.

Japan's main opposition party, which has been rising in polls, has pledged to boost the number of doctors if it wins upcoming elections.(inquirer.net)

Update on this news>   http://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=12151.0

VIENNA, Austria â€"  Josef Fritzl, the Austrian builder who locked his daughter in a cellar and fathered seven children with her, sees himself as a born rapist, a victim of his own tyrannical mother.

According to the first leaked account of interviews with a forensic psychiatrist, which is due to appear in two Austrian newspapers today, Fritzl hatched his plan to incarcerate his daughter, Elisabeth, while he was in prison for rape.

“I have realized that I had a mean streak. For someone who was born to be a rapist, I have managed to contain myself for a relatively long period,” Fritzl is quoted as telling the psychiatrist in a 130-page report leaked to the tabloid newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Österreich.

Fritzl, 73, is awaiting trial for sexually abusing and incarcerating Elisabeth, 42, in a purpose-built dungeon beneath his house in the town of Amstetten. He fathered seven children by her, one of whom died shortly after birth and Fritzl burnt his body in an oven.

Three of the surviving children were allowed to live upstairs with him and wife, Rosemarie, 69, while their three siblings were condemned to a shadowy existence with their mother in the cellar. They never saw daylight until they were freed by police on April 26. It emerged that Fritzl had a previous criminal record for sexual offences.
In 1967 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for brutally raping a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home.

According to the report compiled by Dr. Adelheid Kastner, a prominent forensic psychiatrist who conducted in depth interviews with the builder, Fritzl found the “ideal solution” to his deranged fantasies after he was released from prison. It was then that he decided to lock up his daughter in the cellar so that he could “live out” his “evil side” while leading a seemingly normal life in the flat upstairs.

Fritzl told the psychiatrist that his relationship to women was shaped by his experience with his abusive mother, who allegedly beat him and isolated him from other children until he started school. He was an “alibi child,” Fritzl told the psychiatrist â€" his mother only had him to prove to her partner that she was not sterile.

Dr. Kastner came to the conclusion when she was dissecting the personality of Fritzl that the builder managed to distance himself from what he was doing by never looking his victim in the face when he raped her.

“He was not only incredibly able to lead a double life but also managed to maintain a triple life without any problems,” Dr. Kastner wrote, indicating that Fritzl played down the gravity of his crimes in his mind.

“Mr. Fritzl resembles a volcano; under the surface that appears almost banal there is an evil streak. He is torn apart by his desires that he cannot master,” Dr. Kastner wrote.

The report declared Fritzl clinically sane and fit for trial, but also diagnosed a “severe combined personality disorder and a sexual disorder”.

“It is to be expected that Mr. Fritzl would perpetrate deeds with severe consequences also in the future,” Dr. Kastner concluded.

On the basis of her report the prosecution has demanded from the court that Fritzl be tried and sentenced, then committed to an institution for the criminally insane, where he would receive psychiatric care and therapy including, if deemed necessary, medication.

The trial is expected to start early next year.(foxnews)

You want some? ako pud

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"(UPDATE) An overseas Filipino worker convicted of killing a Saudi national was executed 10 a.m. Saudi time (around 3 p.m. Philippine time) Tuesday in Jeddah, the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

Saudi’s highest court, the Supreme Judicial Council, affirmed on April 21 the death sentence on Jenifer Bidoya, also known as Venancio Ladion, after a lower court found him guilty of killing the Saudi national, DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos said.

He said these court decisions were made despite appeals by the lawyer hired by the Philippine consulate general in Jeddah to represent Bidoya before the emir of Makkah, the governor of Jeddah, and the minister of interior.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo even wrote two letters to King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, on December 6, 2007 and another on July 7, 2008 requesting clemency for Bidoya, Conejos said.

"However, in spite of these efforts, the victim's family was adamant in refusing to forgive Bidoya and insisted on their right to quisas or the imposition of equivalent penalty," he said.

Conejos explained that under Sharia'h law, the crime of murder entails both public and private liability.

"While the King of Saudi Arabia can forgive the public rights aspect of the case, he cannot extend clemency if the victim's family insists on their right of quisas as they did on this case," he said.

Conejos said the DFA has already informed the family of Bidoya of the execution and was coordinating with the labor department on how to extend assistance to his family.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines â€" (UPDATE) An impeachment complaint will be filed against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for three consecutive days, starting Saturday, a private lawyer said Friday.

Harry Roque of the University of the Philippines Law Center said the impeachment complaint would be filed at the House of Representatives at 7 p.m., Saturday, exactly a year after the filing of a similar case; 12 midnight, Sunday, to mark the end of the one-year ban under the Constitution; and at 9 a.m., Monday, when he and other petitioners would personally go to the House to file the complaint.

Roque said the same complaint would be filed on separate days to ensure that no other complaint would slip past the group.

Roque said among the new complainants was Jose de Venecia III., son of former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.

Aside from Roque and De Venecia, other signatories to the complaint include past and present personalities from government, politics, business, entertainment, and civil society: Josefina Lichauco, Renato Constantino Jr., Rolex Suplico, Jose Luis Alcuaz, Leah Navarro, Virgilio Eustaquio, Rez Cortez, and Henry Khan.

Roque said some of the issues that have been raised against Arroyo in the complaint were on the national broadband network agreement by the government with China’s ZTE Corp., where the young De Venecia was a key witness; the Northrail project; the Joint Maritime Seismic Understanding forged among the Philippines, China, and Vietnam; and the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Deputy Minority Floor Leader and Bayan Muna partylist Representative Satur
Ocampo confirmed the filing of the impeachment complaint and said that militant partylist groups Bayan Muna, Gabriela, and Anakpawis would endorse it.

But Ocampo, in a phone interview with INQUIRER.net, stressed that they would qualify that they were not supporting the inclusion of the MOA-AD in the complaint, saying it is a "political issue" and that they favor the move for self-determination of the Bangsamoro people.

Last year, lawyer Roel Pulido filed the complaint, which was endorsed by Representative Edgard San Luis of Laguna province, an ally of the President.

Several impeachment complaints have been filed in Congress against Arroyo since 2005, accusing her of electoral fraud, corruption and human rights violations.

In 2005 and again in 2006, lawyer Oliver Lozano was first in filing an impeachment case, which oppositionists said was a deliberately flawed complaint to nullify subsequent "legitimate complaints."

These complaints were rejected by the House.(inquirer.net)

Chocolate Hills complex in Carmen town "shall comply first the legal requirements for demolition" of the old and dilapidated buildings of the complex.

The Sangguniang Panlalawi-gan here approved the recommendation of the joint committees on government properties and tourism chaired by Board Member Amalia R. Tirol, who rendered the report during the session yesterday, and BM Ester Corazon Galbreath, respectively. The session was presided over by acting Vice-Gov., senior BM Cesar Tomas Lopez.

Also, the local government unit of Carmen town "must get a consent from the Provincial Government of Bohol regarding the development plan of the complex since the province is the registered owner of the buildings and structure to be demolished," said Tirol.

The provincial board also approved the committee's recommendation for Carmen to secure clearance from the Commission on Audit as to the value of the building to be torn down based on provincial legal officer Atty. Handel Lagunay's endorsement.

The move to put off the demolition approval came following BM Ester Corazon Galbreath brought to the SP's attention on Carmen's plan to demolish the structures.

The Carmen Sangguniang Ba-yan has passed Resolution No. 155, series of 2008, giving go-signal to Mayor Manuel Molina to implement the "progressive demolition" of the complex's buildings because they are no longer serviceable and already dilapidated.

It was not immediately known what would Carmen officials do after SP's move.
The municipality of Carmen runs the complex since it was allowed under the expired Memorandum of Agreement between the provincial and Carmen.

The province did not attempt to take over the complex management even after the expiration of the MOA in the 1990s. Under the MOA, the municipality gets the share of 70% and the provincial government, 30% of the proceeds of the complex.(Bohol Inquirer)

 Judith Johnson went to the Beebe Medical Center in Lewes, Delaware for what she thought was a bad case of indigestion.

An hour after being admitted, the hospital told Johnson’s husband his wife was dead, Wilmington's News Journal reported Tuesday.

When someone at the morgue noticed Johnson’s “corpse” was still breathing, Louis Johnson learned his wife was very much alive.

The Johnsons are now suing the hospital and medical staff for compensatory and punitive damages.

“She is brain injured, but can walk and talk,” the Johnson’s attorney, Dr. Leon Aussprung told The News Journal.

Judith Johnson, 61, of Georgetown, Del., was actually having a heart attack when she arrived at the hospital in May 2007. Less than 45 minutes after she arrived, she went into cardiac arrest.

She was given "multiple medicines and synchronized shocks," according to emergency room records, which also indicate she was not given supplemental oxygen. The records also say she "never regained a pulse," and was declared dead at 8:34 p.m.

Johnson now suffers from liver damage, chest pain, memory loss, speech problems, and a change in personality, seizures, and permanent neurological injury as a result of the care she received at Beebe Medical Center, according to the lawsuit.

Beebe medical officials did not directly comment on the lawsuit.

“The situation that you described, while rare, is not unheard of,” said Wallace Hudson, Beebe’s vice president of corporate affairs. “It is called spontaneous return of circulation, otherwise known as ‘Lazarus syndrome. Medical literature points out that since 1982, there have been at least 25 reported cases of survival after failed resuscitation.”(the foxnews)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama,
D-Ill., greets Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz., at the start of a town hall-style presidential
debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.


John McCain tried get out in front of the burgeoning economic turmoil Tuesday at his second presidential debate with Barack Obama, announcing a new plan to prevent foreclosures by allowing the government to buy up mortgages.

But the debate, two-thirds of which focused on the economy, again proved the mess on Wall Street would continue to drive the campaign discourse in a direction that seems to be hurting the Republican nominee in the polls.

Both candidates, facing off in a town hall-style format in Nashville, accused each other of contributing to the financial unrest.

Obama repeatedly portrayed his rival as a deregulator who helped let the markets run wild.

"He believes in deregulation in every circumstance," Obama said. "That's what we've been going through in the past eight years. It hasn't worked, and we need fundamental change."

McCain said only he has the bipartisan record of speaking out against abuses in the financial system and opposing excessive spending in government.

"Fannie and Freddie were the catalyst, the match that started this forest fire. There were some of us, some of us who stood up against it, there were others that took a hike," he said.

McCain, in his new proposal, called on the Treasury Department to step in and basically renegotiate mortgages of homeowners who are struggling to afford them.

His campaign said the plan, which would have the government directly purchase mortgages and replace them with "manageable" fixed-rate mortgages, would cost about $300 billion. The campaign in a statement said part of the $700 billion the government approved in its financial rescue package could go toward this purpose.

"It's my proposal. It's not Senator Obama's proposal. It's not President Bush's proposal," McCain said at the debate.

"Is it expensive? Yes," McCain said. "But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we're never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy, and we've got to get some trust and confidence back to America."

Obama last month sounded a similar idea but was not as detailed.

Moderated by NBC's Tom Brokaw, the debate in Nashville featured questions submitted by voters in the audience and on the Internet.

The candidates spoke within a few feet of each other, pacing on the floor at the center of a semi-circle of undecided voters. The two were mostly polite, but the strain of the campaign showed. At one point, McCain referred to Obama as "that one."

The two men criticized one another repeatedly as the topics turned to energy, spending, taxes, health care and foreign policy.

In one pointed confrontation on foreign policy, Obama bluntly challenged McCain's steadiness.

"This is a guy who sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,' who called for the annihilation of North Korea -- that I don't think is an example of speaking softly."

That came after McCain accused him of foolishly threatening to invade Pakistan and said, "I'm not going to telegraph my punches, which is what Senator Obama did."

The candidates spent several minutes talking about health care -- an issue Obama tried to bring back as a focal point in the campaign over the weekend.

Obama said McCain was going to require taxes on the health benefits workers receive from their employers at the same time his plan would wipe out the ability of states to enforce their own regulations to require tests such as mammograms.

McCain countered that under his rival's plan "Senator Obama will fine you" if parents fail to obtain coverage for their children but had yet to say what the fine would be. "Perhaps we will find that out tonight," he said.

Obama quickly followed up, saying that McCain "voted against the expansion" of the children's health care program the government runs.

The two men prefer dramatically different approaches to easing the problem of millions of uninsured Americans. McCain favors a $5,000 tax credit that he says would allow families to find and afford health care on their own.

Obama wants to build on the current system, in which millions receive coverage through the workplace, with government funding to help uninsured families obtain coverage.

The candidates met at Belmont University, as polls show McCain facing an increasingly challenging electoral landscape.

The national Gallup tracking poll Tuesday showed Obama up 9 points, and surveys show McCain also trailing in critical battlegrounds.

With the intense focus on economic turmoil appearing to have hurt McCain -- whose strong suit is considered foreign policy -- the Republican nominee's campaign has recently moved to shift focus to Obama's personal relationships, bringing up his ties to 1960s radical William Ayers.

But those ties did not come up Tuesday in Nashville.

Each candidate instead took pains to explain to voters why he was the best choice to steer the economy away from recession.

Shortly before the start of the debate, FOX News learned that Obama recently called on his economic advisers to draft an updated economic agenda to address uninsured and jobless Americans.

"We are in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," Obama said at the top of the debate. "I believe this is a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years, strongly promoted by President Bush and supported by Senator McCain."

He said that in the wake of news that American International Group sent executives on a $440,000 retreat after the federal government bailed out the company, the Treasury should demand that money back and demand that AIG executives be fired.

McCain accused Obama of being the Senate's second-highest recipient of donations from individuals at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two now-disgraced mortgage industry giants.

Obama shot back that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, has a stake in a Washington lobbying firm that received thousands of dollars a month from Freddie Mac until recently.

Asked whom they would appoint as their treasury secretary, neither McCain nor Obama definitively named a candidate. McCain mentioned supporter and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as a possibility, while Obama mentioned supporter and billionaire Warren Buffet.

SYDNEY, Australia â€"  A blank-faced 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo's director said Friday.

The boy jumped a security fence at the Alice Springs Reptile Center in central Australia early Wednesday, then went on a 30-minute killing spree, using a rock to slay three lizards, including the zoo's beloved, 20-year-old goanna, which he then fed to "Terry," an 11-foot, 440-pound vsaltwater crocodile, said zoo director Rex Neindorf.

The boy, whose deadly acts were caught on the zoo's security camera, also threw several live animals to Terry over the two fences surrounding the crocodile's enclosure, at one point climbing over the outer fence to get closer to the giant reptile. In the footage, the boy's face remains largely blank, Neindorf said.

"It was like he was playing a game," he said.

He killed 13 animals worth around $5,500, including a turtle, bearded dragons and thorny devil lizards, Neindorf said. Although none were rare, some would be difficult to replace, he said.

"We're horrified that anyone can do this, and saddened by the age of the child," Neindorf said.

Alice Springs police said they identified the boy, who lives locally, but were unable to press charges because of his age. Children under age 10 are not criminally liable under the law in the Northern Territory.

"By all accounts, he's quite a nasty 7-year-old," said Neindorf, who plans to sue the boy's parents. "If we can't put the blame onto the child, then someone has to accept the responsibility."

The zoo's security system, which relies on sensors, probably did not detect the boy because he is so small, Neindorf said.(foxnews.com)


Security footage shows a 7-year-old boy throwing a turtle
over a wall at Alice Springs Reptile Centre in Australia.

Los Angeles Police investigators walk to a news conference
in front of the home, left, where six bodies were found in a
gated community.



LOS ANGELES â€"  The only hints of trouble in the big beige house on Como Lane were the newspapers in the driveway and the lack of any activity behind the front door.

But when police summoned by worried friends of the residents got inside Monday, they found a horror â€" six members of a family fatally shot in a murder-suicide committed by an unemployed man in financial crisis.

The body of 45-year-old Karthik Rajaram, a gun clutched in one hand, was found by officers who followed a trail of carnage through the home in a gated community in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

His victims, most slain in their beds, were his wife, three sons and his mother-in-law.

"Absolute devastation," Deputy Chief Michel Moore told reporters outside the home.

Investigators quickly found two suicide letters and a will, and determined that the man once worked for a major accounting firm and was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company.

"The source of it appears to be a financial state, a crisis if you will, that this man became embroiled in that has unfolded over the past weeks," Moore said.

The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options â€" to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family â€" and decided the second option was more honorable, Moore said.

The bodies were found when officers were sent to make a check on the home Monday morning after the wife failed to show up at a neighbor's home to go to work as a pharmacy bookkeeper, Moore said.

Officers found the mother-in-law, Indra Ramasesham, 69, dead in bed on the first floor. Upstairs, they found a 19-year-old son, Krishna Rajaram, dead in bed in the master bedroom.

The gunman's 39-year-old wife, Subasri, was found in another room, also apparently shot while sleeping, Moore said.

In an adjoining room, a 12-year-old son, Ganesha, was dead on the floor, and his 7-year-old brother, Arjuna, was dead in bed. Their father's body also was found there with a handgun "in his grasp," Moore said. The gun was purchased Sept. 16.

Coroner's assistant chief Ed Winter said the victims were shot multiple times.

The killings occurred some time between midnight Saturday and early Monday morning, Winter said.

The father had a business degree and formerly worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures, but had been unemployed for several months, Moore said. The deputy chief did not identify the financial holding company, though Nevada records show an incorporation there.

Moore did not specify what financial trouble the man had been in. He noted that the family did not own the home.

The man had no record of mental disabilities or contacts with mental health professionals in Los Angeles County, Moore said.

PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman Steven Silber said Karthik Rajaram last worked for the company in 1999, but declined to offer any further information about him.

Sony Pictures Entertainment spokesman Steve Elzer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Karthik Rajaram is listed as a co-manager of a corporation called SKGL LLC, which is incorporated in Nevada, according to state records. He formed the corporation for his family's assets and used his family members' initials to form the name, said Las Vegas attorney Christopher R. Grobl.

SKGL was incorporated in 1999 and renewed its annual business license in December 2007. Grobl did not know what sort of business SKGL was or why Rajaram incorporated in Nevada.(fownews.com)

MANILA, Philippines -- A cancer-stricken Filipina who was on her way back to the country after a brief undocumented stint in Malaysia collapsed at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport September 28 and died the following day at the KL General Hospital, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.

The woman, in her early forties and whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, went to Malaysia five months ago in search of work and on the invitation of a Filipino friend married to a Malaysian, the DFA said.

She worked for two months as a domestic worker but was forced to stop due to her poor health, it said.

On September 17, she asked the help of the Philippine embassy in Kuala Lumpur which brought her to KLGH, where her attending physicians discovered she had cancer. She told the doctor that she had undergone mastectomy and chemotherapy in 1997, it said.

On September 26, she was released from the hospital after a brief confinement where she also showed marked improvement, it said.

The doctors suggested she returned to the Philippines, it said.

On September 28, while waiting for her flight back to Manila at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the Filipina fainted and the embassy’s assistance-to-nationals Officer who accompanied her had to rush her back to KLGH, where she died a day after, according to the DFA.

The DFA and the Philippine embassy in Kuala Lumpur will facilitate the repatriation of her remains to Manila.

At the same time, the Philippine embassy in Malaysia again reminded Filipinos not to come looking for work in Malaysia on a visit visa.

It said the practice of hiring "tourist workers" was against Malaysian labor and immigration regulations.

The Philippine embassy said undocumented Filipino workers were vulnerable to abuse and exploitation as their presence was unknown to the embassy or to any other Philippine government agency.(inquirer.net)

BANGKOK -- (UPDATE 2) Thailand on Tuesday deployed troops to quell anti-government protests in Bangkok that left at least one woman dead and 278 people hurt as months of political turmoil boiled over into violence, officials said.

"One woman protester died here. We don't know her name yet but she was in her 20s," an official at Bangkok's Ramathibodi Hospital told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The official, who did not want to be named as she was not authorized to speak to the media, would not reveal the cause of death.

There were scenes of chaos outside Bangkok's parliament as police fired tear gas into the crowd of thousands, sending bloody protesters fleeing, while angry mobs tried to overturn police vehicles, an AFP correspondent saw.

Two Thai police officers were shot and wounded in the unrest, witnesses said, which capped months of demonstrations aimed at removing Thailand's elected government because of its ties to ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

A man was killed in a car bombing near the protest site, police said, although they said it was unclear if the blast was directly linked to the violence. Police had earlier identified the victim as a woman.

"We have been asked by the police to help maintain law and order," army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd told AFP, without specifying how many soldiers had been deployed.

"The troops that are out are unarmed. Troops are coming from three armed forces -- army, navy and air force."

Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat -- who has only been in his position for three weeks -- said he would not declare a state of emergency or resign as the protests escalated.

"I will continue my work," he told reporters. When asked about emergency rule, Somchai said he was "not thinking of that at all."

Government medical officials said 21 people had suffered serious injuries as police tried to disperse several thousand protesters surrounding parliament to try to prevent Somchai from giving his first policy speech.

The address went ahead but the special parliamentary session ended after two hours and protesters blockaded lawmakers inside, forcing Somchai and five aides to climb over a fence to escape the mob, an AFP correspondent said.

At about 4:15 p.m. (0915 GMT), police fired off a third rally of tear gas to disperse about 8,000 protesters and create an exit for the trapped politicians, who hurried out of the building and drove away in waiting cars.

The political turmoil began here in late May when protesters launched their campaign to overthrow the government because of its ties to Thaksin, who was ousted in a September 2006 coup.

Supporters of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) stormed Bangkok's main government compound on August 26 and have been barricaded there since, also protesting the government's plans to amend the constitution.

Late Monday, thousands heeded a call from a protest leader to march on parliament for a "final battle."

One of Thailand's five deputy prime ministers, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, resigned over the crackdown, saying his role as chief negotiator with the protesters had been compromised.

One man had his left foot amputated after being injured in the unrest.

Parliament went ahead with its session on Tuesday despite a boycott by the opposition Democrat Party in protest against the crackdown.

Somchai said in his speech that his new administration was "determined to create national reconciliation."

Thai media, meanwhile, announced that Queen Sirikit was donating 100,000 baht ($3,000) to pay medical expenses for the wounded protesters, who claim they are carrying out their campaign out of loyalty to the palace.

The People Power Party won elections in December last year that marked the end of military rule brought in by the 2006 coup, but the old power elite in the palace and military resented the return to power of Thaksin's allies.

Former prime minister Samak Sundaravej was forced from office in September, after a court ruled he had accepted illegal payments for a TV show, and his successor Somchai formed his new government last month.

Somchai -- Thaksin's brother-in-law -- has urged the PAD to leave his offices by November and opened talks with the protest leaders.

Those talks were jeopardized over the weekend with the arrest of PAD head Chamlong Srimuang and protest organizer Chaiwat Sinsuwong.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, told AFP that the PAD were protesting against the democratic system in Thailand, raising the specter of a prolonged crisis.

"This is the end of Thailand as we know it ... and the PAD is the spearhead of this right-wing conservative reassertion. There's no quick end here," he said.(inquirer.net)

The Land Transportation Office (LTO) held in abeyance the planned implementation of an administrative order which mandates stiff penalties for violators on rules governing motorcycle drivers and owners.

Rep. Edgar Chatto bared that top echelon of LTO agreed to review Administrative Order AHS 2008-015 which imposes very excessive fines to violators.

The solon admitted that the imposition of penalties generated public indignation since it was quite excessive.

Non wearing of helmet imposes a fine of P1,500 and another P1,000 for the back rider. Motorcycles having defective headlights and other accessories entails a fine of P1,000.

The administrative order, once implemented will impose fines for drivers wearing slippers, P100 for the first offense, P700 and P1,000 for the second and third offenses, respectively.
         

The ruling that only one back rider be allowed likewise generated strong criticism from the public.

Views aired by residents over dyRD's top rated public affairs programs indicated a strong objection since the motorcycles remain as the most practical mode of transportation to carry 2 to 4 passengers especially the so-called habal-habal.

Meanwhile, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan has stepped into the mounting uproar over the very strict implementation of the administrative order.

In its regular session, the provincial board unanimously passed Resolution No. 2008-478, requesting LTO-Tagbilaran district office through registrar Mr. Joel T. Maloloy-on to defer the said enforcement of the said administrative order until January 1, 2008 after board member Aldonso Damalerio II introduced the measure.

SP member Atty. Aster A. Piollo argued that the implementation should be deferred because "not so many people know of this AO, so it is incumbent upon the LTO to make an extensive information campaign province-wide."

But the lady lawmaker of Dimiao and Lila reminded her colleagues in the SP that "it will be our responsibility to help disseminate the program because we are the one asking for an extension for a period of time."

The provincial government should help circulate the information regarding the AO implementation and "at the same time to implement the program," she added.

Vice-Gov. Julius Caesar Herrera, who presided over the session after his return from abroad, lauded the move of his colleagues.

The said AO signed and approved only last May 15, 2008 imposes stiff penalty on motor riding public apparently without any consideration of the economic hardship now facing the populace because of soaring prices of basic commodities.(Bohol Inquirer)

BOMB BLAST VICTIMS. Joshua Sute, 3 (inset) died in
a bomb explosion at Perialde home in barangay Magkaya,
Buenavista town last Wednesday. Cosme Perialde,
grandpa recovering at the Gallares Hospital while Emilia,
grandma and Judith, victmis' mother appeal for fund
assistance at the studios of dyRD where donations from
kindhearted listeners totaled to P50,171.


Public sympathy to a hapless 3-year old boy casualty of a bomb blast in Buenavista town drew an outpouring of donations from generous and kindhearted listeners of Station dyRD on Thursday.

Boholanos from all walks of life came in droves at dyRD giving cash, food and clothes to the family of 3-year old Joshue Suete, who was killed by an improvised bomb Wednesday night.

A total of P50,171 was raised during the 5-hour fund-drive that drew a massive response from dyRD listeners who were tuned-in to top-rated programs "Patrol Balita," "Inyaong Alagad," "Pulso" and "Media Patrol."

The act of kindness of Boholanos in different circumstances - students, ordinary wage earners - that included janitors, bakers and security guards phoned in their pledges for the victims of the bombing incident in barangay Magkaya, Buenavista that also seriously injured the grandparents of the victim Cosme Perialde, 50 and Emilia Perialde, 48.

It was not just their own gesture of charity that pushed donors to share the little of what they have. Some came out of apparent anguish to the viciousness of the crime.

Around 7:30 Wednesday night, two bonnet wearing men riding a motorcycle purportedly lobbed an improvised bomb at the house of the Perialde couple.
         

According to Buenavista police, the suspected home-made bomb was thrown just outside the house of the victims. However, shrapnel ripped through the house's bamboo walls hitting Joshue.

The 3-year old boy was rushed to the Gov. Celestino Gallares Regional Hospital (GCGRH) but was dead on arrival.

Cosme sustained injuries on his leg, shoulders and broke his right arm. Emilia, on the other hand, was hit on the nape.

Cosme had to undergo surgery at the GCGRH to fix his broken right arm.

Joshue's mother and a younger brother who were also in the house during the incident were unharmed.

Buenavista police chief Insp. Reyes said they recovered fragments of the suspected improvised bomb as they try to piece together circumstances that led to the incident.

The recovered bomb parts will be examined at the PNP crime laboratory.

SNAPSHOTS

Emilia went to Station dyRD during the early hours of Thursday to ask for donations to take the dead body Joshue back to Buenavista and for the surgical treatment of her husband.

Emilia, accompanied by her daughter and her grandson who survived the bomb blast, was still wearing clothes that bore the bloodstains from the shrapnel injury on her nape.

Interviewed by Patrol Balita anchorman Atoy Cosap, the injured grandmother relayed to listeners that she and husband Cosme just came home from a day's work at their rice field and had just finished eating supper when they heard the loud blast.

Listeners of dyRD were touched by the fate of the family. A string of phone calls from radio listeners started the fund drive.

People on their way to work, students on their way to school and even tricycle drivers took time to drop by dyRD to personally hand in their donations.

A fish vendor who passed by dyRD parted with her P50 to make her contribution to the fundraising.

A group of college students went to the radio station and shelled out a few pesos from their allowance as donations flooded the airlanes.

When Emilia bared that they have not yet eaten breakfast that morning, packed meals were sent to the station.

A house help who was tasked to deliver the cash donation of her employers gave her own contribution to the cause.

As the fund drive was ended at 11 a.m. on that day, more donations kept coming from the towns and city residents.

Joshue was brought back to Buenavista on Friday to be buried while his grandfather Cosme is recuperating from injuries at the GCGRH.(Bohol Inquirer)

ALGIERS, Algeria â€"  A baby was found alive by rescuers after spending four days in a pool of mud following flash floods that killed at least 41 people in central Algeria this week, a local official said Sunday.

"It's a miracle, really a miracle to find it alive after all this time," the town governor of Ghardaia, Yahia Fahim, told national radio. The state-run APS news agency said the 4-month-old baby appeared in good health after being discovered late Saturday and had been handed to a family while authorities looked for its parents.

Journalists in Ghardaia, where most of the victims drowned, said none of them had seen the baby since it was saved. But the governor said its photo would be posted in all local media for the family to recognize it. It was not clear from his comments whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

Authorities did not say how they knew the baby had been in the mud since the flooding.

The reported rescue came as authorities confirmed at least 41 deaths in the floods caused by torrential rains this week in this usually arid region. In addition to 33 casualties already reported in and around Ghardaia, two more people drowned in the adjacent district of Ourghla and four died farther to the north in the town of Tebessa, some 370 miles east of Algiers, APS said.

Authorities say massive rescue efforts are ongoing in the zone and that emergency measures have been taken to prevent epidemics from spreading through polluted waters.

Hundreds of troops and security services have deployed to prevent looting and help with recovery operations. Thousands of blankets, tents and food units were being handed out in Ghardaia, home to about 100,000 people.

Some 1,400 houses were severely damaged in this medieval town located in a long and narrow valley known as the M'zab, about 370 miles south of the capital, APS said. The M'zab is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site and lies on the edge of the Sahara, the world's largest desert.
(Foxnews.com)


Residents on a river bank pull a man across a river in the region of Ghardaia in Algeria after dangerous flash floods.

MANILA, Philippines -- The European Union has earmarked seven million euros for two separate projects aimed to help civilian victims of the ongoing Mindanao conflict, EU Ambassador to the country Alistair MacDonald told reporters in a press conference Monday.

The allotments, which were decided by the European Commission in Belgium last week following a needs assessment last September, were made despite the worldwide financial crisis that also saw the bailout of some European banks.

Four million euros from the total will go to immediate humanitarian assistance for the estimated 500,000 people who were displaced by the fighting that erupted soon after the Supreme Court stopped in August the signing of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

MacDonald said the four million euros, to be channeled through EU partners like the United Nations, the International Red Cross, and non-government organizations, would be spent on emergency items like food, water, sanitation, non-food items, basic shelter, health care and psycho-social support, and livelihood rehabilitation and protection.

He said this emergency humanitarian assistance would cover the needs of the displaced civilians from six to nine months.

The rest of the grant will be for two-year rehabilitation assistance from now until 2010.

The three million euros "has already been under preparation for some time, even before the renewed outbreak of violence, and was intended to address the problems facing civilians who had been displaced by fighting over recent years, but who had not been able to return fully to their former way of life," the ambassador said.

This second amount, to be implemented by the United Nations Development Programme as part of its Act for Peace program, will provide for both the displaced and the host communities.

MacDonald said the multi-sectoral assistance of this allocation would also address the psychosocial problems of long-term and repeated displacement, and work to rebuild social cohesion in affected communities in 14 provinces.

Over the last 10 years, and including this latest assistance, the EU has provided 126 million euros in development, humanitarian, and rehabilitation assistance to Mindanao.

EU is also the largest donor for the Mindanao Trust Fund, which was established in 2005 by the World Bank following a request by the Philippine government to strengthen assistance to conflict-affected areas in Mindanao. It provides about half of the current total MTF of $8.9 million.

(EU contributions to the Mindanao Trust Fund total 2 million euros. The other donors are Sweden, 1 million euros; Australia, $370,000; Canada, $1.56 million; New Zealand, $200,000; the United States, $750,000; and World Bank, $1.5 million.)(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- With just a click, you can listen to a Sunday homily, read reflections on the Bible, and chat with a priest.

Activist priest Fr. Robert Reyes is launching on Sunday parokyasaweb.org, a virtual parish where he will post his reflections on daily Bible readings, his homily at Sunday Masses and inspirational messages.

More importantly, he's open to chats with his virtual parishioners after the 6 p.m. Angelus, and even beyond that.

"People are asking me, `Father can we confess to you over chat?' Of course, you can. `Can you give us absolution?' Of course I can,'' Reyes, 53, said in an interview Thursday night.

The launch will take place at the Internet shop "Kompyuteran: Iskolar ng Bayan'' in the University of the Philippines' Shopping Center in Diliman, Quezon City at 10 a.m. on Sunday. The Philippine On-line Chronicles is hosting the website.

The idea, Reyes said, is to spread spirituality and reach out to the millions of Filipinos working in other parts of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

"Now I will have a forum to share my spirituality, even my personal struggles looking for and searching for God and for meaning for my own life,'' he said in the interview. "Regular spirituality is a function of priests whose lives are dedicated to reminding people of the centrality of prayer and spirituality.''

Reyes has been working abroad since early 2006 after the Catholic Church advised him to go on sabbatical leave in the aftermath of his criticisms of the administration's policies. He now works for the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.

In his cyber parish, the priest would write a reflection on the daily Bible readings, and post it, and at 6 p.m. he will say the Angelus in a pre-taped podcast.

"So I will be in communion with the whole Catholic Church reflecting on the Gospel pieces,'' he said.

After the 10-minute Angelus, anybody could log on, and chat with him on any subject until he signs off at 6:30 p.m.

"So anyone who wants to chat with me from anywhere in the world, they can do so,'' he said. "But at 6:30 p.m., since I still have to have my own life, I will say goodbye.''

But anybody could still chat with him any time of the day if Reyes is available online, he said.

On Sundays, the priest said he would upload a video clip of his homily at a 10 a.m. Mass he regularly says for a group of Filipinos in an undisclosed place in Hong Kong.

"I cannot upload the entire Mass. It's too tedious and people will find it unnecessary because it's not live,'' he said.

Reyes spent a year from February 2006 working as an English teacher in a university in southern China, where proselytizing is prohibited. After he moved to Hong Kong in March 2007, where he taught the anthropology of religion in a university, he was allowed to say Mass.

But after he was detained and charged by the police in connection with the November 29, 2007 siege at the Manila Peninsula, but later cleared of the charges, he was banned by the Hong Kong bishop from saying Mass again.

This time, the boundaries are limitless.

"The parokyasaweb will really deepen my own appreciation of my own priesthood because I'm not already allowed to say Mass in Hong Kong and I'm not exactly encouraged to say Mass and have a parish in the Philippines,'' Reyes said.

"So what do I do? Forget the Eucharist? No I don't forget the Eucharist but I do celebrate the Eucharist quietly in the privacy of my room but the priesthood is not for celebrating Mass alone.''

Since 2006, people have been badgering him in which parish in Manila he was saying Mass, the priest said.

"Now I'll tell them, `I'm saying Mass on the web','' he said.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- Saying Filipinos are "fighters" that "don't quit," President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo expressed confidence that the country would continue to weather the global economic crisis, as she vowed to press on with reforms.

Arroyo likened the Philippine economy to a boxer, who, despite having been "knocked down," has gotten up and dusted itself off.

In a speech in Pagadian City Wednesday, Arroyo said in the local dialect: "By Christmas time, hopefully the economic clouds will begin to lighten."

"Filipinos are fighters, naturally optimistic, and don't quit," the President said during the mid-year briefing of her economic managers in Makati City earlier in the day.

"We will continue on the path of economic reform. The reforms helped us in this time of global economic upheaval," she said.

Arroyo acknowledged that the "depth of the turbulence" in the US economy was "unknown" but that the "best buffer" against the shock it would cause would be the "building [of] a stronger economy driven by consumption and investment."

"While no one can predict the future during these uncertain global economic times, It seems our measures at home are seeing us through tougher times," she said.

Arroyo said her economic team was committed to strengthening the banking system, improving fiscal health, and promoting investments.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, one of Wall Street’s oldest investment banks, Tuesday sent Philippine stocks plummeting 4.5 percent to a new low in a year and a half.

The peso slid to a 16-month low at 47.20 to the dollar as the fragile health of iconic US financial giants heightened global investors’ aversion to currencies, bonds and stocks from emerging markets like the Philippines.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) lost 114.44 to end at 2421.72.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"(UPDATE) The Supreme Court has found columnist and former television anchor Erwin Tulfo guilty of libel for maligning and throwing “wild accusations” against a Customs official nine years ago.

Voting 4-1, the high court’s second division also affirmed the finding of the Pasay City Regional Trial Court that Remate managing editor Susan Cambri, national editor Rey Salao, city editor Jocelyn Barlizo, and publication owner Philip Pichay were all guilty of libel.

The high court, however, ruled that Tulfo and the Remate officials should not serve the prison term of six months to four years and two months as specified in the lower court decision for a series of articles that appeared in the tabloid Remate in 1999 that besmirched the reputation of Carlos “Ding” So, an officer of the Bureau of Custom’s intelligence and investigation service division.

Instead, they were told to pay jointly and severally So about P1 million in moral damages "for writing and publishing the defamatory articles with reckless disregard whether it was false or not, the said articles being libelous per se.”

Any of the five who would fail to pay the fine would be imprisoned, the high court said.

The libel suits stemmed from the “Direct Hit” columns written by Tulfo that were run in Remate on May 11, 12 and 19, and June 15, 1999.

The columns accused So of corruption, unexplained wealth, extortion and smuggling.

In November 2000, the lower court found Tulfo and the four Remate officials guilty of libel and sentenced them to a "prison correctional in its minimum and medium periods" or two years, four months and one day to four years and two months.

The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions in 2003 and rejected the motions for reconsideration filed by the respondents, who then elevated the case to the Supreme Court.

According to court records, Tulfo called So a thief and a “tie-wearing crocodile” in one column, and used certain expletives in other columns.

So said the columns caused him and his family sleepless nights, mental anguish, wounded feelings, intrigues and embarrassment.

In a 31-page ruling written by Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco, the Supreme Court said Tulfo had not only failed to get So’s side regarding the allegations but also made no effort to verify the information from an unnamed “source” who, the columnist said, had knowledge of So’s alleged illicit activities.

"Journalists have a responsibility to report the truth, and in doing so must at least investigate their stories before publication, and be able to back up their stories with proof,” it said. “The rumors and gossips spread by unnamed sources are not truth.”

The Supreme Court rejected Tulfo’s argument that the information he wrote about was qualified privileged communication that was immune from libel.

"The confidentiality of sources and their importance to journalists are accepted and respected. What cannot be accepted are journalists making no efforts to verify the information given by a source, and using that unverified information to throw wild accusations and besmirch the name of possibly an innocent person," it said.

"Journalists are not storytellers or novelists who may spin tales out of fevered imaginings and pass them off as reality. There must be some foundation to their repots; these reports must be warranted by facts," the high court added.

Cambri, Salao, Barlizo and Pichay could not escape penalty for the libelous columns even if they had no part in writing them, it said, adding that as stated by Article 360 of the Revised Penal Code, the persons responsible for libel included publishers and editors.

The Supreme Court also said the punishment was “tempered with justice” because Tulfo and the tabloid officials were convicted of libel for the first time and did not apply for probation to avoid service of sentence. It added that the imposition of a fine without the prison term should suffice.

“Freedom of expression as well as freedom of the press may not be unrestrained, but neither must it be reined in too harshly. Lastly, the responsibilities of the members of the press notwithstanding, the difficulties and hazards they encounter in their line of work must also be taken into consideration,” the high court said.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"Senator Lito Lapid has escaped prosecution in a graft case involving the purchase of a 40-hectare property in Pampanga for which two deeds of sale were executed bearing widely divergent amounts when he was the province’s governor 11 years ago.

Letting him off the hook, the Office of the Ombudsman informed the Sandiganbayan First Division that Lapid could not be held liable for the purchase of the property for P104 million after another deed surfaced days later showing a purchase price of P5 million.

“As correctly pointed out by the accused, it is imperative upon the judge to relieve [him] from the pain of going through a trial once it is ascertained that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a prima facie case,” said assistant special prosecutor Elita Santos in a resolution.

The 17-page resolution withdrawing the graft case against Lapid was approved by Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio and Deputy Special Prosecutor Wendell Barreras-Sulit.

In reinvestigating the graft charge upon Lapid’s request in 2005, the Ombudsman found that two deeds of sale were executed for the same property.

The deed of sale Lapid signed on November 3, 1997, was for P104 million; 14 days later a second deed of sale surfaced showing the property had been sold to the province for P5 million.

Abelardo Miranda, seller of the property and a respondent in the case, had also executed the second document.

The investigation showed the second deed may have been executed to hide the true value of the land in order to lower the seller’s tax bill.

It showed the transfer tax Miranda paid the provincial government was only P25,000, an amount corresponding to real property worth P5 million.

“Clearly Lapid had nothing to do with the preparation of the second deed of sale dated Nov. 17, 1997, for the reduced amount of P5 million, and the best evidence is the document itself which only bears the signature of accused Miranda,” the resolution said.

The other respondents in the case are then Pampanga Provincial Treasurer Jovito Sabado, Luzviminda Soriano, chief, assessment division of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and her clerk, Ma. Luisa San Antonio.

The Ombudsman also upheld Lapid’s authority to approve the sale of the same property to RightPak International Corp. for P143.5 million four years later, acknowledging that the provincial government made P39 million from the transaction.

Complainant Cielo Macapagal-Salgado had accused Lapid of causing the government undue injury by entering into a deed of absolute sale when he had no authority to do so and when he paid the seller P104 million even if the transfer certificate had not yet been executed.

Macapagal-Salgado, half-sister of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, also said Lapid had no authority to use the P130-million cash deposit the provincial government had in the Philippine National Bank as security for the P104 million payment it obtained from another bank.

The Ombudsman, however, ruled Lapid’s actions were covered by a resolution passed by the provincial board.(Inquirer.net)

Police have identified the robbery suspect who was gunned down as two of his cohorts escaped during a shootout with the owner of a Caltex Gas Station in Poblacion Norte, Batuan town Saturday afternoon.

S/Insp. Samuel Udtohan, chief of the Batuan PNP, told the Chronicle that the slain robber is identified as one Jeffrey Pacomios y Ecat, 21, a resident of barangay San Miguel, Dagohoy town.

Udtohan said the three bonnet wearing robbers aboard a Honda Wave motorcycle stormed the gas station at around 4 p.m. Saturday and held up one of its cashiers.

Pacomios attempted to rob the second cashier at the gas station's office but was fended off by the owner, one Lejarde Tajale y Binangbang who was armed with a .45 caliber pistol.

According to the account of Tajale, he already noticed the bonnet-wearing suspects even before they disembarked their motorcycle and held-up the cashier near the gas pumps.

Tajale, a licensed gun club member, immediately got his firearm and shot the robbers who were on their way to break into the gas station's office, Udtohan said.

Based on the police interview with the owner of the gas station, when the suspects where fired upon by Tajale, they retreated and boarded their getaway motorcycle.

However, Tajale gave chase hitting Pacomios on his left hip. One bullet fired by Tajale also hit the motorcycle's tire which exploded some 75 meters from the gas station.

The fleeing suspects were forced to abandon the motorcycle and Pacomios who was severely bleeding. Just a few meters from their abandoned vehicle the two other suspects chanced upon a habal-habal driver and seized the latter's yellow Ramstar motorcycle.

A responding team of Batuan PNP pursued the two suspects with the help of Carmen PNP.

The suspects were able to elude the trailing policemen. The yellow Ramstar was discovered by police on Sunday morning abandoned in barangay Vida Sur, Carmen town.

Pacomios, who was brought by elements of the Batuan Police Station to the Carmen District Hospital was pronounced dead on arrival.

The owner of the gas station said the suspects were able to take away P200.
         

Police investigating the incident have identified yesterday the owner of the Honda motorcycle that was used by the suspects and abandoned near the gas station.

A check made at the Land Transportation Office revealed the motorcycle's owner as one Rainer Reyes, a resident of barangay Estaca, Pilar town.

According to Udtohan, the cellular phone recovered from Pacomios showed a text message from a certain RR who was asking if the suspects had success in their "operation".(Bohol Chronicle)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE) For failing to stop his vehicle when he was asked to, a jeepney driver was shot dead by one of three male passengers Thursday morning in Quezon City, police said.

Virgilio Aloz, 49, of Block 20 Lot 23 Magalang Street, Maligaya Subdivision, Caloocan City was declared dead on arrival by attending doctors at the Fairview General Hospital from a single bullet wound in the back.

Police Officer 2 Rodel Tumangday of the Quezon City Police District Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit said the incident happened at around 6:30 a.m. at Doña Carmen Subdivision along Commonwealth Avenue.

Tumangday said that three men flagged down and boarded the passenger jeep but when the vehicle moved several meters near the entrance of the Doña Carmen Subdivision, the male passengers suddenly ordered him to stop.

When Aloz failed to step on the brakes, one of the three men suddenly pulled out a handgun and shot the jeepney driver in the back, hitting him just below the right shoulder blade.

The assailant and his two companions fled the scene and police were conducting follow-up operations.

The suspects then hurriedly alighted from the vehicle and fled on foot.

Bystanders immediately brought Aloz to the nearest hospital to try to save him but the victim had lost too much blood.

QCPD-CIDU investigators are conducting follow-up operations to determine the identity of the perpetrators.(inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"A silver tie was taut between her neck and a door handle as Levie Garma laid gasping for breath on the cold floor of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA 3) mezzanine area Thursday morning.

Shrieks for help from a surprised female maintenance officer alarmed workers and a few passengers exchanging coffee, donuts and fastfood at the 4th floor concessionaire's area around 10:30 a.m., when Garma was found trembling behind an access door that led to the elevators.

Carrying a light shoulder bag that contained just her wallet and a few personal items, slipper-shod Garma had been seen by herself on the concessionaire's level as passengers trickled in for a quick bite before their flight.

“I'd seen her standing near the stairs, she had a blank stare ... Moments later, I noticed she disappeared then I heard someone screaming for help,” coffee shop attendant Jaime Villaflor said in Filipino.

Villaflor and others on the mezzanine rushed to the scene and found Garma on the floor as a silver necktie constricted her neck while it was tied to the door handle.

“She was on the floor. She was already pale and struggling to breathe,” Villaflor told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

Michael Vargas, a passenger service assistant who happened to be a trained practical nurse, applied first aid upon seeing Garma close to strangulation.

“Her neck was already bloated, inflated (his own words) ... I estimate that she had been lying there with the necktie around her neck for between three to five minutes,” Vargas told airport officers.

Vargas noticed that Garma's gums bled, most likely because “she clenched her teeth tightly to impede breathing.”

Responders immediately undid the tight knot they believed Garma tied herself. Vargas placed a popsicle stick between her teeth to help restore breathing and rolled her on her side.

Airport authorities have yet to determine whether Garma was passenger or one who accompanied a traveler to the terminal, but police found neither a plane ticket nor a passport inside her bag.(Inquirer.net)

Don't cheat, If   you are honest, this tells the truth. It's pretty good. Write your answers on a piece of paper,

And NO cheating!! The answers are at the bottom.


1. Which is your favorite color out of: red , black , blue , green , or yellow ? 

2. Your first initial?   

3. Your month of birth?   

4. Which color do you like more, black or white?   

5. Name of a person of the same sex as yours.   

6. Your favorite number? 

7. Do you like Flying or Driving more?   

8. Do you like a Lake or the ocean more?   

9. Write down a wish (a realistic one).   


When you're done, scroll down. (Don't cheat!)



[/color]

































Answers

1. If you choose:
Red - You are alert and your life is full of love.
Black - You are conservative and aggressive.
Green - Your soul is relaxed and you are laid back.
Blue- You are spontaneous and love kisses and affection from the ones you love.
Yellow - You are a very happy person and give good advice to those who are down.

2. If your initial is:
A-K You have a lot of love and friendships in your life.
L-R You try to enjoy your life to the maximum & your love life is soon to blossom.
S-Z You like to help others and your future love life looks very good.

3. If you were born in:
Jan-Mar: The year will go very well for you and you will discover that you fall in love with someone totally unexpected.
April-June: You will have a strong love relationship that will not last long but the memories will last forever.
July-Sep: You will have a g reat year and will experience a major life-changing experience for the good.
Oct-Dec: Your love life will not be great, but eventually you will find your soul mate.

4. If you chose:
Black: Your life will take on a different direction, it will seem hard at the time but will be the best thing for you, and you will be glad for the change.
White: You will have a friend who completely confides in you and would do anything for you, but you may not realize it.

5. This person is your best friend.

6. This is how many close friends you have in your lifetime.

7. If you chose:
Flying: You like adventure.
Driving: You are a laid b ack person.

8.. If you chose:
Lake : You are loyal to your friends and your lover and are very reserved.
Ocean: You are spontaneous and like to please people.

ROME -- A terminally ill Italian woman awoke from a coma so she could fulfill her last wish of marrying her partner before she died, La Repubblica reported Wednesday.

Giovanna, a woman in her fifties suffering from an incurable strain of hepatitis, asked her family and doctors in July "to be woken" from her artificial coma so she could marry her partner Enzo, the newspaper said.

Despite "bureaucratic difficulties," the marriage took place Sunday in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Padua, northern Italy.

The guests -- the couple's son, two witnesses and a representative from the town hall -- had to wear sterilized clothes and masks.

Despite the "tiredness and pain," Giovanna was able to say "yes" to her wedding vows before immediately falling back into a coma, the report said.

"Her last wish has finally come true. It's a dream, an experience that will belong just to us and no one else," her husband Enzo said.

One doctor was quoted as saying that the woman had only a few weeks to live.(Agence France-Presse)

CEBU CITY Philippines -- The death of Florencio Marimon Sr., the ship captain of the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars, was confirmed Wednesday by the Disaster Victim Identification-National Bureau of Investigation (DVI-NBI).

The name of Marimon was number 10 among 18 MV Princess of the Stars passengers and crew that were identified through DNA testing and whose names were released on Wednesday by the DVI-NBI.

DVI-NBI is a body created jointly by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), the International Police Organization (Interpol) and the NBI to identify hundreds of decomposed remains found in waters off Romblon, where the vessel sank on June 21. The remains were brought to Cebu for preservation and placed at a refrigerated morgue at the Cebu Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes.

Aside from releasing the list, Interpol and NBI officials, including Dr. Renato Bautista, the DVI-NBI officer-in-charge, have declined to issue a statement.

No one would officially say when the body of Marimon was brought to Cebu but a source at Sulpicio Lines Inc. (SLI), which owned the ill-fated vessel, said they believed that the skipper’s remains were among the bodies recovered from the capsized ship and in the later batches of decomposed bodies brought to Cebu sometime in July.

The 18 names brought to 88 the total number of bodies identified through DNA matching and whose remains were already turned over to their families, according to information contained in the DVI-NBI list released Wednesday.

Marimon's family was reportedly informed of his positive identification last Sunday but the family requested that it be kept from media so they could hold a private wake and burial.

Marimon's remains was laid to rest at the Pardo Public Cemetery in Cebu City at 3 p.m. on Wednesday, but his family, which sought and was given police security, kept the burial off limits to media and non-family members because of the possibility that angry relatives of the victims of MV Princess of the Stars would storm the burial rite, according to cemetery guard Godofredo Abistado.

The family of Marimon had refused interviews in the wake of rumors that the ship captain was just hiding and after the Board of Marine Inquiry (BMI) looking into the MV Princess of the Stars mishap said that the skipper was largely to be blamed for the sea tragedy.

Abistado said Marimon’s widow and son made an arrangement on Tuesday morning for the burial of Marimon's remains at the cemetery.

The family paid P6,000 for Marimon's niche at the cemetery.

"She (Marimon’s wife) kept on crying. She kept on reminding us not to tell anyone that they were burying her husband here. But we cannot keep quiet because many already knew that he was to be buried here," Abistado said in Cebuano.

Abistado said the crowd who joined the funeral reached at least 100.

Being a public cemetery, Abistado said, he could not prevent other people from entering the cemetery, prompting the family to ask for police security.

Three policemen from Pardo Police Station were sent to secure the burial rite.

Police Officer 3 Richard Tagadi-ad said the family of Marimon directly asked for police security from Cebu City Police Office headquarter, which directed the Pardo Police station to send policemen there.

Security was also strict at the Divine Mercy Chapel at the Sacred Heart Church along D. Jakosalem Street here, where Marimon's wake was held.

A staff of the Sacred Heart Church confirmed that the Requiem Mass was held at 1 p.m. inside the chapel, but only family members and selected friends were allowed inside.

The staff said the family even brought their own priest to officiate the Mass before bringing the coffin to the cemetery.

An official close to the DVI-NBI, who refused to be identified for not being authorized to speak about the DNA finding, said the accuracy rate for the DNA test done on Marimon was 99.9 percent.

The source said two of Marimon's close relatives, including his son, submitted blood samples, which were compared to the femur (long bone) of the victim's remains.

According to the source, the femur is usually the sample taken from the body when fingerprints are no longer available, especially if the body is already in an advanced state of decomposition.

The DNA taken from the femur of Marimon matched with the DNA taken from the blood samples from his kin.

All DNA samples are properly numbered and should correspond with the number given to each body in a sealed coffin stored at the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes.

The family of Marimon was given the sealed coffin that contained the number representing the matched DNA samples. The family was also no longer allowed to open the coffin because of the condition of the captain’s body, the source said.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- A mother killed her three children and later herself through poisoning after midnight Monday in Magdalena, Laguna, police said Tuesday morning.

Chief Superintendent Ricardo Padilla, regional director of Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon) Philippine National Police (PNP) and Senior Inspector Raul Sandoval, Magdalena police chief, said Marjorie, 4; Margareth, 3; and MJ, 2 were forced by their mother Janeth Ponce, 32 to drink the bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner at their house in Barangay (village) Salasad at around 1 a.m.

Janeth afterwards drank the poison to kill herself.

All four were rushed to the Magdalena Provincial Hospital but the three children were declared dead on arrival. Ponce was admitted to the emergency room but died shortly afterwards, Padilla said.

Sandoval said the suicide note that they found in the victims' house made them believe that the mother killed her children and herself because of poverty.

In her suicide note, however, Janeth was asking her relatives to take good care of her children.

Police added that the relatives of Ponce refused to subject the mother and her children to an autopsy.

Police will also contact the husband of Ponce, who is a construction worker in Manila.(Inquirer.net)

TAGUM CITY -- (UPDATE 3) The body of the barangay (village) chairman of Masara in Maco town, Compostela Valley province, has been recovered, bringing to nine the fatalities in a series of landslides since Saturday afternoon, police said.

Fourteen other persons remain missing and are believed trapped under tons of mud and boulders that buried a large portion of the mining village, Senior Superintendent Ronald dela Rosa, Compostela Valley police director, said.

Another 17 residents were injured and 70 families in Barangay (Village) Masara in Maco town have been evacuated by search and rescue teams, Chief Superintendent Andres Caro II, head of the Southern Mindanao police office, said.
.
Some 18 houses were completely destroyed, he said. The Office of Civil Defense in Region 11 said that 72 houses were buried in the landslides.

Masara barangay captain Jovencio Anquera was one of three persons who died in a new landslide that buried several homes early Sunday.

Police said the barangay (village) chairman of Masara, in Maco, Compostela Valley was among the three persons who died in a new landslide that buried several homes there early Sunday.

As rescue workers continued searching for survivors, food and medicine for the injured began trickling into Masara since Saturday night despite continuous downpours and the provincial government mobilized more personnel to help in rescue efforts, Dr. Jeorgie Arvin Legaspi, provincial health officer, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) on Sunday.

"Rescue and retrieval operations are still going on. The second landslide occurred at around 3 a.m. today [Sunday]," Josephine Frasco, provincial social welfare officer said in a text message.

Dela Rosa identified those killed in the Saturday landslide as Esteban Mamilit, 59; Evelyn Sellano, 8; Harold Sanchez, 53; and Rosemarie Labor, 29; and her children Maria Cristina, 3, and Maria Teresita, 2.

"Eight victims were also pulled alive and were rushed to various hospitals for treatment of their injuries," Dela Rosa said.

He said rescuers on Sunday retrieved the body of Anquera, nine-year old Aaron Cristine Perando and a certain Magamayo, said to be a security guard of the mining company in the area.

Seven survivors were also rushed to hospitals, he said.

Frasco said personnel from the provincial and municipal disaster coordinating councils, civilian rescue groups, as well as the Compostela Valley chapter of the Philippine National Red Cross, were also mobilized and have responded to the disaster-hit area.

"We have no exact report yet on the number of casualties. This morning's landslide is bigger than the previous one," Governor Arturo Uy said, referring to Saturday's landslide that killed six persons.

Several Philippine Air Force helicopters were seen hovering over the area. Dela Rosa said the Armed Forces' air assets had been mobilized to airlift evacuees in the event of another massive landslide and to transport relief goods.

Uy said he already issued a warning for residents to relocate to safer and more stable grounds. A landslide in the same area last year killed 10 persons.

After the August 6, 2007 landslide, the Mines and Geo-sciences Bureau warned of a possible recurrence.

"It was an unfortunate incident," Uy said as he promised food and medical assistance for the survivors. "They should be relocated," he said, without elaborating where the relocation site should be.

Masara is also the area where a big mining company, the Crew Minerals of the Apex Mining Corp. and the UK-based Crew Gold Corporation, operate.(inquirer.net)

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates â€"  A British couple on trial for allegedly having sex on a Dubai beach asked the judge on Tuesday to be allowed to leave the country.

Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors, speaking in low voices, asked the judge for a "quick ruling" that would let them return to Britain. But judge Hamad Abdul Jawad disregarded the request and scheduled another hearing for Sept. 9 to hear testimony from the policeman who arrested the couple.

Palmer, 36, and Acors, 34, were arrested in the early hours July 5 on a Dubai beach after they had been at a hotel party. They were later charged with having sex outside of marriage, public indecency and public drunkenness.

The case has highlighted the strong contrasts in the booming United Arab Emirates, particularly Dubai. The city has a much more freewheeling attitude than other places in the Gulf, with cash flowing from oil and finance and a huge expatriate population. But the case is a reminder that it remains a conservative Arab nation underneath.

Legal experts say the couple could face up to two years in prison if convicted. The case raised a media storm here, and partway through Tuesday's session the judge ordered journalists out of the courtroom.

"I hope they will not get any penalty, God willing," the couple's Dubai-based lawyer, Hassan Matter, told The Associated Press after the session.

He said medical examinations of Palmer after the arrest "prove she did not have sex," though he did not elaborate. He also dismissed one witness who told the court he saw the couple having sex, saying the witness was far away and it was nighttime.

Palmer, a former employee of a Dubai-based publishing firm, told the court during an August session that she and Acors, a tourist visiting Dubai, were "hugging and kissing" but did not have sex.

Public display of affection, such as touching, kissing or hugging, is illegal in Dubai and couples -- particularly if not married -- can be detained by police for indecency.

In July, a few days after the British couple was detained, Dubai police announced it has arrested 79 people, mostly tourists, for topless sunbathing, nudity and other acts authorities deemed indecent.


Briton Vince Acors (L), who is accused of having sex on a beach
with a British woman, walks out of a Dubai court.

CEBU CITY, Philippinesâ€"The two doctors and a nurse from the government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center who were linked to the controversy over the videotaping of a rectal surgery have gone back to work after serving a three-month suspension.

Dr. Philipps Leo Arias, Dr. Joseph Montecillo and nurse Carmenia Sapio reported for duty at the hospital some time in August, said VSMMC media liason officer Dr. Emmanuel Gines and Department of Health-Central Visayas (DOH 7) regional director Susana Madarieta on Wednesday.

Madarieta said the three reported for work since the preventive suspension expired last August.

The DOH had imposed a three-month preventive suspension on the three hospital staff in the wake of the controversial video taking of the rectal surgery on a 39-year-old male patient that was conducted to extract a perfume canister shoved into the patient's rectum by a male partner on New Year's Eve.

Arias was the head surgeon during the surgery and was assisted by Montecillo. Sapio was the operating room nurse.

The operation on January 3, 2008, became controversial after the unauthorized video was uploaded to the video sharing website YouTube and was circulated through cellphones.

The video showed people around the patient laughing and clapping when the canister was extracted from the patient's rectum.

Gines said that despite the incident, the hospital management still trusted the three suspended medical practitioners, who have since resumed their usual duties at the hospital.

Meanwhile, Assistant Ombudsman Virginia Palanca-Santiago said on Wednesday the Ombudsman would complete "very soon" the criminal and administrative investigation of the incident.

However, Santiago could not give a specific date as it would depend on the investigator handling the case.

The Visayas Ombudsman started conducting the criminal and administrative investigation after it received the complaint of the patient.

The Ombudsman resolution dated May 5, 2008 found that there was reasonable ground for violation of Section 3(e) of the Republic Act 3019 (Anti-Graft And Corrupt Practices Act) against seven doctors, five nurses and two clinical instructors.

Except for the two clinical instructors, the 12 medical practitioners also faced an administrative case for grave misconduct.(Inquirer.net)

PARISâ€"Men tend to wind up with life partners who look like their mother, while a woman is lured to a partner who looks like her father, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Heterosexuals are deeply attracted to individuals whose faces are similar to that of their opposite-sex parent, they said, suggesting that this characteristic is rooted in an evolutionary drive.

A team led by Tamas Bereczkei at the University of Pecs in Hungary created a model of facial ratios -- width of jaw, distance between mouth and brow and so on -- comprising 14 facial zones.

They measured 312 Hungarian adults from 52 different families using this method. Each family included a couple, along with two sets of parents.

The researchers found a significant correlation in facial similarities between a woman's mate and her father, and also between a man's partner and his mother.

The team tested the model on faces that were randomly selected from the general population and repeated the experiment with a panel of judges, who also picked out the same pairings from randomly selected groups of photos.

Interestingly, men and women focused on different parts of the face when they home in on a potential mate, they found.

A man's lover and his mother tended to have similar fullness in the lips, width of mouth, as well as length and width of jaw.

But for women, the critical features were the distance between mouth and brow, the height of the face, distance between the eyes and the size of a man's nose.

The choices are driven less by psychology and socialization and more by evolutionary pressures, suggests Bereczkei.

Too much genetic overlap -- as can happen with incest -- is an evolutionary no-no.

But seeking similar genetic traits "may confer individuals with additional adaptive advantages," he wrote.

It could increase the degree to which parents share genes with offspring, enhancing the genetic representation of future generations.

Finding similar partners might also help perpetuate genetic complexes that have evolved to adapt to a particular environment.

There may be an additional bonus, which probably has more to do with happiness than a genetic imperative.

"Human couples who are similar in physical and psychological characteristics are more likely to remain together than dissimilar partners, possibly leading to an increase in fertility," the study concludes.

The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Royal Society is Britain's de-facto academy of sciences.(Agence France-Presse)

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"The conflict in Mindanao has landed the Philippines on a list of countries with “deteriorated situations” of conflict maintained by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an international think-tank.

In its latest bulletin called “CrisisWatch,” the Brussels-based group also issued a “conflict risk alert” for the Philippines when new clashes broke out last month between government forces and members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

“Violence between the government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has already displaced an estimated 160,000, may escalate following the abandonment of July’s agreement on the crucial ancestral domain issue,” the group said in its monthly bulletin issued September 1.

The group said the scrapping by the Manila government of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain was made amid “escalating clashes between government, paramilitary forces and the MILF.”

It noted the temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court last month, the occupation of 13 towns in Mindanao by the MILF which displaced 160,000, separate fighting in Lanao del Norte that killed 24 civilians in the government push against the MILF that followed, statements made by the government that they were no longer interested in a deal and their call for the MILF to disarm and the extension of the Malaysian monitoring team’s mission by three months.

The ICG also upgraded the Philippines from its list of countries with “unchanged” situations to “deteriorated” situations. Also included on the list are Georgia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Kashmir and Bolivia.

The bulletin is compiled by the ICG’s 135 staff members across the globe.

The ICG is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization with a staff working on “field-based analysis and high-level advocacy” to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts.

Among the members of its board are Kofi Annan, former United Nations secretary general; Richard Armitage, former US deputy secretary of state and former US Ambassador to the Philippines; Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser; Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia; former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and former Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos.

It was during Ramos’ term that the government negotiated a peace accord with another Muslim group, the Moro National Liberation Front.(Inquirer.net)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California â€" Google Inc.'s new browser software is designed to work "invisibly" and will run any application that runs on Apple Inc.'s Safari Web browser, company officials said on Tuesday.

The company said the new Web browser, dubbed Google Chromeâ€"a long-anticipated move to compete with Microsoft Corp, Mozilla Firefox and other browsersâ€"would be available for users to download on Tuesday at 12 noon PDT/1900 GMT.

The public trial of the Google browser will be available in 43 languages in 100 countries, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management said at a news conference at the company's Mountain View, California headquarters.

"If you are Webmaster, and your site works in Apple Safari then it will work very well in Google Chrome," Pichai said.

Google Chrome relies on Apple's WebKit software for rendering Web pages, he said. It also has taken advantage of features of community developed browser Firefox from Mozilla Corp.

Google is a primary financial backer of Mozilla. Google officials said Chrome's code would be fully available for other developers to enhance.(Foxnews.com)

TACLOBAN CITY â€" A man, aided by his two teenage sons, strangled to death his 39-year-old wife, in a remote village in Pastrana town, Leyte on Sunday.

However, the police have yet to establish the motive for the killing.

The police identified the victim as Erlinda Germanes, who was killed by her 43-year-old husband, Melchor, and sons Melboy, 19, and Michael, 18, inside their house in Barangay Socsocon, about 5 km from the town proper of Pastrana.

SPO1 Gregorio Gerilla, of the Pastrana police, said one of the barangay residents went to the police station to report the murder. When the police arrived at the Germanes’ hut, the victim was already dead.

Melchor and his sons did not resist arrest.

The couple has two daughters, Mary Grace, 16, and Mary Rose, 12, who also witnessed the killing.

Gerilla said they have yet to determine the cause of the strangling.

“Some say they were possessed by evil spirits. We really don't know yet,” Gerilla said.

Mary Rose, the youngest daughter, said that days before the murder, her father and two brothers were behaving strangely.

“They said that they have to kill my mother to offer a sacrifice,” said Mary Rose.

Mary Rose also explained that she and Mary Grace could not help their mother because their father and brothers were very strong.

However, their maternal grandfather, Epifanio Dagami, believed that poverty could have driven his son-in-law to kill his daughter with the help of his grandsons.( Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- Boxing champion Manny Pacquiao on Monday said he is retiring from the ring next year and will be running again for public office in the 2010 elections.

“Sigurado na, na tatakbo ako [It is sure, I am running],” said Pacquiao at Camp Crame, headquarters of the Philippine National Police, where he was sworn in as member of the Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi, Partner of the Free Filipino), by Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, who is also president of the party founded by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Pacquiao, who said he is retiring August next year, made boxing history in June when he became the first Asian and first Filipino to win four world titles by knocking out David Diaz to take the WBC lightweight belt.

He is scheduled to fight Oscar “The Golden Boy” De la Hoya December 6 ikn Las Vegas and will be flying to the United States on September 14 to prepare for the bout.

“Isang malaking karangalan talaga na makalaban ko si Oscar. Hindi ko akalaing makasasagupa ko siya, [It is a great honor to fight Oscar. I never imagined I would go up against him,” Pacquiao said, adding that he would fight, at most, two more time before hanging up his gloves for good.

Pacquiao said his parents want the De La Hoya fight to be his last. The two will slug it out at the 147-pound welterweight division.

“My parents wanted me to retire after the De La Hoya fight. But I feel I can still fight two more fights,” Pacquiao said.

Puno said although there is no decision yet on what position Pacquiao will run for, “malaki ang maitutulong niya kung tatakbo siya bilang [he will be a great help if he runs for] congressman or as a local government official.”

In the May 2007 elections, Pacquiao contested the congressional seat of the first district of South Cotabato but lost by a landslide to Representative Darlene Antonino-Custodio.

Puno said the one year lull between boxing and the elections should not be a disadvantage for Pacquiao.

“Magpapahinga siya, maglalaan ng isang taon para maghanda sa halalan. Siguro naman hindi siya makakalimutan ng tao sa loob ng isang taon. Baka sa isang dekada pa [He will rest [and] will have a year to prepare for the elections. Surely, people will not forget him in just one year. It might take a decade for them to do that],” Puno said.(Phil Daily Inquirer)

MANILA, Philippines -- There is no surplus of 400,000 nurses in the country, but a dearth of qualified nurses that employers abroad would hire, the recruitment industry said Monday.

The reaction was to the earlier statement of Commissioner Ruth Padilla of the Professional Regulation Commission that the surplus was enough to meet the requirements of Saudi Arabia, Canada, the United States, and Europe.

To prove his point, Jackson Gan, vice president of the Federated Association of Manpower Exporters, said that the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration has a standing, unfilled 20,000 job orders for nurses to the Middle East, Singapore, and Europe.

He said this was on top of the unfilled job orders from last year.

"While POEA has a current job order for 5,000 nurses to Saudi Arabia, it was able to fill up only 50 percent of the requirement last year. The POEA continues to receive job orders for nurses to Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Belgium," he said.

Gan explained that Filipino nursing graduates were not qualified for these jobs abroad because they were either not trained or did not have two years work experience in big hospitals. He said the Philippines did not have enough government and private hospitals with a 250-bed capacity.

"The most modern private hospitals in Metro Manila have on standby pools of nurses who want to work even as trainee nurses for free just to get the experience required by foreign hospitals. Government hospitals like the PGH [Philippine General Hospital], Jose Reyes, the Heart Center, and others have on their waiting list hundreds of nurses who want to work on those hospitals for the required training and experience," he said.

He suggested that the government increased the budget of the Department of Health for the upgrading and upsizing of provincial or regional hospitals all over the country. This will give Filipino nurses the training and experience required for local employment and deployment abroad.

Gan said the other reason why there seemed to be a surplus of unemployed nurses in the country was that nursing graduates only wanted to work in the US. He said they usually turned down offers to work in the Middle East even when competitive salaries and benefits were offered.

"Many hospitals in the Middle East have the latest medical equipment and professionals which can offer the training needed by nurses for two years and a stepping stone for employment in the US, Canada, and Europe," he said.

Some go to countries like the United Kingdom and Australia which offer study-work programs where they enroll in an accredited university for a second degree in nursing and health care while working as caregiver in care homes. They go for the eventual permanent residency after five years.

Gan said the rise of business process outsourcing, particularly medical transcription, has also absorbed nursing graduates. He said with a starting salary of P15,000 plus a signing bonus of P20,000, nursing graduates who have a working knowledge of medical terms would rather work at these call centers than get a job at private or government hospitals offering a minimum monthly salary of less than 10,000.( Inquirer.net)

Three weeks after having her appendix removed last year, Filipina bar girl Camille was forced by her pimp back to work as a prostitute in Singapore.

Penniless and deeply in debt in a foreign land, 24-year-old Camille, not her real name, had no choice.

She says she had sex with men in hotel trysts arranged by her pimp, who took most of the money, until she sought shelter at the Philippine embassy.

"My wounds barely healed and I was being forced to have sex," she told Agence France-Presse, breaking into sobs during an interview before flying home earlier this year.

"The pimp had no pity. The men had no mercy. I should have listened to my parents not to come here."

Philippine embassy officials said Camille, a single mother, is among a growing number of Filipina women lured by human trafficking syndicates to Singapore, Southeast Asia's wealthiest economy.

Promised jobs as "entertainers" in pubs and restaurants, many instead find themselves virtually indentured as prostitutes, working to pay back the cost of getting here.

Women interviewed by AFP said they were locked in cramped apartments, given one meal a day and told they owed between 1,000 and 4,000 Singapore dollars (US$736-US$2,945) to their pimps for bringing them to the city-state.

The sex industry in Singapore -- where prostitution is legal but pimping and public solicitation are not -- is dominated by women from the Philippines, Thailand, China and Vietnam, industry sources said.

The Philippine embassy in Singapore said there were 212 cases of human trafficking involving Filipinas in 2007, up from 125 in 2006 and from 59 cases in 2005.

Of those 212, nearly 30 percent admitted to having engaged in prostitution or said they were coerced into sexual acts, it said.

Filipino consul Neal Imperial described the numbers as the "tip of the iceberg" as they reflected only women who turned to the embassy for help.

The US State Department, in its 2008 Trafficking in Persons report, put Singapore on its list of countries not doing enough to combat the problem. Cambodia and Sierra Leone were among others named.

The report urged Singapore, which has yet to ratify the 2000 UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol, to "vigorously investigate and prosecute both labor and sex trafficking cases".

Responding to the US report, Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said reported cases of forced prostitution fell to 28 in 2007 from 33 in 2006 and 35 in 2005.

Police investigated all 28 cases and found evidence in only one, the ministry said.

Human trafficking experts said Singapore's figures differ from the US report because the police do not consider women as trafficking victims if they arrive voluntarily.

In contrast, the United Nations counts women as victims if they are lured by false promises about working conditions, and if they are exploited.

Singapore should accept there is a problem, said Sallie Yea, an Australian consultant who has researched sex trafficking in Asia. "Singapore is still in the denial mode."

The island-state is an attractive destination, experts said, because women can enter without a visa on cheap flights.

John Gee, of the non-government group Transient Workers Count Too, said acknowledging that human trafficking exists could be embarrassing for the government, which likes to perpetuate Singapore's squeaky clean image.

But he said the government's bid to maintain that image could push it to tackle the issue.

"I'm optimistic that Singapore will actually rise to the challenge and deal with it," he said.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE 2) No survivors from the C-130 that crashed into the Davao Gulf were found, a Navy official said Wednesday, as search operations were stopped by nightfall.

At the same time, the commander of the Philippine Air Force (PAF) said he was “ruling out” sabotage as the cause of the incident.

But despite saying sabotage was a "remote" possibility, Air Force chief Lieutenant General Pedrito Cadungog said he would still wait for the results of the official investigation of the incident by a PAF fact-finding team.

Search teams from the Philippine Navy and the Philippine Coast Guard also have not seen the fuselage of the ill-fated aircraft, which, according to sonar, lies on the seabed 600 to 800 feet below the surface, 2.5 nautical miles southwest of Samal Island, Captain Rosauro Gonzales said.

Asked if there were signs of life in the area, Gonzales said: "Sa ngayon, wala kaming nakikita. [As of now, we have not seen any]. Firstly, we have not confirmed the crash site."

Gonzales said there have been no reports of survivors washed ashore in Davao City or Samal Island, between which the C-130 Hercules crashed shortly after taking off from Davao International Airport on Monday evening. The plane was carrying two pilots and seven crewmen.

Local search teams could only dive from 200 or 300 feet, Gonzales said, adding a submarine or a mini-submarine will be needed to inspect or salvage the wreckage.

The human body parts recovered on Wednesday were placed in three black plastic bags, he said.

Strong currents washed the body parts and the debris near the shore, a distance from where the sonar had located the fuselage, he said.

With sabotage ruled out, the possible causes of the crash are pilot failure, material failure, and bad weather, Cadungog said.

"I am ruling it [sabotage] our already," the PAF commander said in a phone interview from Mactan Airbase in Cebu, where he met with the families of the C-130’s crew.

"As far as I am concerned, I can categorically say that it [sabotage] is remote," he added.

Given the tight security at the Davao International Airport, Cadungog said it was unlikely anyone could have sneaked an explosive onto the aircraft.

An eyewitness interviewed on television, who claimed to have seen the crash, did not say that the plane exploded before it plunged into the sea.

The scattered human body parts and debris could be the result of the strong impact as the plane smashed into the sea, and not necessarily due to an explosion, Cadungog said.

The crash leaves only one C-130 in the Air Force's fleet operational, although this was grounded soon after the crash was confirmed.

Three other C-130s are undergoing maintenance.( Inquirer.net)

ANGELES CITY, Pampanga, Philippinesâ€"Police arrested Friday a 32-year-old man accused of raping his 90-year-old grandmother in the second known case of sexual abuse on an elderly woman in Pampanga.

"Allegedly, the suspect was under the influence of drugs," said Angeles City police chief Senior Superintendent Pierre Bucsit.

The suspect has been detained at the Angeles City jail following the filing of a rape case by his mother, it was learned.

The old woman reportedly managed to cry out for help as her grandson sexually abused her on August 14 in their home in the village of Balibago here.

Last New Year’s eve, an 81-year-old wheelchair-bound woman was raped by a relative of her caretaker in the province's capital city of San Fernando, a copy of a complaint filed at the prosecutor's office on January 2 showed.

A father and his two sons, all neighbors of the old woman, managed to stop the suspect from further abusing the victim.

The witnesses reported seeing the old woman kicking the man and hearing her shout at him.

One of the witnesses thought that the man, who was 31 years old, was only changing the diaper of the old woman at past 9 p.m.

The incident saw almost all the neighbors coming to the rescue of the victim, according to a village watchman who arrested the suspect.

Unlike in the Balibago incident when only the immediate relatives managed to come to the rescue, the first incident saw victim's neighbors mauling the suspect out of rage.

The man has been detained at the provincial jail following the filing of a rape complaint by the victim's daughter.

In San Fernando where much of the few rape cases are committed against minors (statutory rape), the abuse on the old woman shocked the community, according to policewomen assigned at the city's women desk.

Records showed the city had three statutory rape cases in 2006 and two in 2007.

Data obtained by the Philippine Daily Inquirer from the Department of Social Welfare in Central Luzon showed that while incidents of rape have slightly gone down in 2007, much of the victims were young women.

In 2006, community-based social workers reported 18 rape incidents in Aurora, nine in Bataan, 34 in Bulacan, 51 in Nueva Ecija, 44 each in Pampanga and Tarlac, and nine in Zambales for a total of 209. Three of the victims were men.

Figures in 2007 decreased to 190 with Aurora having seven cases; Bataan, 10; Bulacan, 25; Nueva Ecija, 48; Pampanga, 44; Tarlac, 50; and Zambales, six.

The DSWD recorded 41 victims of incest, 42 victims of acts of lasciviousness, 11 victims of prostitution and one victim of pedophilia.

In its six centers all over the region, the DSWD has provided shelter and care to 28 girls and women who were raped, 22 victims of incest, seven victims of acts of lasciviousness and 30 sexually exploited women.( Inquirer.net)

http://www.youtube.com/v/xAKlS0-_pnw&hl=en&fs=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/psvL2eYQ7YM&hl=en&fs=1

Medical personnel tend an injured passenger in Madrid's Barajas
airport after a Spanair airliner swerved off the runway.

MADRID â€"  A jetliner heading to the popular Canary Islands vacation resort crashed during takeoff Wednesday, turning a wooded area off the end of a runway into a hellish scene of charred bodies and smoldering wreckage. Some 153 were believed dead â€" Spain's worst air disaster in nearly 25 years.

Only 19 people survived the midafternoon crash of the Spanair MD-82 at Madrid's Barajas International Airport, and some were in critical condition, said Development Minister Magdalena Alvarez, whose department oversees civil aviation in Spain. She initially reported 26 survivors.

The airline didn't release a death toll, but said the plane carried 172 passengers and crew.

As smoke billowed from the wreckage, dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to help, lining a nearby road and filling a field next to a swath of charred vegetation. Helicopters flew over dumping water on fires.

"The scene is devastating," said Pablo Albella, an emergency rescue worker. "The fuselage is destroyed. The plane burned. I have seen a kilometer of charred land and few whole pieces of the fuselage. It is all destruction."

Rescuers rushed the few survivors to hospitals, while emergency workers shrouded the dead in white sheets. One body lay on burned grass, an arm and a leg poking out.

Later, a long convoy of black hearses rolled onto the airport grounds to carry bodies to a makeshift morgue set up at Madrid's main convention center. Flight departures resumed after several hours.

It was not immediately clear what went wrong. Alvarez said the jetliner had barely gotten airborne when it veered right, crashed and broke into pieces.

A spokesman for Spanair, a Spanish company wholly owned by Scandinavian Airlines, said it did not know what caused the accident. Alvarez, the government minister, said investigators ruled out foul play and considered the crash an accident.

While preparing for a first takeoff attempt, the plane's pilot reported a breakdown in a gauge that measures temperature outside the plane. The gauge was fixed, delaying the departure, said Spanair spokeswoman Susana Vergara.

It was on the second takeoff attempt that the plane crashed.

The Spanair spokesman, Sergio Allard, originally said Flight JK5022 to Las Palmas had 175 passengers and crew aboard, but the airline later put the number at 172. The flight, which originated in Barcelona, was a code-share with Flight LH255 of the German carrier Lufthansa.

Allard declined to give any numbers on the nationalities of those on board, saying relatives had to be notified first.

In Germany, Lufthansa said it issued tickets to seven people who checked in for the flight and four of those were from Germany. It was unclear whether they were German citizens.

Sweden's Foreign Ministry said two Swedes were on the plane. It said one was at a hospital but the other was unaccounted for.

The accident was Spain's worst air disaster since 1983, when a Boeing 747 operated by the Colombian airline Avianca crashed near Madrid on landing approach, killing 181 people. In 1985, an Iberia Boeing 727 crashed near Bilbao in the Basque region, killing 148 people.

The deadliest disaster in aviation history occurred in Spain in 1977. Two fully loaded Boeing 747s collided on a runway in the Canary Islands and a total of 583 people died.

After being informed of Wednesday's crash, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero broke off his vacation in southern Spain and rushed back to Madrid, heading straight for the airport.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sent condolences to King Juan Carlos of Spain. "I was deeply saddened to learn of the dreadful loss of life in today's aircraft crash at Barajas airport in Madrid, the news of which has shocked us all," she said.

In an expression of mourning, a soccer match in Copenhagen between the national teams of Denmark and Spain started with a minute of silence and players on both teams wore black armbands.

Allard, the Spanair spokesman, said the crashed plane passed an inspection in January and no problems had been reported since then. The plane was 15 years old and has been owned by Spanair the past nine, he said.

The DC-9/MD-80 family of twin-engine, medium-range jets enjoyed wide popularity among the world's airlines in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

But it has had a number of fatal accidents, the deadliest of which was a crash of Slovenia's Adria Airways flight in Corsica in 1981, when all 180 people on board perished.

In Copenhagen, Mats Jansson, the chief executive of Spanair's owner, Scandinavian Airlines, said he had no information about the accident itself.

Jansson and his deputy, John Dueholm, were on their way home from the Beijing Olympics when they learned about the accident and immediately decided to fly to Madrid with a team of crisis counselors.

"We want to be on location ... there are many questions," Jansson said before heading to Spain.

Spanair has a fleet of more than 60 aircraft and runs around 600 flights daily.

Crashes during takeoff or landing are some of the most common aviation accidents.

In July 2007, 199 people were killed in Brazil's worst air disaster when an Airbus A320 belonging to TAM airlines skidded off the runway at Sao Paolo's Congonhas airport and smashed across a road into a gas station and an air cargo building.

Five people died and 65 were injured May 30 when an A320 belonging to Grupo Taca skidded off the end of the runway at Toncontin International Airport near the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa.(Inquirer.net)


A helicopter sprays water on a Spanair airliner in Madrid's Barajas airport.

The world’s tallest woman, Sandy Allen, died early Wednesday morning at a nursing home in her hometown of Shelbyville, Ind. She was 53.

No cause of death has been released, but a family friend said Allen had been sick for several months. She had been hospitalized for a recurring blood infection, along with diabetes, breathing troubles and kidney failure, Rita Rose said.

Allen, who was 7-foot-7, is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest living woman, and has appeared in the publication since the mid-1970s.

She came into the world weighing an average 6.5 pounds â€" but her abnormal growth began soon after her birth in June 1955. By the age of 10, Allen stood at 6 feet 3 inches tall and by the age of 16 she towered at over 7 feet tall.

Her height was due to a tumor in her pituitary gland that caused it to release growth hormones uncontrollably, according to the world record book. At the age of 22, she underwent surgery to correct the condition.

But she was proud of her height, Rose said. "She embraced it," she said. "She used it as a tool to educate people."

Allen appeared on television shows and spoke to church and school groups to bring youngsters her message that it was all right to be different.

She wrote to Guinness World Records in 1974, saying she would like to get to know someone her own height.

"It is needless to say my social life is practically nil and perhaps the publicity from your book may brighten my life," she wrote.

The recognition as the world's tallest woman helped Allen accept her height and become less shy, Rose said.

"It kind of brought her out of her shell," Rose said. "She got to the point where she could joke about it."

Difficulty with mobility had forced Allen to curtail her public speaking in recent years, Rose said. She had suffered from diabetes and other ailments and used a wheelchair to get around.

Rose is working to set up a scholarship fund in Allen's name, with proceeds going to Shelbyville High School.

"She loved talking to kids because they would ask more honest questions," Rose said. "Adults would kind of stand back and stare and not know how to approach her."

The Associated Press Contributed to this report.

MANILA, Philippines -- Malacañang on Wednesday said those who suspect President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's proposal to amend the Constitution to allow for a federal form of government is a tactic to extend her term are those who have ambitions to run in the 2010 elections.

But while saying this, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita was non-committal when asked if the Palace would prevent its allies from inserting, in the Senate joint resolution calling for federalism, provisions that would pave the way for no elections in 2010 or the extension of Arroyo’s term.

"I would rather not answer such a scenario that could lead to further discussion na baka lumabas na merong plano na ganun [no elections or term extension] kasi ang tanong ay kung may allies na mag [because it may emerge that there is such a plan because the question is whether there are allies who will] push for this. I would rather not react on that, makagugulo lang sa usapan [it will only muddle the discussion]," he told reporters in his weekly news conference.

Ermita singled out senators who want to run for president in 2010 for "jumping the gun" with their accusations the push for federalism is a ploy to extend Arroyo’s term.

"Hindi natin mapag-aalis na may naghahangad naman na tumakbo [sa] pagka-pangulo ay galing Senado, kaya siguro sila ang medyo nagre-react dito, lalong-lalo na sila ay may hangarin [We cannot deny that those seeking to run for president are from the Senate, which is maybe why they are reacting to this, especially since they have ambitions]," he said.

"Wala naman tayong naririnig sa ibang sector, sa Lower House, sa ibang grupo, kaya ang aking lang masasabi hintayin natin ang katotohanan. Kung minsan sabi nga [We do not hear anything from other sectors, from the Lower House, other groups, which is why all I can say is let us wait for the truth. Sometimes they say] if we are blinded by some bias ay napakahirap tanggalin ang [it is so hard to remove the] blinder," Ermita added.

On Tuesday, Arroyo reiterated her call for federalism by expressing support for Senate Resolution No. 10, which seeks to establish 11 federal states in the country by amending the Constitution through a constituent assembly.

The Palace has said that the creation of the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE), which will take the form of a federal state and which is seen as one of the last major hurdles to forging peace with secessionist rebels in Mindanao, will need amendments to the Constitution.

Reacting to accusations Arroyo’s call was a ploy to extend her term, Ermita said her support for federalism was just an "announcement of facts" since she openly advocated this in the past.

He also read excerpts from her past speeches in which she explicitly mentioned stepping down in 2010.

In her March 26 statement at the Philippine Development Forum in Clark, Pampanga, Arroyo said, "The best thing we can do for the remainder of my term until I step down 2010 is to stay focused on further economic reforms while providing peace, order and stability."

"Susunod ako sa Saligang Batas at sa sarili kong nais na bumaba sa pwesto pagwakas ng aking termino. Masasabi ko sa inyo nang walang pasubali na bababa ako sa pwesto pagtapos ng aking panunungkulan sa [I will obey the Constitution and my personal desire to step down from my post when my term ends. I can tell you without reservation that I will step down when my term ends in] 2010,” she said in another speech in February.

"Sa palagay ko naman ay di tatalikuran ni Pangulong Arroyo ang kanyang mga nasabi na sa ibang okasyon na bababa sya sa pwesto sa katapusan ng kanyang termino sa [In my opinion, President Arroyo will not go back on what she said on other occasions that she will step down from her post at the end of her term in] 2010," Ermita said.

Ermita said Arroyo "is not saying she will give a vigorous push" to the Senate resolution, but added that they are hoping Congress would act on it over the next two years, especially if it would enhance the peace process in Mindanao.(Inquirer.net)

MANILA, Philippines -- The blood spilled in fighting between government troops and Moro secessionists in the South is on the hands of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the United Opposition (UNO) said Tuesday.

"President Arroyo has blood on her hands," opposition leaders said, blaming her "selfish agenda" for the resumption of hostilities in Central Mindanao that have left several soldiers and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters dead, and over a hundred thousand residents displaced.

"Christian and Muslim lives are being lost. Thousands of families are displaced. Soldiers are being killed and wounded," said Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, UNO president. "Is this the price that Mindanao has to pay just to advance Ms Arroyo's selfish agenda?"

He also expressed dismay about a statement from Malacañang that a shift to a federal system of government through Charter change is the true objective of the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain with the MILF.

"The real motive for the GRP [Government of the Republic of the Philippines]-MILF MOA on ancestral domain has been finally admitted by President Arroyo," UNO spokesperson Adel Tamano said.

He said the "brouhaha" over the Mindanao peace process was never about justice for the Moro people but about Charter change, which he said has always been on the agenda of the President.

"While the opposition desires peace and justice for Moros and Christians alike, it is clear that this MOA was not really intended as an instrument of peace but rather as a means for maintaining power," he said.

"The MILF would be better off waiting for 2010 to deal with an administration that will deal with them honestly, honorably and in a manner that will include all stakeholders," Tamano added.

In the same statement, UNO National Capital Region chair and San Juan Mayor Jose Victor Ejercito said he is convinced Malacañang is using the Mindanao peace process as a ploy to extend Arroyo's hold on power.

"The so-called MOA signing with MILF and the attempt to postpone the ARMM elections are all parts of a grand scheme to divide the nation and eventually extend the President's stay in Malacañang until after 2010," Ejercito said.

Binay said the concept of a federal Mindanao state created under the provision of the MOA on ancestral domain was not feasible.

"What is being offered to the MILF is not a federal state. You cannot have an independent state -- one that has its own military and can deal with foreign states -- within a federal system," Binay said.

"Malacañang knows that, and yet they went ahead and offered it to the MILF. Obviously, there is duplicity and bad faith in this alleged peace process," he said.( Inquirer.net)

By :Kurt Nilsen and Willie Nelson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoswNnsaECM

MANILA, Philippines--Evacuation plans are in place for Filipinos in Georgia should the fighting in South Ossetia escalate, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said Sunday.

The 60 Filipinos recorded as working in Georgia are far from the clashes that have broken out between Russian and Georgian forces, the department said, quoting its embassy in Turkey, which has jurisdiction over Georgia.

Philippine Ambassador to Turkey Bahnarim Guinomla said that Filipinos had been instructed to cross over to Turkey if the violence reaches them.

"We have already informed Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the possible evacuation of the Filipinos if the situation worsens," he added.

Eight million Filipinos, or nearly 10 percent of the country's population, work abroad in scores of countries. Remittances they send home are a major pillar of the domestic economy.(Agence France-Presse)

CARACAS, Venezuela  â€"  At least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela, and medical experts suspect an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats.

Laboratory investigations have yet to confirm the cause, but the symptoms point to rabies, according to two researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and other medical experts.

The two UC Berkeley researchers â€" the husband-and-wife team of anthropologist Charles Briggs and public health specialist Dr. Clara Mantini-Briggs â€" said the symptoms include fever, body pains, tingling in the feet followed by progressive paralysis, and an extreme fear of water. Victims tend to have convulsions and grow rigid before death.

Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, agreed with their preliminary diagnosis.

"The history and clinical signs are compatible with rabies," Rupprecht told The Associated Press on Friday. "Prevention is straightforward: Prevent bites and vaccinate those at risk of bites."

Venezuelan health officials are investigating the outbreak and plan to distribute mosquito nets to prevent bat bites and send a medical boat to provide treatment in remote villages on the Orinoco River delta, Indigenous Peoples Minister Nicia Maldonado told the state-run Bolivarian News Agency on Thursday.

Outbreaks of rabies spread by vampire bats are a problem in various tropical areas of South America, including Brazil and Peru, Rupprecht said.

He said researchers suspect that in some cases environmental degradation â€" including mining, logging or dam construction projects â€" may also be contributing to rabies outbreaks.

"Vampire bats are very adaptable," Rupprecht said. And when their roosts are disrupted or their normal prey grow scarce, "Homo sapiens is a pretty easy meal."

More study is needed to confirm through blood or other samples from victims that it is the rabies virus in Venezuela, researchers say.

At least 38 Warao Indians have died since June 2007, and at least 16 have died since the start of June 2008, according to a report the Berkeley researchers and indigenous leaders provided to Venezuelan officials this week.

All victims died within two to seven days from the onset of symptoms, Briggs said.

One village, Mukuboina, lost eight of its roughly 80 inhabitants â€" all of them children, he said.

During a study trip Briggs and Mantini-Briggs made through 30 villages in the river delta, relatives said the victims had been bitten by bats. The couple have worked among the Warao in Delta Amacuro state for years and were invited by indigenous leaders to study the outbreak.

"It's a monster illness," said Tirso Gomez, a Warao traditional healer who said the indigenous group of more than 35,000 people has never experienced anything similar.

Another tropical medicine expert, Dr. Daniel Bausch of Tulane University in New Orleans, agreed the symptoms and accounts suggest rabies transmitted by bats, and if confirmed, "probably a vaccination campaign would be in order."

The common vampire bat, which feeds on mammals' blood, swoops down and generally approaches its sleeping prey on the ground. The bat then makes a small incision with its teeth, and an anticoagulant in its saliva keeps the blood flowing while it laps up its meal with its tongue.

The researchers in Venezuela have begun taking precautions. Mantini-Briggs, a Venezuelan former health official, said she started to wonder about her own health Friday while talking with biologist Omar Linares, a bat expert at Caracas' Simon Bolivar University.

She remembered there was blood on her sheet after sleeping in a hammock in a village two weeks ago. Initially she dismissed it as nothing important, but she also remembered her finger hurt that morning and that she saw two small red dots there.

Linares suggested she get rabies shots immediately.

"They're vaccinating me," Mantini-Briggs said. "I'm sure a bat bit me."(FoxNews.com)

OUTSIDE TSKHINVALI, Georgia  â€"  Russia and Georgia headed toward a wider war Saturday as Russian tanks rumbled into the contested province of South Ossetia and Russian aircraft bombed a Georgian town, escalating a conflict that already has left hundreds dead.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry said the country was "in a state of war" and accused Russia of beginning a "massive military aggression." The Georgian parliament approved a state of martial law, mobilizing reservists and ordering government authorities to work round-the-clock.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that Moscow sent troops into South Ossetia to force Georgia into a cease-fire and prevent Georgia from retaking control of its breakaway region. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Georgia had effectively lost the right to rule it â€" an indication Moscow could be preparing to fulfill South Ossetians' wish to be absorbed into Russia.

The risk of the conflict setting off a wider war also increased Saturday when Russian-supported separatists in another breakaway region, Abkhazia, also targeted Georgian troops by launching air and artillery strikes to drive them out.

President Bush called for an end to the Russian bombings and an immediate halt to the violence.
"The attacks are occurring in regions of Georgia far from the zone of conflict in South Ossetia. They mark a dangerous escalation in the crisis," Bush said in a statement to reporters while attending the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili called it an "unprovoked brutal Russian invasion."

"This is about annihilation of a democracy on their borders," Saakashvili told the British Broadcasting Corp. "We on our own cannot fight with Russia. We want immediate cease-fire, immediate cessation of hostilities, separation of Russia and Georgia and international mediation."

Medvedev's office said Saturday evening that Russia had not received the Georgian cease-fire proposal.

Georgia, a U.S. ally whose troops have been trained by American soldiers, launched a major offensive overnight Friday. Heavy rocket and artillery fire pounded the provincial capital, Tskhinvali, leaving much of the city in ruins.

It was the worst outbreak of hostilities since South Ossetia won de facto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters Saturday in Moscow that some 1,500 people had been killed in South Ossetia since Friday, with the death toll rising. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

But Tskhinvali residents who survived the bombardment by hiding in basements and later fled the city estimated that hundreds of civilians had died. They said bodies were lying everywhere.

Georgia, a country about the size of South Carolina that borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the breakup of the Soviet Union. Today, Russia has approximately 30 times more people than Georgia and 240 times the area.

Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have run their own affairs without international recognition since splitting from Georgia in the early 1990s and have built up ties with Moscow. Russia has granted its passports to most of their residents.

Putin arrived late Saturday in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz to talk to South Ossetian refugees who have fled the fighting. He said there were at least 34,000 refugees.

"The actions of the Georgian powers in South Ossetia are, of course, a crime â€" first of all against their own people," Putin said. "The territorial integrity of Georgia has suffered a fatal blow."

Russia also laid much of the responsibility for ending the fighting on Washington, which has trained Georgian troops. Washington, in turned, blamed Russia.

"We have urged an immediate halt to the violence and a stand-down by all troops. We call for an end to the Russian bombings, and a return by the parties to the status quo," Bush said in the statement.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Bush had spoken with both Medvedev and Saakashvili. But it was unclear what might persuade either side to stop shooting â€" both claim the other violated a cease-fire declared Thursday.

Alexander Lomaia, secretary of Georgia's Security Council, estimated that Russia sent 2,500 troops into Georgia. The Russian military would not comment on the number of troops. By late Saturday, Russian military commanders claimed they had driven Georgian forces out of Tskhinvali, a claim that Saakashvili denied.

Russia's ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said "98 percent of Tskhinvali" was in ruins. "Our troops have re-established control over the city," he said.

Smoke rose from the city, and intermittent artillery shelling and sporadic gunfire could still be heard.

Georgian forces knocked out about 40 Russian tanks around Tskhinvali, said Georgia's Deputy Interior Minister Eka Sguladze. "Our units are well-equipped with anti-tank rockets, and they thwarted a Russian tank attack," she told reporters.

Georgia, meanwhile, accused Russia of bombing its air bases and the town of Gori, just outside South Ossetia.

An Associated Press reporter who visited Gori shortly after the Russian airstrikes Saturday saw several apartment buildings in ruins, some still on fire, and scores of dead bodies and bloodied civilians. The elderly, women and children were among the victims.

The Russian warplanes appeared to have been targeting a military base in Gori's outskirts that also was bombed.

The Interior Ministry said Russian warplanes also bombed the Vaziani military base on the outskirts of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi and struck near the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The ministry said two other military bases were hit, and that Russian warplanes also bombed the Black Sea port city of Poti, which has a sizable oil shipment facility.

Georgia said it has shot down 10 Russian planes, including four brought down Saturday, according to Lomaia. It also claimed to have captured two Russian pilots, who were shown on Georgian television.

Russian Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the General Staff, confirmed Saturday that two Russian planes had been shot down, but did not say where or when.

Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Georgia brought the airstrikes upon itself by bombing civilians and Russian peacekeepers. He warned that the small Caucasus country should expect more attacks.

"Whatever side is used to bomb civilians and the positions of peacekeepers, this side is not safe and they should know this," Lavrov said.

Russian military commanders said 15 peacekeepers have been killed and about 150 wounded in South Ossetia, accusing Georgian troops of killing and wounding Russian peacekeepers when they seized Russian checkpoints. The allegations couldn't be independently confirmed.

In Abkhazia, the separatist government said it intended to push Georgian forces out of the Kodori Gorge. The northern part of the gorge is the only area of Abkhazia that has remained under Georgian government control. Lomaia confirmed that Georgian administrative buildings in the Kodori Gorge were bombed, but he blamed the attack on Russia.(FoxNews.com)

MANILA, Philippines -- A former national refuted debunked assertions President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s made during her State of the Nation Address, saying the poverty suffered by many Filipinos is mainly caused by “problems in governance” and not global crises.

In a statement on Tuesday, Leonor Briones, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines (SWP), blamed the “slowing down” of the country's economic performance on what she called Arroyo's poor economic management style.

“Arroyo has wrong development priorities, as manifested by the lack of funding for social development. These wrong economic priorities rendered more Filipinos vulnerable to rising cost of living and threaten to push more people into poverty,” she said.

In her speech before the joint session of Congress on Monday, Arroyo blamed the rising prices of fuel and food on global changes.

“We are on a roller coaster ride of oil price hikes, high food prices and looming economic recession in the US and other markets,” Arroyo said. “Uncertainty has moved like a terrible tsunami around the globe, wiping away gains, erasing progress.”

But Briones said while other Asian countries have been able to cope well with the supposed global crisis, the Philippines has fallen behind with a 5.2 percent growth rate, compared to Vietnam’s 7.4 percent and Malayasia’s 7.1 percent.

“The crucial factor is governance,” she said.

Briones, the SWP, and Woman Health Philippines also pointed out that growth rates in the agricultural and fishing sectors went down from four percent to three percent in 2008.

They also called the government's dependence on the Value Added Tax (VAT) a form of “regression.”

“The government should resolve revenue administration so that the government will not be dependent on VAT which puts heavy burden to the poor. It should resort to a progressive system of taxation with higher dependency on income and real property taxes,” said Filomeno Sta. Ana III, another SWP convenor.

The group also countered Arroyo's claim that removing VAT would only increase the prices of commodities. If the VAT remained, the purchasing power of Filipinos would only decrease, the SWP argued.

“The only sustainable and effective way to addressing poverty is to invest on human capital, such as education and health which, unfortunately, shows disturbing trends,” said Mercy Fabros of Woman Health Philippines.(INQUIRER.net)

STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT GLORIA MACAPAGAL-ARROYO DURING THE 2ND REGULAR SESSION OF THE 14TH CONGRESS OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES, 28 July 2008 ..pls click here >http://inquirer.net/sona/2008.php..

MANILA, Philippinesâ€"A Filipina died in Bangladesh after she was seriously taken ill on board a plane en route to Dubai last month, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Friday.

Nurfaida Juklani Burung was on board a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong en route to Dubai on the night of June 22 when she bled profusely, the Philippine embassy in Bangladesh said in its report to the DFA.

But Burung passed away as the plane made an emergency landing at Dhaka's Zia International Airport early morning the following day, said Philippine Ambassador Zenaida Tacorda-Rabago.

Her remains were sent back to the Philippine on June 26, Rabago said, acknowledging the assistance provided by Bangladeshi officials and carrier Dragonair Dhaka.

Rabago also extended her condolences to the bereaved family of Burung.(INQUIRER.net)