Archive - Top Stories

By GREGORY PAUL H. YAN
INSIDE a dank, dimly lit corner shop within the sprawling Cartimar pet complex in Pasay City, a representative of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) gazed at a large and brightly lit aquarium where the shop’s most expensive fish are displayed for sale.

MORE than a year since the series of killings of anti-mining activists in Buguey town, Cagayan province, none of the suspects has been identified, and no case has been filed. But environmentalists are blaming big businesses—Filipino, Korean and Chinese—that are mining magnetite in resource-rich Cagayan. They are also pointing the finger at the powerful Enrile family which they believe to be interested in magnetite mining in the province.

THE SOCIAL networking site Facebook is the venue of a quiet protest that has been going on for a year now, where people are venting their concern over magnetite mining in Cagayan province.

The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) has missed the Dec 2010 target mandated by law for it to provide universal health coverage to Filipinos, as health experts say the agency is poorly managed and consequently unable to deliver quality health care to those who need it most.

By MHIKE CIGARAL
Central Luzon TV and VERA Files
MORONG, Bataan—Four years ago this month, Bayan Muna leader Feliza Timog Ocampo was shot in front of her sister’s house in broad daylight here. Ocampo joins the list of hundreds political activists and journalists killed in this country since 2001, at least 11 percent of whom were women.

By NESTOR B. RAMIREZ
IN what could be a first in the history of extrajudicial killings in the country, a jailed suspect has offered an unusual out-of-court settlement: He pleads guilty and pays the victim’s family for damages, but the charges are downgraded to homicide which means a shorter prison sentence.

By MARK JOSEPH UBALDE, InterAksyon.com
EMBATTLED but still looking composed, Ombudsman Merceditas Guetierrez on Tuesday defended herself following the overwhelming vote at the House of Representatives to impeach her. She lamented that her almost 40 years in public service would only end in attacks that were without basis.

IN this country where there is hardly any socialized medical care, it’s a huge financial burden to get sick or be disabled. At a recent forum hosted by the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) with drugstores, representatives of Persons with Disabilities (PWD) complained of being refused discounts on medicines they were buying.

By HOMER TEODORO
Central Luzon TV and VERA Files
HACIENDA LUISITA, Tarlac—Unlike other cases of extrajudicial killings, the slaying of labor leader Ricardo Ramos should have been an open-and-shut case. After all, the alleged killer is behind bars, and the case against him has been filed in court.

By DON SO HIONG and JEREMY DIMAL
Central Luzon TV and VERA Files
SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) top brass likes to say it does not tolerate human rights violators in its ranks, but in Central Luzon, the AFP continues to have in its payroll an intelligence asset wanted for at least nine murders in Pampanga during former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s term.

By GERMELINA LACORTE
MindaNews and VERA Files
DAVAO CITY—Dry leaves litter the grassy alley leading to the house in Bago Galera, Toril District here that once belonged to the Pitao family. The Pitaos don’t live here anymore. Not since Rebelyn was abducted, tortured, raped and killed two years ago. She would have turned 22 on Sunday, March 20.

ON one cold and windy Tuesday morning, she made her last sandcastle. Precy Sacapaño, a 50-year-old mother of six, used to make a living out of building miniature replicas of castles along the beaches of Boracay in Aklan--until the local government passed an ordinance regulating the activity in 2007.