Archive - Top Stories

By NESTOR B. RAMIREZ
TAGBILARAN CITY—It was Gerry Cuñado’s third time to take the witness stand. But the grief that overcame him in court the morning of July 15 was as raw as what he first felt when his wife, Liezelda, a women’s rights advocate, was killed in their home in Candijay town the night of July 3, 2006. She was 30 at the time.

By ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
IN olden times, churches were considered sanctuaries where even criminals could seek refuge from harm and arrest. That’s long in the past. In fact, churches may be among the worst places to commit a crime, especially when a wedding is taking place. On Dec. 16 five years ago, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in New Manila, Quezon City became the site of blood spill and murder.

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS and YVONNE T. CHUA
THE military fact-finding board created to investigate allegations of the soldiers’ involvement in the 2004 election cheating did not pursue information given by two Marine officers of the money distributed by a general during and after elections that did not need liquidation.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
INSTEAD of determining who truly owned the overpriced helicopters sold to the Philippine National Police in 2009, the Senate veered to digging up the past attempts of Rep. Ignacio “Iggy” Tuason Jr. to cover up for his brother former First Gentleman Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo.

By ARMAND GALANG
LAUR, Nueva Ecija – Lolita Guevarra is consumed by envy over what she says is the preferential treatment wealthy crime victims receive from law enforcers, compared to the neglect the poor suffer.

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS and YVONNE T. CHUA
RETIRED Vice Admiral Mateo M. Mayuga once said he would bring the results of his factfinding mission on the purported involvement of the military in the cheating in the 2004 presidential elections that enabled Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stay in power to his grave. But Mayuga isn’t getting his way. Recently, President Benigno S. Aquino III declassified his “secret” report, popularly known as the Mayuga Report, and the 15-page executive summary has made its way to the news media.

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS
THE resignation of Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim has left unresolved the problem with a politically well-connected tourism official he has brought to the attention of President Aquino. Highly reliable sources said Lim has informed President Benigno S. Aquino III about alleged questionable activities of Mark Lapid, chief operating officer of Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA).

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
FAKE or highly questionable ballots and certificates of canvass were some of the strongest pieces of evidence that showed newly proclaimed Senator, Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, was nearly robbed of his seat in the Senate.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
EVEN before the inspection team approved the purchase of three overpriced helicopters that allegedly belonged to former First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, top officials of the Philippine National Police have already recommended the purchase.

By CAROLYN O. ARGUILLAS,Mindanews
GENERAL SANTOS CITY - Now the silence can be explained. President Benigno Simeon Aquino III and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim on Thursday evening shook hands and talked peace for two hours in a hotel in Japan with their respective panel chairs taking down notes, the President’s Cabinet members and the MILF’s peace panel and Central Committee members as well as the Malaysian facilitator waiting outside the meeting room.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
Interaksyon.com
THE owner of the Manila Aerospace Products Trading Corp., which sold two pre-owned helicopters refurbished to seem brand new to the Philippine National Police, claimed on Tuesday that Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of the former president, ordered the irregular transaction.

By MELVIN GASCON
SOLANO, Nueva Vizcaya—The Philippine National Police has released a second artist’s sketch of the possible gunman in the year-old assassination of a human rights lawyer and Liberal Party campaign manager here.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE
Interaksyon.com
AFTER the first hearing on the overpriced procurement of three helicopters by the Philippine National Police , the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee has yet to unmask the mastermind behind the anomalous transaction.

By KENNETH ROLAND GUDA
TEN years is an eternity, especially for those who have spent that time in prison, and for crimes they didn’t commit, said a group of detainees at the Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City. This month, those detainees—mostly Bangsamoros from Basilan, Sulu and Zamboanga City—gathered to mark the decade since their arrest in 2001.

By VICENTE ALEJANDRO
TACLOBAN CITY— A call of the National Democratic Front to disband the Army’s 19th Infantry Battalion for their alleged hand in extrajudicial killings in this province “has no basis” and the battalion’s supposed involvement in the shooting incident in Palo, Leyte in 2005 “was never proven.”

By VICENTE ALEJANDRO
PALO, Leyte—On a normal day the 800 or so residents of Barangay San Agustin here, most of them rice farmers, would still be fast asleep at the break of dawn. But the loud noise in their ricefields on Nov. 21, 2005 roused them from slumber. The sounds of gunfire and explosions were coming from the area planted with coconut trees.

TODAY President Benigno Aquino III delivers his first State of the Nation Address, the first SONA written entirely in Filipino. Read full text.

By GERMELINA LACORTE
DAVAO CITY—Alleged accomplices and a suspect in the murder of schoolteacher Rebelyn Pitao have been killed in what seems to be "revolutionary justice" being carried out, as police officials continue to wash their hands of the case, which has not progressed in two years.

By GERMELINA LACORTE
DAVAO CITY -- "Until now, I still can't believe she's dead," Evangeline Pitao, the mother of Rebelyn Pitao, says two years after her daughter was abducted and killed. "When I enter her room, I still cry every time I see her ashes."

By JOSEHPH HOLANDES UBALDE
SUSPENDED ARMM governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of the prime suspects in the 2009 killings of 58 people in Maguindanao, will likely spend his jail time in the hospital if doctors checking his health will recommend it, Ampatuan's legal counsel said Wednesday.

By DESIREE CALUZA
Photos by MARIO IGNACIO
SAGADA, Mt. Province —Morning has broken and the sun casts its rays on this northern highland village as a widow sings a song of peace for those whose hearts have been pained by turmoil and violence. In Sitio Nadatngan in Barangay Madongo here, Florence “Dom-an” Macagne Manegdeg, who turns 39 today, greets the day facing the sun and accompanying its ascent in the horizon by playing her bamboo flute.

By MYLAH REYES ROQUE
THE Manila policeman dismissed from the service after he was caught on video allegedly torturing a theft suspect at a Tondo police station is now teaching—in a college for would-be policemen.

By MICHAEL A. BENGWAYAN
MOUNT Pulag, whose fertile environment nurtures life-prolonging plant species, is in danger of dying. Environmentalists are concerned that Mount Pulag’s mossy forest, where a specie of the cancer-curing Yew tree is found , is being killed by illegal vegetable gardeners, loggers, and squatters.

By TESSA JAMANDRE
AN aggressive overflight reconnaissance over Philippine-claimed isles in the oil-rich Spratlys group of islands in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) had been monitored and reported to the Philippine military shortly after Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario returned from his visit to Beijing.