Archive - Top Stories

By KATHLYN DELA CRUZ and CYRILL YAMBAO
VARIOUS media organizations unveiled their non-journalistic talents on May 2 in celebration of the World Press Freedom Day.Click on image to view video

By MARK UBALDE
InterAksyon.com
OVERSEAS Filipino workers (OFWs) have been through a lot since the government institutionalized labor migration some 38 years ago. They have been banned, beaten, kidnapped, evacuated, praised and lauded.

By GAIL ORDUÑA and MARC CAYABYAB
Photos by GIAN GERONIMO
AMIDST rising oil and food prices, a Filipino worker these days continues to suffer from cheap wages, unfair practices, and the poor state of labor policies in the country.
Click on image to view slideshow

BY KITT MOLINA and ALETA SANTOS
Hope for the Youth Foundation and VERA Files
THIS is a true story about a crime that, despite the existence of a law, has gone unpunished. "Nora," 22, is a victim of human trafficking, one of up to 100,000 Filipino women and children who are believed to be victimized every year.
Click on image to view slideshow by Vincent Go.

By FERDINANDH CABRERA
MindaNews and VERA Files
COTABATO CITY—The Commission on Human Rights’ Central Mindanao regional office has filed a torture case against a police superintendent and his subordinates after it concluded that they mishandled two suspects in the October 2010 bus bombing in Matalam, North Cotabato.
Click on image to view video.

By MARC CAYABYAB, GIAN GERONIMO, KATHLYN DELA CRUZ and CYRILL YAMBAO
WHILE charges may still be filed against former Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez who resigned on Friday, progressive party-list groups called for efforts to be directed to charging former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. “Now with Merci gone we can concentrate on prosecuting (Arroyo) for electoral fraud, graft and corruption and human rights violations,” said Bayan Muna Partylist Rep. Neri Colmenares in an interview with VERA Files.

By MARK JOSEPH UBALDE
InterAksyon.com
FORMER Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez said that while she didn't mind facing her accusers at her impeachment trial next month, her devotion to her family made her resign from her post on Friday.

By MARK JOSEPH UBALDE, LIRA FERNANDEZ and CHICHI CONDE InterAksyon.com
OMBUDSMAN Merceditas Gutierrez tendered her resignation on Friday, just two weeks before the schedules Senate impeachment trial. A tweet from the Department of Interior and Local Government’s Twitter account confirmed the news at 12:16 p.m.

THE media hype over what has been dubbed as “the wedding of the decade” of Prince William and Kate Middleton set for tomorrow has elicited mixed views among young Filipino audience, many of whom believe it has gone over the top.

IN between official functions on Friday, newly appointed Health Assistant Secretary Enrique A. Tayag admits he would be watching on television the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

DENYING allegations of fund misuse, former Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) chief Francisco Duque III assured millions of overseas Filipino workers that their money was put into good use. In an interview with ABS-CBN this morning, Duque said he will be coming out with the “full report” on the questionable transfer of P530.382 million from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to PhilHealth.
Read the full text of the complaint here.

CEBU CITY -- Starting tomorrow, more than 200 families living along the Mahiga creek in Mabolo will be forcibly evicted from their homes. In this audio slideshow, Cebu journalist Marian Codilla and her team visited the community and documented the current plight of the settlers there.

WITH th the onslaught of disasters around the world, many have committed to saving the environment in their own creative way. As the country celebrates Earth Day, VERA Files reports on four environment advocacies that form part of this year’s theme, “A Billion Acts of Green.”
Click on image for the video.

FORMER Police Officer Michael Ray Aquino is expected to be extradited soon to the Philippines to face murder charges in connection with the November 2000 slaying of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver after a U.S. Court of Appeals denied this week his last-ditch petition for a rehearing.

JENNY Silahis is a penitent who has been involved in the practice of self-flagellation for over 20 years now as part of the penitensiya, or public penance, during Holy Week. Penitents like Silahis, mostly men, walk the streets during Holy Week under the heat of the sun, and subject themselves to pain by lashing their backs with instruments such as chains or bamboo.
Click on image to view slideshow.

By KENNETH GUDA and MYLAH REYES ROQUE
SOME members of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines are like Roman soldiers subjecting people to the same Calvary—arrest and torture—that Christ went through two millennia ago.

By TESSA JAMANDRE
CHINA has accused the Philippines of “invading” the South China Sea which it claims as wholly its own, the first time it has ever done so. “Since 1970’s, the Republic of the Philippines started to invade and occupy some islands and reefs of China’s Nansha Islands and made relevant territorial claims, to which China objects strongly,” China said in a note verbale submitted April 14 to the United Nations in reply to the protest lodged by the Philippines on April 5.

By LIEZL P. BUGTAY and VENUS P. BETITA, AFRIM
A promise of prosperity turned into a bitter cautionary tale for a community that had pinned its hopes on an alternative energy project in Cagayan de Oro. Rather than benefiting from a much-vaunted government project, the farmers whose lands were planted to jathropa became victims of what they now believe was a swindle.

A COMPANY partly owned by former First Son and current party-list Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo recently sold for $1.125 million the controversial house in upscale Foster City, California that used to belong to him and his wife Angela, and transferred the deed of ownership just last month, according to real estate websites and the San Mateo County Assessor-Recorder’s Office.

BY CYRILL BEATRIZ YAMBAO and MARC JAYSON CAYABYAB
The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) has replaced the members of the Hearing and Adjudication Committee after they voluntary inhibited in response to the accusation of lack of impartiality by lawyers of TV5 and Willie Revillame.

VERA Files is bringing back this August 2009 story, which exposes the existence of the Foster City, California home listed in the name of Angela Montenegro Arroyo, wife of Congressman and former First Son Juan MIguel Arroyo. The couple is facing charges for failing to pay taxes amounting to more than P73 million when Mikey's mother Gloria was president.

By MELVIN GASCON
SOLANO, Nueva Vizcaya—Investigations into the murder of lawyer Ernesto Salunat Sr. have hit a blank wall and the police recently found out why: They were using a “grossly inaccurate” cartographic sketch of the accomplice’s face, and though a second sketch corrected the error, this second sketch had not yet been disseminated.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE, LIRA DALANGIN-FERNANDEZ, and LORENZ NIEL SANTOS
THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) filed a P73.85-million tax evasion complaint against Ang Galing Pinoy party-list Rep. Juan Miguel "Mikey" Arroyo and his wife Angela Thursday.

By GREGORY PAUL H. YAN
TO BE sure, local and international demand for endangered seafood species drives the flourishing illegal marine trade. But there is a second and just as important reason: difficulty of authorities to go after those who break the law.

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.