Archive - Top Stories

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.

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.

A rare case of a Filipino male, who tested HIV positive 10 years ago in France and then was found HIV negative in his most recent testing in the Philippines this year, has puzzled the medical community and the Department of Health (DOH).

By AMER R. AMOR
AFTER the earthquakes that hit Japan and New Zealand, volcanologists are drawing attention to the possibility a big one could hit Baguio, but the city lacks a comprehensive disaster management program and has in fact repeatedly failed to enforce environment rules that could mitigate disaster.

By MARK JOSEPH UBALDE
TV5's InterAksiyon.com
EVERY March, something bad happens to the Contemplacion family, cried Russel, one of the youngest children of Flor, the Filipina domestic worker who was executed for murder in 1995.