Archive - Top Stories

By LEILANIE ADRIANO LAOAG CITY—Alainrey Gamit Barroga needs a botox injection soon, and not because he is vain. The 38-year-old artist was diagnosed with X-linked Dystonia Parkinsonism (XDP) locally known as “lubag,” an inherited neurodegenerative condition affecting mostly males that can only be treated but for which there is no known cure.

By VERA Files
THE feast day of St. John the Baptist last June 24 turned into a traumatic event for a group belonging to a Catholic congregation, among them a priest, who happened to pass by San Juan City in Metro Manila on their way to a retreat that day.

By VERA Files It’s the feast of St John the Baptist, and in his honor, Filipinos brought out their water canons, guns and hoses. In Cavite City, they called it a water festival and christened it Regada.

By LALA ORDENES FORMER Solicitor General Frank Chavez, a nominee to the Chief Justice post vacated by impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, sent a letter (see below) to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) Friday questioning the composition of the council that vets and approves nominees to judicial posts.

By ELIZABETH LOLARGA
CALLED “the heroic generation,” these are baby boomers who forsook their parents’ post-war dreams for them to finish a college education, find a stable job and settle down but instead took tremendous risks in defying the state’s force to fight for seemingly abstract rights that today’s youth take for granted, freedom of expression and being able to vote for the President of one’s choice, among others.

Text by ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
Photos and Video by VINCENT GO
RODALLIE Mosende was a homeless girl who appeared destined to be one of many poor people prowling the streets of Quiapo. That is, until documentary photographer Rick Rocamora chanced upon her and took her picture.

Text by XIANNE ARCANGEL, Photos by MARIO IGNACIO IV
PERSONS with disabilities (PWDs) possessing skills in information and communications technology face a bright future: Companies are turning to them to fill vacancies for highly technical jobs.

By ARIEL C. SEBELLINO
MARICEL Oriña, a self-employed housewife and mother of two boys, can only sigh in exasperation over the lack of sensitivity on how children are portrayed on television.

By NORMAN SISON
MOJITO and Piña Colada, move over. Here comes the Manila Sunshine. In mid-May, one of the top hotels in Manila unveiled an alcoholic bright yellow cocktail, precisely designed to be the Philippine capital’s signature drink. That brought plenty of cheer to Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez, who concocted the idea. However, there is more to just making it in the universe of mixology.

By LALA ORDENES THE Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) in a historic move decided Monday to allow live coverage of the public interviews of candidates for judicial positions. This means that cameras and tape recorders are now allowed inside the room where the JBC panel interviews candidates for vacant posts in the judiciary and the office of the Ombudsman.

By ARTHA KIRA PAREDES
THE special registration for persons with disabilities (PWDs) nationwide set for next month will be called off following the Commission on Elections’ decision to give priority to voter registration in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Text and photos by ELIZABETH LOLARGA
BACK in the years when dynamic cultural administrators produced free outdoor performances, from poetry readings to full orchestra concerts,Paco Park was a destination for the culturati and the hoi polloi.

By PATRICK KING PASCUAL
Coming to terms with one’s self is not easy for homosexuals in a society where gender is limited to either male or female. Raymond Alikpala, 46, a lawyer and formerly a seminarian, knows very well the anguish of living in the shadows having done so in the first 38 years of his life.

By VINCENT GO
Hundreds of farmers from Negros Occidental and Batangas marched to Manila to ask President Benigno Aquino III to immediately distribute land to farmer-beneficiaries before the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program ends in 2014.

By CARLO FIGUEROA
HUMAN rights groups continue to voice their opposition to moves to amend the country’s juvenile justice law. This comes even after the House of Representatives on June 4 passed on third and final reading House Bill 6052 proposing to lower the age of criminal liability from 15 to 12 years old.

BY VERA FILES
Two decades after its creation by the Constitution, the Judicial and Bar Council remains an institution critics say is riddled with “systemic deficiencies” and even defects, and is badly in need of reforms.

It’s June 12, Independence Day, and for some Filipinos, it meant a trip to the birthplace of the Philippine Republic in Kawit, Cavite, a lesson in geography, and even photo opportunities with the country’s first president, Emilio Aguinaldo.

By MARK PERE MADRONA
ROMEO Berard II of Winnipeg, Canada may only be 16, but he already has a life mission --- i.e., to make sure that every Filipino child will be able to go to school.

By VERA FILES
The Judicial and Bar Council represents the first and crucial step in the judicial appointment process. Ultimately, however, the person responsible for appointments of all the country’s judges and justices is the President.

By VERA FILES
THE Judicial and Bar Council is now the focus of national attention as it begins the process of recommending a replacement for ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona. The process, if done right, is expected to help restore public confidence in the High Tribunal.

By KARLOS MANLUPIG
HUNDREDS of environmentalists, activists and residents in Davao City staged a march protest to protest the proposed privatization of power plants in Mindanao and urged the scrapping of the Electric Power Reform Act which marked it’s eleventh year last Friday.

By PATRICK KING PASCUAL
WASHINGTON D.C.-Maria (not her real name) is an officer in the United States Navy. She has been serving her country for more than 20 years. She comes from a family who has served the government for a number of generations. She's a lesbian.

By CAROLYN MERCADO and STEVEN ROOD
THE Philippine Judiciary is on edge. Five months of rigorous scrutiny by the public and media as a result of the trial of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona created a high degree of expectation that major reforms are forthcoming. Ensuring that Corona’s conviction and the appointment of a new chief justice will lead to a lasting improvement of the country’s judicial system is putting tremendous pressure on the high court.

By LALA ORDENES THE conviction of Renato Corona, the first time in the country’s history a chief justice is removed from office by impeachment, has thrown the Supreme Court and even the Judicial and Bar Council into uncharted waters, forcing the High Tribunal to contradict itself and act against its own pronouncements.

By LEILANIE ADRIANO
LAOAG CITY— The Commission on Elections sees the low turnout in last month’s special voters registration for persons with disabilities (PWDs) in the Ilocos region as a “good sign.”

By NESTOR B. RAMIREZ
The newly formed Task Force Pawikan has confirmed the illegal sale of pawikan or sea turtle meat during a covert operation at the province’s largest seafood market in Barangay Pasil in Cebu City.

By YVONNE T. CHUA
WHEN classes open on Monday, the country is finally giving up the distinction of being the only country in Asia that has a pre-university education of just 10 years. The Department of Education is rolling out in all 45,619 public elementary and high schools the “K to 12 curriculum,” beginning with Grades and 1 and 7, also called the “new high school.”

AN association of school teachers has called for a stop to the implementation of the government’s K-12 basic education program, citing the absence of a law authorizing the program and the “disastrous” partial implementation of universal kindergarten last year.

By MIKHAIL FRANZ FLORES
FIRST, the detainees. Then, people with disabilities. Now, indigenous peoples. The Commission on Elections is getting indigenous peoples (IPs) who are qualified voters to register and vote in next year’s midterm elections.

By JOSEPH HOLANDES UBALDE, InterAksyon.com
BUYING cigarettes per stick or "tingi" rather than by pack is preferred by many Filipinos. While smokers like to think that consuming cigarettes little by little means they are consuming less and are therefore not addicted, medical health experts caution “it is often a prelude to buying cigarettes in packs or consuming even more.”