Archive - Banner

Text and photos by YVONNE T. CHUA AT 10:30 a.m., the hotel emergency alarm went off, signaling the start of Thursday’s “Shake Drill” designed to prepare Metro Manilans for a 7.2 magnitude earthquake or the “Big One.” Many of the 30 or so guests meeting at the hotel’s fifth-floor function room quickly stood up and

By JAKE SORIANO BARANGAY TUKANALIPAO, Mamasapano, Maguindanao — The skeleton of a new bridge, concrete, now stands close to the old wood one made iconic by the bloody incident six months ago. A sign of further development is a poster, next to the new bridge, announcing a P50 million irrigation system project. The old wood

By YVONNE T. CHUA WHEN he delivers his sixth and final State of the Nation Address on Monday, President Benigno S. Aquino III will predictably present a glowing report of his accomplishments, what with only a year left of his presidency. To be fair, Aquino has delivered on a number of his promises.  To name

By RONN BAUTISTA and KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING (Conclusion) IN the Philippines, sign language insets in free-to-air television channels are almost unheard of. Out of Metro Manila’s 18 channels, only one features a sign language interpreter alongside its news programs. Citing logistical and aesthetic concerns, most private TV networks hesitate to include insets in their newscasts despite

By RONN BAUTISTA and KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING (First of two parts) SUPPERTIME in the Philippines is often accompanied by the start of local primetime newscasts in Filipino homes. At 6:30 p.m., media networks ABS-CBN, GMA-7 and TV-5 begin broadcasting their flagship news programs. While the rest of the country follows the rundown of the day’s newsworthy events, a

By VJ BACUNGAN and DANICA UY A BEVY of red tricycles hurtle down Bonifacio Avenue, a four-lane national highway cutting through Cainta town in Rizal, their buzzy two-stroke engines leaving plumes of blue smoke in their wake. They overtake another tricycle which, even from afar, stands out from the rest. At six feet tall, this tricycle towers over

Text and photos by LUCIA P. TANGI (Conclusion) A week before she was about to leave the country for her first job on a cruise liner, Mary Valdez (not her real name) received a text message from her crewing agency. She was instructed to return to the clinic where she had completed her medical examination

Text and photos by LUCIA P. TANGI (First of two parts) The image of an olive-skinned man or a “barako” who has “a girl in every port” usually comes to mind when one mentions the word seafarer. The stereotype stems from the dominance of men in the maritime industry since the country started its massive

Text and photos by MARIA FEONA IMPERIAL and YVETTE B. MORALES WHEN she walked into her first day of teaching back in 2007, Leah Reyes was rendered speechless. It was not because all eyes were on her as the new substitute teacher. Rather, not all of the students in the classroom could see. Reyes had

  By FERDIE C. MARCELO WHEN Yolanda lashed Samar and Leyte in November 2013, feet tripped on feet to contain the damage. The statistics that surfaced five months after were terrifying: 6,300 dead, 4.1 million displaced, and 1.1 million houses damaged or destroyed. To this day the effects are still being felt by the villagers,

  By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS GOVERNMENT agencies and private companies are reactivating their emergency drills with the release by Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of its latest findings about the West Valley Fault. Phivolcs Director Renato U. Solidum, Jr. warned that based on the movement pattern (every 400 or so years) of the West

By YVONNE T. CHUA The combined net worth of the 290 members of the House of Representatives for 2014 has surpassed P17 billion, an increase of more than 10 percent from their declarations for 2013. The increase has raised the average net worth of the representatives in the 16th Congress by more  than P6 million.   Released days ago, the summary

By CHARMAINE DEOGRACIAS GENERAL SANTOS CITY – Boxing hero Manny Pacquiao still has to decide when to hang his gloves after today’s megafight with Floyd Mayweather but many young boys from his hometown are already training to fit those lucky gloves. Young aspiring boxers here believe their future is in the boxing gym not in

By YVONNE T. CHUA The 15-year Education for All (EFA) global movement is drawing to a close this year, and the verdict is out. Only a third of the 164 governments that pledged to achieve universal primary education and five other goals by 2015 have done so, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

  The Department of Foreign Affairs is misleading the public when it says “Sabah is not in any way part of the note” verbale the Phililippine government sent recently to Malaysia in denying VERA Files’s story “PH offers Sabah to win Malaysia’s support for UN case vs China.” Note Verbale No. 15-1979 sent to Malaysia,

    By TESSA JAMANDRE THE Philippines has offered to downgrade its claim on Sabah in exchange for Malaysia’s support for its case against China before the United Nations. The quid pro quo was contained in a note verbale the Department of Foreign Affairs handed to a representative of the Malaysian Embassy last week, a

By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS IT is not true that the Board of Inquiry did not try to ask the side of President Aquino on the Jan. 25 Mamasapano tragedy that claimed 67 lives including 44 of the country’s elite police commandos, 18 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and five civilians, including an eight-year

Text and photos by OFELIA EMPIAN LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—She whirls around the room with her apron on. She wipes the table clean,then stacks the yellow plastic plates, and forks and spoons in the basket. Her teacher beams and praises her student: “Very good!” Celina Sakiwat smiles, sits and waits for her sister to fetch her

  By JOHNNA VILLAVIRAY GIOLAGON TUKANALIPAO, Mamasapano – The old woman sat gravely in a corner of an unfinished classroom in Mamasapano town as an officer from the regional government explained that her group will be receiving complimentary health insurance. Her head was covered with a maroon hijab, the bright color belying the sorrow in

By LUZ RIMBAN THE Philippine National Police’s Board of Inquiry is considering the possibility President Benigno Aquino III may have been on top of, or fully aware of, the Jan. 25 Mamasapano operation in Maguindanao that resulted in the death of 44 troopers of the PNP’s Special Action Force. The BOI, now almost done with its

By LUZ RIMBAN (Conclusion) ADVOCATES for Mindanao like Fr. Eliseo Mercado, OMI, and Fr. Joel Tabora, SJ, constantly refer to history as the point where Filipinos need to go to understand the strife in Mindanao. “Ang unang dahilan siguro kung bakit may gulo dito sapagkat yung feeling ng ating mga kapatid na Muslim ay mayroon hindi

 By LUZ RIMBAN (First of two parts) IF Muslims in the Philippines only had a hand in the way things are run in the country, one of the first things they would do is rewrite mainstream history books to help Filipinos understand and put current issues in context. Indeed, some of them say, an educational

    By NORMAN SISON “GO to Manila, go around the Nips, bounce off the Nips — but go to Manila.” It was January 1945. General Douglas MacArthur had landed his forces at Lingayen Gulf early that month to begin his campaign to liberate the main Philippine island of Luzon. With his eye fixed on

  By Jose Bayani D. Baylon As the country remains gripped over the incident that cost the lives of 44 members of the PNP Special Action Force, I could only remind myself that war is never pretty. Now, someone might say, the 44 were not in a state of war as they were simply carrying