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By LUZ RIMBAN
TWO prominent members of a powerful political family in Abra are facing plunder charges for allegedly embezzling more than P130 million in municipal funds, in what a whistleblower has called “big-time corruption in a small town.” Named in a complaint-affidavit are former Abra congresswoman Cecilia Seares-Luna and her eldest son Jendricks

By ELLEN TORDESILLAS
THE displaced director of the Commission on Elections’ Law Department has accused Chairman Sixto S. Brillantes Jr. of unethical behavior for allegedly requesting him to help absolve two Comelec officials ordered suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman for approving the P690 million contract to purchase ballot secrecy folders for the 2010 elections.

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 MEDIA SOLUTIONS
LEGASPI CITY — Barely three months after activist Methodist pastor Isaias Sta. Rosa was abducted and gunned down in August 2006, supertyphoon “Reming” battered Albay province, burying his home in Barangay Malobago, Daraga town in lahar and leaving his widow Sonia and four children homeless.

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 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
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.

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 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 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.