Philippine Canadian Inquirer Issue #106

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VOL. 3 NO. 106

MARCH 14, 2014

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Delfin Lee’s love of luxury cars led to his fall, say police

Ghost of Sendong

Mystery of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet

Fil-Can in Focus: Ronald Alzate and Noel Crisostomo

Featuring Adobo Atbp.

Twice as many police officers expected at Boston Marathon; spectators urged to avoid big bags The Associated Press

Giant clams and corals, harvested from Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) off the coast of Zambales province, are stacked on the deck and hold of a Chinese ship (inset), as a small Chinese boat scrapes the coral reef bed. Both China and the Philippines claim the shoal, which lies within the Philippine exclusive economic zone.

PHOTO BY NINO JESUS ORBETA

ERC voids power rate hike

Spot market prices ‘not reasonable, rational’

BY MICHAEL LIM UBAC AND RIZA T. OLCHONDRA Philippine Daily Inquirer MALACAÑANG ON Tuesday endorsed the finding of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that prices on the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) during the shutdown of the Malampaya gas pipeline late last year could not qualify as “reasonable, rational and competitive.”

Citing market failure, the ERC issued an order last week for the recalculation of the rates on the spot market.

The order in effect voided the ERC approval last December of the P4.15 per kilowatt-hour rate increase in generation charge that Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) had sought. It was the biggest increase sought by the country’s largest power distributor.

❱❱ PAGE 14 Twice as

Philippine Canadian Inquirer

Tagle: Observe Lent to be close to God, not to draw attention to self PHOTO FROM CBCPNEWS.COM

❱❱ PAGE 10 ERC voics

BOSTON—The number of police officers patrolling this year’s Boston Marathon will be doubled to over 3,500, one year after two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260.

The enhanced police presence is part of a beefed-up security plan detailed Monday by public safety officials as they prepare for the April 21 marathon.

Spectators who plan to attend the marathon are being strongly discouraged from bringing backpacks, rolling bags, coolers and other large items, and are instead being asked to carry personal

❱❱ PAGE 8

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MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 2

ANG TUNAY NA KALAYAAN AY WALANG HANGGANAN.

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Philippine News

3 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

P-Noy makes pitch for gender equality

BY MICHAEL LIM UBAC Philippine Daily Inquirer TO MARK International Women’s Day, Malacañang vowed to strengthen measures to combat violence against women and provide more opportunities for gender equality and empowerment.

Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said it was everyone’s obligation to seek an end to violence, discrimination and other forms of gender bias.

Saying that women hold “half the sky,” Coloma said in a radio interview that the nation “recognizes women who have become catalysts for change and displayed extraordinary courage, strength, care and love for their families in the midst of the storm and tragedy that devastated our country last year.”

In a statement, President Aquino recognized the contributions of Filipino women to the country’s rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of calamities.

In his message for the celebration of International Women’s Day, the President said his administration joined other nations in recognizing the importance and contribution of women to society.

“Today, we should strengthen our commitment to achieve a just society,” the President said, noting that Filipino men and women alike should be “united in creating a bright future.”

Mr. Aquino noted that the nation was able to withstand the back-to-back calamities last year, such as the earthquake in Bohol and Cebu provinces, the siege in Zamboanga City and Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in Eastern Visayas.

He praised the women who “stoke the flames of hope” amid difficult circumstances by tirelessly caring for their families and taking part in recovery efforts.

He said that in the aftermath of these disasters, it became clear that every nation had an obligation to make their people safe and maintain a high state of readiness against those challenges.

Malacañang noted that International Women’s Day had grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration of women across developed and developing countries.

The theme for this year’s observance of National Women’s Month is “Juana, ang tatag mo ay tatag natin sa pagbangon at pagsulong.”

In a radio interview, Coloma said the country had undertaken great strides to empower women, and these efforts were bearing fruit.

According to Coloma, the Philippines is fifth in the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranking for countries with the highest respect for the rights of women and has the highest Global Gender Gap

Index in 2013 in Asia (WEF Gender Quality Index).

The Philippines had performed well compared with regional economic powerhouses, such as China, Japan and India, he noted.

He said WEF also commended the country for Filipino women’s advancement and progress in the areas of economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, health and survival, educational attainment, political participation and economic equality.

‘End violence now’

“Let us be proud of Filipino women, let us be proud of our mothers who cared for us and raised us, and continue to play an important role in our families and our society,” he said.

He said the government had continually striven to eradicate violence against women (VAW).

He noted that last year, the government embarked on an 18-day campaign to raise awareness on this pervasive practice. It had the theme “End violence against women now. It’s our duty.”

He said this campaign was particularly directed at state employees and officials in local governments and national agencies, such as police and military officers, social workers, health workers, prosecutors, judges and lawmakers.

“The government continues to aim for a just society and to strive to elevate women’s status,” said Coloma.

To combat violence against women, the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) had embarked on “massive awareness raising using all forms of media [to] help make women more informed about their rights, as enshrined in our laws on rape, sexual harassment, human trafficking and violence against women and their children [or intimate partner violence],” Coloma said.

Coloma, quoting a text message from the PCW, said frontline service providers, like barangay officials, police, health and social workers, and state prosecutors, should be enabled to become more capable in handling cases and be held accountable if remiss in their duties.

MOVE

He said the PCW was also advocating to “include the men in the antiVAW campaign” as well as expand and strengthen “MOVE” (men opposed to violence against women everywhere). “[MOVE] is an organization of men who talk to other men [so that they will] never condone, remain silent or commit VAW,” said Coloma.

He said police statistics showed a sharp increase in reported cases of VAW, from over 16,000 in 2012 to 23,000 in 2013.

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“This means more women are breaking their silence and coming out to put a stop the abuse they are experiencing,” he said.

Workplace advancement

But citing data from the National Statistical Coordination Board, Coloma said women had a higher employment rate (93.3 percent) compared to men (92.7 percent).

The number of women professionals also reached 68.3 percent compared to 31.7 percent for men and more than half, or 52.1 percent, of women hold executive or managerial positions, he said.

“In the remaining two years of the term of the President, he knows that women have a pivotal role in advancing… widespread and lasting progress for our people,” he said.

Women in disasters

Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. also praised women in disaster areas for their contribution to helping the country rise above the challenges brought about by these calamities.

In a statement, Ochoa expressed his admiration to these women who serve “as pillars of strength and solidarity in their respective families, communities and our nation.”

The executive secretary said the capacity of Filipino women to endure and prevail under demanding circumstances embodied women empowerment.

“Heroines all, women in affected areas,

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though victims themselves, have inspired us with their efforts to keep their families together, extending assistance to others as volunteers in rescue and rehabilitation efforts, and ably performing their duties as leaders in their respective communities,” Ochoa said.

Platform for action

He took the opportunity to announce that the Philippines would begin this month an assessment of the progress of its commitments under the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) in preparation for the 20-year global review next year.

The BPFA is an international accord for women’s rights created during the Fourth World Conference on Women of the United Nations in Beijing in 1995. It has the backing of some 189 countries, including the Philippines.

The BPFA includes key areas of concern that need action, such as women and poverty, violence against women and access to power and decision-making.

“The Philippine experience can very well be a major contribution to this review as the world looks at more opportunities for gender equality and empowerment, and for broadening advocacy in the promotion and protection of women’s rights after 2015,” Ochoa said.

The Philippine report will be crafted by stakeholders in the government and nongovernment sectors, and will be tackled during the Women’s Consultative Conference this month, he said. ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 4

P128-M plunder charge vs GMA ally

BY GIL C. CABACUNGAN Philippine Daily Inquirer FORMER CANDABA Mayor Jerry Pelayo, a close ally of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has been charged with plunder in connection with P127.7 million worth of ghost projects that were supposed to be implemented in the last nine years.

The plunder case was filed in the Office of the Ombudsman by more than a dozen Candaba residents led by Arnold Canimo, who accused the former mayor of conniving with several individuals and corporations to embezzle government funds.

Canimo and his fellow complainants claimed that Pelayo had engaged several individuals and corporations for 11 separate contract agreements to establish, maintain, develop, rehabilitate and improve a demo farm at the Clark economic zone in Pampanga province, and construct, repair, rehabilitate and improve irrigation service roads, including the Barangca

Bridge over Malisik River.

The complainants said that after preliminary works were done on the Clark demo farm, the project was abandoned when Pelayo stepped down last year after losing to Mayor Rene Estacio Maglanque, an assistant secretary at the Department of Transportation and Communication during the Arroyo administration and an alleged business partner of detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

Napoles is allegedly the mastermind behind the pork barrel scam that had several lawmakers transferring public funds into fake NGOs set up by the businesswoman, and receiving millions of pesos in kickbacks and commissions.

According to the complainants against Pelayo, “equipment like hand-tractors, irrigation pumps, planting materials, pesticides, seeds and the like that were supposed to be used for the demo farm, were not delivered to the municipality of Candaba.”

The scheme, the complain-

Former Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo (left) with politician Juan Miguel Zubiri in this 2009 photo for the handing over of the Special Allotment Release Order (SARO).

PHOTO FROM SENATE.GOV.PH

ants added, had Pelayo’s crony corporations receiving funds from the Candaba municipal hall based on disbursement vouchers. The corporations

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would then deliver the funds to the Arroyo ally in exchange for a 3-percent handling fee.

“In sum, respondent Pelayo, then mayor of the municipal-

ity of Candaba, in connivance with respondent corporations, amassed, accumulated, and/or acquired ill-gotten-wealth, in the amount of P127,753,914.64 through... a series of misappropriation and conversion,” the complainants claimed.

Pelayo, according to the complainants, “entered into contracts with corporations or entered into projects that never materialized or (were) never completed.”

Also accused of plunder along with Pelayo were Patrick McCrann, Emmanuel Belen, Ruel de la Cruz, Elmer Sanchez, Jien Zhien Chen, Cornelyn Martha del Ponso, Miles Gangcuangco and several John and Jane Does.

Aside from Canimo, the complainants were Rufino Soliman, Edgardo de Guzman, Dionisio Guevarra, Francisco San Pedro, Rodolfo Manalili, Lorenzo Catacutan, Jessie Laurente, Romeo Balatbat, Zacarias Laurente, Gaudencio Lacanilao, Danilo Bartolome, Dionisio Pelayo, Bernardo Santiago and Freddie Pelayo. ■

Philippine News

5 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

COA: TRC chief, others accountable in pork scam

BY GIL C. CABACUNGAN, JEROME ANING AND TJ BURGONIO Philippine Daily Inquirer TECHNOLOGY RESOURCE Center (TRC) Director General Dennis Cunanan and the heads of the other implementing agencies involved should be held accountable for their role in the P10-billion pork barrel scam allegedly masterminded by detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, said Commission on Audit Chair (COA) Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan. Cunanan and the other agency heads should stop tossing the blame as they did not perform their roles after their agencies took the 3-percent and 10-percent management fees from the pork barrel funds that passed through their offices for the projects of the nongovernment organizations (NGOs) of Napoles that turned out to be fake, Tan said.

“Based on our findings, they have been getting commissions but we have not seen any monitoring of the projects (supposed to be funded by pork barrel funds of lawmakers) because as it turned out, the ones who monitored all the documents were the offices of the concerned legislators,” Tan said.

Agencies’ shortcomings

Tan noted that the COA’s special audit of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) releases between 2007 and 2009 zeroed in on the shortcomings of the implementing agencies. Allegations that Cunanan and the heads of other implementing agencies received kickbacks from Napoles were made by whistle-blowers like Benhur Luy. “There was very little effort if at all on the part of the implementing agencies to really do any monitoring. That’s why our question was: If you did nothing, why collect management fees?” Tan said.

She said that if the proper process was followed to the letter, the implementing agencies should have implemented the project themselves instead of acting as mere conduits for the fake NGOs. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that Cunanan, who is on leave from the TRC, will

be given the opportunity to refute—or admit—that he, too, had received kickbacks from the ghost projects of the fake Napoles NGOs that received the pork allocations from the lawmakers’ PDAF. “We’re giving him a chance to explain or rectify himself on the issue of his allegedly receiving kickbacks,” said De Lima.

She said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was waiting for what Cunanan has to say on that point so the government would know what step to take next.

At Thursday’s Senate hearing, whistle-blower Luy claimed that he saw Cunanan leaving the office of Napoles carrying a paper bag that contained P960,000 in kickback money.

Cunanan denied having received any money although he said he was trying to remember if he did visit Napoles’ office as part of TRC officials’ regular duties to inspect the NGOs accredited by the agency to implement PDAF-funded projects.

Cunanan and Luy have been provisionally accepted to the government’s witness protection program (WPP) and have applied to become state witnesses.

De Lima said she did not think the credibility of Cunanan and Luy would be affected by their conflicting testimonies.

“Benhur remains to be a very credible witness. He has not given us reasons or indications to doubt his credibility and the credibility of his story about the entire PDAF scam,” she said.

She said it was the first time that she heard Luy relate the story of having seen Cunanan carrying a paper bag as he left Napoles’ office.

But she admitted that the conflicting claims of Luy and Cunanan regarding the latter’s alleged acceptance of kickbacks “complicated” the situation.

Importance of testimony

However, De Lima stressed that the value of Cunanan’s testimony was his allegation that three senators—Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla and Juan Ponce Enrile—had contacted him to follow up on the ghost projects to be funded by their pork funds.

“If only we focused on the substantive aspect of his testi-

Pork barrel scam witness Benhur Luy says he personally saw Dennis Cunanan carrying a bagful of money from scam suspect Janet Lime Napoles.

PHOTO FROM INTERAKSYON.COM

mony, it would be good [for the case]. We heard many things from him that are important to the main issues of the PDAF scam. But because of his denials that he received kickbacks ... we did ask him about it but he was consistent in his denials,” she said.

But she hinted that Cunanan’s admission to the WPP could be affected if he fails to explain or prove that he did not accept kickbacks. But she quickly added, “I don’t want to make a definitive action at this point while I haven’t heard his side. He has to explain himself.”

“The remedy that I can see at this point, while we’re evaluating [Cunanan’s] continuing status as provisional state witness, is for us to give him a chance [to explain],” she said.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III yesterday said De Lima should sort out the conflicting testimonies of Luy and Cunanan lest it jeopardize the government’s case.

Pimentel wondered how the DOJ could have admitted Luy and Cunanan into the WPP when they had “conflicting versions” of the alleged payoff to Cunanan.

“How come we have two people admitted into the WPP, and on one material incident, they have two conflicting versions?” the senator said in a phone interview.

“One said it happened and www.canadianinquirer.net

one said it never happened. And they are both truthful. How did that happen?” he said.

As a matter of policy, applicants are accepted into the WPP not only because they’re telling the truth, but the “entire truth,” Pimentel said.

Pimentel, a lawyer, said WPP witnesses should be truthful in the “entirety of their testimony” lest they be challenged by the legal principle “falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus” (false in one, false in all) “When you’re lying in one item of your testimony, you might have lied in the rest of your testimony. That will become an opening for the defense counsels. They will now take advantage of that,” he said.

Pimentel said if the DOJ wants to present Luy as the “star witness,” then Cunanan’s testimony must be “measured against” Luy’s.

“And if it’s Cunanan who is inconsistent with Benhur Luy, and Benhur Luy’s testimony is more important, then the less important witness must be discharged from the WPP. Because you can’t have this funny situation where you have two truthful witnesses, and yet contradicting each other,” he said.

It would be all right for a witness outside the WPP to contradict the testimony of a WPP witness, but it’s a different matter if both are WPP witnesses, Pimentel pointed out.

Pimentel believes that Cunanan’s testimony was not indispensable.

He said Cunanan’s “phone conversations” with the senators constituted “weak evidence” that could be easily punctured by the defense. He said Cunanan should have made personal visits to the lawmakers to verify their authorization letters.

If at all, he said Cunanan could only provide documents used in processing the transfer of funds from TRC to the NGOs, which would constitute strong evidence, but others could also testify on these.

In a radio interview, Sen. Grace Poe expressed her reservations about admitting Cunanan as a state witness.

“He wasn’t telling the whole truth especially about himself ... He was pointing to others John Travolta style. He’s blaming others, except himself,” she added.

If Cunanan had admitted receiving the P960,000, he would have been more credible, said Poe. Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, for his part, said Cunanan’s credibility wasn’t “cut and dried” as that of Ruby Tuason, who admitted receiving commissions by acting as a middleman between Napoles’ JLN Corp. and the lawmakers.

“He’s credible on some points but not all, especially where they differed with Luy,” he said. ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 6

Corona posts bail for tax evasion

BY CHRISTINE O. AVENDAÑO Philippine Daily Inquirer THE DEPARTMENT of Justice filed last Monday a P120.5million tax evasion case against impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona in the Court of Tax Appeals (CTA).

Prosecutor General Claro Arellano yesterday said DOJ task force “Run Against Tax Evaders” filed 12 counts of tax evasion against Corona—six counts for violation of Section 254 of theNational Internal-Revenue Code of 1997 (attempt to evade or defeat tax) and six counts for violation of Section 255 (failure to file income tax return.)

Arellano said Corona posted bail of P120,000 (P10,000 for every count).

Corona’s arraignment has been set for March 26 in the CTA Third Division and April 2 in the CTA Second Division.

The filing of the tax evasion case against Corona came seven months after the Bureau of In-

ternal Revenue filed the complaint against him.

The BIR complaint was based on documents on his properties that surfaced during his impeachment trial. The Senate impeachment court convicted Corona in May 2012 for failing to declare his true income in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.

In an interview with reporters, Arellano said the DOJ task force headed by Senior-Assistant State Prosecutor Edna Valenzuela had found probable cause to charge Corona with tax evasion.

He said Corona filed a motion for reconsideration of the task force resolution but this was denied.

He said the tax evasion case against Corona’s daughter, Carla, and her husband, Constantino Castillo II, had not yet been resolved by the task force.

“We are inclined to believe the documentary evidence presented by the BIR still outweighs the claims of Corona,” Arellano said.

Former chief justice Renato C. Corona.

PHOTO FROM GLOBALPOST.COM

In its complaint, the BIR said Corona owed the government P120.5million in taxes, inclusive of surcharges and interest, from 2003 to 2010.

It said Corona in his SALN undervalued three of his properties by P17.30 million, failed to declare two properties valued at P12.75 million and only declared cash assets of P134.44 million in 2010.

Corona’s daughter was sued

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for P9.93 million and her husband, for P20.24 million.

Reacting to the tax evasion case, Corona said he was a “victim of the Priority Development Assistance Fund and Disbursement Acceleration Program anomalies that whet the insatiable gluttony of many senators and congressmen for public funds.”

He said he was under no illusions about receiving fairness

and justice from the DOJ which is headed by Secretary Leila de Lima who testified against him in the Senate trial.

“Why am I now being persecuted? I have done no wrong, earned our savings honestly for 45 years, filed my income tax returns and SALNs truthfully, paid all my taxes to the government andwas never involved in any anomaly or illegal transaction,” he said. ■

Philippine News

7 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Solons score sale Dennis pins down JPE, Bong, Jinggoy of public hospitals: Their pork proposals are ‘similarly worded’ Where will poor go?

BY TJ BURGONIO Philippine Daily Inquirer

BY GIL CABACUNGAN Philippine Daily Inquirer TWO LAWMAKERS are speaking out against the growing number of state owned hospitals being sold to private companies, the latest of which is the P5.69- billion buyout by Megawide-World Citi Consortium of the Philippine Orthopedic Center ( POC).

Representatives Emmi de Jesus of Gabriela and Lito Atienza of Buhay Hayaang Yumabong said the Department of Health should fully disclose not only the details of these takeovers but also its plans on what to do with the displaced indigent patients.

“Public service will not be its top priority because it does not want to lose money. The contract will not end just there because it is renewable for another 25 years,” said De Jesus of the private companies in a privilege speech questioning the privatization of public hospitals. She noted the transfer to companies hands of public hospitals such as Dr.Jose Fabella Medical Hospital, San Lazaro Hospital and Dr. Jose R. Reyes Memorial Medical Center.

De Jesus cited the case of Daisy Cervantes, a 38-yearold housewife who was paralyzed from the waist down after falling from a mango tree last year and who has been benefiting from free medicine and other services as a Class D patient at POC the last four months.

Indigent patients

De Jesus said: “Daisy is

not alone, 85 to 95 percent of 200,000 indigent patients depending on POC every year could be dislocated with the privatization of the POC. Where will the 500 patients admitted daily to POC’s wards go when Megawide-World Citi has alloted only 70 beds (of its 700bed facility to be built at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute compound in Quezon City) for the poor?”

Atienza warned the privatization of public hospitals would leave indigent patients with no alternative as past experience shows that any public service that went into private hands (such as power and water utilities) “inevitably led to higher costs.”

Lack of funds

Atienza questioned why the government would abandon its duty of providing public health services to its citizen by selling its hospitals to private businessmen instead of pumping in billions of pesos to modernize and expand these facilities.

De Jesus noted the DOH itself admitted that lack of funds was the main reason the POC facility along Banawe Avenue, Quezon City, has not been renovated or expanded since it was built 50 years ago.

“The government not only abandoned POC, it gave it away to businessmen,” said De Jesus.

She said the people are not looking for doles-out from their representatives or local government officials but expect public services that they can depend on despite their lack of financial resources. ■

Megawide-World Citi Consortium bought the Philippine Orthopedic Center for P5.69 billion.

PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA.ORG

EVEN SEN. Juan Ponce Enrile endorsed the recipient of his own pork barrel in the “grand conspiracy” to convert government funds into kickbacks, a government executive said.

Testifying before the Senate blue ribbon committee, Dennis Cunanan said Enrile and Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. submitted similarly worded project proposals to the Technology Resource Center (TRC) to course their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allocations to preselected nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

Cunanan, TRC’s director general who is on leave, said

Estrada and Revilla “pressured” him on the phone into releasing their PDAF allocations to NGOs controlled by Janet LimNapoles, the detained businesswoman who allegedly engineered the P10billion pork barrel scam.

Now a provisional state witness, Cunanan sought to distance himself from the transactions in the TRC, a government corporation that acted as a conduit for the release of the PDAF to NGOs. “They copied from each other’s project proposal,” Cunanan told the committee during its 10th hearing on the PDAF scandal.

Citing his own research, Cunanan said that even Enrile identified the NGO-recipient of his PDAF, in a reversal of the

process that it was usually the TRC that informed legislators about the availability of their PDAF. “He wrote to this implementing agency and said that funds would be soon available. Later on, his staff followed up with a letter this time identifying the NGO,” he said under questioning by Sen. Miriam DefensorSantiago.

Santiago remarked: “Wow. I’m very interested in what you have to say.”

Cunanan said the transaction involving Enrile’s PDAF pushed through, without going into specifics.

It was the first time Cunanan identified Enrile as the direct endorser of a recipient NGO. ❱❱ PAGE 13 Dennis pins

Prosecution rests vs Ampatuan et al.

BY JEANNETTE I. ANDRADE Philippine Daily Inquirer THE PROSECUTION in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre case rested its case against 28 accused, including former Datu Unsay town Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., alleged to be one of the brains behind the horrific killing of 58 people.

In a manifestation that it filed with the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221, the prosecution said it was terminating its presentation of evidence in the multiple murder case and was prepared to rest its case against 28 accused.

Ampatuan Jr., one of the principal accused in the Nov. 23, 2009, massacre in Maguindanao where 58 people, including 32 journalists, were brutally killed, still has a pending bail petition.

The prosecution panel, led by senior state prosecutor Archimedes Manabat, said that while it was prepared to rest its case against the former Datu Unsay mayor and 27 of his coaccused, it “[was] in no position to terminate its evidence presentation and rest its cases against the remaining 78 accused” although it did not plan to preswww.canadianinquirer.net

Former Datu Unsay town Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., alleged to be one of the brains behind the horrific killing of 58 people.

PHOTO FROM NEWSHOPPER.SULEKHA.COM

ent more witnesses.

Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes last month directed the prosecution to file a written manifestation identifying the accused against whom it was resting its case.

Although 197 people were initially charged in the massacre, only 107 suspects have been arrested and accounted for.

Included in the list of accused against whom the prosecution has rested its case are Supt.

Abusama Maguid; Chief Insp.

Sukarno Dicay; PO3 Gibrael

Alano; SPO2 Badawi Bakal; SPO1 Samad Maguindara; PO3 Ricky Balanueco; PO1 Michael Macarongon; PO1 Abdulbayan Mundas; PO1 Badjun Panegas; PO1 Amir Solaiman; PO1 Datu Jerry Utto; Manny Ampatuan; Misuari Ampatuan; Moktad Daud; Zakaria Akil; Mohamad Balading; Armando Ambalgan; Mohades Ampatuan; Salik Bangkulat; Macton Bilungan; Maot Dumla; Nasser Esmael; Edres Kasan; Nasser Talib; Salipad Tampogao; Ibrahim Kamal Tatak; and Rakim Kenog. ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 8

Tagle: Observe Lent to be close to God, not to draw attention to self

BY JOCELYN R. UY Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, PHILIPPINES— Don’t fast and abstain to be sexy and slim. Don’t do charity for the sake of popularity.

During Mass in observance of Ash Wednesday, Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle warned the Catholic faithful against engaging in “hypocritical acts” of sacrifice during the 40-day Lent.

Tagle called Lent a “wonderful, holy season” for the faithful to reawaken their desire to return wholeheartedly to God through prayer, alms-giving and fasting.

But these three disciplines of Lent, as taught by Jesus Christ himself, must always be practiced in order to find their way back to God, not to put themselves up and call attention to themselves, Tagle added.

Catholics across the country flocked to churches on Wednesday to have palm ashes traced on their foreheads in the form of a cross at the beginning of the Lenten season, which would be observed with fasting and absti-

nence, especially on all Fridays.

In his homily at the Arzobispado de Manila Chapel in Intramuros, Tagle said some Catholics would include fasting and abstinence merely as part of their beauty regimen to lose weight.

“On the eve of Ash Wednesday, they weigh 130 pounds.

After the Lenten season, they only weigh 90 pounds. They tell themselves that they don’t need other beauty tips anymore because all they have to do is to fast,” he said.

There were also some faithful who would do charity work to become popular and as for some politicians, to make the headlines of newspapers and attract more voters, the cardinal pointed out.

“All these acts are not toward God but toward oneself,” Tagle said. “What does Jesus call these people? Hypocrites!

[Those] engaging in religious activities not in order to return to God but to be full of self. That is not holiness. That is definitely not a way to return to God. That is hypocrisy.”

For a more genuine act of fasting, alms-giving and prayer,

one must become poor so that others may become rich in God’s love—like a mother who gives her only food for her child to eat or a couple who cares for each other when one is sick despite an argument.

“That is what true prayer, true alms-giving and true fasting is all about. They are always of becoming poor so that others may become rich in God’s love,” said Tagle.

In prayer, the same must also be done, he said, explaining that one must sacrifice his time allotted for himself in order to be in communion with God. While it would be pleasurable to spend time watching telenovelas, playing video games and window shopping, Tagle exhorted the faithful to spend a little less time for themselves this Lenten season.

“Let us be a little poorer in our time. [Let us have less] time for ourselves but [more] time to commune with God. And when we are poor because we commune with God, our relationships will be enriched. We will be more patient. We will be more kind and we will be more forgiving,” he said.

Pampanga—The re-encatment of Christ’s passion and death, with actual nailing on the cross as part of the Lenten Rites.

PHOTO BY TONY MAGDARAOG / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

He also encouraged the faithful to change the ways of the world, where one becomes poor so that others can become rich.

“That is not the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Lent. What Jesus did was he became poor so that others could prosper.”

Malacañang issued on Wednesday a statement calling on government officials and employees to go into quiet introspection during Lent and see whether “our lifestyle brings out good and is truthful, righteous, just, and above, all, in accordance with our Lord’s commandments.”

The statement, read by presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda at a news briefing, urged the bureaucracy to “continue to spread the good news

in every sphere of human activity and strive to be beacons of hope, so that those who doubt and despair may see that, by working together, we can truly build a more just and inclusive Philippines.”

According to Malacañang, those who observed the Ash Wednesday ritual should bear in mind what the Scriptures said: “For dust you are and to dust you will return. This reminds us that it is only through authentic service to our neighbors, and the commitment to truth and justice, that we can bring about meaningful change in our respective communities.” ■ With a report from Michael Lim Ubac

Delfin Lee’s love of luxury cars led to his fall, say police

BY MARLON RAMOS Philippine Daily Inquirer THE DISCOVERY of the identity of Delfin Lee’s mistress and his penchant for luxurious rides did him in.

The fugitive real-estate magnate had been going around the metropolis in style despite the order for his arrest issued by the Pampanga Regional Trial Court, according to a police official directly involved in tracking down Lee. Hunted since May 2012, the owner of GlobeAsiatique Realty Holdings Corp. was arrested at a ritzy hotel casino in Ermita, Manila, on Thursday night.

His biggest mistake? The high-end vehicles he was using were all registered under the name of his 41-year-old livein partner with whom he has three children, the source said.

“We really started from

scratch in our task to locate and arrest him,” said the police official, who agreed to talk with the Inquirer on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to speak on the matter.

er not to name the woman, saying she was not in anyway involved in the syndicated estafa case filed against Lee. Luxury cars

Big break

“We got a big break when we were able to determine the identity of Mr. Lee’s live-in partner sometime in December,” he said.

“From there, we searched where the woman was staying and what vehicles she was using. We found out from the records of the LTO (Land Transportation Office) that she actually owned several highend vehicles,” the official said.

Agents of Task Force Tugis, a crack team of police investigators created by Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Alan Purisima, accomplished what other law enforcement units had failed to do even

Globe Asiatique developer Delfin Lee. PHOTO FROM SOLARNEWS.PH

after President Benigno Aquino III offered a P2-million reward for Lee’s arrest.

“His arrest was the result of months of careful investigative research and intelligence gathering. We used several informants to find Mr. Lee,” the source said.

“The PNP chief had also been badgering us to produce good www.canadianinquirer.net

results since Task Force Tugis was created in August last year,” he added.

The police official said the task force received information that Lee was hiding in Metro Manila, riding in different luxury vehicles owned by his mistress in getting around the metropolis.

The source asked the Inquir-

He said the woman owned a Dodge Durango, a Porsche Cayenne, a Ford Expedition, a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Mitsubishi Adventure.

Lee, on the other hand, owned a Porsche Panamera, he added.

“But he seldom used the Panamera because he knew the authorities were already hot on his trail,” the PNP official said.

“Mr. Lee was using his live-in partner’s vehicles alternately to avoid suspicion. The windows of the vehicles had dark tints, which made it difficult for us to determine if he was really inside the vehicle every time we did surveillance operations,” he said. ❱❱ PAGE 12 Delfin Lee’s

Philippine News

9 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

PH-China venture in EEZ ‘illegal’

BY CHRISTINE O. AVENDAÑO Philippine Daily Inquirer SUPREME COURT Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio warns that any move by Manila to enter into joint-development ventures with Beijing over the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ) will be a culpable violation of the Constitution.

Carpio said the basic law of the land mandated that the use and enjoyment of the country’s EEZ was exclusive only to Filipinos.

“Any joint venture with China under its terms will constitute a culpable violation of the Constitution, a sellout of our national patrimony,” he said.

Carpio spoke before the Philippine Women’s Judges Association on March 6 about protecting the country’s marine wealth in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), which he hoped would be “the advocacy of every Filipino.”

China’s offer to the Philippines and other claimant states for joint development of disputed areas, which China has been pitching in, setting aside sovereignty issues, posed three problems, he said.

First, China wanted to jointly develop only the EEZ of the Philippines but not that of China.

“In effect, China is saying to the Philippines, what is exclusively China’s economic zone is China’s alone but what is exclusively the Philippines’ economic zone belongs both to China and the Philippines. And if the Philippines does not agree, China’s warships will be there to prevent the Philippines from exploiting its exclusive economic zone,” Carpio said.

Unclos

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), every coastal

state is entitled to a 370-km (200-nautical mile) EEZ, subject to boundary delimitation in case of overlapping EEZs with other coastal states.

The EEZ is the area extending 370 km from the baselines of a coastal state. Under the Unclos, EEZs must be drawn from the baseline of a coast of a continental land or island capable of human habitation of its own, according to Carpio.

A second problem has to do with the precondition that those states that agree to the offer should recognize the nine dash-line map on which almost 90 percent of the South China Sea is being claimed by China, he said.

Carpio said this meant that the participating state would have to vacate any island it possessed and give it to China, as well as renounce any maritime claim in China’s nine-dash-line area.

He said that if the Philippines agreed to the joint-development proposal, it would give up its “exclusive sovereign rights to exploit all living and nonliving resources in its EEZ,” and waive its exclusive right to exploit its ownmineral resources on its extended continental shelf.

Carpio said these problems were the reasons other claimant states were not receptive to China’s offer of joint development. Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan also claim parts of the South China Sea. He said China’s joint development offer would negate the maritime entitlements of the Philippines under the Unclos.

“This is constitutionally impermissible because our 1987 Constitution mandates the State to ‘protect the nation’s marine wealth in its EEZ and to reserve its use and enjoyment to Filipino citizens. Any joint development with China constitutes a culpable violation of

the Constitution,” Carpio said.

Chinese contractors But he said Chinese companies could take part in the exploitation of oil and gas in the Philippine EEZ but only as “technical and financial contractors” of the government or Filipino companies under Philippine law and not Chinese law.

They can be paid in kind, an arrangement that is being observed in the Malampaya gas field where Shell is the technical and financial contractor of the government.

Carpio said none of the claimant states to the Spratlys had taken up China’s joint development offer because it would mean “a complete surrender to China’s outlandish, ‘indisputable sovereignty claims.’”

Arbitration in UN

He said the Aquino administration was fulfilling its constitutional duty to protect the nation’s marine wealth in its EEZ by filing an arbitration case against China in the United Nations.

“This exercise of pursuing the arbitration case against China is to reserve the use and enjoyment of our marine wealth in our EEZ exclusively to Filipinos, as mandated by the Constitution, which we have all sworn to uphold,” Carpio said.

He said that what was at stake in the filing of the arbitration case was whether the Philippines would keep or lose 80 percent of its EEZ (including the Reed Bank and Malampaya) and 100 percent of its extended continental shelf in the West Philippine Sea. But Carpio maintained that China’s nine-dash-line claim did not comply with the basic requirement of the Unclos for drawing EEZs. He said there was no basis under international law for China’s claim to a historical right to the waters enclosed

www.canadianinquirer.net

Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio say any joint venture by the Philippines with China is a culpable violation of the Constitution because the basic law of the land mandated that the use and enjoyment of the country’s EEZ was exclusive only to Filipinos.

VIDEO GRAB FROM ANC

within the nine-dash line in the South China Sea. He noted that the Unclos had extinguished all historical rights of other states within the 370km EEZ of the adjacent coastal state. Likewise, the Unclos did not recognize historical rights as bases for claiming EEZs or the extended continental shelves of other claimant states.

Scarborough Shoal

Carpio said China should be prohibited from claiming Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal, which lies off the coast of Zambales province.

While China claimed that Scarborough Shoal or Huangyan Island to the Chinese (or Nanhai Island based on documents showing that a Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing visited it in 1279), it claimed in 1980 that Nanhai Island was in Xisha or the Paracels, this time to counter Vietnam’s historical claim of the Paracels.

The Chinese foreign ministry back then also said the island was visited by the Chinese astronomer in 1279.

“One could not imagine how

Gou Shoujing went ashore to visit Scarborough Shoal when it was just a rock, with no vegetation, and did not even have enough space to accommodate an expedition party,” Carpio said.

Carpio also dismissed the Chinese claim that the Chinese astronomer had installed one of 27 Chinese observatories on Nanhai Island, as it was impossible to make such an installation on the shoal at that time.

“In short, it is both physically and legally impossible for Scarborough to be Nanhai Island— physically because no observatory could possibly have been installed in 1879 on the tiny Scarborough rocks, and legally because China has already officially declared that Nanhai is in the Paracels, more than 380 nmi (704 km) from Scarborough,” he said.

Scarborough Shoal is 230 km (124 nmi) from Zambales and lies within the Philippines’ EEZ. Because it is nonhabitable, the shoal has a 22-km (12nmi) territorial sea and thus it cannot generate an EEZ, contrary to China’s claim, according to Carpio. ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 10

ERC voids...

President Aquino’s spokesman, Herminio Coloma, agreed with the ERC order directing Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC), operator of the spot market, to recalculate the price of electricity from November to December 2013.

“We note the manifestation made (Tuesday) by the Energy Regulatory Commission to the Supreme Court regarding its March 3, 2014, order, ruling that the prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market during the period covering the Malampaya shutdown could not qualify as ‘reasonable, rational, and competitive,’” Coloma said at a briefing in Malacañang.

“Hence, the ERC has ordered the imposition of regulated prices in lieu of the voided rates,” Coloma said.

Based on ERC’s own simulation, the WESM prices for the period may drop by “more than half.”

This means the WESM component of the generation cost and related charges will also go down. However, the actual WESM price will come from PEMC and the actual impact on Meralco bills will have to be determined by the distribution utility, the ERC said. ❰❰ 1

Common good

The ERC said the lack or failure of competition on the spot market “necessitates government intervention” to protect consumers from unreasonably high market prices.

“Government intervention in this case is a valid exercise of the state’s police power and can be done by the regulatory body to which the said power has been delegated and to intervene when the common good so demands,” the ERC said in its order.

Coloma said the ERC ruling would cover WESM prices in Luzon but excluded Meralco in view of the high court’s temporary restraining order (TRO).

The Supreme Court is hearing suits against Meralco in connection with its controversial increase of P4.15 per kWh to be implemented in three installments.

The ERC approved a staggered rate increase that was to have been collected in December, February and March, drawing public condemnation.

The Supreme Court, howev-

er, has issued a second 60-day TRO stopping the rate increase.

The TRO ends in April.

When added to the generation charge of P5.667 per kWh, the increase would have resulted in a power-generation charge of P9.107 per kWh without the staggered implementation. (The generation charge is not for Meralco but for its power suppliers.)

A typical household consuming 200 kWh a month would have to shell out a one-time increase of P830, pushing its monthly bill from P2,212 to P3,041.48.

Meralco wanted to collect a P4.15 per kWh rate adjustment from its 5.3 million customers to recover some P9.6 billion in power generation costs.

Simultaneous shutdowns

The rate increase stemmed from the shutdown of the Malampaya gas pipeline for maintenance from Nov. 11 to Dec. 10 last year.

A number of power generation plants also shut down during the period, creating a 45-percent shortfall in the average 6,000 megawatts that Meralco supplies to customers.

The shortfall forced Meralco to buy more expensive supply from the WESM and to pass on the cost to customers.

The shutdown of the pipeline also prompted plants that use the cheaper natural gas from Malampaya and supply power to Meralco to use more expensive fuel.

Collusion, calls for resignation

Lawmakers and the Department of Energy have accused industry players of collusion that led to the huge rate increase in Meralco’s generation charge.

Allies of the President in Congress have called on ERC Chair Zenaida Ducut and members of the commission to step down for not protecting the interests of the public when the agency approved the huge rate increase last December.

In the wake of the public outcry over the huge rate increase and call for ERC officials to step down, the ERC ordered a recalculation of electricity spot market rates for November and December 2013, which are billed in December and January, respectively.

At a briefing, ERC Director

The Energy Regulatory has voided its earlier approval last December of the P4.15 per kilowatt-hour rate increase in generation charge that Manila Electric Co. had sought.

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Francis Saturnino Juan said the more immediate impact of the order would be on Meralco’s pending petition to stagger the recovery of deferred generation costs for the January billing month over six months.

The generation charges and related taxes for the billing month of January were temporarily capped at P5.67 per kWh instead of the actual P10.23 per kWh in deference to the Supreme Court order on the December rates.

Of the P5.67 per kWh, generation cost alone accounted for P4.56 per kWh, of which P3.60 per kWh was attributed to spot market prices. The rest came from the cost of bilateral contracts and the fuel costs of three plants supplied by the Malampaya gas platform (which went on maintenance shutdown) that had to use more expensive alternative fuel.

The P4.15 per kWh rate increase in the December billing is the subject of an extended TRO by the Supreme Court.

Out of the total deferred increase, generation charges accounted for P3.44 per kWh and the rest were from taxes and related charges. In turn, out of the P3.44 per kWh, the WESM alone accounted for P2.42 per kWh and P1.03 per kWh was from fuel cost of natural gas-fed plants.

Malacañang upheld the authority of the ERC, an independent and quasi-judicial regulatory body, to void the rates www.canadianinquirer.net

during the covered period.

Police power

“We note finally that the ERC exercised government’s police power to stop the imposition of ‘excessive, exorbitant, unreasonable, or very high prices’ of electricity in compliance with its mandate under the Epira (Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001),” Coloma said.

“We affirm government’s commitment to protect the citizens’ welfare by ensuring stable and reasonable electricity prices,” he said.

But Coloma hinted that the ERC might have found evidence of possible collusion and uncompetitive behavior among players of the power sector that was widely blamed by the public for the high power rates in the country.

“We note further that this ruling is the outcome of ERC’s inquiry into the behavior of market players during the Malampaya shutdown that preceded Meralco’s imposition of the questioned power rate adjustments,” he said.

Lower charges

Meralco said the pass-on charges in its customers’ electricity bills for December and January may drop as regulators ordered a recalculation of spot market rates.

“It (charges) will be lower for January. The question is how low,” Meralco first vice presi-

dent William S. Pamintuan said at a briefing.

He said the impact on the January rates would be felt by customers first. For the December rates, the subject of the TRO, will be computed later when the case is resolved.

Meralco officials declined to give initial estimates of how much lower the bills would be, saying the company first would have to recompute the billing from PEMC. “It’s all subject to final PEMC numbers. We have to wait for that to avoid confusing customers and then we can do whatever needs to be done. We can reflect adjustments in later bills, for example,” Pamintuan said.

He said Meralco would draw guidance from the ERC on how it could recover any of the adjusted rates.

Juan said the ERC had directed PEMC to recalculate the prices during the affected period since these appeared unjustified considering the many plant outages and “under-offers” of power capacity during the supply period.

The ERC also ordered PEMC to issue a new billing to Meralco seven days from March 11.

Juan said the ERC had found basis to intervene in the market after determining that the WESM prices during the period could not qualify as reasonable, rational and competitive due to the confluence of factors accompanying the tight supply situation. ■

Philippine News

11 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Binay’s VP: Ate Vi or Jinggoy Presidential hopeful to also tap Pacquiao for 2016 Senate slate

BY TARRA QUISMUNDO, NORMAN BORDADORA AND GIL C. CABACUNGAN Philippine Daily Inquirer ALTHOUGH THE next presidential election is still two years away, Vice President Jejomar Binay has already begun putting together his slate for the 2016 elections while at the same time building a new political party to carry his presidential bid.

Reaffirming his intent to seek the highest national post, Binay yesterday confirmed that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada and Batangas Gov. Vilma Santos-Recto were among those being considered to become his running mate.

“He (Jinggoy) is being considered. Just like Governor Vilma is also being considered. As they say in English, ‘it ain’t over till it’s over.’ In other words, it ain’t over who will become my vice president until we have declared,” Binay told reporters.

He said Sarangani Rep. Manny Pacquiao would also definitely be part of his senatorial slate, saying he hopes to complete his lineup early.

“Yes, we will include him (Pacquiao) in the slate... We’ve

been talking about it even before the 2013 elections,” Binay told reporters.

He did not say who else were being considered to join the slate but admitted that the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) had already begun looking for possible candidates.

Internal rifts

Binay, who recently decided to leave his longtime party PDP-Laban (Partido Demokratikong PilipinoLakas ng Bayan) due to rifts within the group, said UNA would remain standing as his coalition.

He said his still unnamed party would apply for membership in the coalition once it is formalized.

“I can tell you, we are already looking for those interested to become our senatorial candidates. We don’t want to experience again what happened before, when we failed to complete the slate because of lack of time,” Binay said.

“As much as possible, we want to have [a list] to choose from. We hope to complete the 12 early before the elections,” he said.

Pressed on who else were being considered apart from

Pacquiao, Binay said: “One at a time. There will be no excitement if you already know.”

Binay is set to launch his new political party on June 12, coinciding with the nationwide celebration of Independence Day. Estrada yesterday said he’s glad Binay was considering him to be his running mate in 2016.

“I’m just happy to be one of those being considered,” he said.

Asked about Santos-Recto, the other potential running mate of Binay, Estrada said, “She’s also very good. Very charismatic. A superstar.”

Sen. Ralph Recto, however, said his wife won’t run for any elective position.

No plans of running

“We appreciate all considerations but the governor has no plans of running,” Recto said in a text message. “She has no plans of running for any post and is busy governing the province of Batangas,” he added.

Minority Leader and San Juan Rep. Ronaldo Zamora yesterday said Binay and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas were still the top prospects for the presidential race and all the rest were just pretenders.

“In order to have a serious

Batangas Mayor Vilma Santos and Senator Jinggoy Estrada.

PHOTO FROM ANGSAWARIKO.COM

chance at winning the presidency, one has to have funds, an organization or a party, and name recall. At this point, only Binay and Roxas have these, the rest are just pretenders,” said Zamora in an interview.

Zamora is perceived to be a backer of Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano of the Nacionalista Party, who has also announced his desire to run for the presidency.

Ruling party’s bet

The ruling Liberal Party (LP) has continued to look to Roxas as its presidential bet in 2016

despite his loss to Binay in 2010.

Some LP insiders claim that President Aquino has been coaxing his friend, Sen. Francis Escudero, to be Roxas’ running mate.

LP leaders reckon that an endorsement by the President, whose popularity has remained relatively high since his landslide victory four years ago, could provide the winning edge to any aspirant who is popular but lacks the necessary resources such as Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery Panfilo Lacson and Sen. Grace Poe. ■

Cristina on JPE: Womanizer, yes; thief, no

BY CHRISTIAN V. ESGUERRA Philippine Daily Inquirer THE WOMAN who stood quietly behind him all these years has come out and dropped her own bombshell against Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile: She still loves him.

Speaking in an exclusive television interview, Cristina Ponce Enrile spoke of her long struggle with her husband’s alleged womanizing in their 56year marriage, confirming that she once left for the United States to seek a divorce.

Cristina said the last straw was Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, Enrile’s former chief of staff who, like the 90-year-old senator, was also implicated in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam.

“Yes, it is true,” Cristina ad-

mitted in Winnie Monsod’s “Bawal ang Pasaway” program on GMA News when asked if Reyes was the reason she wanted to leave Enrile that time.

“Because I had heard that she was already too long ‘coz he [had] had many girls before Gigi, many girls. But they [did] not last too long, [but] with Gigi, it lasted long,” she recalled.

“Somebody told me that it’s not only this time. It’s more years that you don’t know [about]. So that’s what got me.”

Still, the wife came to the husband’s defense in the face of allegations that he channeled huge portions of his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to bogus organizations put up by Janet Lim-Napoles.

“I don’t think that Johnny is that stupid,” she said. “I don’t think so, I don’t think so, I don’t believe that he’s involved at all.”

Just as convinced was Cristina that her husband had nothing to do with smuggling in Cagayan, a running allegation in Enrile’s political base.

“No, no, that I can vouch for it,” she said, recalling one meeting where Enrile supposedly told those in attendance: “I don’t want to know that anybody tries to smuggle anything, even toothpick.”

Of all the women involved with Enrile—Cristina counted 38 affairs—it was only Reyes that prompted her to fly to the United States and seek divorce.

She said she eventually reconsidered after Enrile told her, “Over my dead body.”

Cristina said she had met Reyes “only one time,” but preferred not to go into details, other than that she saw the exchief of staff in the other house in the compound where Enrile www.canadianinquirer.net

was staying.

“It was not nice,” she told Monsod, who then asked, “And you gave it to her?”

“Oh yes,” she replied. “I decided, alsa balutan [time to pack my bags] and try to get a divorce.”

By her own admission, Cristina was not one to take her husband’s womanizing lightly, at least early in their marriage. She said he began fooling around “after about six months after my first child.”

The couple has two children, Katrina and Juan Ponce “Jack” Jr., a former congressman.

Roller-coaster marriage

Cristina admitted that she once stormed the house of an alleged Enrile mistress and fired at the gate. Next stop was Enrile’s office where she made a mess.

“It’s like a roller-coaster,” she said, referring to her long marriage with Enrile. “He’s not a palikero [playboy]. The women are the ones who [offered themselves to him].”

“Would he bite?” Monsod asked. “Oh, definitely,” she replied, recalling how Enrile would supposedly ogle girls whenever they had dinner outside, say, in a hotel lobby.

“When he looks around like that and follows the girl, I tell myself, “Uh-oh, and I’m correct.”

When she returned home after a failed attempt to divorce Enrile, she said he and Reyes “lay low” for a while. “I don’t think it’s an affair anymore. I think it’s a necessity ...” she said.

Asked if she still loved her husband, she said: “I think the word is an affection that I have because he’s the father of my children and I respect him for that.” ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 12

Delfin Lee’s...

Since he went into hiding, Lee stayed most of the time in an apartment at the ritzy Governor’s Place residential block on Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City, with his mistress and their children, the official said.

He said Lee was also seen frequenting a house in Parkway Village in Quezon City and an apartment at the GA Tower residential building on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue in Mandaluyong City that Lee owned.

Before he was arrested in the lobby of Hyatt Regency Hotel and Casino, the PNP official said, Lee left Governor’s Place at around 1 p.m. in his mistress’ Porsche Cayenne with license plate No. XRE-761.

When the vehicle got stuck in traffic on its way to the hotel, the official said, a motorcycleriding member of the arresting team managed to get close to it and saw a man inside “who looked like Delfin Lee.” ❰❰ 8

“Luckily, the window tint of the Cayenne was not that dark.

Our agent was able to make a positive identification of the subject,” the police official said.

Stakeout

He said he and his team decided not to enter the hotel and just place a stakeout in the area to avoid calling the attention of Lee’s driver and their other companions.

The official said he and his team were not sure exactly where in the hotel Lee was, but were told by an informant that the fugitive was in a meeting with his lawyer and his business partners in a private room.

After waiting for almost four hours, he said, Lee and his group emerged at the lobby of the hotel. It was 6:45 p.m.

Plainclothes policemen walked up to Lee and arrested him.

The police official vehemently denied the claim of Lee’s lawyer that the arrest was illegal,

saying the arresting team informed the fugitive businessman why he was being arrested.

“Mr. Lee was immediately handcuffed. We read him his rights. We also explained to his lawyer that the arrest warrant against his client was still valid and in effect,” he said.

Lee was then taken to Camp Crame to undergo medical checkup. Police also took his mug shots and fingerprints for documentation.

Asked if Lee had become too lax since the controversy over the P7-billion housing scam has been buried by the pork barrel scam, the source said: “I don’t think so. He was really very unpredictable. He was like that since the first day we tried to track him down.”

“We were just lucky that all our hard work paid off. This victory of the rule of law is a joint effort of several police units and not just Task Force Tugis alone,” he said. ■

Ghost of ‘Sendong’ haunts Cagayan de Oro

BY DJ YAP Philippine Daily Inquirer CAGAYAN DE ORO, PHILIPPINES—The ghost of Tropical Storm Sendong haunts this city more than two years after it struck, keeping residents alert to the possibility of another tragedy.

“That was the No. 1 lesson of Sendong,” said Romela Ratilla, a senior science research specialist at the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) office in Northern Mindanao, and herself a survivor of the monster storm’s devastation in December 2011.

“People listen to Pagasa (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration) now,” Ratilla said.

When Typhoon “Pablo” hit the country in December 2012 to

ravage another portion of Mindanao almost exactly a year after Sendong, “there were forced evacuations,” Ratilla recalled.

“Days before Super Typhoon Yolanda was to make landfall [in Eastern Visayas in November 2013], residents went to evacuation centers without having to be told,” she said.

The same thing happened when Tropical Depression “Agaton” struck here in January, inundating some lowland areas, but otherwise leaving the city unscathed.

Sendong killed 1,268 people when it tore through Northern Mindanao. Over half of the dead, 674 people according to the latest official count, were from Cagayan de Oro, and more than a third of the city’s population was affected, as the storm ❱❱ PAGE 15 Ghost of

Cha-cha debates to begin in May

BY LEILA B. SALAVERRIA Philippine Daily Inquirer THE CHARTER change resolution in the House of Representatives is headed to the plenary (entire house) next week, but debates won’t begin until May, according to Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II. The committee on constitutional amendments has issued its report on the measure which seeks to amend provisions of the Constitution that limit foreign participation in economic activities and certain industries in the country by adding the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” to the provisions.

The measure was approved on Monday after four hearings that began last month. Committee chair Rep. Mylene GarciaAlbano submitted the panel’s report to House leaders on Wednesday afternoon.

Hyper fast-tracking

But the “hyper fast-tracking” of the Cha-cha resolution has fueled concerns from critics that the measure, principally authored by Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, was being rushed to favor big business and foreign

interests, who are expected to benefit from the lifting of the protectionist provisions.

The bill’s proponents have said the measure is intended to boost the Philippine economy by attracting more foreign direct investments.

Gonzales said the resolution would be included in the House’s Order of Business, or agenda for the plenary.

This does not mean the debates could begin at once, however. The sponsorship speech for the measure will be delivered in May and it is only after this the debates can begin, Gonzales said.

Three-fourths vote

Proponents of the resolution are expected to court their colleagues for their votes, as the bill would need a three-fourths vote of all members to hurdle the plenary.

Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, one of the lawmakers who voted against the resolution, said the marathon hearings and speedy release of the committee report set a new record.

He said there were other measures the House should pay more attention to, such as the

repeal of the Electricity Power Industry Reform Act, which has been blamed for the high electricity rates, and the stalled freedom of information bill.

Discussions on the two bills began several months ago but they have yet to be approved by the committees hearing them.

Colmenares said the speed by which the resolution was moving might indicate the lawmakers were being enticed to support it in exchange for favors.

“It is this hyper fast-tracking of Cha-cha that fuels the argument that it is indeed greased by hidden pork,” he said in a statement.

Belmonte and Budget Secretary Florencio Abad have denied any “hidden pork” behind the Cha-cha move, with Abad pointing out the controversial Priority Development Assistance Fund, or congressional pork barrel, had been removed from the 2014 national budget and transferred to executive agencies.

Palace hand

Colmenares said that despite Malacañang’s assertion it had nothing to do with the Charter change measure, the Palace hand was obvious. www.canadianinquirer.net

Inside Congress. The public would soon be able to watch in real time what their elected representatives are doing in Congress once a pending bill is passed and enacted into law.

“They may deny it to high heavens but actions speak louder than words as can be seen in this case, especially since the philosophy of Cha-cha proponents to open up the economy to foreigners is no different from the economic strategy of Malacañang,” he said.

The Charter change resolution seeks to amend the Constitution’s articles concerning the national economy and patrimony; education, science, technology, arts, culture and sports; and general provisions.

Adding the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” would not automatically lift the

restrictions on foreign ownership of property and participation in certain industries, but would allow Congress to pass measures to remove those limits.

Opponents of the move have warned the measure was dangerous since it would mean Congress could change national economic policies anytime it wants to, and this could lead to instability.

They said this would be akin to selling the Philippines to foreigners and would be detrimental to the country’s economy, environment and national security. ■

Philippine News

13 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Dennis pins... ❰❰ 7

20 questions Revilla

from

The three senators, who have denied any wrongdoing, skipped the hearing as in the past, but Revilla sent a list of more than 20 questions for Cunanan through the committee chair, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III. In rush of the three senators to have their fund released, Cunanan said the lawmakers’ representatives would show up with the endorsement letter, even before the fund was transferred to the TRC. “You’re very detailed. I congratulate you. I should have let you stayed in UP,” commented Santiago, an alumna of the University of the Philippines.

Cunanan, who was TRC deputy director general when the senators dealt with agency from 2007 to 2009, admitted he often talked with Enrile’s chief of staff Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes.

The 42-year-old Cunanan, who wore rimmed glasses and was clad in a dark blue polo shirt, said he was endorsed to Reyes, who he believed was the alter-ego of the senator.

And while he dealt mostly with Reyes, Cunanan said it was hard to believe that Enrile didn’t know about the transactions.

Cunanan also confirmed that Estrada and Revilla submitted project proposals that had the same format and language, even misspellings.

‘Let it go’

Egged on by Santiago, he said that Enrile’s camp forwarded project proposals that were similar to those of his two colleagues.

“Yes,” he said when asked if this was part of “a grand conspiracy to plunder public funds” as he had stated in his affidavit, but stopped short of identifying the mastermind.

“That’s very difficult to say.”

“Let it go,” Santiago coaxed him, using words from a song in the movie “Frozen,” but to no avail.

In his affidavit, Cunanan said the project proposals of Estrada and Revilla appeared to have been prepared by one person or group.

He recalled an instance when Benhur Luy, who visited his TRC office to lobby the projects, called the offices of Estrada and Revilla, and handed him

the phone so he could talk with their staff, and eventually, the senators.

Luy, erstwhile chief aide of Napoles, confirmed that he called Estrada’s staff Pauline Labayen and Revilla’s staff Richard Cambe before handing the phone to Cunanan.

“I was even doubting if he can really call, but he did,” Cunanan said of Luy. “I think he first talked with Labayen. When I got the phone, Labayen told me: ‘Director, the senator will talk to you.’”

“Of course, I was shocked when it was passed to me. The senator asked, ‘What seems to be the problem? Why don’t you complete it because it’s being awaited in the ground?’ I told him: ‘Senator, it’s still being processed. It’s not that easy.’

We ended there,” he added.

He didn’t doubt that it was Estrada on the other line because he was familiar with the senator’s voice on TV and in the action films he appeared in.

‘Kap is my idol’

Cunanan said he next talked with Cambe, who asked if there was a way that the release of the fund could be fast-tracked.

“I said it’s now being processed. Then I was put on hold for a while, and Cambe passed the phone to the senator. He asked ‘What’s taking you too long? That’s my PDAF. The NGO is authorized, maybe you could speed it up,’” he added, recalling his conversation with Revilla.

Cunanan said he could not recall the exact conversations, but admitted: “I don’t get to talk to senators every day.”

He said thatwas the first time he spokewith Estrada and the second time with Revilla.

“I also watch TV. ‘Idol ko si Kap,’” he later said, referring to Revilla’s former TV show, to prove that he was familiar with the senator’s voice.

Santiago later told reporters that Cunanan’s testimony established the involvement of the three senators in the racket.

“What’s important is there’s conspiracy as seen in the documents. In all three offices of the senators, the format, phraseology was exactly the same. It looks like they just copied from each other. They had a template and agreed to follow a certain modus operandi as evidenced by the uniform use of supporting documents,” Santiago said. ■

Best revenge: Miriam urges Gigi to turn state witness

BY TJ BURGONIO Philippine Daily Inquirer SEN. JUAN Ponce Enrile and his wife, Cristina, are painting Enrile’s former chief of staff Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes as the “stand-alone” culprit in the P10-billion pork barrel scam, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said.

The “best revenge” then for Reyes is to fly home to Manila and turn state witness against Enrile, her fellow suspect in a plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the scam, Santiago said.

“This couple, the Enriles, are trying to make Gigi Reyes a stand-alone culprit for all the kickbacks that he received under the pork barrel schedule,” Santiago said while quizzing witness Dennis Cunanan at the continuation of the Senate probe of the scam.

In a recent TV interview, the senator observed that Enrile had managed to steer clear of the scam by letting Reyes handle pork barrel transactions and his wife vouching for this and saying that he did not steal any money.

It now appeared that Enrile’s camp was engaged in a “lurid scheme” for Reyes “to take the criminal blame not only for his plunder but also for his moral turpitude in the sense of sexual addiction openly displayed as a public official,” Santiago said.

The senator, who had tangled with Enrile over the release of different amounts of Christmas bonus to senators in December 2012, said she had known Reyes to be a genial person.

“For me, as a humble friend of this young woman, Attorney Gigi Reyes, whom I knew because I was a trial judge when she was a law student in UP. Her professor in procedure told the class to observe my proceedings in my courtroom. That’s how I got to know her. And throughout her entire length of duty in the Senate, she never showed me anything but a pleasant and accommodating disposition,” she said.

Being dropped

“And so I grieve as a neighbor and as a friend of Attorney Gigi www.canadianinquirer.net

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago says the “best revenge” for Gigi Reyes (bottom photo) is to fly home to Manila and turn state witness against Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, her fellow suspect in a plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

PHOTO FROM INQUIRER.NET AND INTERAKSYON.COM

Reyes that she’s now being–in Tagalog, hinuhulog [or being dropped]. She’s the only one at fault,” she added.

And using Cunanan’s testimony as a reference, Santiago said Reyes was again being tagged as the key person who signed documents for Enrile.

Yet, Santiago said she doubted that Reyes got into this on her own because she believed Enrile used Reyes as “front.”

‘Best revenge’

Then she dispensed this advice: “I think that the best revenge for Attorney Gigi since I know she will watch this on YouTube is: ‘Attorney Gigi, return the money that Enrile stole because I’m sure that Attorney Gigi is in charge of the safekeeping of these illegitimate funds that need to be laundered abroad, and turn the tables on Enrile by coming home and turning into state witness,” Santiago said.

In his testimony, Cunanan said he often dealtwith Reyes in the release of the senator’s pork barrel to preselected nongovernment organizations. He, however, said it was hard to believe that Enrile wasn’t aware

of the transactions.

Cunanan also said Enrile authenticated the documents signed by his staff when state auditors made verifications.

Conspiracy

Santiago could not help but compare Cunanan’s testimony with that of previous witness, socialite Ruby Tuason, who testified that she delivered kickbacks to Reyes in restaurants and that there were instances when Enrile would show up to pick up Reyes or to have coffee.

While Enrile appeared to have steered clear of such transactions, Santiago said he could not escape liability in the conspiracy to commit plunder.

“The guilt of one is the guilt of all,” she said, further pointing out Enrile did not stop any of the transactions.

She said the Supreme Court had ruled that if a person, who was part of a conspiracy, claimed that he was not a conspirator then he should at least prove that he tried to prevent the crime.

Enrile declined comment. He earlier said he would not discuss matters pertaining to the plunder complaint. ■

Philippine News

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 14

Pork witness to be questioned on lifestyle

BY NIKKO DIZON AND JEROME ANING Philippine Daily Inquirer

Police and other emergency workers on the scene after the bombing.

PHOTO BY AARON TANG / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Twice as... items in clear plastic bags. Anyone who does bring a bulky bag will be subject to search, officials said during a news conference at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency’s bunker in Framingham.

The new guidelines for spectators are similar to rules for runners made public several weeks ago by the Boston Athletic Association.

Authorities said they sought to strike a balance between keeping the traditional feel and character of the marathon and tightening security in response to last year’s deadly terror attack.

“We are confident that the overall experience of runners and spectators will not be impacted, and that all will enjoy a fun, festive and family-oriented day,” said Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

Schwartz said police are looking to spectators to be especially vigilant and report any suspicious items or activity.

Like runners, spectators are also being told they cannot bring containers with more than 1 litre of liquid and cannot wear bulky costumes or anything that covers their faces.

Unregistered runners known as “bandits” will be prohibited this year. Officials said the move was necessary because or security concerns and because organizers are expecting 9,000 additional runners this year—bringing the total field to 36,000—and double the typical number of spectators for a crowd of up to one million.

“This course is at capacity this year and it’s just common sense” for bandits to stay off the ❰❰ 1

course, Schwartz said.

Police and other public safety officials from the eight cities and towns along the marathon course have been meeting for months to come up with a plan to beef up security following last year’s deadly attack. Two brothers are suspected of building homemade pressure-cooker bombs and placing them in backpacks near the finish line.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges and faces the possibility of the death penalty. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with police several days after the bombing.

Kieran Ramsey, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, said the agency has “no specific intelligence indicating there is a threat to this year’s marathon.”

“At this point, we don’t have one, nor do we anticipate it,” Ramsey said.

Ramsey said the FBI and its law enforcement partners have met with officials in other cities that host large scale public events, including London and New York City.

Col. Timothy Alben, commander of the state police, said police will have more than 100 additional security cameras along the route and have also met with business owners to co-ordinate use of their surveillance cameras, as well. He urged spectators to report anything at all suspicious to police.

“In this world, you never eliminate risk, you never bring it down to zero ... but we are working very hard at reducing that risk level and managing it to the best of our collective abilities,” he said. ■

THE SENATE blue ribbon committee won’t just hear what Dennis Cunanan has to say about his dealings with senators allegedly involved in the P10-billion pork barrel scam, it will also take up his offer for a lifestyle check and receive new evidence from him about purported kickbacks to the lawmakers.

Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, the committee chair, told reporters yesterday that Sen. Grace Poe had requested that Cunanan, the director general of the state-owned Technology Resource Center, bring his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN).

Cunanan’s lawyer, Odessa Bernardo, said her client was prepared to provide evidence that would “bolster accusations of kickbacks against the senators.”

The lawyer declined to give details, but said Cunanan was “ready to face the senators and will answer all questions, including his supposed wealth and lifestyle.”

She told the INQUIRER that documents concerning the house at the swank White Plains subdivision in Quezon City where Cunanan is staying

and his SALN had been submitted to the Senate.

Cunanan is the first government official to offer evidence to the prosecution in return for his being dropped from the plunder case under investigation in the Office of the Ombudsman. The respondents number 38, including Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. and alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

Asked if the panel would test Cunanan’s credibility, Guingona said, “Of course, we will look into that,” including the official’s “demeanor and how he conducts himself.”

Guingona said this was the reason Benhur Luy, the principal witness in the alleged diversion of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allocations to ghost projects and kickbacks, would be present during the hearing, “to compare, to check if their testimonies are consistent with each other or if they are inconsistent.”

ceived kickbacks from the senator’s PDAF allocations, Guingona said it was up to the National Bureau of Investigation to locate her. “If they find her then we will summon her,” he said.

Ruby Tuason, a former Malacañang social secretary and confessed Napoles bagman, testified that she personally delivered kickbacks from Napoles to Estrada and Reyes.

Cunanan has testified that he had phone conversations with Estrada and Revilla, during which they told him to divert their PDAF allocations to dubious nongovernment organizations (NGOs).

The senators have denied wrongdoing. The lawmakers have boycotted the hearings, but Estrada said he would monitor today’s proceedings.

“I have to because I will [answer] all accusations if any via privilege speech. And I am ready. Even now, I can already deliver it. I have all the ammunition against him,” Estrada said.

Demolition campaign

Corroborative evidence

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has also been summoned to the hearing. She has agreed to Cunanan’s application as a provisional state witness.

Asked about Enrile’s former chief of staff, Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, who allegedly re-

Much has been reported in the media on Cunanan’s purported lavish lifestyle although De Lima said it was all part of a negative publicity campaign.

“Let him say what he wants to say. I am not scared of him,” ❱❱ PAGE 24 Pork witness

FOI bill passed by Senate INQUIRER.net MANILA, PHILIPPINES— The Senate on Monday passed on third and final reading the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill, Inquirer Radio 990AM said.

Reports said all 21 senators present voted for the approval of Senate Bill no. 1733 or the People’s Freedom of Information Act of 2013.

Senator Grace Poe, who sponsored the bill on the plenary floor as chair of the committee on public information, was among the first to announce the news on social media.

“Senate Bill NO 1733 or People’s FOI is hereby approved on third and final reading!” she wrote at 3:17 p.m. on Monday. www.canadianinquirer.net

Senate President Franklin Drilon last year said they would pass the FOI bill by March, after

months of interpellation.

However, the FOI bill still has a long way to go before it is passed into law since its counterpart version in the House of Representatives remains stalled at the committee level.

Speaker Fe l i c i a n o Belmonte promised that the lower chamber would pass the bill before his term ends in 2016.

Advocates of the FOI bill believe it will help improve transparency and accountability in government. ■

Philippine News

15 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Ghost of... ❰❰ 12

wiped out entire riverside villages, rendering a brown muck landscape.

‘Disaster imagination’

These days, there are few traces of Sendong’s destruction.

Houses in areas inland have been rebuilt, and roads and bridges have been fixed. Greenery has reclaimed places by the Cagayan de Oro river, which used to host settlements that were flattened by the storm. These have been declared hazard zones where no one is no longer allowed to build structures.

The 53-year-old Ratilla, whose twostory home sheltered 32 neighbors, along with her own family of four at Barangay (village) Balulang, said her fellow homeowners would now seek her out to ask for the latest weather bulletin.

“It’s like I became their ‘Pagasa,’ so I needed to arm myself with knowledge. I had to do a lot of studying myself so I can explain what the advisories mean,” she said.

This, according to Science Secretary Mario Montejo, is the kind of forward thinking that local officials and the general public need to have whenever catastrophe looms.

He described it as “disaster imagination,” a concept that was introduced to the DOST by Director Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).

“By using disaster imagination, our local chief executives and disaster manag-

ers can think and act two steps forward by anticipating—using scientific data— the potential of a hazard to wreak havoc in communities,” he said.

On Monday, Montejo led officials of the DOST and its attached agencies, Phivolcs and Pagasa, on a disaster preparedness roadshow called “Iba na ang Panahon,” in a two-month-long series of education campaigns nationwide.

Creative messaging

The Filipino slogan takes advantage of the two meanings of the word “panahon”: “time” and “climate,” to drive home the point that both are changing dramatically.

The caravan is part of an interagency government program dubbed “Science for Safer Communities,” which seeks to prepare communities for natural disasters using the tools of science and technology, such as radars and satellite imagery available online.

The DOST team is also supported by its Project Noah (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards), which the government jump-started in the aftermath of Sendong’s destruction.

Project Noah Executive Director Alfredo Mahar Lagmay urged government agencies to be creative in crafting messages about disasters to effectively convey information to the public more effectively.

For example, he said, one of his posts on Twitter containing a satellite image of the projected track of a recent storm attracted only about 40 “retweets” (shared or quoted

by his followers). But when he posted the same image with the caption “retweet for a better love life,” the number of retweets more than tripled, Lagmay said.

Partner agencies include the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Department of National DefenseOffice of Civil Defense, as the implementing arm of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, and of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-National Mapping and Resource Information Authority.

Disaster managers and experts are hopping from region to region, beginning last week in Pampanga, and then in Batangas, providing local government leaders, from the governor to the mayors, knowledge of scientific data interpretation for dissemination to ordinary people in te villages.

The Cagayan de Oro leg of the caravan was held at the Pryce Plaza Hotel, attended by about 300 local executives, disaster managers and government employees.

Cagayan de Oro Mayor Oscar Moreno said he considered the roadshow a very important gathering from which local officials could draw lessons in facing approaching disasters.

“You know, what happened to us in the last three years has been very, very daunting, terrifying and extraordinary: Sendong, Pablo, Yolanda and we don’t know how many others will follow—we hope no more,” Moreno said.

People’s initiative vs pork pushed

BY GIL CABACUNGAN Philippine Daily Inquirer BAYAN MUNA is pursuing a people’s initiative to forever ban the pork barrel in all its mutations— from the Priority Development Assistance Fund ( PDAF) to the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said the group had decided to take this route proposed by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno because the government and its congressional allies had taken steps to go around the Supreme Court’s ruling last November that declared the PDAF unconstitutional.

Under a “people’s initiative,” proponents of a constitutional amendment need to gather the signatures of at least three percent of the qualified voters in each congressional district and at least 10 percent of the total voters nationwide.

“The purpose of the people’s initiative is to forever ban the pork barrel system because it’s the main source of corrup-

tion and political patronage,” said Zarate.

Special purpose fund

“The SC decision pertains to the PDAF only as part of the President’s Special Purpose Fund. But if you examine the budget, it is still full of lump sums, especially under the Office of the President,” said Zarate in a text message.

In December, various antipork groups and personalities held the first national assembly for the abolition of the pork barrel system through a people’s initiative led by the broad alliance, #Abolishpork Movement.

Based on initial discussions, Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said the proposed law would seek the removal of lump-sum discretionary spending and off-budget items and the return of all unobligated and unreleased funds to the General Fund to avoid a repeat of the DAP. Both Colmenares and Zarate pointed out the Supreme Court has yet to decide on the legality of the DAP which was concocted by the Aquino administration as a means to transfer funds to other agencies and pet projects of lawmakers. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net

Collective memory

Montejo said the experience of Yolanda, whose destruction dwarfed those of Sendong and Pablo, killing more than 6,000 people in Eastern Visayas in November last year, could serve as a “good source of collective memory” about what a Signal No. 4 typhoon could do to coastal communities.

“This type of collective memory could be used to prompt us to not secondguess a warning once it has been issued from the national government to local communities,” he said.

Montejo noted that Sendong was the kind of storm that would visit in 50- to 75-year-cycles, and yet Sendong was followed by Pablo the following year, also in Mindanao in December. And then Yolanda struck the Visayas in November the next year.

“Strong storms that used to occur only after 50-75 years now occur year after year,” he said.

Ratilla said experience was the best teacher for the people of Cagayan de Oro, a city of 600,000. She and her neighbors now know exactly what to do if another big storm comes, she said.

“First, we will haul all our furniture and appliances to the second floor, and then we will evacuate to my sister’s house, which is on high ground and far from the river. We’re not going to try to weather the storm anymore,” Ratilla said. ■

Opinion

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 16

THERE’S THE RUB

Dark horses

By Conrado De Quiros Philippine Daily Inquirer RONNIE ZAMORA has an interesting thing to say about the electoral situation today. Only Jojo Binay and Mar Roxas are the serious presidential bets, the others are not. Including Alan Peter Cayetano whom he appears to be backing.

“In order to have a serious chance at winning the presidency,” he says, “one has to have funds, an organization or a party, and name recall. At this point, only Binay and Roxas have these, the rest are just pretenders.”

This reminded me of something I read some time ago about the way the US presidential elections have gone since the mid-1970s. Which was that all the presidents who came after the deposed Richard Nixon were people no one expected to become so.

Ford of course was just an accident, he happened to be next in line to Nixon, being the vice president. He subsequently lost to virtual unknown Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia turned politician, in 1976.

Carter in turn lost to Ronald Reagan, who had lost to Ford in the Republican primaries, and whom Paul Newman dismissed as a bad actor who, if he won, would be a bad president. Lo

and behold, he didn’t just win once, he won twice, and presided over the salad days of the United States in the 1980s.

He was followed by George Bush Sr. who, though Reagan’s vice president, was considered weak. He won after trailing Michael Dukakis for most of the campaign, but managed only one term. He lost to an equally virtual unknown, Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, who savaged him with the line, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton won a second term, ending with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any postwar US president.

Next was Bush Jr., who arguably became so only by performing a dagdagbawas on Al Gore in Florida. And following him came the darkest horse of all, pun fully intended, Barack Obama.

Talk of the best-laid plots of mice and men oft going astray. Hilary Clinton beware.

Of course the dynamics of American elections are worlds apart from ours, but some comparisons are still worth noting. Not the least of them is that the same trend has been roughly true for us since Marcos.

Cory of course was not the product of elections, although elections might have had to do with it as well. A few weeks before the Edsa 1986 Revolution, there was the snap election,

which didn’t just preface the Edsa Revolution but initiated it.

Fidel Ramos was not the wise-money bet, though he had the blessings of Cory. Ramon Mitra was. He had, as Zamora puts it, the funds, the organization, the party, and the name recall.

But the more interesting candidate was Miriam Santiago who jumped into the fray with a ragtag band and nearly stole the elections. Of course, to this day, she believes it was Ramos who did steal the elections from her. Or Ronnie Puno did, with Ramos’ blessings.

Talk of the best-laid plots of mice and men oft going astray. Hilary Clinton beware.

Only Erap was widely expected to be president. You could see it looming from a mile away, Joe de Venecia’s funds, organization, party and name recall were no match to Erap’s appeal to the masa. Ironically, he would be the one president who would not finish his term by way of impeachment.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had nothing to do with being elected. Like Ford, she inherited the presidency from Erap, unlike Ford she stole the presidency from Fernando Poe Jr. And of course the most unexpect-

ed president of all, P-Noy. What this suggests, in our case more than in the United States, is that while funds, organization and name recall are necessary to win the presidency, they are not sufficient. Indeed, what this suggests, in our case more than the United States, our elections not being ruled by a two-party system, and given that the candidates of our dominant parties have uniformly lost, is that party may not even be necessary, let alone sufficient.

What seems to be the more decisive element in winning the presidency here is having a larger-than-life, or mythical, or heroic aura or storyline.

It’s more than popularity, it lodges deeper in the psyche than popularity.

Even Marcos had it, though that is another story altogether. Which stands to reason, our culture being steeped in myth and legend, our heroes being larger-than-life and savior figures.

Cory was clearly so, being the Joan of Arc of Philippine politics. Ramos was so as well, his identification with Edsa not just coming from Cory’s endorsement but from his participation in it. Even Miriam benefited from a heroic image, striding forth to slay the dragon of corruption. That was how the youth in particular saw her, as I learned from students asking me then why I wasn’t sup-

porting her, she stood morally heads and shoulders above the rest. Who knows?

Maybe she did win the elections.

Alas, all that is gone now replaced by the image of her driving out presumed hecklers on the gallery during Erap’s impeachment while she defended him to high heaven.

Erap was so also, courtesy of his movies. We are a culture too that isn’t always able to distinguish fantasy and reality, a thing Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla have been trying to conscript to their cause. Only Gloria was not, although there was a larger-than-death quality too in her ability to corrupt everyone she met, like a Midas touch in reverse.

In any case, she never really trusted in elections to get to, and keep, power.

And of course P-Noy was so.

I look at Binay and Roxas, and I don’t see that quality at all in the one or the other. The nail on the coffin for Binay could very well be that he is even now considering having Jinggoy as running mate. And Roxas is so characterless he is just banking on P-Noy’s blessings to see him through.

Someone emerges who radiates a heroic resonance, preferably with funds, organization, party and name recall, and I don’t see why he, or she, can’t thunder past either one of them.

History is on her side. ■

ANALYSIS

China rides roughshod on neighbors

By Amando Doronila Philippine Daily Inquirer THE PHILIPPINES and the United States on Saturday jointly expressed concern over recent incidents in the South China Sea that “threaten freedom of navigation in disputed waters,” an apparent reference to China’s increasing assertiveness in pressing its territorial claims in the region.

In a joint statement at the conclusion of bilateral talks in Washington on March 6-7 ahead of US President Barack Obama’s visit to the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region in April, the two allies “emphasized the importance of upholding peace and stability, respect for international law, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation and overflight.”

Although the statement did not directly refer to China and did not specify any “developments,” it clearly referred to China’s enforcement at the start of the year of a new fisheries law requiring foreign vessels to first seek its permission before exploring waters it considered part of its territory and the water cannon attack

by Chinese Coast Guard vessels on two Philippine fishing boats on the Panatag Shoal (Scarborough Shoal) on Jan. 27.

The Obama visit is expected to determine up to what extent the United States will back the Philippines in defending its territory from further Chinese incursions.

Diplomatic solution The joint statement called for a “diplomatic” solution and, expressing concern that some “certain assertions” made were “vague,” said claimant nations should clarify their claims.

Without directly referring to it, the Philippines and the United States publicly rejected China’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea, saying it “lacked legal basis.”

The statement emphasized that maritime claims in the South China Sea must be derived from land features in accordance with the international law of the sea, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).

Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines claim parts of the South China Sea, but China claims 90 percent of the 3.5-millionsquare kilometer regional waterway.

The Philippines invoked the Unclos in bringing its territorial dispute with China to the United Nations for arbitration in January last year. The peti-

tion asked the UN arbitration tribunal to declare China’s nine-dash line claim invalid and to stop Chinese incursions into the West Philippine Sea. China has refused to participate in the arbitration, insisting it has “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea.

In a joint statement ...[of the Philippines and the United States]... the two allies ‘emphasized the importance of upholding peace and stability, respect for international law, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation and overflight.’

Bilateral talks While the Philippines and the United States have both called for the immediate conclusion of a binding code of conduct through multilateral negotiations between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and China to prevent rival claims from erupting into confrontations, China has insisted on bilateral negotiations, a mode that gives it the advantage of picking off its weaker neighbors one by one.

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Nothing illustrates China riding roughshod on its neighbors more vividly than a report by the Inquirer on March 7 about Chinese ships harvesting giant clams and corals to fill their black-and-red mother ship at Bajo de Masinloc (Panatag Shoal), off the Zambales coast, with impunity.

Nearby, three Chinese Coast Guard vessels stood guard.

An Inquirer photographer took pictures showing the steady presence at Bajo de Masinloc of Chinese vessels, which number from three to five at any given time, indicating how the Chinese have effectively seized the shoal.

There was no Philippine Coast Guard vessel in the area. But the Inquirer reported that while the Naval Forces Northern Luzon regularly monitors the shoal, it does not intervene, raising the question who is guarding Philippine territory and protecting Filipino fishermen.

Arrogant response In an arrogant response to the US strategic security policy of a “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region, China last week called on the United States to accept its growing security presence in East Asia and warned its neighbors that it would “respond effectively”

to safeguard its territorial integrity amid simmering maritime disputes in the region.

The Financial Times reported from Beijing that Fu Ying, spokesperson for the National People’s Congress, said, “If the US cares about peace and prosperity, it should support China’s aspirations for safeguarding territorial integrity and regional peace.”

The remarks, which came ahead of the parliamentary meeting, reflects China’s growing weariness with US regional dominance, particularly as Washington continues to press its “pivot” to Asia defense policy, which will see 60 percent of US warships deploying to the region by the end of the decade.

“The US has stated publicly that it has no plans to contain China,” Fu said. “We want to see if words are matched by actions.”

If any country “provokes or undermines security” in the region, Fu said, then China would “respond effectively to safeguard its territorial integrity and regional security.”

Fu did not specifically mention Japan, the Financial Times pointed out, but Beijing and Tokyo are engaged in an increasingly tense dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. ■

Opinion

17 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

VIEWPOINT

‘Perfect storm’?

By Juan L. Mercado Philippine Daily Inquirer “Filipinos share one common item in our everyday existence: rice,” National Scientist Gelia Castillo wrote in her book on a cereal that makes or breaks presidents. “Rice In Our Life” reviewed three decades of studies into rice that was sown between 6,000 BC and 400 AD, in the Philippines—from Ifugao to Lucena.

Rice self-sufficiency has been an upward moving target, “always out of reach, even as we calculate we are only three percent short,” she wrote.

“Seared deep in the psyche of Filipino politicians are crises when we could not find rice, even if we had the money to buy it.”

Unseasonal storms, meanwhile, ripped up the old rice calculus. Tropical Storm “Sendong” tore into Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in 2011, leaving 1,080 corpses. Typhoon “Pablo” later clobbered Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental.

This shattered the historical pattern of one typhoon cutting through Mindanao’s breadbasket every 18 years. Then, the Bohol earthquake in October and Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in November last year savaged farms.

“Only 97 percent sufficiency was

attainable for 2013,” the Department of Agriculture conceded. National Food Authority opened the applications for imports—for use and as buffer stock. Ayaw magsaligan ring tiyan, sa ana’t ibang taegsan, an Aklan proverb says. “Don’t count on someone else’s rice bin for what you eat.”

The immediate, however, can blur the long-term threats. The number of crop species that now feed more people than half a century ago is shrinking. Rice, wheat, sugar and potatoes form a new “globalized diet.”

“Over the past 50 years, diets around the world have become more similar,” notes Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture’s Colin Khoury. Today’s diet includes staples that were not important half a century ago, particularly oil crops like soybean.

Other crops however declined, including sweet potatoes, cassava, yams and millets. “This narrowing base raises concerns about the global food system’s resilience.”

Another danger is, “a more homogeneous global food basket makes agriculture more vulnerable to drought, insect pests and diseases,” Luigi Guarino, from Global Crop Diversity, told BBC’s environment reporter Mark Kinver. Diversity of

cultivated crops, in fact, declined by 75 percent during the 20th century, UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates. If this slide persists, “a third of today’s diversity could disappear by 2050.”

Seepage of crop diversity also jacks up the number of people exposed to harvest failures. And climate change compounds the risk.

“Warmer temperatures are causing malaria to spread to higher alti-

Seared deep in the psyche of Filipino politicians are crises when we could not find rice, even if we had the money to buy it.” - National Scientist Gelia Castillo tudes and once disease-free regions in Asia, South America and Africa,” says the Science journal. “A onedegree Celsius rise in temperature could lead to an additional three million cases” in a year, cautions University of Michigan’s Mercedes Pascual.

The Philippines targets nationwide malaria elimination by 2020.

But it still lacks a long-term domestic program even as international funding dwindles.

“A perfect storm of growing populations, climate change and dimin-

ishing resources for food production” confronts the world, warns the new “Foresight Report on Food and Farming Futures.” Commissioned by the United Kingdom, the two-year study involved 400 experts from 35 countries.

Do “we have 20 years to arguably deliver 40 percent more food; 30 percent more fresh water and double energy output?” asks UK’s chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington.

“The current system must be radically redesigned to produce more food sustainably. We can’t wait…”

“There is an urgency in taking what may be very difficult policy decisions,” he adds. “The food system is working for the better-off… But those at risk of hunger have least influence on decision-making.” The UK recommends that the most resourceintensive types of food be curbed.

Waste in food production has to be radically curbed.

Yearly, the Philippines loses a million metric tons of already-harvested rice for various reasons—from slipshod processing to shabby storage.

Cabbage spoilage mars a third of harvests, UP Los Baños studies found.

Fish losses crest at 40 percent.

Consumers in rich countries junk as much food as sub-Saharan Africa

produces. Wasting food is “stealing from the tables of the poor,” Pope Francis told a UN World Environment Day audience, noting that a culture of waste is despicable when many suffer from hunger. “Our grandparents were very careful not to throw leftover food.”

“Our so-called food surpluses are a mirage,” former FAO agricultural economist Ti Teow Choo stressed.

“Increase purchasing power of today’s poor even marginally. Then, those impressive stockpiles would be bought out overnight by people who needed the food but could not afford it.”

Government is trying to whittle down the poverty rate from 25 percent in 2012 to 16 percent by 2016.

When President Aquino steps down, he hopes there’ll be fuller rice bins.

What if Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla funneled their pork chunks to curbing post-harvest rice losses and to reducing fish and vegetable spoilage? They would have had the blessing promised to those who gave the hungry to eat.

Instead, they chose to sow the wind with fake NGOs. Ironically, they don’t have a clue why they’re reaping the whirlwind of what is a “perfect storm.” ■

AT LARGE

Three ‘Marias’ and one Princess

By Rina Jimenez-David Philippine Daily Inquirer THEY WERE baptized “Tres Marias” after regular “gigs” at the many proReproductive Health rallies held in recent years urging for the passage of this key health measure.

But the trio of Cooky Chua, Lolita Carbon and Bayang Barrios had no need of banding together to make a name for themselves. Individually, they were and are already “names,” albeit not so much in the world of pop and commercial music. But in the world of folk and so-called alternative music, the three are legendary, although I must apologize if the word makes them out to be weathered crones and withered women.

Certainly not Carbon, who rocked the grounds of Conspiracy Bar last weekend with her “non-virgin” rendition of a sappy pop ballad (“we do sing Pinoy pop, too!” they mock-protested) that transformed it from a teenage lament into a post-breakup anthem of survival and self-determination, especially with her throaty, world-weary pose.

Carbon is the most “senior” of the three women, reaching national prominence when her band “Asin” burst into the popular consciousness in the politically-charged late 1970s and early 1980s, successfully riding

on the still-nascent environmental movement at the same time. Not to be forgotten were her smoky vocals which lent the folksy songs of early “Asin” an air of mystery and seduction.

We are fortunate that after “Asin” disbanded, with Carbon disappearing for some years, she resurfaced some years back and is still singing, her locks of wild, unruly hair still swinging.

Chua, during the “Tres Marias” album launch, explained that Carbon had always been her “idol.” But Chua herself broke into the music scene in the early 1990s when her band Color It Red became one of the most popular contemporary Pinoy rock groups. Cooky, though, will always be identified with the song “Paglisan,” (Departure) described as a “haunting love elegy.”

Barrios was originally the vocalist in Joey Ayala’s band Ang Bagong Lumad, which means “the new indigenous,” Barrios herself being a Manobo. But in the intervening years, she has emerged as an artist in her own right, with her songs infused with ethnic touches—from the use of tribal instruments to her own ethnic wear and gestures. Today, much of her musical output is done in collaboration with her husband, Mike Villegas, with whom she has a daughter, Mayumi. *** I first caught the “Tres Marias” or

Three Mary’s during the tribute organized by Likhaan and other women’s groups for the late former health secretary Dr. Quasi Romualdez, who had “bloomed” in the years after he left government into an ardent, passionate women’s health advocate.

So it was little wonder that when the three women artists/activists decided to formally band together and launch their first album, they approached Likhaan with a sponsorship proposal.

And little wonder, too, that Likhaan, with support from international NGO Oxfam, agreed to provide the financial

[B]y their own personal histories and their dedication to art despite the changing times and shifting tastes of their audience, the “Tres Marias” proved to be true symbols of the Filipino woman, long may she reign. wherewithal for an album launch. But the night was dedicated not to a woman but to “Doc Quasi”. And not a few women felt their eyes misting during a video show on the good doctor, whose championship for reproductive health and rights was there for all to see, judging from his presence in so many pro-RH activities. Guests

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at the album launch were artists Noel Cabangon and Gary Granada, who had collaborated, at one time or another, with the three women, aside from making their own hit songs.

Still, women were feted, honored and adored that night under the shelter of a bamboo grove. It was a most fitting celebration of women’s strength and endurance. And by their own personal histories and their dedication to art despite the changing times and shifting tastes of their audience, the “Tres Marias” proved to be true symbols of the Filipino woman, long may she reign. *** Also in celebration of International Women’s Day, friends and colleagues decided to honor one woman in particular: Ana Maria “Princess” Nemenzo, who is formally associated with the women’s health NGO WomenHealth. She has also been associated with the women’s movement, with women’s issues, with women’s aspirations for over 30 years.

I first met Princess shortly after the ascension of Cory Aquino to the presidency in 1986, when she helped organize a meeting of women’s health advocates. At the time, news had spread that “Tita Cory,” whose rise to the presidency had been ardently supported by women’s groups, was about to sign an executive order which

would have “banned” all forms of family planning save for the “Church-approved” natural family planning.

At the time of the gathering there was barely a “women’s health movement,” and we were but a motley gathering of feminists, breastfeeding promoters, family planning advocates and health caregivers—united in our belief that women have the right to self-determination, especially when it came to our reproductive health, choices, and destinies.

The rumored “EO” was never issued, but it was only the first of many battles in a drawn-out war, one we are still waging! And in the years since I have known Princess, I cannot but be impressed with her energy and consistency, her dedication to the cause of women in particular, and to progressive causes in general.

Friends and colleagues threw Princess a surprise party on International Women’s Day, but deadlines prevented me from attending the affair. (Another friend said it was quite a feat that so many women were able to keep the party a secret!) But friends’ accounts and photos on social media prove not only that the affair was well-attended, but blessed with good feelings and positive vibes all around. I am proud to call you a friend and a sister, Princess! ■

FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

18

Canada News

Ukrainian Canadians pressure world powers to get Russia out of Ukraine

NEWS BRIEFS

FROM THE CANADIAN PRESS

BY TERRY PEDWELL The Canadian Press OTTAWA—Ukrainian-Canadians marched in Ottawa Sunday in an attempt to convince some of the world’s bigger powers to force Russia to remove its grip on Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Only France’s ambassador, Philippe Zeller, personally spoke with the dozens of protesters as they waved flags and placards outside the French embassy.

The demonstrations began in front of the Chinese embassy before snaking through the capital to buildings housing diplomats from France, the United States and the UK. Chanting anti-Russia slogans and waving placards, they urged the signators of a 1994 nuclear disarmament agreement with Ukraine to live up to the accord.

“We are now turning to the guarantors of the Budapest agreement, the countries that promised Ukraine to do everything in their capacity to prevent it from economic warfare and to protect its territorial integrity,” said protest organizer Lada Roslycky.

“At this time, they are grossly failing Ukraine’s needs.”

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was originally signed by Russia, the U.S. and the

PROVINCES HAVE MIXED REACTIONS TO KOREAN TRADE DEAL United Kingdom, giving Ukraine assurances of protection in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons.

China and France later gave assurances that they would also live up to the accord’s provisions.

“We just want to say that we stand in solidarity with Ukraine and its people,” Zeller told protesters outside the French embassy.

But an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday suggested the Budapest accord could actually be used by Russia as justification for sending troops into Ukraine to protect people in the Crimean peninsula.

Sergey Glazyev accused the United States of interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, saying Russia then had

no choice but to intervene.

Canada has made clear it supports the interim government in Kyiv, which Russia says was formed as the result a “coup.”

Last week, the Harper government imposed a travel ban on individuals it deemed as a threat to Ukraine.

As well, nine Russian soldiers participating in military exercises were ordered to leave Canada by the end of the day Friday.

Canada has sent two military observers, part of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, to monitor the Russian military situation in Ukraine. ❱❱ PAGE 22 Ukrainian Canadians

Aliens in the sky? Survey shows 1,100 UFOs spotted in Canada last year

BY CHRIS PURDY The Canadian Press WINNIPEG—Two children out sledding told their parents they heard a beeping noise before seeing what looked like a flying hotel, a massive structure with protrusions and windows. It flew over a nearby house and vanished.

The encounter is listed in an an-

nual survey that reports that 1,180 UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, were spotted in Canada last year.

A Winnipeg group called Ufology Research has been compiling data on suspected spacecraft sightings across the country for the last 25 years.

In its latest survey, released Tuesday, it said most of the 2013 observations were of lights in the night sky.

The most common sighting was of an orange star-like shape that lasted

an average of 13 minutes.

Almost half the sightings took place in Ontario. British Columbia and Alberta had the next highest numbers.

“It’s a matter of eliminating possible explanations, until we’re left with something we can’t explain,” said the group’s editor, Chris Rutkowski.

“It may or may not have anything to do with aliens, and very likely ❱❱ PAGE 44 Aliens in

OTTAWA—Canada’s pending free trade deal with South Korea is shaping up to be a tale of two provincial solitudes. Ontario is worried that Korean-made automobiles will flood the country imperiling the jobs of the province’s autoworkers. But Alberta says it “makes sense” for the province, on a number of fronts, including energy and agriculture.

HUNDREDS WITHOUT WATER IN WINNIPEG WINNIPEG—Hundreds of Winnipeg homes are without water and could be for weeks because of frozen pipes. Pat Dormer had her pipes thawed last week only to have them freeze up once again. By Chinta Puxley.

CANADA WINS FIRST GOLD AT SOCHI PARALYMPICS KRASNAYA POLYANA—Canada has its first gold medal at the Sochi Paralympic Winter Games.Cross-country skier Brian McKeever won the men’s visually impaired 20-kilometre race on Monday.

MANITOBA WANTS PANEL TO RULE ON CENSUS DISPUTE WINNIPEG— Manitoba wants the federal government to appoint a panel to rule on whether Statistics Canada undercounted the population by 18,000 in the last census— costing the province $100 million a year in transfer payments.

Finance Minister Jennifer Howard says Ottawa has a responsibility to help resolve the dispute.

A panel made up of a representative from Manitoba, Statistics Canada and a neutral chair could settle the dispute, she suggested Tuesday. By Chinta Puxley.

19 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

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World News

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 20

Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight exposes gaps in global passport control measures

BY JAMEY KEATEN The Associated Press Bombed out vehicles in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war.

PHOTO COURTESY OF VOICE OF AMERICA / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

A list of prominent people believed held by Syrian rebels The Associated Press BEIRUT—WITH THE release of 13 Greek Orthodox nuns held hostage by the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in Syria for over three months, here’s a list of some other prominent people, including clerics, journalists and activists still missing in Syria and believed in the captivity of rebels. Many are thought to have taken by radical factions, in particular the al-Qaida breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Clerics

Two bishops and a priest have been missing since last April, according to Syrian opposition activists and church officials.

Gunmen pulled Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church and Bishop John Ibrahim of the Assyrian Orthodox Church from their car and killed their driver on April 22 while they were travelling outside the northern city of Aleppo. It is not clear who abducted the priests and no group has publicly claimed it is holding them.

An Italian Jesuit, Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, went missing in July after travelling to meet Islamic militants in the eastern city of Raqqa. The city fell into rebel hands in March and was subsequently taken over by radicals including the Islamic State.

Activists

Syria’s leading human rights lawyer, Razan Zaytouni, was abducted along with her husband and two other prominent activists from a rebel-held Damascus suburb Dec. 10. Zaytouni is an icon of Syria’s secular revolutionaries. Nobody claimed responsibility for her

abduction, but it came after she wrote an article denouncing the Islamic State.

Abdullah Khalil, also a human rights lawyer, has been missing since last May. Khalil became the head of the local council in Raqqa. Khalil was last seen on May 18, when was taken away by unidentified armed men as he was leaving his office.

According to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, some 60 Syrian opposition activists have been abducted since last spring in from northern areas controlled by Islamic State. Most have been released but as of December, 22 were still being held.

Journalists

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists estimates about 30 international and local reporters are currently in captivity. Most of the kidnappings over the past six months have occurred in opposition-held parts of northern and eastern Syria. They include among others two Spanish journalists, El Mundo reporter Javier Espinosa and freelance photo journalist Ricardo Garcia Vilanova; French journalists Edouard Elias, Didier Francois, Nicolas Henin and Pierre Torres; and a Lebanese, a Mauritanian and a Jordanian national of Palestinian origin.

The spike in abductions of journalists while on assignment in the opposition-held areas in northern Syria prompted major news organizations, including The Associated Press, to call for urgent action. It called on rebel leaders to assist in identifying groups currently holding journalists and take the steps necessary to bring about their release. ■

PARIS—When you travel, airport security agents may pat you down, inspect your deodorant and scan your body from head to toe. But there’s a good chance that no one’s checking whether you’re using someone’s lost or stolen passport.

A gaping, if little-known, loophole in international aviation security came into broader view Sunday when the international police agency Interpol said its computer systems had contained information on the theft of two passports that were used to board an ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight—but no national authorities had checked the database.

Largely unheeded, Interpol has long sounded the alarm that growing international travel has underpinned a new market for identity theft and bogus passports have lured many people: Illegal immigrants, terrorists, drug runners, pretty much anyone looking to travel unnoticed.

It’s not known whether stolen passports had anything to do with Saturday’s disappearance of the Boeing 777 bound from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board. But such oversights aren’t new—and Interpol hopes national authorities will “learn from the tragedy.”

More than 1 billion times last year, travellers boarded planes without their passports being checked against Interpol’s database of 40 million stolen or lost travel documents, the Lyon-based police body said. Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said in a statement Sunday that it has long asked why countries would “wait for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates.”

Officials cite recent instances of use of stolen travel documents: A war crimes suspect who tried to attend a conference in Congo, but was instead arrested; the killer of the Serbian prime minister crossed 27 borders on a missing passport before he was caught; Samanwww.canadianinquirer.net

tha Lewthwaite, the former wife of one of the suicide bombers in the 2005 attack on London’s transit system, escaped capture when she produced a fraudulently obtained South African passport.

Sometimes, authorities are outmatched: Ticket-buying regulations and border control techniques vary from country to country, and an Interpol official says there’s no one-size-fits-all explanation why some countries don’t use its database systematically.

For the last decade, Interpol has stocked and shared information on stolen or lost passports in ways few international agencies can: it has 190 member countries. And air security is increasingly international work: the Malaysia flight had mostly Chinese and Malaysian passengers, but Americans, Australians, French, Indians Indonesians and Ukrainians too.

The Interpol stolen or lost travel documents database draws on information from 167 countries. It was searched more than 800 million times last year—but one in eight searches was conducted by the United Arab Emirates alone. The U.S. and Britain are other big users, and France and Switzerland routinely check it too, Interpol officials said.

“Now, we have a real case where the world is speculating whether the stolen passport holders were terrorists, while Interpol is asking why only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights,” Noble said Sunday of the Malaysia flight.

Speaking to reporters in Paris in October, Noble said some member countries cite a lack of police resources, privacy concerns, or political hostilities with other countries for their failure to check passports against the global data—though interest has grown: Border agents checked it 740 million times in 2012, producing 60,000 hits.

In November, in yet another talk on the subject, Noble said that four of every 10 international passengers are still not screened

against the database. Some countries have woken up more to the threat. In 2006, U.S. authorities scanned the database about 2,000 times—but did so 78 million times just three years later.

The declared thefts of the two passports used—one of Austrian national Christian Kozel in 2012, and one of Luigi Maraldi of Italy last year—were entered into Interpol’s database after they were stolen in Thailand, the police body said. Authorities are examining other suspicious passports and working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the Malaysia Airlines flight.

In Thailand, where immigration police last year caught a Thai man with 5,000 fake passports, officials say international co-operation helps, but passport forgers are now using advanced technology, and can evade capture with techniques like finding a lookalike to match the passport, or altering the passport photo.

“It must take great skills and expertise by our officers to detect the fake passports and visa stamps because the system cannot detect them the whole time,” said Maj. Gen. Warawuth Thaweechaikarn, commander of the Immigration Police’s investigative division.

Interpol wants to get airlines involved. It’s preparing an initiative called “I-Checkit” that will let businesspeople in the travel, banking and hospitality industries screen documents against the lost documents database when customers book a flight, check into a hotel room or open a financial account. The project is still being worked out, an official said.

Police Lt. Gen. Panya Maman told reporters that Maraldi, the 37-year-old Italian, had deposited his passport as a guarantee at a motorbike rental shop. But when he returned the bike, the shop said they’d already given his passport to some guy who looked like him. Maraldi then filed a missing passport report to local police in Phuket in July.

Speaking Sunday in Bangkok, Maraldi said he had no idea who made off with it. ■

World News

21 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

HL: Travel agents questioned on stolen passports linked to missing Malaysia Airlines jet

BY THANAYARAT DOKSONE AND JIM GOMEZ The Associated Press PATTAYA, THAILAND—Authorities questioned travel agents Monday at a beach resort in Thailand about two men who boarded the vanished Malaysia Airlines plane with stolen passports, part of a growing international investigation into what they were doing on the flight.

Nearly three days after the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, no debris has been seen in Southeast Asian waters.

Five passengers who checked in for Flight MH370 didn’t board the plane, and their luggage was removed from it, Malaysian authorities said.

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this also was being investigated, but he didn’t say whether this was suspicious.

The search effort, involving at least 34 aircraft and 40 ships from several countries, was being widened to a 100-nautical mile (115-mile, 185-kilometre) radius from the point the plane vanished from radar screens between Malaysia and Vietnam early Saturday with no distress signal.

Two of the passengers were travelling on passports stolen in Thailand and had onward tickets to Europe, but it’s not known whether the two men had anything to do with the plane’s disappearance. Criminals and illegal migrants regularly travel on fake or stolen documents.

Hishammuddin said biometric information and CCTV footage of the men has been shared with Chinese and U.S. intelligence agencies, which were helping with the investigation.

Almost two-thirds of the passengers on the flight were from China.

The stolen passports, one belonging to Christian Kozel of

PHOTO BY AERO ICARUS / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Austria and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy, were entered into Interpol’s database after they were taken in Thailand in 2012 and 2013, the police organization said.

Electronic booking records show that one-way tickets with those names were issued Thursday from a travel agency in the beach resort of Pattaya in eastern Thailand. Thai police Col. Supachai Phuykaeokam

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said those reservations were placed with the agency by a second travel agency in Pattaya, Grand Horizon.

Thai police and Interpol officers questioned the owners.

Officials at Grand Horizon refused to talk to The Associated Press.

Police Lt. Col. Ratchthapong Tia-sood said the travel agency was contacted by an Iranian man known only as “Mr. Ali” to

book the tickets for the two men.

“We have to look further into this Mr. Ali’s identity because it’s almost a tradition to use an alias when doing business around here,” he said.

The travel agency’s owner, Benjaporn Krutnait, told The Financial Times she believed Mr. Ali was not connected to terrorism because he had asked for cheapest tickets to Europe and did not specify the Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight.

Malaysia’s police chief was quoted by local media as saying that one of the two men had been identified—something that could speed up the investigation.

Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman declined to confirm this, but said they were of “non-Asian” appearance, adding that authorities were looking at the possibility the men were connected to a stolen passport syndicate.

Asked by a reporter what they looked like, he said: “Do ❱❱ PAGE 22 HL: Travel

Immigration

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 22

PANGARAP : SO, OUR JOURNEY BEGINS

So, Can You See Clearly Where You Are Headed For?

BY BOLET AREVALO TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. THE SOONER YOU ARE ABLE TO FOCUS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE IN YOUR WORK LIFE, THE BETTER. Where have you been? How far have you gone? Not necessarily in your job search, but also in your own discovery of the place you have migrated into.

When I was preparing to leave, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. Because I had applied under the skilled professionals category, I was definite about the skills and the competencies that I was bringing with me. I thought that, since I had been approved, this country I was moving to was also convinced that those skills were employable.

This is not to say that there was a mismatch or a mistake at all. It is just that coming here, you could be likened to a child who is brought to a candy store and does not know what candies to buy. There will be candies that are new to you, candies that are all appetizing and offered to you at the same time.

While I had own my dreams or wish list, I came to realize that my wish list was too short after all. There is so much that can be done, studied, trained for, or explored. And the very government makes them all

available and reachable to you.

All you need to do is decide and decide immediately.

For someone who came somewhere in the last fighting chapter of her work life, it was so heartening to realize that here, age is never an impediment to break new grounds and achieve, plus the fact that most companies do not impose any age to retire. Amazingly, you feel so young and as if Pandora’s box has just opened up before you.

Suddenly, the world is your stage.

Hold it. That in itself could present a problem. If you are not able to clearly define who you want to be when you set foot, the myriad of options will only confuse you and make things even more difficult to grasp.

The possibilities that are before you are just that, possibilities. You have to fit in yourself or make yourself fit in. And that should start with defining what you want and knowing exactly where you want to be headed to.

For those who are young when they came over, it looks like there is plenty of time. But for those who are not, then time is of the essence.

It is not that you should hurry. The point is for you to be able to focus on what you really want and immediately set sail.

Remember that as the clock ticks, the pension or RRSP ticks. The later you get into a job, the shorter your chances of being able to achieve the retire-

expertise, marketing communications. Now that we have relocated to Toronto, I am stubbornly determined to focus only on this, nothing less. So help me God. As they say, better late than never!

Coming to a more progressive country, you will soon discover that it can be a land of great opportunities. The myriad of new things you can do or become can confuse you, so define and focus on what you really want and where you want to go. Time is of the essence. The faster you can do that, the better the impact on your future and your retirement years. ■ ment that you envision.

I must confess that even after having stayed in Canada for 5 years and having written a book on jobhunting, I myself was greatly distracted by the myriad of other things that can be done by someone who is multiskilled like most of us. That, plus the fact that the feeling of being in a new place and the desire to try something new and different can be overwhelming.

Some of these you can afford, while for some, the government or some other organization can help you to get into those.

I had my own detours. At the start, when you know your baon is dwindling, there is the temptation to try anything or accept any job that will help bring food on the table and pay the bills. I was in that exact situation and I took on what was being available or offered at the time of

HL: Travel... you know of a footballer by the name of (Mario) Balotelli? He is an Italian. Do you know how he looks like?” A reporter then asked, “Is he black?” and the aviation chief replied, “Yes.” Possible causes of the apparent crash include an explosion, catastrophic engine failure, terrorist attack, extreme turbulence, pilot error or even suicide, according to experts, many of whom cautioned against speculation because so little is known.

Malaysia’s air force chief, Rodzali Daud, has said radar indicated that before it disap❰❰ 21

my need. Before I knew it, my 5 years in Canada had passed me by so fast. I had not been able to re-integrate into the work environment where I know my transferrable skills can be best utilized. Nevertheless, the persistence to use some of those skills even in volunteer capacity or piecemeal basis was there.

So I got the satisfaction that I published a book, currently write for a newspaper, help organize community events, edit friends’ write-ups, give pro bono advice on some marketing and communications projects, do translation jobs and the like.

But what is my biggest mistake? I did not insist on chasing my dream job when I was in Vancouver. I was happy with the weather, my friends and my small jobs even amidst the difficulties. My dream job? I want to go back to my line of

Nobody ever said that our journey, will be easy. But as I write and as you read, we share our strengths and we can hold to the promise that “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them,” Matthew 18:20.

Bolet is a marketing communications practitioner and dabbles in writing as a personal passion.

She is author-publisher of the book: The Most Practical Immigrating and Job Hunting Survival Guide, proven simple steps to success without the fears and the doubts. The book is available in Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Chapters/Indigo, the Reading Room and other online bookshops worldwide, and in National Book Store and Power Books in the Philippines. Please check out https://www.amazon. com/author/boletarevalo.

Ukrainian Canadians... peared, the plane may have turned back, but there were no further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.

On Sunday, a Vietnamese plane spotted a rectangular object that was thought to be one of the plane’s doors, but ships could not locate it. On Monday, a Singaporean search plane spotted a yellow object 140 kilometres (87 miles) southwest of Tho Chu island, but it turned out to be sea trash.

Malaysian maritime officials found oil slicks in the South China Sea, but lab tests found that samples of it were not from

an aircraft, Azharuddin said.

Selamat Omar, a Malaysian whose 29-year-old son Mohamad Khairul Amri Selamat was a passenger on the flight, told of getting a call from the airline saying the plane was missing.

“We accept God’s will,” Selamat said. “Whether he is found alive or dead, we surrender to Allah.” ■ Gomez reported from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Associated Press writers Gillian Wong and Louise Watt in Beijing, Joan Lowy in Washington and Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed to this report. www.canadianinquirer.net

But the OSCE has so far been unsuccessful in getting the observers into Crimea.

They tried three times last week only to be turned back.

Warning shots were fired during their last attempt to enter the region. They did not make another attempt on Sunday and it was unclear whether they would try again any time soon.

Germany’s Angela Merkel joined Harper and other G7 leaders Sunday in telling Putin that a planned referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia was illegal and violated Ukraine’s constitution. ❰❰ 18

But Putin has only tightened Russia’s grip further on Crimea, by seizing another border post.

As well, heavily-armed soldiers wearing military uniforms with no country markings reportedly sealed off a military airport in Crimea.

Street violence also erupted in the Black Sea port city of Sevastopol after rival pro- and anti-Russia protesters clashed.

The White House said U.S. President Barack Obama would meet Wednesday with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk in Washington in an attempt to peacefully end the crisis. ■

Immigration

23 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Jason Kenney heading to Germany, Great Britain, to study apprenticeship systems

BY LEE-ANNE GOODMAN The Canadian Press OTTAWA—Ever since taking on the Employment portfolio last summer, Jason Kenney has urged Canadian businesses to “put more skin in the game” in terms of skills training, even accusing them recently of “freeloading” on government programs.

It’s a bold stance for a powerful cabinet minister in a Conservative government traditionally aligned with big business— and a message that wasn’t entirely wellreceived at last week’s right-wing Manning Networking Conference.

“It galls me to hear you suggesting that the private sector is freeloading off government because I remember the training programs that we in the private sector were running before you in government expropriated them,” one audience member told Kenney following his address to the conference.

Kenney defended his remarks, saying he “cannot deny what the data tells us.”

Canada, he told the disgruntled businessman, is at “the bottom end in terms of the private sector spending on skills development.”

To that end, Kenney and a Canadian delegation are travelling to Germany this weekend to study the European powerhouse’s apprenticeship system, a long-established partnership between government, schools and business that most agree wouldn’t fly in Canada.

Nonetheless, those travelling in Kenney’s delegation describe the trip as a fact-finding mission to determine what

Minister Jason Kenney.

elements of the German system could, indeed, be replicated in Canada.

In particular, they say, the delegation wants to know how to compel Canada’s businesses to take on a bigger role in training their would-be employees, and to how to change the Canadian culture so that parents and youth alike view skilled trades as an honourable vocation.

“The trades are held in very high regard in Germany, unlike in Canada,” Sean Reid of the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada said in an interview Thursday.

“It’s starting to change a bit here now, but there’s still a stigma about trades that doesn’t exist in Germany, and we want to know what they’ve done to mitigate and minimize that stigma, how they’ve elevated trades and promoted them as a valid career path.”

There are also lessons to be learned in Germany for Canadian businesses, Reid added. Under the German system, employers are critical players in both workplace and classroom training programs that are tailored to match labour market demands.

“Employers play a very central role in the German training system,” he said.

“In Canada, employers do train, but what they haven’t done as much of is to take institutional ownership of the training system the way employers have in Germany.”

That might be because Canadian businesses, on average, are much smaller than their German counterparts, and may not have the resources to invest so ❱❱ PAGE 39 Jason Kenney

PHOTO BY MICHAEL_SWAN / FLICKR

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MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 24

FILIPINO-CANADIANS IN FOCUS: ROLAND ALZATE AND NOEL CRISOSTOMO

‘We celebrate the fact that we’re healthy, happy and alive’

BY ALEX Y. VERGARA Philippine Daily Inquirer THEIR LOVE story has overcome all sorts of obstacles and conventions.

Filipino-Canadian Noel Crisostomo was already a seasoned and well-traveled designer in his 40s when he met young Roland Alzate in Manila four years ago.

Alzate, then fresh from a short stint as an English teacher in Seoul, wasn’t only young (in his early 20s), he’s also from a fairly conservative family.

Although his parents were aware of his gender preference, it wasn’t something they discussed. He wasn’t sure how his father would react to their same-gender relationship.

They met when Alzate went to Crisostomo’s shop in Makati to pick up a dress for his mother. Having left the Philippines for Calgary when he was only 20, Crisostomo was also quite new to the Manila scene. Before relocating to Manila, he worked in Toronto and Shanghai for such ready-to-wear brands as Club Monaco and Ports 1961.

“There was already a spark between us when I first saw him,” said Crisostomo. “For some reason, I found myself inviting him upstairs to our work area to show him more of my pieces.”

Mutual attraction

Before the day was over, the pair found themselves spending a “no-frills” dinner in a neighborhood restaurant. Crisostomo, who must have had a million things going through his head, forgot to bring his wallet.

“Rense (Alzate’s second name) ended up paying for our dinner,” he said with a hearty laugh. “Nakakahiya naman sa bagets. (It was so embarrassing to him.)”

The attraction, it turned out, was mutual.

“Before we met, I never believed that you could hear music when you find love,” said Alzate. “But the feeling was palpable from the start. I felt that I was home. Having met him gave me a feeling of utmost serenity, which I can’t explain up to now.”

Alzate’s initial fears about his family proved unfounded. Not only is Crisostomo welcomed

by Alzate’s parents, he has also become friends with his siblings, dining out and going on holidays.

Fine Arts background Putting his background in Fine Arts to good use, Alzate, a graduate of St. Louis University in Baguio and a lover of luxury designer brands such as Gucci, Hermés, Givenchy and Celine, soon joined Crisostomo in his business.

From office and production manager, Alzate became Crisostomo’s in-house stylist for photo shoots and fashion shows. Apart from mentoring by Crisostomo, Alzate took in everything there was to know about the business.

Before long, he became his assistant designer.

“I taught him the basics, but our aesthetics are totally different,” said Crisostomo in our previous interview. “He’s really a talented and driven designer.”

With Crisostomo’s blessings, two years ago, Alzate took his career to the next level by go-

ing solo almost. He finally came into his own after winning the prestigious design contest, last year’s Look of Style Award by Look Magazine and the British Council.

Alzate is doing further studies at Central Saint Martins in London.

“That’s why I’m on the lookout these days for cheap flights,” said Crisostomo. “It’s a good thing Philippine Airlines now flies to London.”

Roland Alzate and Noel Crisostomo

Doing things together

In a glamorous milieu where temptations and fleeting relationships are quite common, here’s how the two have managed to grow and keep their relationship.

“Rense and I love to do things together,” says Crisostomo.

“We basically like the same things. We travel a lot especially when our business is good. We go on short trips at least every month. We also enjoy discovering things together.

“He is an optimist and a dreamer, and I love that about him. We both know that I’m not getting any younger, so I try to be realistic. But he has taught me to always see the glass as half full and to always dream big.

“We enjoy the same food.

As much as possible, we have meals together. Losing weight has been a constant struggle for me because we like to discover restaurants and good eats.

“When Rense and I get into an argument, we make sure we do not sleep until we kiss and make up. And that, I believe, has helped strengthen our relationship. Through the years, we have learned to compro-

mise and to accept each other’s shortcomings.

“Rense is my knight in shining armor! I know I’m being very corny, but it’s true. He’s always there to defend me.”

Alzate says: “I admire Noel’s heart. I’ve never met anyone as kind as him. He’s the type who loves unconditionally talaga, and that’s very rare these days.

“He’s also very giving and kind. He tends to spoil you. Surprisingly, he tends to deny himself some of the luxuries he so willingly gives others.

“It’s great that we can communicate and level with each other. There’s really no such thing as age gap because Noel and I click in so many ways. He values my opinion. It helps that we have similar tastes.

“Of course, we argue. But at the end of the day, we always try to arrive at a compromise, which I think is the key to a healthy, long-lasting relationship. It also helps that I idolize him for his design and work ethic.

“When we’re on trips, the mood is always celebratory. Ev-

ery day we spend together feels like a birthday, a New Year, a Christmas. We celebrate everything. I mean everything!

We celebrate the fact that we’re healthy, happy and alive.

“I find it funny when people sometimes mistake Noel for my father. One time, I really wanted to buy something, but he found the item impractical and expensive. I was about to throw a little tantrum before the smiling salesclerk asked Noel: ‘Your son, sir?’

“We just both looked at each other and kept quiet, but I knew he was upset. Big time! True enough, when we left the store, Noel told me that he wanted to punch the guy right there and then. I had a good laugh.”

“I’ve learned so many things from him,” adds Alzate. “He’s not only my mentor when it comes to the financial and artistic sides of running a business. Thanks to Noel, I’ve also learned a great deal about compassion, patience and the importance of cultivating good relations with other people. It’s because of him that I’ve come to learn more about God.” ■

“There should be somebody who would say that he benefited (from the racket). It will be unfair if it will be Cunanan who will prove that he did not,” Pimentel said over dwIZ. “Let those who have the information prove that he did.”

To do otherwise, Pimentel said, would be unfair to Cunanan as it would go against the

rules on evidence.

“Let us also read up and review the affidavits of Benhur Luy [and the other whistleblowers]. Let us check what they said about Dennis Cunanan,” Pimentel said. “If none among them said that they gave him money and that he benefited, it might be true that he didn’t.” ■

Rare quality

Pork witness...

Revilla said. He said Cunanan’s testimony was part of a campaign to put him in a bad light because he was being considered a presidential candidate in 2016 by the Lakas party. “I expect him to lie,” Revilla said.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III said Cunanan would be questioned about his wealth. ❰❰ 14

Million People March in Luneta against Pork Barrel.

PHOTO BY RYOMAANDRES / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

www.canadianinquirer.net

FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

25

Featuring Adobo atbp.

Loco About Adobo!

BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer

We are loco about adobo; let's not be bobo about the same.

Adobo 101

IT’S NO secret: Filipinos looooooooove to eat. Forgive the use of multiple vowels for added emphasis, as would be the habit of many an emphatic teener, but it is justified. Filipinos don’t just love to eat: they looooooooove it. Eating is as necessary for physical survival as it is for social acceptance and endearment.

I am also willing to hazard a well-informed guess that eating is one of the Filipino’s favorite pastimes and recreational activities. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are smattered with at least two meriendas in between; with every mealtime an opportunity for bonding and pleasure.

Favorite fare are too numerous to count and are dependent on from which part of the Philippines one hails. However, as far dishes go, perhaps nothing is more Filipino and well-loved than your mother's adobo. Except maybe for your neighbor's mother’s adobo. Indeed, there are as many variations to this delectable Pinoy dish as there are families named “Santos” in the Philippines.

We all love to eat it, whatever the variant: pula, puti, simple and straightforward, or with a variety of ingredients mixed in, saucy or dry (to mention just a few different kinds). With a plate of steaming hot white rice and maybe a glass of ice-cold soda with which to—rather guiltily—wash it down.

But how did this dish originate?

Adobo is an immensely popular Filipino dish and mode of cooking that—unlike many other fave dishes of mixed influence—originated within the Philippines. Adobo is the term which refers to both the dish, and the method of cooking which basically entails marinating meat or seafood in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar and garlic. These are the three staple marinade ingredients to a dish that has countless varieties, interpretations, and methods of preparation.

Meats are marinated in the mixture, and are either boiled in the same (for a saucy adobo), or cooked in oil (for a dry adobo).

Chicken and /or pork are the meats of preference, but there are also many variations that involve beef, shrimp, vegetables or even more exotic ingredients (I have eaten a mouth-watering pork adobo cooked with fried dried squid added into the dish.

OMG!!!)

Don’t let the Spanish name fool you—adobo is 100 percent Pinoy, through and through.

The cooking method is indigenous to the Philippines. In fact, it pre-dates Spanish colonial rule. When Magellan arrived, Lapu-Lapu was already cooking up an adobo storm. Or something to that effect.

At the time the Spanish colonized the Philippines in the late 16th century and early 17th century, they found that Fili-

PHOTO COURTESY OF DBGG1979 ON WIKIPEDIA

pinos had a thriving cultural, political, socio-economic and religious structure in place.

The high-bridged-nose conquistadores also encountered an indigenous cooking process which involved stewing with vinegar. In true conquering fashion, they gave the dish a Spanish name, referring to it as adobo, the word for seasoning or marinade. The name eventually came to refer to dishes prepared in this manner, as well as the cooking method. The rest is history. Sadly, the original term Filipinos used for the dish is not recorded in history; having been lost to the nether regions of forgetfulness and disuse.

Hello, how do you aDObo?

Though the number of variations to the adobo dish and way of cooking is seemingly endless, the most popular one remains the adobong itim (black adobo), which uses soy sauce along with the vinegar and garlic. However, it is interesting to note that the closest to the pre-Hispanic dish is the adobong puti (white or blond adobo, which is sans soy sauce. As for the vinegar used, most popular options are cane, rice or coconut vinegar; although some prefer to use cider or white wine vinegar for that extra gourmet flair. Some Common ingredients that go into the adobo are bay leaf and black pepper, in amounts ac-

cording to taste. Variants may include other ingredients, such as saba bananas (sugar bananas), siling labuyo (bird's eye chili), jalapeño pepper, red bell pepper, olive oil, onions, brown sugar, potatoes, hard-boiled egg, or pineapple.

Although the main method of cooking is to let the meats slow cook or simmer in the marinade, some prefer to further brown the dish in the oven, panfry, deep-fry, or grill the meat to get it crispy on the outside.

Regionally, adobos are also quite varied. The dish is commonly cooked with coconut milk, called adobo sa gata, in ❱❱ PAGE 27 Loco About

Featuring Adobo atbp.

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 26

Filipino Food on the Global Menu

BY CHING DEE Philippine Canadian Inquirer IN THE Philippines, we just call it “food.” To the rest of the world, it’s “Filipino food.”

Much like every Pinoy kid, I grew up with my mom’s hearty home cooking (but I don’t blame her for my weight). From her humble yet delectable adobo to her “special occasions only” pancit palabok, my mom taught me more about Filipino food more than any 5-star chef.

Based on my personal observations, Pinoys are fans of sarsa—a thick sauce that just tickles the palate, whetting it to make you crave for more. When we say sarsa, think of the brown soy sauce lacquer that coats the meat when one cooks adobo; imagine the golden color of the lip-smacking peanut sauce of kare-kare; dream of exquisite caldereta’s dark sauce made of the uncanny yet wonderful mélange of liver and tomato paste.

Another observation is our innate love for spices and aromatics. Most Filipino dishes start by sautéing garlic and onions. I think it’s safe to say that the mouthwatering aroma of this combination to Pinoys is like Pavlov’s dog’s bell. In short, the smell alone makes people drool. Pinoys are not afraid of bold flavors and we appreciate flavor extremes and everything in between.

‘The next big thing’

In 2012, Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods” host and renowned food critic Andrew Zimmern said in a Today Show Food Blog that he predicts “two years from now, Filipino food will be what we will have been talking about for six months.”

“I think that’s going to be the next big thing,” Zimmern said in the article.

“San Diego is now a big enough ethnic population of

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM VIA WIKI COMMONS

Street Food.

Filipinos that chefs are going there and seeing stuff. I think it’ll creep up into Los Angeles and from there go around the rest of the country,” Zimmern predicted.

And from Zimmern’s lips to God’s ears, Filipino food is slowly—and deliciously—making a buzz around the globe. I say it’s about time!

“It’s just starting. I think it’s going to take another year and a half to get up to critical mass, but everybody loves Chinese food, Thai food, Japanese food, and it’s all been exploited. The Filipinos combined the best of all of that with Spanish technique,” Zimmern continued.

Andrew Zimmern is not the only chef-slash-food critic who found love at first taste with Filipino food.

In 2009, after his show “No Reservations” created a fan special, chef, host, and all-around culinary expert Anthony Bourdain found himself in Manila, Cebu, and the Philippines’ culinary capital Pampanga.

In Manila, Bourdain and local tour guide Ivan Man Dy sampled dishes cooked in Dampa: shrimp and crabs cooked in coconut milk and Ilocano specialty pinakbet.

In Pampanga, he dined with Claud Tayug in Balay Datung where he experienced local

PHOTO COURTESY OF LCQGIRL ON WIKIPEDIA

Lechon.

PHOTO COURTESY ARCADE ON WIKIPEDIA

Tapsilog.

PHOTO COURTESY OF HALIL S. MUCARAM VIA WIKI COMMONS

fern salad with quail eggs, a deconstructed version of karekare, a fancified adobo, and sinigang sa miso. He also had kambing (goat) four ways (one of which is papaitan) and sisig at its birthplace Aling Lucing’s.

Bourdain described sisig as just “the thing you need” while enjoying a cold beer.

In Cebu, the culmination of his culinary trip around the country, Bourdain had a lifechanging encounter with a pig courtesy of Augusto Elefano—a roasted pig, that is. After tasting Cebu lechon, he ranked it number one in his “Hierarchy of Pork.”

Truly Pinoy in Toronto

Back in college, I asked my friends, “What's your biggest, greatest dream? Answer as if God has given you all the resources that you need (money,

www.canadianinquirer.net

intelligence, looks). Even if it sounds crazy—I don't care.”

One of my dear friends, Anna Balmonte (now proudly Mrs. Anna Dolores) answered, “It's not a 'crazy' dream… I want to make a Cinderella out of our traditional Filipino dishes so foreigners can rave about those the way they rave (about) Thai and Vietnamese food.”

I would like to think that much like Ate Anna, many Filipinos dream about making Pinoy food a star—“the next big thing.” Thankfully, with numerous efforts of Filipinos around the world, our local cuisine is slowly becoming global.

In Toronto, Len Cervantes of www.blogto.com wrote about the best Filipino restaurants in the area for 2013.

Cervantes mentioned Lamesa Filipino Kitchen in Queen and Bathurst for its caldereta, crispy pata, and kare-kare. Next is Sampaguita Village Restaurant where lechon kawali and bistek are hits. Tocino Boys is

another restaurant where people in Toronto can enjoy typical Filipino breakfast staples like longganisa and—well—tocino.

If you’re craving for the musical crunch of chicharon, head on to Remely’s.

On those bitterly cold days, there’s nothing like a piping hot bowl of bulalo, sinigang, or arroz caldo from Casa Manila. For a fusion of Chinese and Filipino influences, Co-China Manila is the place to dine. Their BBQ pork skewers and lumpiang shanghai will bring life to any party.

Paying homage to a famous Pinoy fast food chain is probably where Jollytops got its name, but not their dinuguan because you’ll surely not see that in Jollibee’s menu. For a wonderful twist on Pinoy classics—read: pork ribs adobo and pork binagoongan—Ritz Restaurant has it. Kanto by Tita Flips is another Pinoy food spot if you’re in the Bathurst-Dundas area where you can munch on pancit palabok, crispy lechon kawali, and sisig fries—Tita Flips’ take on the Canadian poutine.

Lastly, Mayette’s serves almost anything grilled to perfection. So, if you’re craving for inihaw na bangus, squid, tilapia, and pork, pull up a chair at Mayette’s.

Filipino food, the Brits, and Uncle Sam

The United States is no ❱❱ PAGE 31 Filipino Food

Featuring Adobo atbp.

27 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Loco About... southern Luzon and Zamboanga, for instance. Mashed pork liver is added in Cavite, while turmeric gives Laguna’s adobong dilaw (yellow adobo) its yellowish colour. Ilonggos, on the other hand, like to include achuete (annatto) into their version. Methinks it would make for an interesting documentary food tour to travel around the Philippines sampling the many kinds of delectable adobo dishes. ❰❰ 25

Adobo goes global

So we’ve established that adobo is well-loved within the local context of the Philippines. But it is also receiving acclaim and a thumbs-up from foodies the world over.

Heartthrob singer-actor Zac Efron’s (of High School Musical fame) reported love for the dish made news some days ago in the Lifestyle sections of local dailies. Sources have it that the star is not only crazy about the dish, but that he also knows how to whip it up for himself.

In 2002, producer Kevin J. Foxe (the man behind the successful indie movie The Blair Witch Project) was inspired by the popularity of the dish to make the comedy-drama titled American Adobo, which chronicles the challenges faced by five Filipino-American friends residing in New York.

Adobo’s international acclaim dawned on me recently, when , on assignment to write a feature story on a luxury resort on the island of Mactan, Philippines , the British Sous Chef of the resort present-

ed me with his newest fine-dining creation: slow-cooked pork belly adobo with seared scallops. It was divine, and oh-soworthy of global culinary chic points.

The Adobo Bill

Ok, ok—it isn’t just an adobo Bill, I exaggerate. House Bill No. 3926 or the proposed National Symbols Act of 2014 filed

by Bohol Rep. Rene Relampagos, seeks to declare and recognize several other items as the country's official national symbols. In the category of “National Food” of the Philippines, it is adobo that is being pushed (shock of shocks! You mean it isn’t yet the national dish???)

Relampagos cited the importance of passing the bill to boost national identity, and because of the 20 items often thought and taught to be national symbols, only 10 of these are, in fact, officially recognized in the Constitution, Republic Acts and Proclamations.

The lawmaker noted that adobo should be recognized as the country's national food, because of its versatility and variety.

"Whether using chicken, pork, fish, squid, kangkong, sitaw, puso ng saging and others as main ingredient, there are many ways to cook adobo—adobo sa gata, adobong matamis, adobong tuyo, adobong masabaw, adobo sulipan, adobo sa pinya, adobo sa kalamansi, adobong malutong, adobong puti, adobo flakes, spicy adobo, just to name a few," Relampagos said.

Pinoy fave, Pinoy food, Pinoy roots, Pinoy pride; from your home, across 7,107 islands, to the world: that’s a whole lotta adobo for you to go loco about. ■

WANT TO try a regional twist to your traditional adobo?

Go adobo ala Ilonggo!

CHICKEN-PORK ADOBO (ILONGGO STYLE) Ingredients: • 1 kg pork or 1 kg chicken • 1 big onion, chopped • 5 garlic cloves • 1 tablespoon black peppercorns • bay leaf • 1/2 cup atsuete oil • 1/4 cup soy sauce • 1 tablespoon fish sauce • 1/2 cup cane vinegar • 1 tablespoon muscovado sugar • 1/2 cup water (or more) • salt • 1 long green chili pepper • 4 hard-boiled eggs (optional) Procedure: In a deep frying pan or casserole mix the first 10 ingredients.

Bring to a boil without stirring. When it comes to a boil, start mixing it to get even color. When the meat is cook and liquid consistency starts to get thicker, add boiled egg and mix uniformly. Salt to taste and garnish with green long pepper before removing from heat. Enjoy!

Recipe from: http://www.sunro.nl/other-services/recipes-of-the-month/adoboilonggo-style/

Food that's proudly Pinoy

BY KATHERINE MARFAL-TEVES Philippine Canadian Inquirer SINIGANG, ADOBO, kare-kare, sisig, pork barbeque, lechon, and fried chicken—paired with steaming hot kanin (rice) and equally tasty sawsawan (condiments)—it’s definitely more fun eating in the Philippines!

The Filipino cuisine is unique as it was influenced by both sides of the Pacific— from its neighbors in the region of Malaysia and Indonesia, including China and India, and Mexico—plus the cooking pots of Spain and the United States.

This explains why we have these malinamnam (yummy delicious) cuisine that is loved—not just by our countrymen—but by the visiting tourists from around the world.

1. Rice A Filipino meal won’t be complete without a steaming hot rice or kanin on the plate. Traditionally, we want our kanin to be wet. In any eatery or restaurant, a meal is served with a soup, whether nilaga or sinigang (for free!)— and the sauce of the ulam (viand) also tops the rice to give it its saucy look and to make it muy delicioso.

For fried ulam—the banana ketchup, liver sauce, toyo and fried chicken gravy—make for truly Filipino sawsawan (dipping sauces) and they are almost always within arm's reach to make a meal more appetizing.

2. Sinigang Filipinos just love sinigang because of its signature maasim (sour) flavor.

Sinigang is a clear broth soup dish made with a sour fruit (one can use the kamias, sampalok, santol, kalamansi, alibangbang, bayabas, batuan or the labóg).

Though this Filipino dish originated from the Tagalog region—there are several other versions to be enjoyed—the Kapampangans have their bulanglang bayabas (guava), the Visayans have their tinola/tinowa/tuwa, and Bicolanos have cocido (made with tomatoes and drib-

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bled with kalamansi).

Another addition to the sinigang family is the sinigang sa miso (fish sinigang)—introduced by the Japanese farm workers in Mindanao in the early 1900s.

3. Kare-kare Do you know that the word karinderia (roadside eatery) was coined by the Indian soldiers during the British Occupation of Manila?

These Indian soldiers, also called Sepoys, chose to settle in Cainta and Taytay in Rizal province. With these towns on the path of pilgrims en route to Antipolo, the settlers opened roadside eateries to feed the pilgrims while they’re along the road, hence the term karinderia/karihan was coined—referring to a place where one can have kaari (which we now know as kare-kare).

According to writer Dr. Ricardo Soler, the term kare-kare came from the Indian dish kaikaari, which the Sepoys introduced, defined as “a sauce, gravy, or stew of vegetables cooked with many spices.”

4. Adobo This Filipino dish is very popular among Filipinos wherever they may be.

The proof—the countless of adobo variants that were produced in every region.

In the Filipino context, adobo generally refers to the meat stew (a.k.a. CPA or Chicken/Pork Adobo) simmered in vinegar, garlic, black peppercorn and bay leaf.

This term also refers to a cooking technique of braising any meat (chicken, pork, beef, quail, duck, venison, seafood, frogs, etc.) or vegetable with the aforementioned ingredients.

5. Bulalo Being the country’s major cattle producer, Batangas is identified with the popular Filipino dish called Bulalo.

This dish is basically nilagang baka— the boiled beef shank and kneecap (called bulalo in Tagalog) is slow-cooked for a few hours with onions, leeks, salt, and pepper, until much of the collagen and fat has melted into the clear, flavorful broth. ❱❱ PAGE 28 Food that’s

Seen & Scenes

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 28

MULTICULTURALISM MINISTER TIM UPPAL Kapisanan ng mga Nagkaisang Mamamayan (KANAN) had a Q&A roundtable and get-together with Minister of State for Multiculturalism Tim Uppal. PCI also participated in the event.

PCI VISITS THE SURREY FOOD BANK PCI talks to Surrey Food Bank’s Marilyn Hermann, Executive Director; Kuldip Ardawa, Community Partnership Coordinator and Katrina Albert, Development Manager.

A fundraising breakfast, the Surrey Food Bank’s Annual Breakfast with the Bank, will be held on May 2, 2014. Please see the invitation on page 45 for more details. More about this in the next issue.

For photo submissions, please email info@canadianinquirer.net. www.canadianinquirer.net

Seen & Scenes

29 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

GEORGE POBLETE BIRTHDAY Dolly Poblete, feted her husband George R. Poblete on his birthday at their home in Scarborough, together with this sister Carmen Poblete Jose, their children and grandchildren.

Close friends Bayani & Baby Bernabe, Oswald & Mila Magno, Dolly Poblete and Livi & Gus Camacho

The Region Commander of the Knights of Rizal in Canada, George is an active community volunteer with the Knights of Columbus, Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Prince of Peace Church ministries and the Block Rosary Crusade of Toronto. He took some precious time to be with his family on his birthday.

Jose Mari with his PAL colleagues Tess Garcia (PAL Distr. Mgr.), Jocay Dawang; seated are Evelyn Lobrin and Ginny Sevilla

George & Dolly savoring his birthday cake, with David Isaac, Eric, and grandchildren Katrina, Natasha, Grace, Xavier & Erico.

Jose Mari with wife Jo and daughter Tanya blowing the candles on his cake.

Maristella, George & Dolly, with Carmen & Dave Jose, ready to eat their fruit bouquet.

SURPRISE 75TH BIRTHDAY PARTY: JOSE MARI AZARRAGA Wife Jo Azarraga, children Tony Azarraga, Trina Owens and Tanya Warner and the grandchildren gave Jose Mari Azarraga a big surprise dinner last weekend at Kalayaan Community Centre (KCCC) Banquet Hall in Mississauga. Jose Mari was so happy to have his former Philippine Airline colleagues now in Metro Toronto, close friends from Mississauga, Knights of Columbus and Block Rosary Crusade groups on his 75th Birthday.

George & Dolly with children Dr. Cecilia, Ferdie, Amy and grandchildren Katrina & Natasha

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Featuring Adobo atbp.

MARCH 14, 2014

FRIDAY 30

Food that’s...

To inject heartiness (and health), this dish is served with some petsay, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, or corn on the cob.

According to an urban legend, the Bulalo that we know was popularized by Rose and Grace Restaurant, a Batangas institution since 1970. They served nilagang baka using uniformly cut shanks with bone marrow in steaming-hot large bowls.

Interestingly, the same nilagang bulalo is called pochero in Cebu, kansi in Iloilo, and pakdol in Tacloban.

6. Lechon A fiesta or any special occasion is incomplete without the lechon or whole roasted pig on the feast table.

The traditional manner of roasting lechon continues to be on an open pit—but it’s prepared and served differently.

In the Central Luzon and Southern Tagalog areas, lechon is made with sweet/sour/salty and peppery sauce made with pork liver. The Visayans, meanwhile, stuff the pig with salt, peppercorn, lemongrass, garlic, ❰❰ 27

leeks, and star anise—giving it an aromatic taste.

In the Ilocos region, this sumptuous dish is stuffed with karimbuwaya, a cactus plant (Indian spurge tree, Euphorbia neriifolia) with succulent petal leaves that emit a certain citrus aroma and sourness.

7. Sisig This originally cholesterol-laden dish, served in a sizzling plate is a concoction of pork ears, cheek, and jowl—boiled and grilled over charcoal—until almost charred.

Then, it will be mixed with boiled chicken liver, onions, kalamansi, and fresh chili.

Aling Lucing Cunanan of Angeles City, Pampanga gets the credit of inventing the presentday sisig. In the mid-1970’s, she did a makeover on the sisig matua, “grilling further the boiled pig’s head and mixing it with chopped chicken liver.”

Meanwhile, Trellis Restaurant in Quezon City was the first to serve the Pampango delicacy in Metro Manila—which then started the restaurant/ grill genre bandwagon.

An added variation to this

Snigang.

dish—serving it with a raw egg that will cook on the hot plate— coupled with equally sizzling rice. It can also be mixed with mayonnaise or other preferred condiments.

Healthy versions of this dish have also been created. We now have squid, tuna, shrimp, tofu, or chicken sisig.

8. Pork and chicken barbecue A children’s party is not complete without this grilled pork or chicken on bamboo sticks, marinated in a proudly Pinoy blend of soy sauce, sugar, banana ketchup and chili.

Barbecue stands in fact can be found in every street corner.

Where there is smoke, there is this popular barbecue that’s

www.canadianinquirer.net

Sisig.

proudly Filipino.

It is also eaten as a pulutan or as an ulam, accompanied with atsara (from the Indian achaar or pickled vegetables and fruits).

9. Fried chicken “Isa pa, isa pang chicken joy!”

(One more, one more chicken joy!) Can you still remember this line from the popular T.V. commercial of Jollibee several years ago?

Indeed, children cannot just get enough of this crunchy and sometimes spicy chicken. And even adults love it! A survey conducted by burger chains revealed that the fried chicken outsells the burger, amounting to more than 60 percent of total sales.

Fried chicken was first intro-

duced by Max’s Fried Chicken in the Philippines in 1945. Soon after, fast food chains KFC and Jollibee introduced the American “southern fried chicken”, which is coated in flour or batter.

Nowadays, almost all eateries and restaurants in the country have fried chicken on their menu—served with the oh-so delicious gravy!

Among other traditional and appetizing Filipino dishes include lechon kawali/bagnet, crispy pata, kaldereta, bicol express, tapa, tocino, longganisa, kinilaw, lumpia, bistek Tagalog, tinolang manok, chicken inasal, paksiw, daing na bangus, tuyô/ danggit/tinapa and pakbet/ pinakbet. ■

Featuring Adobo atbp.

31 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Filipino Food... stranger to immigrants and certainly the culture they bring with them. And with this culture comes cuisine and with cuisine comes good times.

Pinoy food definitely hits the right spot for many Americans: it’s hearty, tasty, and almost dirt cheap. So, when some Pinoys found the opportunity to introduce our cuisine to their new neighbors, they jumped on the prospect with gusto—and some adobo.

In 2012, Maharlika Filipino Moderno, a restaurant in New York City, was named one of the best new restaurants in the U.S by MetroMix New York.

"Maharlika has been a smashing success since they debuted in the East Village in January, booking all of their seatings weeks in advance," according to MetroMix, who raved about Maharlika’s longanisa slider, goat adobo, crispy pata, ube waffles, and the endearingly Pinoy special: spaghetti with chopped hotdogs.

"A win of this magnitude would not be possible without our die hard supporters,” Maharlika said after getting the culinary accolade.

A year later and now in Manhattan, Maharlika creators started a new restaurant named Jeepney. Thursday night is the best time to dine and experience Pinoy culture as they encourage eating without utensils—and even plates—or what we Pinoys call “kamayan.”

“As a Filipino American I grew up having my American friends over at my house and when I was 5, I would beg my dad not to eat with his hands when they’re there… Now I’m so thankful that my dad made me remember that I’m Filipino,” Maharlika and Jeepney co-owner Nicole Ponseca said in an interview.

With no utensils and only banana leaves to contain one’s food, the diner goes from the mere act of eating to a unique dining experience. A Zagat reviewer, noted for hopping from one restaurant to another, piped that Jeepney’s food was the best thing they ate that night.

“We have a terrific Filipino community in Jersey City. I’ve had a tremendous amount of Filipino food in my life though I’ve never had this sort of kamayan. It’s a new experience, the food was delicious, it’s a little bit more messy than I’m used to,” Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop said.

Grub Street posted a lumpia special on its website, setting its sights on the Filipino party staple and listing the best places in New York to get the humble pika food that packs a punch. The list also featured classic Pinoy dishes and restaurants like Vekslers (that serves lobster rolls in pan de sal), Lumpia Shack Snackbar (with its halo-halo and pork adobo), Papa’s Kitchen (for some palabok and caldereta), and The Ugly Kitchen (for tapsilog).

Food trucks are fun and convenient ❰❰ 26

PHOTO COURTESY OF PUNCTUATED VIA WIKI COMMONS AND JACQ DAVIS

ways of serving delicious food without putting a dent in one’s bank account.

The rise of food trucks in the U.S. also gave rise to Filipino food and its strong following.

In Los Angeles, California, Tapa Boy is making waves with its food truck. Serving everything from beef tapa bowl with atchara (pickled papaya and carrots) to turon (fried banana fritters wrapped in pastry) to buko juice, Tapa Boy has certainly created a following—Pinoys and non-Filipinos alike.

“Our menu, primarily, is consisting of the traditional Philippine breakfast: tapsilog, tapa, garlic fried rice, fried egg, tocilog, with tocino, longsilog with longanisa. We also do crispy adobo,” said Lawrence Fama, co-owner of Tapa Boy. Their breakfast meals and snacks will surely make any homesick Filipino feel at home.

Another famous Pinoy food truck in California is Manila Machine, the brainchild of Marvin Gapuitos and Nastassia Johnson. Although in hiatus (as announced on their website), Manila Machine is currently working on a cookbook. They serve sisig, adobo, lumpia, and pan de sal sliders with their signature Manila dip. Filipino breakfast meals and desserts (did someone say leche flan?) can also be enjoyed courtesy of MM. Perhaps Bourdain is right, the most heartfelt recollection of Pinoys when it comes to happy hour food is sisig. But thanks to Senor Sisig, you don’t have to wait for happy hour to get your pig fix.

With its long line of patrons, Senor Sisig stands out in the San Francisco Bay Area. One can enjoy Senor Sisig Burrito and California Sisig Burrito courtesy of Senor, as well nachos and sisig-silog—as if you’re munching after a hard night’s partying back in college.

Sharon Lim, food reviewer from www. examiner.com wrote, “The sisig has a perfect amount of savory with a hint of smokiness like it was barbequed on a grill. There's a nice crust on the edges of each square piece, but a tender—slightly juicy—middle that provokes one to keep going for another bite.”

In Phoenix, Hey Joe! food truck is also making a name and introducing bold Pinoy street food like balut, adidas (chick-

en feet), and even chicken—ehem—butt.

With all the shenanigans in the States about Pinoy food, Brits need not fret.

Londoners can now enjoy Pinoy comfort food—like okoy and lumpiang sariwa—courtesy of husband and wife Felix and Tess Peñas.

“Our aim is to promote Filipino food in London. We also eat in Filipino restaurants here and sometimes the guests... so I told my wife, we better start our own, and if we do start our own, we better make it big, so people can make a good impression of the food,” Felix shared.

A few months after starting their restaurant, the couple won an award recognizing the quality of the food they were

serving. Their offerings even piqued the interest of their patrons, some of which even flew to the Philippines for more of its cuisine.

“We got a nice review so when they went there, they were surprised, all the way, they started the okoy, lumpiang sariwa, down to the halo-halo and the selection of dessert. They finished everything. Okay, it was positive. At least they know that they ate some Filipino food,” Tess recalled.

The couple dreams of making Filipino food readily available in London supermarkets, like Indian, Thai, and Chinese food.

With the rise of awareness about the culinary gift that is Filipino food, it’s safe to say that more Pinoys will have the guts to get the word—and food business—out there. Anthony Bourdain himself extends the invitation to Filipinos and foreigners: “If nothing else, I hope that homesick Filipinos living abroad get a glimpse of some of the food and scenery they’ve no doubt been missing. And for viewers who weren’t previously familiar with the wide and tasty spectrum of flavors available over there, I hope the sight of me shoving a lot of very tasty stuff into my maw provides—if nothing else—inspiration to look further.” ■

“Attracting and retaining the best international talent to fill skills shortages in key occupations is critical to Canada’s economic success.”

- Hon. Jason Kenney, P.C., M.P.

Minister of Employment and Social Development

Respond to Canada’s need for immigrants.

Become a Regulated Immigration Consultant Full-time | Part-time | Online Apply online at www.ashtoncollege.com or contact a program adviser at (604) 899-0803.

Ashton College | Vancouver, BC 604 899 0803 | 1 866 759 6006 w w w. a s hto n co l l e g e. co m

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FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

32

Entertainment

MISS B’S ENTERTAINMENT REVIEWS

#Flashback nights: Dru Hill & Sisqó live concert in Vancouver BC

BY BABES NEWLAND

ALL ROADS on a Thursday night led old school R&B music pundits to Gossip Nightclub last February 27th. T’was “the” venue to reminisce some of perfectly blended soulful ditties of 1990s. Foursome Dru Hill with popular front-man Sisqó brought back joyful memories of R&B, gospel, hip-hop, rock and romance that took the world by storm in their heydays.

Lead singer Mark Althavean Andrews, known by his stage name Sisqó, Nokio, Jazz and new member Tao (pronounces tay-oh) came to Vancouver with a purpose. That is, to re-emerge themselves into the music recording scene anew. This ultra talented quartet were armed and ready for that feat. Where some pop R&B artists abused to the point of absurdity the use of melisma, Sisqó and his coperformers utilized that vocal technique in moderation. They performed few cuts from their fourth album InDRUpendence Day, amongst which was one of their most memorable, “We’re Not Making Love No More”.

Their act was far from lackluster and pretentious. It went beyond mere recollection of the group’s most memorable hits after the decline of disco and funk in the 1980’s. They came to conquer Vancouver with frenetic sets of sexy mid-tempo ballads. Up-tempo tunes were exemplified by matching synchronized steps and lush style of vocal arrangements. Sisqó’s monster singles, “Incomplete” and “Thong Song” from his first solo album, “Unleash The Dragon” became regular fares on every cover bands’ playlists in the Philippines.

An electrifying opening act provided by beauteous and talented Powerhouse Station Entertainment artist—JERRICA with her back up dancers, Marivi Dulay and Angel Oquendo, set the tone right. Jerrica stamped her Electronic Dance Music artistry on her original rendition of “Illuminate”. This is a ditty that she collaborated with Vancouver’s equally talented young musician, Trevor Hoffman. Then she went on to dishing out a medley of 1990’s old school pop R&B hits from Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Woop”; to Ginuwine’s “Pony” to Aaliyah’s “Try Again”, to name a few.

After two decades, Dru Hill & Sisqó were up for grabbing their 2nd wind in the music industry.

Their persistence in continually reinventing and perfecting their craft became apparent in their recently concluded tour.

This Baltimore, Maryland, natives definitely know how to create/re-create rhythms that harbor loose, sexy mid-tempo ballads to combination of pop, soul, funk and hip hop. ■ Sisqó

Jerrica Santos

Dru Hill and Sisqó

Entertainment

33 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

‘Norte,’ 4-hr Pinoy film hailed Cristine has no time for overseas opens in PH romance just now

She was a rebel, but insists she has mellowed and made peace with sis AraMina

BY BAYANI SAN DIEGO JR. Philippine Daily Inquirer THAT LAV Diaz’s four-hour film “Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan” will finally be screened in local cinemas can only be described as groundbreaking.

A multi-awarded filmmaker, Diaz has built a solid reputation in art house circles, and has defiantly avoided commercialism throughout his career.

In spite of its length, “Norte,” which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 66th Cannes International Film Festival last May, was one of the most acclaimed movies in the world— figuring prominently in the yearend “best films” lists of various critics’ groups and publications.

“Norte” weaves together the stories of a failed law student and a wrongfully convicted laborer—in a tragic tale that echoes Dosteovsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”

It’s about apathy and gross injustice. “It’s about the ghosts that continue to haunt our country,” said Diaz, who hails from Maguindanao.

The “Norte” cast and crew feel strongly about sharing the film with their countrymen.

The last time a Diaz film was screened in local theaters was in 2002—and that was “Hesus, Rebolusyunaryo,” produced by Regal Films and top billed by Mark Anthony Fernandez and Donita Rose.

The usual length of a film is two hours.

Diaz’s “Batang West Side” (2001) is five hours and 15 minutes long, while his “Ebolusyon ng Isang Pamilyang Pilipino” (2004) is 10 hours. Both films were not released commercially.

Among 10 best films

The British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound picked “Norte” one of its 10 Best Films of 2013.

“Norte” placed 9th, tying with Alain Guiraudie’s “Stranger by the Lake.” (Recent Oscar winner, Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” was No. 2 on the list.)

La Internacional

Cinefila ranked Diaz’s film No. 6. It was also picked by Artforum—placing first, second and ninth in the lists of three of the five critics polled by the

BY MARINEL CRUZ Philippine Daily Inquirer

Lav Diaz (second from right) and actress Angeli Bayani (second from left) shooting on location in La Paz, Paoay.

magazine.

Jason Quandt, senior programmer of the Toronto fest (where “Norte” was also shown), dubbed it the “best film of the year.”

Screen Daily’s Jonathan Romney hailed its “grace, humanity, narrative verve ... [and] intellectual clout.”

Slant’s Calum Marsh said: “Diaz doesn’t just convey time, endurance, perseverance—he makes us feel them.”

IndieWire’s Eric Kohn called it one of the “must-see underdogs at the New York Film Festival ... [it’s] poignant, fascinating ... each moment flows beautifully to the next.”

“Norte” also landed in the Top 50 list drafted by the web site The Film Stage. It placed No. 38 in a roster that included some of this year’s Oscar nominees and winners: Wong Karwai’s “The Grandmaster,” Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” Spike Jonze’s “Her,” David O. Russell’s “American Hustle,” and Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave.”

Producer and actor Moira Lee told the INQUIRER: “This film is about us. It talks about our past and how that is linked to our present state as a nation. Lav says it’s also a ‘warning’ against fundamentalism and fascism, against twisted ideologies that cause the suffering of good people.”

Confronting ourselves

Actor Sid Lucero said that “although it takes a critical look at our society ... Filipinos should see it because if we do not confront our shortcomings as a people, how can we move forward as a nation?”

“It’s good to let Filipinos have their own experience of the film ... I believe it’s better to let ‘Norte’

speak for itself,” Diaz said.

Diaz acknowledged that he was aware how difficult it was for independently produced films to get slots in the local theatrical circuit. “I thought it would be shown in two parts. I am happy that Filipinos can watch it in full ... that they have that choice.”

Actress Angeli Bayani related: “I hope more cinemas like Ayala would screen films like ‘Norte’ which deserves to be seen by more Filipinos. The movie industry should not just be about box office earnings, but also about educating our people and enriching our culture.”

A masterpiece

Actor Archie Alemania said: “After receiving good reviews abroad ... that it will now be shown in the Philippines is an even bigger blessing. It’s a masterpiece ...

I am proud to be part of this film and to be part of history.”

Last December, “Norte” was shown at the Cinemanila International Film Festival—where it won Best Director and had an SRO screening in a 200-seat cinema in Taguig (SM Aura).

“The most oft-repeated comment I heard from viewers (whether foreigner or Filipino) as they left the theater was that the movie did not feel like it was four hours long,” Lee said. “Time somehow ‘flew’... and some wished that the film was even longer. I think this means they found the experience of the film immersive and ultimately pleasurable.”

Lee said that “Norte” had been picked up for distribution by international companies: Shellac in France, New Wave Films in the United Kingdom and the Cinema Guild in the United States. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net

“IT’S MY choice to be single for two years,” said actress Cristine Reyes. But she admitted that she has a new admirer in Gilas Pilipinas basketball player Kevin Alas.

The “Honesto” star said work was a big factor in that decision.

“Saan ko pa isisingit ang love? ” Aside from “Honesto,” Reyes is a regular on the Sunday variety show “ASAP.” She is also working on a movie titled “The Gifted,” with costars Anne Curtis and Sam Milby.

She is “interested” in the cager, Reyes confessed. “He’s nice to me,” she told the INQUIRER. “However, I can’t tell if he’s courting me or not.”

Alas always posts comments on her Instagram account, she revealed. “He likes uploading photos with his little brother.

Weakness ko ’yon; I’m fond of kids. He has also invited me to watch him play. ” But, Reyes reiterated, “If Kevin can wait for two years, that would be better.”

Friends, neighbors

The Kapamilya star denied the rumor that she has reconciled with actor Rayver Cruz, a former

boyfriend. “We hang out a lot because we live in the same neighborhood,” she said. “Some people just can’t accept the idea that one can be friends with an ex.”

She insisted that she has likewise maintained friendships with two other exes, actors Derek Ramsay and Dennis Trillo. “I can discuss anything with Derek... and I’m still close to Dennis’ family.”

Reyes recently treated her mom, Frances Klenk, and siblings to a trip to Hong Kong to celebrate her 25th birthday.

All is well between her and her older sister, actress Ara Mina, she clarified. The two had a huge squabble last year that resulted in Mina filing a libel case against her.

Reyes claimed she has become more mature. “I rebelled,” she confessed. “I was angry because I felt my whole family lied to me. I didn’t know who my real parents were until I was in grade school.”

She would rather not discuss the issue further, so as not to hurt her biological mom and foster parents, she said. “What’s important is that everything has been settled. I support both families.”

Reyes added: “I feel bad that Ate Ara and I fought. I had so much angst until last year.” ■

SHE IS in touch with former boyfriends Dennis, Rayver and Derek.

PHOTO FROM INQUIRER.NET

Entertainment

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 34

Kris Aquino at peace after reaching agreement with James Yap Says ex-husband has genuine desire to make up for lost time

BY MARINEL R. CRUZ Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, PHILIPPINES—“I can see that James has a genuine desire to make up for lost time. More than relief, I feel that I’m now at peace,” said actress-TV host Kris Aquino, who on Wednesday has finally agreed with ex-husband, basketball star James Yap, on the terms for custody and visitation for their six-yearold son, James Jr. or Bimby.

Aquino and Yap on Wednesday reached a settlement before the Makati Regional Trial Court with Cristina Sulit as presiding judge. Yap could visit Bimby once a week starting March 7, according to Aquino. The custody of Bimby will remain with Aquino until the child turns 18.

Aquino said Sulit had presented the ideal setup for Bimby.

“James’ previous schedule with Bimb was three consecutive nights in a month.

This never pushed through because Bimb didn’t want to sleep at his place,” Aquino explained.

“Now it’s up to James whether he wants to see Bimb on a Friday or a Saturday, or after school. Judge Sulit told

James that there would come a time when Bimb would be comfortable enough to have a sleep over, that James should take it slow and give the child a chance,” she added.

Aquino said she was also “amenable” to Yap taking Bimby on an out-of-town trip during the summer. “The only thing is, his brother Josh has to be present. Bimb never agrees without his Kuya. The judge said James would shoulder the trip and he agreed,” she shared with the INQUIRER. The actress-TV host believed that the new agreement signaled a “good start” for her and Yap. “It will just take effort on both of our parts. I’ve realized my responsibility in shaping the way Bimb will look at his father. For the past four years, it was just Kuya, me and him. It’s a journey for Bimb, too, but I don’t think it’s too late. As a parent you realize that you have to make allowances for the well-being of your child.”

Aquino admitted there were many failed attempts to come up with a settlement between the two parties. “As the judge mentioned, Bimb’s relationship with his father was shaped in great part by his relationship with me. So while there was animosity, Bimb was also

PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA AND INTERAKSYON.COM

reluctant to have a relationship with James,” Aquino explained.

She said her relationship with Yap had a “thawing out” in December while she was promoting the movie “My Little Bossings,” which she coproduced.

The comedy film featured Bimby and Ryzza Mae Dizon in the lead role. “I saw that he exerted effort to help promote the film.

He even arranged for block screenings,” she said. “When my new show [with Boy Abunda] ‘A&A’ was just starting, James’ team had a bad game against Ginebra and I spoke on his behalf. This also thawed the ice between us. When I celebrated my birthday, I got a text message that said, “Happy birthday! Thank you for being the best mom to Bimby.”

I replied, “Who is this please?” He said,

“James.” I asked, “Yap?” And then he texted back, “Oo.” Yap celebrated his birthday with Bimby on Feb. 15, Aquino added.

“Attorney Sig (Fortun, her legal counsel) and Attorney Lorna (Kapuna, who represented Yap) both agreed that it was now the right time to have a conference with the judge while the two of us seemed to be in a good place in our lives,” Aquino said. The Wednesday meeting was scheduled at 2 p.m.

At the court room, Kris recalled: “We were laughing already. James said, ‘Ikaw ba ‘yan? Nagbago talaga ihip ng hangin!’

You see, Bimb is only turning 7, at least for the next 11 years of his life or until he reaches adulthood, James and I really have to share. I said so let’s not make it difficult anymore.” ■

Yeng Constantino engaged to worship director-boyfriend

BY KATHERINE MARFAL-TEVES Philippine Canadian Inquirer SINGER-SONGWRITER YENG Constantino is now engaged to her nonshowbiz boyfriend, Victor Asuncion.

This, she shared through the photosharing site Instagram on March 8.

The 24-year-old pop-rock singer posted a photo of two holding hands, with the top hand wearing a ring, bearing the caption, “I said Yes.” The proposal happened on Saturday evening over a cup of coffee. Asuncion, in an interview with “Buzz ng Bayan” on Sunday, confessed that he was so nervous as he was about to pop the question. "I didn’t need to bend my knees because my knees were really bent because of uneasiness,” he said.

Constantino and Asuncion, a worship director at a Christian church, became a couple on June 18, 2013. Though their relationship is still young, Yeng is happy and proud in telling the world that she is indeed settling down.

The love story

Constantino met Asuncion in 2013

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Yeng with boyfriend Victor Asuncion.

through a common friend. They eventually became good friends after hanging out a number of times—but failed to see each other for a long period of time.

When the two met again, Asuncion took the chance to court the singer—and as they say—the rest is history.

In her previous interviews, Yeng was vocal that she wanted a God-fearing man to be her first boyfriend.

So when she and the worship director became a couple, she couldn’t hide her happiness and contentment. In an interview with “Buzz ng Bayan,” Yeng expressed that Victor has turned her into a better person. Victor also confessed that Yeng is his first girlfriend.

The date and other details of the wedding are yet to be discussed by the couple. ■

Entertainment

35 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Obama appears between 2 ferns: New ground for presidential promotion on Web’s Funny or Die

BY DAVID BAUDER The Associated Press NEW YORK—Zach Galifianakis brought the ferns, and President Barack Obama opened a new avenue of presidential communication.

The president urged young people to sign up for the new health care plan through an appearance posted Tuesday on the comic website Funny or Die, bypassing the news media and even previous favourites like TV talk show titans Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman.

Instead, he chose to be a guest on Galifianakis’ “Between Two Ferns,” the digital short with a laser focus on reaching people ages 18 to 34.

The video reached 1 million views within three and a half hours of posting and was adding more at a pace of 1 million per hour in the middle of the day, according to Funny or Die. The website was briefly the number one source of referrals to Healthcare.gov, the Obama administration said, with some 19,000 people navigating directly from the video to the health care website in the first few hours.

“Gone are the days when your broadcasts—or yours or yours—can reach everybody that we need to reach,” Obama press secretary Jay Carney said to broadcast journalists at the White House press briefing Tuesday.

With 4 million viewers, Obama exceeded in six hours the typical audience he would get by appearing on television shows hosted by Letterman, Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. That doesn’t count the ancillary views—clips of the interview aired repeatedly on CNN. And the video was a topic on Howard Stern’s radio show. By nighttime, the video had more than 8 million viewers.

As hip as Fallon and Kimmel may be in some circles, their audiences skew older—a median age of 52.7 for Fallon and 56.2 for Kimmel during the last week of February, the Nielsen company said.

For Web entertainment, it’s a moment that rivals Emmy or Golden Globe nominations for Netflix’s “House of Cards.”

And in presidential annals, it breaks form much like Richard Nixon did with his awkward jokes on television’s “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” In the clip, Galifianakis peppered Obama with awkward questions, including whether he’d locate his presidential library in Hawaii or Kenya.

“What’s it like to be the last black president?” he asked.

“Seriously?” Obama said. “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?”

This image from video released by Funny Or Die shows President Obama, left, with actor-comedian Zach Galifianakis during an appearance on “Between Two Ferns,” the digital short with a laser focus on reaching people aged 18 to 34. The president urged young people to sign up for the new health care plan through an appearance posted Tuesday, March 11, 2014, on the comic website Funny or Die, bypassing TV talk show titans like Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel for an online audience.

PHOTO FROM FUNNY OR DIE

Galifianakis feigned annoyance when Obama, about halfway through the 6-minute clip, began urging young people to sign up for health care, sighing heavily before muttering, “Here we go.”

“I think it’s fair to say I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have something to plug,” Obama said. As he went on, the “Hangover” star asked: “Is this what they mean by drones?”

Funny or Die was launched by Will Ferrell and partners in 2007 and has gone beyond being a niche location.

There have been about 20 “Between Two Ferns” episodes, drawing an average of 6 million viewers each, and the Obama appearance is expected to go well beyond that number. Funny or Die gets 19 million unique visitors a month and has 7.8 million followers on Twitter and 5.5 million likes on Facebook.

Television talk show appearances have since become an accepted part of the political circuit. The Obama administration hasn’t ignored this: First lady Michelle Obama appeared on a skit last month in Fallon’s first week at “Tonight.” Vice-President Joe Biden was on Meyers’ first show. The president played along with Fallon’s “slow jam the news” skit in talking about student loans in 2012, when he was running for re-election.

He’s done interactive Web appearances with Linked In, Google and Twitter, said presidential spokesman Joshua Earnest. But it wasn’t quite like Galifianakis questioning him about whether there’s another presidential pardon for a turkey in order or showing him a rash on his arm.

“The video enabled the president to deliver his message very clearly but in a way that’s fresh and appealing to a young audience,” said Susan Etlinger, an Internet analyst for the Altimeter Group. “It’s almost cynical but in a sincere way.”

The White House began talking with Funny or Die last summer about ways to promote the health care plan, and the site has posted several comic videos about the topic, said Mike Farah, production president of the site and executive producer of “Between Two Ferns.”

The interview was taped two weeks ago.

“What I really love about the video is that it’s a funny ‘Between Two Ferns’ first,” Farah said. At the end, the interview’s black backdrop collapses and it’s revealed the White House is where the appearance was taped—the joke being that’s where Galifianakis does all his shows.

In the first few hours, 96 per cent of the site’s visitors judged the video funny, meaning it had reached immortal status on the site, he said.

As 2016 approaches, no doubt other politicians will be watching its impact.

Not everyone was amused, though. On Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” host Brian Kilmeade said the video was inappropriate and “pretty tragic.”

Carney was asked whether some presidential dignity was compromised.

“We obviously assess opportunities that we have and, you know, look at whether they’re going to be successful and wise,” he said. “And I think we made the right call here.” ■ Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler at the White House contributed to this report.

Buying a Home in Canada Buying a home is an exciting experience that can be both rewarding and challenging – and potentially even more challenging for someone who is new to Canada. If you are a newcomer to Canada, and you are thinking about becoming a homeowner, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) offers useful tips to help you find the right home.

CMHC’s Housing for Newcomers site offers tips to help newcomers through the entire homebuying process from making the decision to buy to moving day and beyond. You’ll find lots of information including how to determine what type of home you want and where you want to live, as well as how to find and finance a home.

Looking for a home requires patient, deliberate work and some thoughtful planning, but when you consider how much time you will be spending in your home, and how much money you spend to buy a home, the effort is clearly worth it. CMHC also offers several worksheets and checklists as well as videos in 8 languages to help with every stage of the home buying process. Visit Housing for Newcomers at www.cmhc.ca/welcomehome.

www.canadianinquirer.net

FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

36

Lifestyle

Teen energy drink consumption linked to depression, substance abuse: study

BY SHERYL UBELACKER The Canadian Press TORONTO—A significant proportion of high school students appears to be consuming highcaffeine energy drinks, and for some of them at least there seems to be a link with mental health issues, substance use and sensation-seeking behaviour, a study has found.

The findings have prompted the researchers to call for a reduction in the amount of caffeine in energy drinks and reduced access to the beverages for teens.

In the study of more than 8,200 high school students in Atlantic Canada, researchers at the University of Waterloo and Dalhousie University in Halifax found that about two-thirds of respondents reported consuming an energy drink in the previous year.

About one in five students said they drank the beverages once or more each month, said the study published in the journal Preventive Medicine.

“We also found something very interesting,” said principal investigator Sunday Azagba, a researcher at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact at the University of Waterloo in southwestern Ontario.

“The more intense users tend to be more likely to be depressed, they’re more likely to have substance use,” he said, referring to alcohol and marijuana.

Sensation seeking—taking part in novel activities that provide excitement—also was higher among those who reported consuming energy drinks compared to those who don’t imbibe the caffeine-charged drinks, the researchers found.

“While it remains unclear why these associations exist, the trend is a concern because of the high rate of consumption

among teenagers,” said Azagba.

“These drinks appeal to young people because of their temporary benefits like increased alertness, improved mood and enhanced mental and physical energy.”

The study, based on data from the 2012 Student Drug Use Survey of high school students in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, found that younger teens were more likely to consume energy drinks than their older peers.

“Marketing campaigns appear designed to entice youth and young adults,” said Azagba, noting that brand names like Monster Energy, Red Bull and Rockstar Energy can be appealing to young people.

“It’s a dangerous combination, especially for those at an increased risk for substance abuse.”

Kathleen Miller, a senior scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the University at Buffalo, said the findings are troubling but not surprising, as they’re in line with the body of

emerging evidence on energy drinks and their potential effects.

The study’s findings on the tie-in between sensation seeking and energy drink consumption are among the strongest “we’ve encountered yet,” she said.

While clearly intended to provide a bit of a caffeine buzz, most regular or “mainstream” energy drinks contain about the same amount of the stimulant as a cup of coffee, Miller said Thursday from Buffalo. “So it’s not just the caffeine. There’s something else going on here.

“I think it’s more to do with the way these energy drinks are subculturally understood, the way they’re marketed and the narrative behind them. The whole message is take risks, live on the extreme, live on the edge,” she said, pointing out that Red Bull, for instance, is a major sponsor of virtually “every extreme sport on the planet, literally.”

Energy drinks have been associated with a number of adverse health effects, includ-

ing cardiovascular symptoms, sleep disorders, nervousness and nausea. The side-effects are caused by the beverages’ high concentration of caffeine.

“Given the negative effects of excessive caffeine consumption as well as the coincident occurrence of the use of energy drinks and other negative behaviours in teens, the trends we are seeing are more than cause for concern,” said Azagba.

In recent years energy drink consumption has skyrocketed. In the U.S. alone, sales are expected to reach $20 billion in 2013.

“In our opinion, at the very least, steps should be taken to limit teens’ access to energy drinks, to increase public awareness and education about the potential harms of these drinks and to minimize the amount of caffeine available in each unit,” said Azagba.

“This won’t eliminate the problem entirely, but steps like these can help mitigate harm to our youth that appears to be associated with consumption of these drinks.”

The Canadian Beverage As-

sociation (CBA), which represents most manufacturers of non-alcoholic beverages in Canada, said the study findings reflect only an association, not causality, as the researchers themselves admit.

“The use levels reported by the researchers reinforce the fact that the vast majority of teens, over 80 per cent, rarely or never consume energy drinks,” the association said in statement. “Further, there is no evidence—here or anywhere else—to indicate that the consumption of energy drinks in any way led to substance abuse or to the sort of behaviour associated with substance abuse.”

Noting that energy drinks are regulated in Canada and have a capped caffeine content, the CBA said “contrary to the misperception perpetuated by this paper, most mainstream energy drinks contain only about half the amount of caffeine of a similar size cup of coffeehouse coffee.”

Miller, who was not involved in the study, is researching the connection between sexual risk-taking and the use of energy drinks mixed with alcohol— which many researchers deem a dangerous combination.

“What we’re finding is that drinking them together seems to put you at greater risk than just drinking alcohol,” she said, suggesting that the stimulating effect of caffeine in energy drinks may mask the effects of alcohol, so a person may not realize their level of impairment.

“When you drink alcohol alone, it makes you slower, it makes you sleepy and it makes you stupid because it has an effect on cognitive judgment,” she said. “What the caffeine does is take away the sleep part and reduce the slow part.

“You’re still stupid, but you’re in a better position to do something about it. So it’s a recipe for trouble.” ■

Lifestyle

37 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Forget sexy-suffocating, welcome chic ‘n’ easy

BY CHECHE V. MORAL Philippine Daily Inquirer THERE MAY come a moment in a woman’s life when it might become pivotal to be able to squeeze herself into a starlet bandage dress and look positively ravishing in it. Just like in a movie.

But in real life, what woman relishes cutting off her oxygen every time she wants to look stunning? Not when she has to rush off to meetings at work (and “work” doesn’t involve beaming for fans or being chased by paparazzi), drop off the little one at kindergarten, pick up the groceries on the way home.

As if he had heard what many busy women have been wishing for, Eman Pineda, the same man who created corporate-women favorite Tyler, introduced a new concept of dressing called Harlan + Holden in 2011. (He has since sold the Tyler brand.)

Loose silhouettes

Harlan + Holden is all about comfort and ease, lightness

and fluidity. Its trademarks are loose silhouettes and unstructured shapes, relaxed styles that don’t sacrifice women’s desire to look feminine, polished and chic.

You’re a fool if you think you can only look appealing if strangers can make out your ribcage from your skintight dress, it seems to be saying.

You’re misguided if you think elegance and sophistication are synonymous only to severely tailored clothes, or that wearing a slouchy top is equal to looking slovenly.

One look at the racks of Harlan + Holden, and unflattering and drab are the last things you would associate with its collections. There’s a freshness and refinement to its aesthetics, which also feels very urban. It reminds us somewhat of the minimalist lines of Jil Sander or Calvin Klein, but with the price points of COS. “Harlan + Holden is for the modern woman who is confident in her femininity without feeling the need to wear skintight or skin-baring clothes to look sexy,” Pineda says.

Freedom of movement

“She knows that she needs to be comfortable to live her active lifestyle, yet she doesn’t sacrifice style and femininity.

She is the no-nonsense, directto-the-point type of woman.

She doesn’t like wearing difficult designs because she is always in a hurry… This behavior is reflective of her everyday lifestyle, so she prefers clothes that are easy to wear.”

Freedom of movement is a key consideration in the designs. But women are encouraged to play with the styling, pairing loose with loose or, say, a loose top with a pencil skirt.

There’s thoughtfulness to the fabric choices, as Pineda believes “how a woman feels in her clothes reflects how she’ll look in them.” Materials are light and breathable. While you will find the reliable neutrals, colors are also aplenty.

“Being a relatively new brand whose aesthetics separates itself from the norm, we have the advantage of presenting something different and unavailable elsewhere to our customers,” says Pineda, who began offer-

Drawstring tunic with epaulette details.

ing Harlan + Holden at Adora in Greenbelt 5, but has since opened two other outlets, in Power Plant Mall and Shangri-La Plaza Mall. He likes to limit the availability for now to maintain exclusivity.

“The best way to wear Harlan + Holden pieces is to make them your own,” he says.

“Each piece is so forgiving that any woman, no matter what age or body type, will look good in it.” ■

Randolph High School in Massachusetts Honors Filipino Culture, Helps Typhoon “Haiyan” Victims

BY ALPHA MIGUELSANFORD, M.ED, CAGS FOLLOWING THE November 8, 2013 typhoon in the Philippines, two Randolph High School students, Elvira and Ellen Evangelista, asked the Randolph High School Student Council to support the victims of the typhoon. A few months later, through the collective effort of the Randolph High School student council and advisors Ross Zuckerman and Caitlin Walsh, the Randolph High School will sponsor a “Night of the Nations” on Friday, March 21st from 5pm-8pm focusing on the Filipino culture to benefit the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

“This is the first of its kind and I am honored that Elvira www.canadianinquirer.net

and Ellen Evangelista’s love for the Philippines and their genuine kindness to our fellow kababayans paved the way for this event!”, says Alpha Miguel-Sanford, Assistant Headmaster of Randolph High School who is also a Filipino.

She added that this is also the first time a public high school in Massachusetts has thought of celebrating and honoring the Filipino heritage.

Caitlin Walsh and Ross Zuckerman, advisors of the RHS student council state, “As teachers , we understand how Global Issues can broaden our horizons about what is happening in the world today. So, after hearing about the Typhoon that struck the Philippines it seemed only fitting to host this event as the event directly correlates to the ideals of social action that we

try to stress on a daily basis and most importantly, to help people on the other side of the world by making an effort within my own local community. “ The “Night of the Nations” event will feature authentic Filipino cuisine from local restaurant and caterer JnJ TuroTuro. While experiencing this fine Philippine cuisine, guests will have the opportunity to learn about various countries and heritages in presentations from our very own Randolph High School students.

Following dinner, guests will be welcomed into the Randolph High School’s auditorium for a diverse array of cultural performances of song and dance from the students of Randolph High ❱❱ PAGE 44 Randolph High

Lifestyle

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 38

Travelling soon? Avoid ‘Phone Bill Phobia’ with these simple tips Five simple ways to save on ‘roaming’ —just in time for March Break

BY MARC SALTZMAN WHETHER YOU’RE travelling for work or play—or perhaps a bit of both—you no doubt want to bring your smartphone along for the ride.

Not only can your pocketsized device help keep you organized, connected, productive and entertained while on the go, but you’ve also got built-in GPS navigation, a camera and camcorder, alarm clock, pedometer and more.

Problem is, you’re probably afraid to use your phone outside of Canada—especially given the horror stories of travellers coming home to an astronomical wireless bill.

You don’t need to succumb to “Phone Bill Phobia,” as long as you heed these simple travelling tips: Travel add-ons

Before you leave on your trip, it

pays to pick up a travel plan. Most carriers offer options to purchase add-ons that will save you money on the standard rates for voice, text and data usage while you’re away. WIND Mobile, for example, is the first Canadian carrier to offer unlimited data, talk and text across the U.S.—for just $15/month. With an unlimited plan, you have the freedom to share your entire trip with the world, without the stress of keeping track of your usage or fears of coming home to a crazy bill. If you’re not able to take advantage of a deal like this, you can still prevent “Phone Bill Phobia” with the following suggestions.

for apps that support it—such as live sports scores, real-time weather and news headlines—as it also eats up data.

Turn off ‘Sync’

On a related note, turn off the option to synchronize data and apps automatically. Simply uncheck the "Sync" option in Settings to make the necessary changes. Many time-sensitive apps are set to automatically sync using your data connection—to constantly get new information for you—but you can temporarily disable it or select when to sync (specific dates and times).

Properly close apps

Disable push mail, apps

When roaming, manually check for new email instead of having the data pushed to your phone automatically. iPhone and Android users, for example, can turn off “Fetch New Data."

Similarly, go into your Settings and disable pushed notifications

Make sure you properly close apps when you’re done with them—otherwise, they may still be running in the background and using up data (and your battery, too). This includes GPS-based maps/directions, social feeds, games and other apps that might stay open on

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your phone, though minimized.

On Android, press and hold your Home button and then swipe to the right to close apps; iPhone users can double-tap the Home button and then flick up to close each app.

Consider text, IM

Use text messaging (SMS) or instant messaging—like BBM, WhatsApp, iMessage, Kik, Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger—as opposed to making a voice call. Why? It’s a lot quicker and cheaper. After

all, there’s a lot less “small talk” when chatting via typed words opposed to a phone call.

Email tip

If you're a heavy email user, go into your email settings and choose not to download the entire email from lengthy messages. This way you can manually tap “Get remaining message” (or a similar option) to read the entire text, if desired. Similarly, you can also choose for attachments not to download automatically, such as a large image. ■

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Lifestyle

39 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Jason Kenney... heavily in training, said Ken Doyle, director of policy for Polytechnics Canada.

But Doyle and Reid—who are paying their own way to travel with the delegation, as are all members—say they want to hear first-hand how the Germans have achieved an eight per cent youth unemployment rate, the envy of the industrialized world.

“I want to ask the practitioners of the system what trends they’re seeing, how they got to the stage where there’s such an appreciation for the trades and what we can take away to plant the seeds for similar success in Canada,” said Doyle.

Kenney has been lauding Germany for months as a nation that gets it right in terms of training workers via apprenticeship partnerships among government, schools and businesses.

His influence was readily apparent in last month’s budget in which the Conservative government announced the creation of the Canada Apprentice Loan, an expansion of the Can❰❰ 23

www.canadianinquirer.net

ada Student Loans Program, in its 2014 federal budget.

The fund will provide apprentices in so-called Red Seal trades with access to more than $100 million in interest-free loans every year to help them pay for their training.

During their trip overseas, Kenney and the Canadian delegation—including representatives from labour unions, trade associations and four provincial governments—will travel to various businesses and educational institutions in cities like Dusseldorf and Berlin to see first-hand how the German model works.

The Canadians will also head to England to hear about recent improvements to the British apprenticeship and training system.

“I’m pleased to be leading a delegation of provincial representatives, employers, educators, trainers and labour organizations to study the German and British systems to learn how we can apply best practices to Canada in order to improve our labour market system,” Kenney said in a statement.

In his speech to the Manning conference over the weekend, Kenney lauded Germany once again, pointing out that many young Germans “make fantastic incomes” in skilled trades thanks to the country’s apprenticeship system.

“While we are a model in many areas, we should also have some humility and recognize that perhaps we can learn a little bit from other countries,” he said to applause.

There are reservations, however, about the German model, even among some of the delegation members.

In Germany, children as young as 10 years old are streamed into a system that combines both general and technical education. Some have suggested that robs students of the freedom to choose their future career paths.

“The German system is quite prescriptive; you’re strongly encouraged to decide early on which path you’re going down,” says Reid of the Progressive Contractors group.

“It’s one thing to encourage, it’s another to prescribe.” ■

Business

PH tops regional sentiment

BY DAXIM L. LUCAS Philippine Daily Inquirer OPTIMISM ON the prospects of the Philippine economy is at its highest level in recent history, thus giving the country arguably the best investment climate in Asia, according to a study made recently by London-based Economist Corporate Network.

In a briefing, Christopher Fossick, managing director of international property consulting firm JLL, which commissioned the report, said 49 percent of multinational corporations surveyed in the region ranked the Philippines at the top of the 14 major Asian nations in the pile.

“When it comes to the investment climate, as far as these multinationals are concerned, the Philippines is effectively number one in the region,” he said. “And this climate is definitely improving.”

The study actually ranked Myanmar ahead of the Philippines, with 77 percent of polled multinational firms saying things were improving, but Fossick pointed out that the country represents a special case.

“Myanmar’s doors are just opening [to foreign investors] so the Philippines is effectively number one in the rankings,” he said.

The study made by a unit of The Economist noted that 44 percent of all survey respondents believed that the Philippines’ investment climate is “staying the same,” while only 6 percent said that it was “worsening.”

“And those that had a negative view on the Philippines were probably industry-specif-

ic,” he said.

The respondents covered 334 large multinational corporations operating in Asia from a wide array of sectors like pharmaceuticals, banks and retail.

Seventy percent of respondents had global revenues of at least $1 billion, and 80 percent of them were headed by nonAsian multinationals.

The country was ranked by these executives ahead of China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan.

They were most bearish on India where 32 percent of respondents said the investment climate was deteriorating, followed by 22 percent in China who believed prospects were turning south.

As such, the JLL official predicted that the local real estate market—especially the office, commercial and residential sectors—would be a direct beneficiary of the bullish sentiment.

“We expect the capital value of the Philippine [property] market to reach $300 billion by 2031,” Fossick said, saying that this represented an increase of over 50 percent from the projected $134 billion value by 2021.

More significantly, this would represent a sharp rise over the aggregate capital value of the local real estate market of only $48 billion recorded in 2011.

For this year, JLL expects capital values of office real estate in Metro Manila to rise by between 10 and 20 percent, while rental values would increase by between 5 and 10 percent, due mainly to the continuing strong demand from the business process outsourcing sector. ■

MARCH 14, 2014 FRIDAY 40

10 PH tycoons on richest list

BY DORIS C. DUMLAO Philippine Daily Inquirer AS THE PHILIPPINES gained the bragging rights as Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economy, 10 of its tycoons led by SM group founder Henry Sy made it to Forbes magazine’s 2014 list of wealthiest people on the planet.

In the latest annual ranking of global billionaires published on March 3, the net worth of Sy and family was estimated at $11.4 billion, lower than last year’s $13.2 billion. But it was enough to enable him to keep his ranking as the country’s richest man and to be among the world’s top 100 billionaires. The 89-year-old Sy, whose SM group dominates the local banking, retailing and property development scene, ranked 97th globally, down from last year’s 68th.

The magazine said its estimates were a snapshot of wealth on Feb. 12, when it locked in stock prices and exchange rates from around the world.

Stock prices in the Philippines have pulled back from record highs seen last year as large global funds pulled out of emerging markets since May last year when the US Federal Reserve announced a tapering of the monetary stimulus that boosted financial markets in the last few years.

Worth of $6.4T

A total of 1,645 billionaires made it to the global list this year with a combined net worth of $6.4 trillion, up from $5.4 trillion a year ago.

The ranks of the world’s billionaires continued to scale new heights and expand to newcorners of theworld, according to Forbes.

The country’s second richest man is still Lucio Tan, with an estimated net worth of $6.1 billion, ranking 227th globally.

The 79-year-old Tan, who has interests in tobacco and beverage manufacturing, banking, property development and aviation, saw his net worth rise from last year’s $5 billion.

Ranked third richest in the Philippines this year is Megaworld and Alliance Global Group founder Andrew Tan, 61, with an estimated net worth of $4.7 billion, rising from last year’s $3.95 billion.

He was followed by Enrique Razon Jr., chief of global port operator International Conwww.canadianinquirer.net

Business tycoon Henry Sy.

tainer Terminal Services Inc. and Bloomberry Resorts Corp., with a net worth of $4.2 billion.

At 54, Razon is the youngest among Philippine billionaires.

Joining this year’s list and ranking fifth among the country’s wealthiest is JG Summit founder John Gokongwei Jr., 86, with an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion.

Completing the local roster are construction magnate David Consunji (net worth: $3.3 billion), Metrobank group and GT Capital founder George Ty and family ($2.3 billion), Jollibee group founder Tony Tan Caktiong ($1.7 billion), stockbroker, insurance and car dealership magnate Robert Coyiuto Jr. ($1.5 billion) and Filinvest group founder Andrew Gotianun ($1 billion).

Except for Gokongwei, all these billionaires were also on the 2013 list.

Two names that were part of Forbes’ 2013 global list but are no longer on this year’s roster are retailer Lucio and Susan Co, founder of fast-growing retailing chain Puregold and Cosco Capital as well as Alphaland and Philweb chair Roberto V. Ongpin, who complained about being included on the list.

PHOTO FROM CELEBRITYNETWORTH.COM

tertainment CEO Vince McMahon, fashion king Michael Kors and Denise Coates of UK online betting firm Bet365.

This is the 28th year for the Forbes billionaires list.

To compile net worths, the magazine valued individuals’ assets—including stakes in public and private companies, real estate, yachts, art and cash—and take into account estimates of debt.

“We attempt to vet these numbers with all billionaires.

Some cooperate; others don’t.

We also consult an array of outside experts in various fields,” the magazine said.

Dictators, royalty excluded

The Forbes billionaires list ranks individuals rather than large, multigenerational families who share large fortunes.

The list neither includes dictators who derive their fortunes entirely as a result of their positions of power nor royalty who, often with large families, control the riches in trust for their nation, the magazine said.

Because of the technology boom and strong stock market, the United States once again has the biggest number of billionaires (492).

Bill Gates world’s richest

Globally, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is back on top, toppling telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico, who had topped the list the past four years.

Spanish clothing retailer Amancio Ortega, best known for the Zara fashion chain, retained the No. 3 spot for the second year in a row, extending his lead over legendary American investment guru Warren Buffett, who is again at No. 4.

The magazine said roughly two-thirds of the billionaires had built their own fortunes, 13 percent inherited them and 21 percent had been adding on to fortunes they received.

Other notable newcomers include World Wrestling En-

Zuckerberg

The year’s biggest gainer was Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, 29, whose fortune jumped by $15.2 billion to $28.5 billion as shares of his social network skyrocketed.

The United States was followed

by China (152) and Russia (111) as the countries with the biggest concentration of billionaires.

But Forbes also noted that wealth was spreading to new places. New billionaires have been discovered in Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania and Uganda.

The magazine said that for the first time, an African, Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, broke into the Top 25 with a net worth of $25 billion. ■

Sports/Horoscope

41 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

Injury forces PSC sees less than 100 Martinez withdrawal athletes joining Asian Games

PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

BY CEDELF P. TUPAS Philippine Daily Inquirer OLYMPIAN MICHAEL Christian Martinez withdrew his participation from the World Junior Figure Skating Championships in Bulgaria due to a nagging knee injury.

Told by his doctor and coach to heal the knee first so as not to jeopardize his bid in future competitions, Martinez, who rose to prominence following his participation in the Sochi Olympics last month, decided to skip the event.

Having finished 19th as the youngest competitor in the

men’s figure skating event of the Olympics, Martinez was expected to make waves in Bulgaria.

“Michael is withdrawing from the Bulgaria competition,” said the skater’s mother, Maria Teresa Martinez in a statement posted on an SM Facebook page.

SM supports Martinez’s training and campaigns overseas.

“It’s the doctor’s and coach’s decision,” she said. “Michael’s doctor has recommended that he withdraw from the World Junior since his knee injury has not completely healed yet.”

Bucking injuries, Martinez made history by becoming the first Southeast Asian skater to compete in the Winter Olympics. ■

BY MARC ANTHONY REYES Philippine Daily Inquirer PHILIPPINE SPORTS Commission chair Richie Garcia said there could be no more than 100 athletes bound for the Asian Games but the agency is open to a bigger delegation if more athletes meet the qualification criteria.

Garcia, who is also the chief of mission to the Asiad in Incheon, South Korea, said the PSC is looking at less than 100—about the number of athletes from softball, rugby and basketball as well as from a sprinkling of other sports.

“We don’t want to set a limit but we are looking at the number of athletes whomay qualify,” he said.

The country sent 188 athletes to the 2010 Guangzhou Asiad

PHOTO FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

and posted a 34-9 gold-silverbronze medal tally.

Garcia and the Asiad Task Force yesterday met with officials of boxing which is seeking P10.5million for its preparations.

Dr. Ernest Jay Adalem of basketball said they have yet to vouch for the funding request although they recognize the fact that boxing remains the country’s best possible source of Asiad medals.

“We are here to make sure that we have enough budget for all the sports competing in the Asian Games,” said Adalem, who sat with fellow Task Force members Romeo Magat of tennis and Philippine Olympic Committee chair Tom Carrasco of triathlon.

Association of Boxing Alliances in the Philippines executive director Ed Picson said they are pushing for a 20-man pool in eight weight classes. ■

HOROSCOPE ARIES

CANCER

LIBRA

CAPRICORN

(MARCH 21 - APRIL 19)

(JUNE 22 - JULY 22)

(SEPT 23 - OCT 22)

(DEC 22 - JAN 19)

Your mind isn’t likely to be on the job today. That could cause a number of problems. You might be feeling especially romantic. You’re thinking about the evening when you can be alone with your romantic partner or at least luxuriate in racy novels or sexy movies. At lunch, buy some clothes you feel are especially flattering and then enjoy your evening!

TAURUS (APRIL 20 - MAY 20) A renewed sense of physical vigor could have you plunging with determination into whatever projects you need to do today. However, your mind won’t really be on them, Taurus, as you could be feeling especially passionate now. Your own intellectual and philosophical interests might be uppermost in your mind, right up there with sex and romance! That physical vigor could prove very pleasurable tonight.

GEMINI (MAY 21 - JUNE 21) You’re in a romantic mood today, Gemini. You’re more likely to notice attractive strangers you pass on the street, and attract admiring glances from them!

Racy novels and movies could seem more appealing than usual, and you might do some window-shopping for sensual products. This is definitely an evening to spend with that special person in your life. Have a professional style your hair to make sure you look your best!

An evening at home with your sweetheart could seem very appealing today, Cancer. Sex and romance are very much on your mind, and you might surprise yourself with how Earthy you feel. You could decide to pick up a romantic novel or see a sexy movie.

You could learn to communicate better with your partner today, both verbally and physically. Make sure you look your best, and go for it!

Communications with family members and others should be clear, honest, and loving. Although your physical passions may be surging beneath the surface today, Libra, they’re still very much present. You’re likely to be feeling particularly romantic, and might want to read racy novels or go to a sexy movie. This is the night to be alone with that special person. Make sure you look your best.

You’re a born romantic by nature, Capricorn, but today you’re likely to think more in terms of physical passion than idealized romance. You’re likely to be especially concerned with your appearance.

The color blue might seem especially appealing right now, but don’t forget to add some red for passion! Phone your romantic interest and have fun tonight!

LEO

SCORPIO

AQUARIUS

(JULY 23 - AUGUST 22)

(OCT 23 - NOV 21)

(JAN 20 - FEB 18)

Communication with a significant other might hit a brick wall, and you may not be able to get through. Money could be coming in the mail, Leo, but probably won’t arrive today. This could be a day full of frustrations, but the evening should make up for it. Love and romance look great right now. This is a wonderful day to schedule an evening with your partner - or to look for one. Enjoy!

A phone call from your sweetheart might bring out your passionate, romantic side today, Scorpio. You’ll probably have a lot to do, and therefore not be able to meet with him or her until late. All signs indicate that the encounter will be worth the wait. You should be especially attuned to your partner right now. You might know instinctively what they need from you now.

Even if you aren’t romantically involved, Aquarius, you’re likely to feel especially passionate today and anxious to schedule an intimate evening with someone who’s caught your eye. You may not gallop off into the sunset right away, but you could dream of faraway lands. Be patient and don’t overwhelm this person with too much passion too soon. Wait and see how things go.

VIRGO

SAGITTARIUS

PISCES

(AUG 23 - SEPT 22)

(NOV 22 - DEC 21)

(FEB 19 - MAR 20)

You are passionate by nature, Virgo, but the strength of your desires might surprise even you today. You’re feeling especially romantic and even sexier than usual. You’ll want to spend time alone with your lover. Don’t be surprised if you attract admiring glances from others, even strangers.

Communication on all levels should be clear and forthright. Enjoy a great evening!

As someone who tends to operate through your intellect, Sagittarius, you might be surprised by the surge of romantic passion that comes your way at this time.

For today at least, your values might shift from the intellectual to the physical. You’ll probably want to plan a romantic evening with someone special.

You might even want to get out and spend some money on clothes. Enjoy your day.

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While you are Earthy by nature and enjoy physical passion, Pisces, this might seem even more pronounced today. Racy novels and movies could be especially appealing. You may want to plan a romantic evening with a lover. If you don’t have one, don’t be surprised if an old friend suddenly looks very sexy!

This is a great day to shop for clothes. You’re more likely to pick the most becoming items.

FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

42

Travel

Why the Philippines is the place to be this summer INQUIRER.net MANILA, PHILIPPINES— When you live in a country that fuses together urban sophistication, impressive skylines, gorgeous beaches and the friendliest people on this side of the world, it’s hard not to look forward to it at its finest— during the summer.

Yes, the Philippines boasts some of the most exciting prospects for the summer, so before you book that trip to the Maldives or Ibiza, here are few reasons to make you stay in the Philippines for the summer holidays.

You can go back in time

Well, okay—it doesn’t literally mean going back in time, but the Philippines is home to some of the most historic spots in the world! Corregidor Island, for one, is guaranteed to transport you back into the Second World War with its perfectly maintained Malinta Tunnel and Pacific War Memorial, among others. But if that’s not up your alley, fear not—there are many other options to satisfy your craving for exciting history.

There’s also Mactan Island to check out Magellan’s Cross, or Fort Santiago to be a witness to the heroics of our countrymen during the Spanish era.

You can finally perfect wave

catch

that

Even Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers can attest to this—the Philippines boasts some of the best surf

spots in the world. Be sure to check out Siargao Island for a thrilling adventure that will surely be the talk of the town for whole of the summer. CNN agrees too—the Cloud Nine surfing hotspot on Siargao is among their Top 50 Best Surf Spots in the World. Now why would you want to miss out on that?

perfect summer destination for families, colleagues and friends alike.

There’s always something to do for everyone

The food (Oh yes, the food)

From the sisig of Pampanga to the lechon of Cebu, there is no end to the culinary feast that The Philippines can bring.

Yes, the Philippines is home to a wide range of quality dishes— both local and international fare. Whether it’s a frosty glass of halo-halo by the beach that you’re craving for, or a sumptuous lechon dinner at the heart of the city, or a quick 2-piece chicken meal from Jollibee, the Philippines has it—and so much more.

We have some of the best beaches ever

The summer is the perfect

There’s scenic Bohol, exciting Boracay and exotic Palawan for some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

time to hit up the beaches around the Philippines—and there are just so many to choose from. There’s the gorgeous Bohol for one of the most scenic destinations in the country, exciting Boracay Island for the partygoers and socializers and beautiful Palawan for some of the most exotic and solitary beaches in the Philippines. Local travel website tripmoba. com has some enticing travel packages for many of the country’s top beach destinations,

and it’s so simple to use—a few clicks and you’re in for a summer holiday you won’t ever forget.

The list never ends

The Philippines never seems to run out of things to do— whether it’s going on a hike up Mt. Pinatubo, riding horses in Baguio or partying the night away around The Fort or Capitol Commons. Yes, the Philippines offers a widely extensive list of things to do, making it the

You don’t have to worry about mom getting bored or your youngest brother getting restless this summer—there are so many things to do across many different age groups, and now that it’s summer, there’s even more time to do it. tripmoba. com has a wide range of flights, hotels and experience packages that cater to many different ages and interests, and all it takes is a click of a button. The up-and-coming Filipino website is so efficient that it’ll take just a few minutes to get your dream destination started.

The Philippines is really a melting pot of diversity— among people, cultures and natural wonders alike, and this summer, the country is set to take centre stage and show the world why it really is more fun in the Philippines. ■

Travel

43 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

After 79 years the Cascades of Time Garden a delight for flora fans

BY BILL GRAVELAND The Canadian Press BANFF, ALTA.—It’s a tiny patch of floral tranquility in one of the most beautiful parks in Canada.

While the streets of the Banff National Park townsite are virtually awash with 3.5 million visitors a year, the Cascades of Time Garden located at the end of Banff Avenue and on the way to the Banff Springs Hotel offers a surprising break from the frenetic pace.

The ornamental gardens are located in a five-hectare (12-acre) plot of land which also includes the Banff Parks administration building.

The site was originally the home of the Brett Sanatorium and Hotel built in the 1880s by Dr. Robert Brett, a company doctor for the Canadian Pacific Railway, in response to the discovery of the sulphur hot springs in Banff.

When the hotel burned down in the 1930s the plot of land was snatched up by Parks Canada, which built the administration building and the gardens in 1935.

“They commissioned Walter Beckett, an Ontario architect, and what is a bit unusual about this project was Beckett had to plan for not only the building but the landscape. In a lot of projects you would have an architect and a separate landscape architect,” said Steve Malins, a spokesman for Banff National Park.

The garden itself takes up about 1.6 hectares of the site.

“The garden was definitely a huge feature for Beckett. He had this notion of Cascades of Time and not because it faced Cascade Mountain,” he said.

Malins said the goal was to feature a cascade of time in the way the garden

was set up with a forest zone boundary on two sides, stone patches and pools of water.

“He even had notions of casts of dinosaurs and early cave dwellers in amongst the garden too, but fortunately that didn’t happen,” said Malins with a laugh.

“What we ended up with is this beautiful, classically designed garden that really emphasizes the space. He wanted views of the mountain but also wanted to add some colour to a relatively short growing season.”

Depending on the weather the goal is to have the flowers planted by the May long weekend and in place until the first frost, often in September. Approximately 50,000 annuals are planted and eight Parks Canada staff take care of the administration building grounds during the summer season.

Beckett drew his inspiration from the grounds of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa and from a number of English estates.

Malins estimates that more than 100,000 people visit Cascades of Time, which is less than one per cent of those who visit the townsite. But despite the numbers it is rarely empty.

“People picnic in there. There’s often people playing bocce ball or Frisbee and of course quite a few weddings and wedding photos are often taken amongst the gardens.”

If You Go...

Cascades of Time Gardens is free and open from the May long weekend until late September.

The site is within easy walking distance from Banff Avenue, the town’s main thoroughfare.

A number of sulphur hot springs are available at hotels in the area. ■

In California wine country, liquid gold: An olive oil trail

BY MICHELLE LOCKE The Associated Press YES, THERE’S liquid gold hidden among the vines, part of an olive oil boom in recent years. You can tour an orchard, learn what extra-virgin olive oil really means and taste your way through lemon-, herband even chocolate-infused olive oils.

Harvest is usually around the end of the year, but any time is good for a visit. Here are five recommended “pit” stops.

Round Pond Estate

A family run winery whose owners branched out into olives some years ago, this estate produces four gourmet olive oils and has an onsite olive mill. If you’re pressed for time you can do the “Splash and Dash” tasting, enjoying olive oils and the estate’s red wine vinegars. Available AprilNovember, Thursday-Sunday 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday-Sunday 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., $20 per person. For a more leisurely approach, take a tour and tasting, by appointment only and available at 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. daily. You get a tour of the mill followed by sit-down tasting of olive oils, vinegars and syrups paired with estate wines, vegetables and other fresh edibles, $45 per person, 886 Rutherford Road, Rutherford, Calif., 888-302-2575, http:// www.roundpond.com/olive-mill/ Long Meadow Ranch

Tailor your visit to be long or short, depending on your inclination. Stop by the winery tasting room in St. Helena (738 Main St., 707-963-4555) to enjoy an olive oil tasting from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., no appointment needed, $5 for a tasting of Prato Lungo and Napa Valley Select olive oils. For a more in-depth look, visit the winery’s Mayacamas Estate. You’ll explore the grounds, see the vineyards and visit the oldest olive orchard in Napa County, planted in the 1870s. Reservawww.canadianinquirer.net

tions required, $85 a person. During harvest, you can watch the mill in progress from a viewing platform and all visits end with a tasting of limited production wines and a sample of LMR organic Napa Valley Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil, http://www. longmeadowranch.com/.

McEvoy Ranch

McEvoy Ranch started when Nan McEvoy, part of the family that founded the San Francisco Chronicle, was looking for a place in the country. She settled on 550 acres (23 hectares) in Marin County. Inspired by her love of Tuscan olive oil, she worked with Italian expert Maurizio Castelli to create what is now a thriving business. The ranch is open only at certain times of the year, so you’ll need to plan your visit. This year, tours will be offered April 12, June 14, July 26 and Oct. 4. There’ll be a birding tour April 26, a cooking demonstration Aug. 2, and a wreath-making workshop Nov. 1. Orchard walking tours start at $30 per person; touring the gardens and having lunch is $90. Call 707-778-2307 for reservations or book online at http://www. mcevoyranch.com/tours-and-workshops. html. McEvoy Ranch also recently opened a third retail location at San Francisco International Airport’s Terminal 3.

Olive Press

The Olive Press offers a tour of its mill in Sonoma where you can learn about how the oil is made, get tips on how to taste oil like a professional and browse the large store. Tour reservations are required at least a week in advance, and cost varies from free to $20 per person depending on activities selected. The mill is located within Jacuzzi Family Vineyards so there’s a complimentary wine tasting as well.

Mill: 24724 Highway 121 (Arnold Drive), Sonoma, Calif. 800-965-4839. Napa tasting room: 610 First St., Napa, Calif. Hours: Monday, Wednesday-Saturday 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday 9 a.m.-6 p.m., http://theolivepress.com. ■

MARCH 14, 2014

Aliens in... not. And yet the possibility that there’s an interesting phenomenon there is something that scientists should be curious about.”

Rutkowski, a media relations staffer at the University of Manitoba, studied astronomy and started the ufology group when he realized no one in Canada was collecting data on UFOs. His hobby morphed into annual surveys and several books.

He said the 2013 sightings are the second most he’s recorded since 1989, when there were just 141. The highest number— 1,981— was tallied in 2012, although the survey suggests that was an anomaly because people were anxious about the Mayan calendar’s prediction about the end of the world that year.

Rutkowski also explained that it has become easier for people to report sightings through the Internet and, in general, he believes more people are looking up.

“I think people are growing more curious about what’s up in the sky and the possibility of something out there that they ❰❰ 18

FRIDAY 44

Randolph High... don’t understand.”

It may sound a bit out there.

Among last year’s sightings, three were classified in the category C3 or “close encounters of the third kind,” because people reported seeing actual extraterrestrials. Another three were listed under C4, “close encounters of the fourth kind,” described as alien abductions or having alien contact.

The survey said some witnesses were “pilots, police and other individuals with reasonably good observing capabilities and good judgment.”

A few of what the report calls its most reliable and strange “unknowns” include the one involving the two children out sledding in Musquodoboit, N.S., on Jan. 8, 2013.

Rutkowski said some people argue that children make up stories all the time. But this sighting struck him as sincere.

“The kids remained true to their story even while the RCMP were talking to them.

The parents were quite sure the children were not making stories up and they were not prone

to making stories up.

“It’s quite likely that they did see something. The question is what?”

Another interesting sighting came from a retired helicopter pilot, who said he watched at least 50 orange, round lights flying in pairs across the sky in Portage la Prairie, Man., on Sept. 28.

The man, named Arnie, asked in a phone interview not to have his last name published. It’s a bit embarrassing, he said.

“I’ve always been a UFO skeptic and yet I saw those lights,” said the senior, who added the lights moved like no aircraft he’d ever seen before. “It was so crystal clear and so sharp and I was just puzzled.”

He recalled that he was standing in a parking lot, on his way to pick up Chinese food, when he witnessed the bizarre, five-minute light show with another couple.

Arnie swears he’s not crazy.

And while he still doesn’t believe in aliens, he knows he saw something out of this world.

“I allow the possibility that there is something out there.” ■

School. The night will be concluded with a special guest speaker, acclaimed Bostonbased Filipino painter, Bren Bataclan. Bren’s works have been featured in the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Readers Digest, the Chicago Tribune and many more.

Guests of the “Night of the Nations” will have the opportunity to participate in a silent auction for three of Bren’s paintings worth $800 USD. All proceeds from the night will be donated to the Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation which helps Filipino children arrive to school safely while staying dry. Prior to the Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation, children in under resourced areas of the Philippines had to wade through chest deep water just to get to school. Thanks to Jay Jaboneta and Anton Mari Lim, the Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation people have finally begun to address the problem.

Randolph High School is honored to present all proceeds to ❰❰ 37

the Yellow Boat of Hope foundation.

Michael Allen, Randolph High School Headmaster is excited about this purposeful event at RHS. He says, “Here at RHS we want everyone to think with increased emphasis on cultural sensitivity and global mindfulness. We invite everyone to share in this celebration of the Filipino culture. My hope is that after we have this night of culture and learning the community will continue to come together in an effort to sponsor a trip there to give our kids an opportunity to study abroad and expose them to new experiences that will help prepare them to think about local issues from a global perspective.

Ticket admissions will be $5 for students, $8 for adults, and free for children ten and under.

Please join us for a night of cultural education and appreciation in an effort to help the people of the Philippines rebuild their lives following Typhoon Haiyan. Additional donations are welcome. ■

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FRIDAY 46

FAST FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Modern Heroes

BY RUDY M. VIERNES Philippine Daily Inquirer THE PHILIPPINE government cannot provide employment to its teeming employable citizens, sad to say.

That’s the reason so many Filipinos go abroad where employment abounds. Thus the template OFW was coined for Overseas Filipino Worker, which used to be OCW for Overseas Contract Worker.

Time was when one was tagged as OCW the term had a rather abject connotation. No longer because our government has dubbed them “heroes.”

Hero, in mythology and legend, is an honor given to someone with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, especially one who risked or sacrificed his life for a cause, or has saved somebody from the pangs of death.

Our OFWs are called heroes by a grateful government because their dollar earnings, a record high of close to $23 billion in 2013 have saved the country from economic collapse. They don’t mind the loneliness and deprivation as long as they can build and achieve their dreams of putting body and soul together, sending their kids to school, enjoying little luxuries, if not sudden opulence, especially professionals who are megabuck earners.

In our recent visit to the Philippines we traveled north of the country. We were amazed how the provincial landscape had morphed into a once languorous landform of nipa huts into gleaming homes with TV antennae soaring into the sky, while in their garage are parked trappings of affluence, like a late model car, a passenger jeep with a sign “Katas ng Qatar” or “From Saudi With Love.”

That scenery was absolutely amazing, vibrant, albeit a startling metamorphosis.

Another OFW vignette. My late wife and I were in the shopping mall one December day. We were behind a young family with two carts loaded with goodies and the queues were unusually long I figured it may take about 10 minutes for my wife to pay for those goodies so I asked her to transfer. Besides, our small basket totally paled in comparison with the two cartfuls in front of us pushed by a shopper who ostensibly was on vacation from Dubai as announced by his T-shirt.

Thanks to our heroes in the construction sites in the Middle East—factory workers, health care professionals, engineers in industrialized countries, the nannies, tutors and chambermaids of rich families in Europe, entertainers

Publisher Philippine Canadian Inquirer Editor Melissa Remulla-Briones editor@canadianinquirer.net Associate Editor Laarni de Paula Correspondents Gigi Astudillo Angie Duarte Katherine Marfal Frances Grace Quiddaoen Ching Dee Socorro Newland

and mariners in cruise ships, plying the high seas. Their dollar remittances have become a major factor that propped-up the Central Bank reserves that prevent the Philippines from careening to the point of insolvency.

Brain drain

There are estimated 11 million OFWs worldwide and the exodus goes on with tens of thousands leaving the country every year. This includes an increasing number of skilled professionals and workers taking on unskilled jobs resulting in brain drain. This is particularly true in healthcare and education.

There are medical practitioners in the Philippines, especially those working in government hospitals in the provinces who undergo retraining to become RNs whose services abroad are very much in demand.

In America

Filipinos in America today find it easy to integrate themselves in mainstream American society because of their high education and speaking skills many of them have ascended to the middle or upper middle class. Filipino-Americans have the second highest median household income of $65,000, exceeding that of the US general population. Asian Indians and Filipinos lead Asian-Ameri-

cans i n household wealth.

Filipinos constitute the second largest immigrant group in the US and they live a life as sophisticated as educated Americans. They are among the 49% of Asians in the US—aged 25 and over—who hold bachelor degrees. By contrast, the corresponding figure for white Americans is 31% and, for all Americans, it is 29%.

However, in other countries where Filipinos abound like those in the Middle East, there are serious issues they have to contend with. OFWs, both blue collar and white, face problems of illegal recruitment, maltreatment, exploitation, long hours of work, limited food, or quartered in the doghouse. They suffer these indignities just so they can earn a mighty greenback to send home.

These issues have become major concerns of our attaché in these countries.

In some cases their paychecks are withheld and passports confiscated for flimsy reasons. Some domestic helpers, educated as they are as teachers, are physically or sexually abused and maltreated. There are sad stories of Filipino entertainers in counties like Japan who become sex slaves. They go abroad for a promise of domestic work or “social services” only to be deceived into sex work.

But by and large our OFWs have become movers of our country’s economy and have been honored by a government that sets aside a day in December to welcome our balikbayans at the airport with a perfunctory ceremony and have photo-ops published in the papers with the caption "OUR MODERN HEROES.” And our reluctant heroes are grateful for the attention and recognition, if only as an annual parody. ■

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Graphic Designer Victoria Yong Photographers Angelo Siglos Danvic Briones Operations and Marketing Head Laarni de Paula (604) 551-3360 laarni.liwanag@canadianinquirer.net Advertising Sales Alice Yong (778) 889-3518 alice.yong@canadianinquirer.net Antonio Tampus (604) 460-9414 antonio.tampos@canadianinquirer.net PHILIPPINE PUBLISHING GROUP Editorial Assistant Phoebe Casin Graphic Designer Shanice Garcia Associate Publisher Lurisa Villanueva In cooperation with the Philippine Daily Inquirer digital edition Philippine Canadian Inquirer is located at 400-13955 Bridgeport Rd., Richmond, BC V6V 1J6 Canada Tel. No.: 1-888-668-6059 or 778-8893518 | Email: info@canadianinquirer. net, inquirerinc@gmail.com, sales@ canadianinquirer.net Philippine Canadian Inquirer is published weekly every Friday.

Copies are distributed free throughout Metro Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto.

The views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors named, and are not necessarily those of Philippine Canadian Inquirer Editorial Team.

Member

47 FRIDAY MARCH 14, 2014

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Visit www.DignityMemorial.ca to find the closest provider to you.

The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral, cremation and cemetery providers that comprise the Dignity Memorial network. The Dignity Memorial network includes affiliates of Service Corporation International (CANADA) ULC, 1929 Allen Parkway, Houston, Texas, as well as many other fine independently owned and operated establishments. ®†™† Trademarks of AIR MILES® International Trading B.V. Used under license by LoyaltyOne, Inc. and SCI Canada. *Valid until August 31, 2014. No purchase necessary. Limit one per AIR MILES Collector account. See location for details. Offer valid at all participating Dignity Memorial locations. Please allow up to 45 days for reward miles to appear in your Collector account.

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2/24/14 10:10 AM

www.canadianinquirer.net

MARCH 14, 2014

www.canadianinquirer.net

FRIDAY 48