News

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews/2 May) -- Jean Béliveau is no ordinary French Canadian from Montreal.

Béliveau has walked 51,000 kilometers across 51 countries, and has used 51 pairs of shoes in the process, to promote world peace since he left home on August. 18, 2000.

The 53-year-old former plumber has been walking across our planet for the past nine years.

KIDAPAWAN CITY  (MindaNews/01 May) – Election monitors in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) have gathered in Zamboanga City to improve poll monitoring in 2010 and the ARMM elections in 2011.

This was the gist of the letter signed by Edwin Capili, president of the Hotels Resorts Restaurants Association of Dipolog (HRRAD), which was sent April 30 to the Sangguniang Panlungsod here.

GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews/28 April) – A group of Mindanao-based lawyers is pushing for the indictment of ousted president Joseph Estrada before an international court for his role in the “all-out-war” launched by government forces against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) nine years ago.

The first explosion took place around 3 p.m. killing Jason Samad, 10, of Barangay Bagong Upam in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.  His father Kamid was seriously injured, reports from the Maguindanao police said.

COTABATO CITY (MindaNews/27 April) –  The Commission on Elections’ “revised implementation calendar” shows a different date for the 2010 elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM): April 20, instead of May 10.

For Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, ARMM Solicitor General, the proposal to hold next year’s polls much earlier in the ARMM provinces of Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-tawi, Lanao del Sur and the cities of Marawi and Lamitan has “legal impediments.”

DATU PIANG,Maguindanao  (MindaNews/26 April) –  As two-month old Baina, the firstborn son of Al and Sarah Alon, was dying from a preventable disease  in one of the rooms at the Datu Gumbay Piang Central Elementary School here on Sunday, April 26,  a baby girl was born in another room nearby.

Like Baina, the still unnamed baby girl, the eighth child of Samira Indosan,  was born to parents displaced from Barangay Balanaken over six months ago and who have been living in the elementary school since.

ILIGAN CITY (MindaNews/April 26, 2009)---  Two persons were killed when some 40 unidentified armed men strafed residents in Sitio Palianon, Tagoloan, Lanao del Norte Saturday.

SURIGAO DEL SUR (MindaNews/25 April)  --  Hundreds of farmers, environmentalists, local government officials and religious groups from the southern towns of Madrid, Carrascal and Cantilan will stage a four-kilometer march from the National Irrigation Administration in Barangay Calagdaan to the municipal plaza of Cantilan to dramatize their opposition to the entry of two mining firms in the area.

KIDAPAWAN CITY  (MindaNews/23 April) --  The chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has asked the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to look into the alleged involvement of at least three village officials in Maguindanao in last week’s ambush of PDEA-12 agents while on their way to arrest a suspected drug lord in the area.

GENERAL SANTOS CITY  (MindaNews/23 April) -- Entrepreneurs from Region 12 or Southwestern Mindanao earned  some P12 million in sales during the recent National Trade Fair (NTF) 2009 at the SM Mall of Asia, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reported.

COTABATO CITY  (MindaNews/23 April) -- Two powerful political clans in Maguindanao  reconciled during a breakfast meeting Wednesday in a Makati City hotel.

The “unity gathering” of  the Ampatuan and Mastura clans was organized by the League of Municipal Mayors in Maguindanao.

BUTUAN CITY (MindaNews/22 Apr) -- A “no objection” resolution allowing the operation of a state-run small town lottery (STL) drew varied reactions here as it was approved by the city council without a public consultation to determine the people’s sentiments on the issue.
“Not every thing legal is moral,” Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos said in reaction to the resolution expressing "no objection" to the lottery of the Philippines Charity Sweepstake Office (PCSO).

Ustadz Ayub Guiamlod, 53, died around 10 a.m. in front of his students at the Jamaatul Jabar Madrasah, near the Datu Saudi Uy Ampatuan Compound evacuation center in Datu Piang, Maguindanao. His students said he fell to the floor trembling upon hearing the second round of artillery fired that morning.

ILIGAN CITY (MindaNews/21 April) -- Mylene Amerol-Macumbal, whose average in the recent bar exams was just .05 point shy of that of the first placer, attributes a big part of her success to her husband, Judge Arassad Macumbal.

Joel Celis, election officer of President Roxas, also in North Cotabato, identified the victim as Lyndon Gutierrez.

KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews/20 April) – A minor who was among those who escaped from the Cotabato City Jail on Thursday night and who surrendered on Sunday to Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema was not included in the list of escapees submitted earlier by former warden Insp. Panga Arab.

The minor, who is facing a robbery case, brought to 15 the number of escapees.

DAVAO CITY  (MindaNews/20 April) --  Want your kids to acquire new skills this summer?

Children from six to 16 can improve their grammar and communicative skills, learn to write news, take photographs, and tell a digital story, during the 3^rd GSIS Summer Youth Training Workshop from April 21 to May 2.

IPIL, Zamboanga Sibugay (MindaNews/19 April) – Artemio  was closing his small billiard center in front of his house at a little past 10 p.m. on April 4 when a gunshot broke the silence of  night. Then another.
“He was already dead when I found him lying on the floor,”  Artemio’s wife, Liza said in the dialect.

Maquiling and other cockpit aficionados do not know that just across the highway is a place sacred to the early settlers and inhabitants of Bukidnon. 

SINUDA, Kitaotao, Bukidnon (MindaNews/19 April) -- In a precedent-setting meeting Saturday at the Office of the Supreme Tribal here, at least 25 non-Lumad occupants of  the Matigsalug-Manobo’s ancestral domain,  led by Presidential Legal Counsel Jesus Dureza, vowed to submit to the  process of formally seeking the tribe’s consent for use of their land.

“I will be the example. Unahon nako akong sarili nga magsubay gayud sa inyong proseso (I will lead by following your process),” said Dureza who has been operating the Seagull Mountain Resort in Lorega, this town since 1994.

Notter was freed after 93 days in captivity and 15 days after Filipino national Mary Jean Lacaba was freed.