acerojano

China ships in disputed waters as tension runs high

 News
Feb 102013
 

Agence France-Presse 2:25 pm | Sunday, February 10th, 2013 TOKYO – Four Chinese ships were spotted Sunday in disputed East China Sea waters, Japanese officials said, as Tokyo considered disclosing video footage and pictures as evidence of a Chinese frigate’s alleged radar-lock incident. For the first time after Tokyo made the allegation last week, China sent maritime surveillance vessels near Japanese-controlled islands in the East China Sea, known as Senkaku in Tokyo and Diaoyu by Beijing, which also claims them. They were seen sailing in the contiguous waters near one of the outcrops as of 0000 GMT, the Japan Coast Guard said. Tokyo accused a Chinese frigate of locking its weapons-tracking radar on a Japanese destroyer — the first time the two nations’ navies have locked horns in the territorial dispute that has provoked fears of armed conflict breaking out between the two. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday demanded Beijing apologize and admit to the incident, which occurred late January, after Chinese authorities flatly denied Tokyo’s accusation. Japan’s Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Fuji TV on Sunday that Tokyo was carefully studying whether or how to disclose military data as evidence. However he also said he did not think China would “admit to it even if Japan discloses a variety of evidence, because it is trying to protect its national interest”. Onodera on Saturday told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper that Tokyo had “evidence to show the fire-control radar chased after the ship (of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces) for Read More …

PH draws German backing on sea disputes with China

 News
Feb 072013
 
PH draws German backing on sea disputes with China

By Fat Reyes INQUIRER.net 6:13 pm | Thursday, February 7th, 2013 MANILA, Philippines – A German foreign minister on Thursday expressed his country’s support for the Philippine position to solve its sea disputes with China under international law, saying that peaceful resolution was best for the two countries. In a press briefing Thursday, German Federal Foreign Minister Guido Guido Westerwelle AP said that the Philippines’ territorial disputes with China on the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) was discussed and that his country remained supportive of peaceful resolution of the disputes. “We appeal to all sides to resolve all the questions in accordance with international law and in a peaceful and cooperative way,” Westerwelle said in a statement. Westerwelle and a 12-man delegation from Germany were in Manila for a two-day visit, the first by Germany’s top diplomat to the Philippines in 12 years. For his part, Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario said that he conveyed to his foreign counterpart the Philippine initiative to bring the territorial disputes before an arbitral tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) to “clearly establish the county’s sovereign rights and jurisdiction over its maritime entitlements in the West Philippine Sea.” “I asked him to continue supporting the Philippine effort for a peaceful and durable solution to this dispute,” Del Rosario said in a statement. Westerwelle, when asked by reporters to explain Germany’s support, Del Rosario said that a German professor of international public law was appointed as Read More …

Canadian’s year-old son abducted along with nanny in Pagadian

 News
Feb 072013
 
Canadian’s year-old son abducted along with nanny in Pagadian

By Richel Umel Inquirer Mindanao 5:09 pm | Thursday, February 7th, 2013 ILIGAN CITY, Philippines – A group of still unidentified armed men snatched the one-year old son of a Pagadian City-based Canadian businessman and the boy’s nanny around 6:30 a.m. Thursday. Superintendent Julius Munez, Pagadian City police chief, said the armed men barged into the house of the family of the Canadian trader on Sto. Rosario Road in Dau village and took the boy and the nanny at gunpoint. The boy’s father was not around when the gunmen struck. Munez said police have launched a search and rescue operation to recover the victims.

In California, a push to highlight the Filipino story

 News
Feb 072013
 
In California, a push to highlight the Filipino story

Kuwento By Benjamin Pimentel 2:22 pm | Thursday, February 7th, 2013 Photo courtesy of Assemblymember Rob Bonta’s office. SAN FRANCISCO – It didn’t take long for it to become evident that finally having a Filipino in the California State Assembly would be a big deal for Filipinos in California and beyond. Just five weeks after being sworn in, Rob Bonta, California’s first Filipino-American assembly member, began working on a bill that would finally honor Filipino immigrants who, nearly a century ago, moved to the US to work as field hands in California, but went on to make history. Bonta’s bill would require California school districts to teach students about the contributions of such historic, but mostly forgotten, figures, as Philip Vera Cruz, Larry Itliong, Pete Velasco and Carlos Bulosan. “As the first Filipino-American state legislator in the history of California, I have the opportunity to provide a voice for the Filipino-American community — a community whose contributions have been historically underemphasized in the story of our state,” he said. Now to be sure, the idea of highlighting the Filipinos’ incredible journey in California didn’t have to come from the state’s first Filipino-American legislator. In fact, Bonta had the work of other legislators, who were not Filipinos, to build on. Ten years ago, Assemblymember Pat Wiggins pushed a resolution that would recognize the contributions of Filipinos in the farm labor movement.  Five years later, in 2008, Assemblymember Warren Furutani moved for a formal state recognition of the contributions of Filipinos to Read More …

Aussie with ammo, Fil-Am with gun caught in Naia checks

 News
Jan 292013
 
Aussie with ammo, Fil-Am with gun caught in Naia checks

By Jodee A. Agoncillo Philippine Daily Inquirer 9:19 pm | Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 INQUIRER FILE PHOTO MANILA, Philippines–An Australian national was caught with almost a hundred 9-mm bullets while a wheelchair-bound Filipino-American yielded a .22 cal. pistol in separate security checks at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City on Tuesday. The Australian, identified as David Andrew Straoud, was scheduled to board Philippine Airlines flight 730 to Bangkok, Thailand, when 99 bullets were found in his backpack during a check through the X-ray machine around 8 a.m. at Naia Terminal 2. Straoud, a 42-year-old oil drilling engineer married to a Filipino woman, was placed under arrest by the Pasay police for illegal possession of ammunition and violation of the election gun ban. In an interview, Straoud claimed that the bullets were placed in the bag by mistake and that his wife Vina Vergara had a license for a 9-mm pistol, which he said she acquired for “self-defense.” About three hours earlier that morning, the bullets went undetected when Straoud flew to Naia from Silay Airport in Bacolod City, where his family is based. “Perhaps, they were still sleepy,” he said as to how security personnel missed the bullets at Silay. Later in the afternoon, Vergara and her son with Straoud immediately flew to Manila carrying the gun license and other pertinent documents. She was working on his bail amounting totaling P60,000 at press time. Also on Tuesday, Esmael Bulatao, a Filipino-American and polio sufferer who hails from Canan, Pangasinan Read More …

Tubbataha Reef accident ignored during meeting of PH officials with US lawmakers

 News
Jan 292013
 
Tubbataha Reef accident ignored during meeting of PH officials with US lawmakers

By Tarra Quismundo Philippine Daily Inquirer 8:59 pm | Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario, right, looks at the guest book which was signed by visiting US congressmen led by Edward Royce, R-Calif., left, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013, in Manila, Philippines. Rep. Royce is in Manila for talks with top Philippine officials, including President Benigno Aquino III, aimed at strengthening relations between the two countries. Others in the photo are Rep. Eliot Engel, D-New York, second from left, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., third from left, Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., fourth from left, and Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., second from right. AP MANILA, Philippines — The grounding of a United States minesweeper ship on Tubbataha Reef and its increasing damage on the marine sanctuary and protected area in the Sulu Sea was apparently not on the agenda when a delegation of US lawmakers met with Philippine officials on Monday. Officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said discussions between the Philippine and US sides instead focused on furthering long-standing defense and economic ties between the two countries. Environmental issues were discussed broadly, with focus on Philippine initiatives on preparing for and mitigating the impact of climate change, officials said. “There was a discussion of the leadership of the Philippines in terms of conservation of the environment,” said Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary for American Affairs Carlos Sorreta, who was present in the meeting. Asked if there was an Read More …

The Mexican Connection

 News
Jan 292013
 

8:51 pm | Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 VALLADOLID, The Yucatan—This is not my first time in the Yucatan nor in Mexico, and every time I visit, always as a turista (to act otherwise would be disingenuous), I feel a connection with the country, a stronger one with it and the rest of Latin America than with that country north of the border, where my wife and I live, even as the tangled layers of bloodlines, colonial history, and economic imperatives, among other things, tie us to both the Hispanic world and that of the norteamericanos. Perhaps this can be explained by the simple fact that Las Islas Filipinas—that perla del mar oriente—was under the Iberian thumb far, far longer than the roughly half a century of US colonial occupation. The United States did take over a Southeast Asian country but one that was already Hispanicized. Walking around this lovely, un-bustling 16th-century colonial town, blessedly far from the hordes of visitors that clog Cancun on the Caribbean coast but not too far as to be a long haul from the Cancun airport, I do have a sense of déjà vu, even if this may be my first visit to this particular pueblo that is still largely Mayan. Whenever asked, I always facetiously summarize the legacies of more than three centuries of Spanish rule as the fiesta, the siesta, and la iglesia—with the last being a legacy the Philippines would be much better shaking off. (In this sense, the Mexicans very astutely Read More …

Tatay in America: From macho Filipino to Mr. Mom

 News
Jan 292013
 
Tatay in America: From macho Filipino to Mr. Mom

Kuwento By Benjamin Pimentel 8:47 pm | Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 Jojo Abinales with daughter Angela SAN FRANCISCO – One would hang out at a laundromat watching telenovelas. Another didn’t know the difference between a blouse and a skirt. Meet the Filipino man as Mr. Mom. They cook, do the laundry and take care of their children. In other words, they don’t fit the traditional image of the Filipino male. Or more specifically, the macho Filipino. The ranks of at-home dads, as Mr. Moms are also known, are growing in the United States, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. And they are helping change the parenting styles in America, the story said. Reading that story led me to think of three Filipino Mr. Moms I know. They’re friends of mine, fellow expats now based in the US. To be sure, in a society where having a maid is a luxury few can afford, Filipino men in the US take on far more parenting and household responsibilities than their counterparts back home. I went on paternity leave twice to take care of my kids. But those stints were short, each gig lasting no more than three months. On the other hand, my three friends played that role for at least a year. For one of them, it’s turned into a life-long commitment. It is, they all agreed, a tough job. “It was easy when there was only one child, but when there was another one, it became difficult,” said Romel Read More …

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