Maniolas

AMBASSADOR Daniele Bosio in a photo taken from the official website of the Italian Embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. FILE PHOTO BIÑAN CITY—Members of an antihuman trafficking group on Friday stormed the regional trial court in this city to assail the court’s ruling that allowed the temporary release of Italian diplomat Daniele Bosio, who was arrested and detained for the alleged abuse and trafficking of three Filipino children. Members of the nongovernment End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of children for Sexual Purposes (Ecpat) held placards as they asked Judge Teodoro Solis of the Regional Trial Court Branch 25 to resign. “We are asking that the judge inhibit from the case and that the case be transferred to a court in Manila,” said Ecpat head Amihan Abueva. Bosio posted P900,000 in bail a day after Solis, on July 8, granted his petition for temporary release. Bosio, the Italian ambassador to Turkmenistan, was on a holiday when he was arrested on April 8 in a popular resort in this city. The arrest came after members of the child rights group Bahay Tuluyan Foundation was alarmed at seeing the 46-year-old Bosio with three boys who turned out to be street children from Caloocan City. Biñan City Prosecutor Agripino Baybay recommended charges of three counts of child abuse and three counts of human trafficking against Bosio. The diplomat was initially detained at the local detention facility but was later transferred to a private hospital in Makati City a month before his petition for Read More …

MANILA – Forty-two Taiwanese and two Chinese suspects have been arrested in the Philippines over a sophisticated Internet scam targeting compatriots back home, police said Thursday. The suspects — who posed as police officers, prosecutors, judges and anti-money laundering officials — cheated people from Taiwan and China out of their money by claiming they could safeguard their cash, a police statement said. The scammers would allegedly convince their victims that their bank accounts were being used for money-laundering and that their assets could be protected if they transferred all their money to accounts owned by the fraudsters, police added. “The syndicates… usually go to the Philippines as tourists and rent houses in posh (housing projects)” where they set up their illegal operations, a police statement said. The suspects were arrested in a series of raids in the central city of Iloilo on Wednesday by a police anti-cybercrime unit and immigration bureau agents. The law enforcers were aided by an official of Taiwan’s cultural office in Manila, it said. The two Chinese suspects were “caught in the act of engaging with their would-be victims abroad,” said Senior Inspector Joanna Fabro, adding that scammers often believed they were unlikely to be prosecuted in the Philippines. But she said the authorities were now boosting their anti-cybercrime capabilities. “Maybe they aren’t afraid of our laws. But we have more teeth and we hope more of them will be apprehended soon,” she said. The suspects will eventually be deported to China and Taiwan respectively but Read More …

Deborah Toh (center, facing camera) getting a goodbye group hug from her classmates. Her three days at the Philippine school left such a huge impression that she has already asked to go back.  ANN/Straits Times FILE PHOTO/TOH YONG CHUAN SINGAPORE—Like many parents, I sent my eight-year-old daughter Deborah for extra lessons during the June school holidays which end at the end of the month. But she didn’t attend an enrichment centre in Singapore; she spent three days at an elementary school in Cauayan city, a nine-hour drive north of the Philippine capital Manila. It came about after my daughter came home from school in early January asking why she did not get to go overseas during the December school holidays. “My classmates went skiing and to Disneyland,” she protested. Our family did not go away on holiday last December, but we have taken our children to Malaysia, Thailand and Japan previously. My wife and I were taken aback that children as young as eight were already comparing where they went for vacations. Worried about where this might lead, we wondered how to give our daughter a bit more perspective about life and holidays. Which was how we came up with the idea for a visit to the Philippines. Our resourceful Filipino maid Maricel, who lived in Cauayan before she came to work for our family eight years ago, arranged for Deborah to join her nine-year-old daughter Charelle at her school. Cauayan city has a population of just 122,000, according to Read More …

Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, center, talks to journalist after casting his ballot at a polling station at a polling station, Bojong Koneng in Bogor, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 9, 2014. AP JAKARTA — After the most polarizing campaign in Indonesia’s history, millions of people voted to elect a new president Wednesday in a race too tight to predict, hoping for change that will fight corruption and poverty. The world’s third-largest democracy is divided over two very different choices: Joko Widodo, a one-time furniture maker and Prabowo Subianto, a wealthy ex-army general with close links to former dictator Suharto. Just a couple of months ago, the election was considered firmly in favor of Widodo, who rose from humble beginnings to become the governor of Jakarta with a squeaky-clean political record. But a late surge by Subianto has vastly improved his chances after he wooed legions of supporters with calls for nationalism despite allegations of widespread human rights abuses during his military career and his connection with Suharto — his former father-in-law. Widodo’s appeal is that he is seen as a man of the people who wants to advance democratic reforms even though he lacks experience in national politics, and represents a break from the past as the first candidate in direct elections with no connection to the 1966-1998 Suharto-era and its excesses. When the polls opened Wednesday morning to about 190 million people, analysts predicted that undecided voters would determine the winner. The polls closed early in the afternoon, and preliminary Read More …

WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN Calle Crisologo at night is the face of Vigan City, Ilocos Sur province, in its quest to land on the list of the world’s New 7 Wonder Cities. Vigan has made it to the short list of 21 cities. LEONCIO BALBIN JR./INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON VIGAN, Philippines—Residents and netizens in this Ilocos Sur capital woke up to the news that the country’s only heritage city made it to the list of 21 finalists in the new Seven Wonder Cities of the World race. But they knew that the campaign to push Vigan to the finish line had just started as the fresh round of voting starts on Monday and ends on Oct. 7. “This is not the end of the road. We’ve only just Vigan (a play on the song, ‘We’ve only just begun’),” read a Facebook post on Vigan’s web page. Vigan made it to the penultimate round in the search and needs a further boost over the next three months to advance to the final round of voting. Organizers of the New7Wonders Cities campaign earlier observed that Vigan, a trading port long before the conquering Spaniards arrived in the late 16th century, had been losing steam but got a second wind in the run-up to the July 7 cut-off. Vigan City Mayor Eva Marie Medina, who was out of the country when the list was released, sent a text message to city employees thanking Bigueños and Filipinos around the world for helping Vigan’s bid. Vigan, known for its Spanish-era mansions, cobblestone streets and culture, is the lone Philippine candidate in the global Read More …