Daily News Highlights – August 27, 2015 Edition

Journalist Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, of the Virginia affiliate of CBS, were shot at close range while conducting an on-air interview at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, a town near Roanoke. Vicki Gardner, a member of the local chamber of commerce, the interviewee, was shot in the back and is undergoing surgery. Vester Lee Flanagan, known on air as Bryce Williams, shot himself along a Virginia highway after fleeing from police. According to various media reports, the suspect filmed the murder himself and posted it on Twitter. His now suspended Twitter account said that Ward complained to human resources about him after only working with him for a day, which apparently got him fired. 

Read the full story on Rappler World.

Now that Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr had categorically said he is running for vice president or president in 2016, he was asked on TV whether he would apologize for what happened during the dictatorial regime of his father and namesake. The answer was yes and no. “Will I say sorry for the thousands and thousands of kilometers [of roads] that were built? Will I say sorry for the agricultural policy that brought us to self-sufficiency in rice? Will I say sorry for the power generation? Will I say sorry for the highest literacy rate in Asia? What am I to say sorry about?” he said. The senator said he always apologizes for his own transgressions but said his family’s stand on his father’s presidency is different. “We have constantly said that if during the time of my father, kung may nasagasaan, o merong sinasabing hindi natulungan o (if there were those who were run over or those saying they were not helped or) they were victimized in some way or another, of course, we are sorry that happened. Nobody wants that to happen. These are instances that have fallen through the cracks.” His father, Ferdinand Marcos, ruled the Philippines form 1965 to 1986. 

Read the full story on Rappler.

Suspected dummies of Vice President Jejomar Binay cornered the bulk of Makati’s IT, janitorial, and security services worth P5.6 billion ($120 million) by running the same companies that won bids in the span of almost a decade. This is the “initial finding” of a review of service contracts in the Philippines’ richest city that the leadership of Acting Makati Mayor Kid Peña ordered. Violeta Lazo, acting head of Makati’s general services department, told the Senate that her office found interlocking stockholders and signs of collusion in the contracts. In the latest of a year-long series of Senate hearings, Lazo cited some of the “red flags” she spotted: the same companies always won the bids, and the winning companies had common owners or stockholders.

Read the full story on Rappler.

A new species of pitcher plant has been discovered in the Sierra Madre mountains of Aurora province in the Philippines, becoming an addition to the more than 50 native pitcher plant species in the country. Named after Filipino botanist Julie Barcelona who is among those who discovered the species, the red meat-eating Nepenthes barcelonae has very distinctive pitcher shape and mouth. The first-produced pitchers are red, larger and stouter, while the latter ones are green, more slender. The team University of Canterbury lecturer and herbarium curator Pieter Pelser, one of the authors of the paper on this discovery, told Rappler that they found this species during their fieldwork on Philippine rafflesia, a parasitic flower known for its pungent odor. His team categorized the discovered species as “critically endangered” based on international standards.

Read the full story on Rappler Science.

Australia’s city of Newcastle, which claims to be the world’s biggest coal export port, said it is pulling money out of fossil fuel industries and investing in more sustainable enterprises. Newcastle City Council, which manages a Aus$268 million (US$191 million) investment fund for Australia’s 7th largest city, voted to move progressively toward “environmentally and socially responsible investments.” Councilor Declan Clausen said, “Coal exports are going to continue…but we’ll also be focusing our investment away from really large, new, environmentally damaging resource projects towards things that are more sustainable in line with the changing expectations of the broader community.” Newcastle, 170 kilometers (106 miles) north of Sydney, is one of the biggest councils in Australia to vote to divest from carbon-heavy industries.

Read the full story on Rappler Science.

Sea levels are rising around the world, and the latest satellite data suggests that 3 feet (one meter) or more is unavoidable in the next 100-200 years, NASA scientists said Wednesday, August 26. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than ever, and oceans are warming and expanding much more rapidly than they have in years past. Low-lying US states such as Florida are at risk of disappearing, as are some of the world’s major cities such as Singapore and Tokyo. “It may entirely eliminate some Pacific island nations,” Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division, said.

Read the full story on Rappler. 

South Sudan President Salva Kiir signed a deal Wednesday, August 26, to end 20 months of war in the world’s youngest nation, but added a list of reservations that raised doubts about whether peace would take hold. The signing ceremony was held in the capital Juba under the threat of UN sanctions if Kiir failed to put his name to the accord, which had already been signed by rebel leader Riek Machar. At least 7 ceasefires have already been agreed and then shattered within days – if not hours – in South Sudan, which broke away from Sudan in 2011.

Read the full story on Rappler.

A Filipino nurse who insulted Singaporeans online and called for the takeover of the city-state pleaded guilty to one charge of sedition and two counts of providing false information to the police, on Wednesday, August 26, ChannelNews Asia reported.  Ello Ed Mundsel Bello, known as “Edz Ello” on Facebook, was fired from his job at the government-run Tan Tock Seng Hospital in January after internal investigations revealed a series of social media posts which were deemed offensive. The 28-year-old Bello was arrested last April. Under the Sedition Act, among other things, it is an offense to promote hostility between different races or classes in multiracial Singapore, which is mainly ethnic Chinese. Bello will be sentenced on September 16. 

Read the full story on Rappler.

Sanford Wallace, known as Facebook’s Spam King after having sent 27 million unsolicited messages in 2008 and 2009, admitted to his spamming spree and pleaded guilty on Monday, August 24, to fraud and criminal contempt. Bloomberg reports Wallace, who had been under indictment since 2011, compromised around 500,000 real Facebook accounts through phishing spam messages. 

Read the full story on Rappler.

The first prose piece by Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien is to be published in Britain on Thursday, August 27, a version of an epic Finnish poem that experts describe as “undeniably his darkest work.”  Written in 1914-1915 when Tolkien was still a student at the University of Oxford, “The Story of Kullervo” shows the young author “finding his feet,” Vincent Ferre, professor of comparative literature at University Paris Est-Créteil told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Fascinated by ancient languages from a young age, Tolkien was taken by the 19th century work of epic poetry, Kalevala, a compilation of mythology and folklore which tells the story of Kullervo. The story is “the first time that JRR Tolkien, who had been a poet until then, began writing prose,” Ferre, a Tolkien expert, said. 

Read the full story on Rappler.