December 11, 2014 Edition

It was seized upon by America’s shocked friends and gloating enemies alike. A damning report into the United States’ brutal treatment of War on Terror detainees triggered worldwide condemnation and calls for CIA agents and senior officials to face justice. China and Iran, whose own human rights records have often been criticized by Washington, denounced the abuses – but so did Germany and the new pro-US leader of Afghanistan. European Commission spokeswoman Catherine Ray welcomed the transparency of the report but warned it “raises important questions about the violation of human rights by the US authorities.”

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Responding to rising survey numbers, Senator Grace Poe is no longer flatly rejecting a likely presidential bid in 2016. The daughter of the late actor Fernando Poe Jr, who was defeated in the 2004 presidential polls, said she’s scared of the thought but is not closing her doors to seeking higher office. A November Pulse Asia survey showed a surge in her poll numbers, while frontrunner Vice President Jejomar Binay continued to suffer a slow decline. Poe though would not say what the tipping point would be to make her finally decide.

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Suspended Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Alan Purisima continued to cling on to this post, saying it’s his right to seek legal remedies. Purisima stayed in his official residence at Camp Crame on December 11 and avoided the media days after he was ordered suspended by the Ombudsman over a graft complaint. Senator Grace Poe, who led a Senate probe into PNP’s activities, urged Purisima to let go for the sake of the institution.

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Who picked the banana you ate this morning? Who cut the cane for the sugar in your coffee? The United States Department of Labor listed 13 Filipino goods believed to be produced through child labor including bananas, coconuts, corn, fashion accessories, fish, gold, hogs, pornography, pyrotechnics, rice, rubber, sugarcane, and tobacco. The goods were outlined in a 39-page report released last December 1 by the US DOL, with a separate report released by the Philippine Department of Labor and Employment December 10. Not a single good supplied by the Philippines was reported to be produced through forced labor, but the country is among states with the most number of goods produced through child labor.

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The UN’s human rights chief condemned rich nations for their indifference to waves of global migration, after new figures showed more than 3,400 people died in the Mediterranean this year trying to reach Europe. A record 348,000 migrants and refugees took to leaky boats this year in search of a better life in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East, 4,272 of them dying in the process, according to the UN refugee agency. Most of these were in the Mediterranean, where more than 207,000 made the crossing since January, almost 3 times the previous high of 70,000 during the Libyan civil war in 2011. Rich countries must not become “gated communities” that avert their eyes “from the bloodstains in the driveway,” UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said at the start of talks on the issue in Geneva.

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The news that Indonesian authorities sank 3 Vietnamese fishing boats in Indonesian waters last week puts new teeth into President Joko Widodo’s vow that he intends to make his nation into a regional maritime power. The December 5 sinking of Vietnamese vessels was seen by some observers as a message to China, which has made unprecedented intrusions into Indonesian waters around the Natuna Islands and which recently reiterated its right to South China Sea areas also claimed by the Philippines. Jokowi has outlined a diplomatic agenda serving notice that Indonesia would raise its profile in the South China Sea.

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Rival carriers Philippine Airlines Inc. and Cebu Pacific Air joined forces to oppose the planned new talks between the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) set for early next year. Philippine carriers are protesting the Civil Aviation Aeronautics Board’s decision (CAB) to allow Emirates to increase its Dubai-Manila flights despite exceeding its allowable capacity. PAL and Cebu Pacific added that holding new bilateral air negotiations with UAE would favor Emirates that currently flies 3 times a day to UAE. The airlines also asked CAB to stop Emirates from selling tickets to be flown beyond December 26 this year.

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Time magazine named ebola fighters as their Persons of the Year for 2014. “For decades, Ebola haunted rural African villages like some mythic monster that every few years rose to demand a human sacrifice and then returned to its cave. It reached the West only in nightmare form, a Hollywood horror that makes eyes bleed and organs dissolve and doctors despair because they have no cure,” said Time managing editor Nancy Gibbs. The year 2014 saw Ebola transform from being an outbreak to an epidemic, hitting West African countries – Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone – the hardest. The disease also reached Europe and the United States. Time said the disease showed the weak health infrastructure in many countries and how even the World Health Organization (WHO) was “in denial and snarled in red tape.”

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Read the full story on WHO’s admission it was slow in responding to Ebola here.

The Philippine national football team missed out on its first trip to the AFF Suzuki Cup final as they suffered a 3-0 heartbreaking loss to Thailand at the Rajamangala Stadium in Bangkok on December 10. The Thais exhibited their hunger to give the 80,000 fans in attendance a great show right from the get-go as they took control of the ball to pound the defense of the Azkals early in the first half. The nil-nil deadlock on aggregate was finally broken as Chanathip Songkrasin struck a thunderous goal from inside to box to beat Patrick Deyto and give his squad a 1-0 advantage in the 6th minute. Thailand continued to pound on the Azkals’ back-line for the greater part of the first half causing the latter to commit one too many fouls.

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As the January sales season nears in the West, Pope Francis will call on shoppers not to buy products which may have been made by modern-day slaves – whatever the savings. In a speech to be delivered on January 1 entitled “No longer slaves, but brothers and sisters,” the pope will say that despite the financial crisis, consumers should think twice before buying “items which may have been produced by exploiting others.” His message, published by the Vatican on Wednesday, December 10, slams “the growing scourge of man’s exploitation by man,” an “abominable phenomenon” covering everything from forced prostitution to child soldiers and slave labour in factories.

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