July 9, 2013 Edition

A Chinese court gave former railways minister Liu Zhijun a suspended death sentence, which basically means life in prison. Liu’s conviction brings to an end one of the most high-profile corruption cases in years, and makes him the first top official to be jailed since new leaders took office vowing to clean up the ruling Communist Party. Once hailed as the “father” of China’s flagship high-speed rail network, Liu, 60, was convicted of bribery and abuse of power by a court in Beijing. He was sacked as railways minister in 2011 after 8 years in the post, and was charged and convicted of accepting 64.6 million yuan in bribes to help 11 people secure contracts and promotions.

Read more on Rappler and The Independent.

The buyer of the 51% stake of tycoon Lucio Tan in legacy carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) remains a mystery. What we know from the statements and a stock exchange disclosure on July is that Dubai-based Emirates is not the one and Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) is a possibility. Tan wants to dispose PAL, which is now considered not a core business of the newly re-organized group. The other PAL shareholder, San Miguel Corp, had said it prefers the soon-to-be new business partner to be profitable and well-known.

Read more on Rappler here.

The showdown over the controversial Reproductive Health (RH) law moves from Congress to the Supreme Court (SC) starting July 9, when critics of the law that fund the distribution of free contraceptives face the tribunal during an oral argument. They  intend to persuade SC justices that the measure, which staunch critic, the Catholic Church called ‘evil,’ is unconstitutional. The  measure took 13 years and 4 months to pass, and cost President Benigno Aquino III some political capital.

Read more on Rappler.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the latest wave of bloodshed during dawn prayers in Cairo, calling for an independent inquiry into fresh violence which killed over 50 people, mostly loyalists of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. Ban said he was “deeply disturbed” by the killings, which have been described by Morsi’s supporters as a “massacre.” Germany expressed “shock” at the violence, Turkey called it an attack on “humanity” and Brotherhood backer Qatar urged “self-restraint” and “unity.” The bloodshed happened outside the headquarters of the elite Republican Guard, which the Brotherhood accuses of betraying Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president.

Read more on Rappler here and here.

The world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, are facing head on their concerns about hacking, a major irritant between them. US and Chinese officials met in Washington for the first session of a “cyber working group” two days before the countries hold their main annual talks. A State Department official said the inaugural session would let the two sides “raise concerns, develop processes for future cooperation and set the tone” on cyber issues. The United States has accused China of waging a vast hacking campaign against the US government, military and companies, with a private study recently concluding that cyber-theft costs the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year. China has hit back that it is also the victim of cyberattacks, charges that gained ammunition when the intelligence leaker Edward Snowden said US spies had hacked into the prestigious Tsinghua University, one of 6 centers that routes all of China’s Internet traffic.

Read more on Rappler.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro called on US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden to decide if he wants to fly to Caracas after the fugitive sent an asylum request aimed at escaping US justice. “”We told this young man, ‘you are being persecuted by the empire, come here,'” Maduro said, referring to the United States. He called the offers from the three Latin American nations “collective humanitarian political asylum.” Over the weekend, the leftist leaders of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia all offered asylum to Snowden, who has spent more than two weeks stranded at Moscow’s international airport while waiting for a country to give him sanctuary.

Read more on Rappler.

On July 8, about 10 million Filipino Muslims looked to the skies for the crescent moon, which marks the start of a new month in the lunar calendar. Originally expected on Monday night – so it could usher the Ramadan on July 9 – the crescent moon wasn’t visible. This means the Muslim faithful will start their month-long fast, the Ramadan, on Wednesday, July 10, as declared by the mufti or Muslim scholars. Considered as one of the greatest religious observances in Islam, Ramadan is the 9th month of the Islamic lunar calendar or Hijrah. The calendar has 12 months that follow the phases of the moon.

Read more on Rappler.

President Benigno Aquino III and the Cabinet met for 10 hours — from 10:30am to 8:30 pm on July 8 — to deliberate on the government’s 2014 budget. Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said in a tweet that they felt like they were “all presenting a thesis defense with the questions” coming from Aquino over the proposed P2.268 trillion budget. “We are moving into performance-informed budgeting, so [Aquino] was asking a lot of questions regarding outputs and outcomes and corresponding budgets,” said Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. “He was exacting and rigorous.” The Aquino administration is running behind its budget preparation schedule, but the president likes to mention savings and prudent allocation of funds when announcing budgets.

Read more on Rappler.

It’s a weird, lopsided fight if ever there was one: seagulls divebombing to attack and feed on the fat of 50-ton whales and their babies. And the birds are winning. The battle, new in recent years, is playing out in the South Atlantic off the coast of Argentina’s Patagonia region, and is not known to be happening in waters elsewhere in the world that are home to the mighty mammals. The effect of all the relentless nibbling is a pernicious disruption of an eco-system. One theory as to why it is happening is there is an overpopulation of seagulls — in this case, the kelp gull. In recent years the gulls have been wreaking havoc. They used to feed on refuse tossed overboard by fishing boats. Now, they have added whales to their menu in frenzied waves of pecking.

Read more on Rappler.

Even before the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton, gives birth, another royal baby is already on the way. The Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II’s granddaughter, award-winning equestrian Zara Phillips, is pregnant with her first child with rugby player Mike Tindall. She is the daughter of Princess Anne, the second child and only daughter of Queen Elizabeth with Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and is 14th in the line of succession. The Duchess of Cambridge is  expected to give birth to her first child with Prince William this month.

Read more on Rappler.