Daily News Highlights – November 5, 2015 Edition

Former interior secretary and now Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer for 2016 Manuel Roxas II defended the Aquino administration over the laglag-bala (bullet-planting) controversy at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, saying the passengers have to take responsibility when they get caught with bullets. When asked who has to take responsibility over discoveries of bullets in luggage at the airport, Roxas said, “Kung nagpasok ka ng contraband sa airport, paano naging problema ng gobyerno ’yun?” (If you enter the airport with contraband, then how does that become the government’s problem?) The public has criticized airport authorities for not immediately addressing the alleged scam. Roxas said there have so far been about 1,200 recorded cases of discoveries of bullets in passegers’ luggage in the past 10 months.

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The Abu Sayyaf Group is demanding P1 billion ($21 million) each for the release of the hostages abducted in a resort on Samal Island, Davao del Norte last September 21. In a one-minute, 27-second video released on November 3, the four hostages – Canadian tourists John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, Norwegian resort manager Kjartan Sekkingstad, and Filipina Marites Flor – are shown sitting in front of armed men, whose faces were covered with masks. The video, posted by the United States-based jihadist monitor SITE Intelligence Group, showed the hostages in a jungle setting. According to intelligence officials, the hostages are currently being held in Sulu, stronghold of the US-listed terrorist group.

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Amid questions over her and her family’s citizenship, Senator Grace Poe said her husband would renounce his American citizenship to show “support” for her administration. Llamanzares was born to Filipino parents who were then studying and working in the US. Unlike Philippine citizenship law which requires at least 1 parent to be a Filipino, American laws consider as citizens those people born in their country. Poe did not give other details of her husband’s planned renunciation of American citizenship. She, however, assured the public that Filipinos would not have an “American boy in Malacañang.”

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China has been under-reporting its coal consumption for years, experts said Wednesday, November 4, after official statistics were revised upwards by hundreds of millions of tons a year. Pollution is a growing concern in the world’s second-largest economy, whose cities are regularly blanketed by choking smog – much of it the result of burning coal, which provides most of China’s primary energy. The updated figures suggest that Chinese emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide – already the world’s largest – are bigger than previously thought.

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Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised big changes after nearly a decade of Conservative rule as he was sworn into office Wednesday, November 4, almost 50 years after his father took the job. The 43-year-old former bartender led his Liberal party to a landslide victory on October 19, dealing a crushing blow to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. He is the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history. He is also the son of the late Pierre Trudeau, considered the father of modern Canada, who served as prime minister from 1968 to 1979, and again from 1980 to 1984. Canada’s youthful leader – slammed as being too inexperienced to govern in campaign attack ads – faces a diverse set of challenges, from bolstering the country’s economy to slashing carbon emissions and ratifying a US-led Pacific free trade pact.

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A bombing claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group Wednesday, November 4, killed at least 4 policemen in Egypt’s Sinai, as investigators pursued their probe of a mysterious Russian airliner crash in the peninsula. The jihadist group had also said it was behind Saturday’s downing of the Airbus A321, which crashed shortly after taking off from a south Sinai resort, but there has been no evidence yet to support the claim and experts say a mechanical failure may have been the cause. All 224 people on board the flight bound for Saint Petersburg, mainly Russian tourists, were killed. ISIS provided no details in its claim of responsibility for the crash. It has met with skepticism from Russia and Egypt, but officials say they cannot rule out any possibilities.

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Rappler Holdings Corporation, the parent company of Rappler, Inc., welcomes Omidyar Network, the fund created by eBay founder and entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam to help businesses use markets and technology for social impact. Pierre is also CEO and publisher of Honolulu Civil Beat, a local news service in Hawaii that encourages civic participation through media. Omidyar Network said it invests “in entrepreneurs who share our commitment to advancing social good at the pace and scale the world needs today.” It uses 5 criteria for its investments: alignment, impact, potential for scale, leadership and innovation. “Rappler is breaking new ground in covering news and developing a reader engagement model that is pioneering and meaningful,” said CV Madhukar, Omidyar Network investment partner. “We are excited to be investing in Rappler.”

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France said Wednesday, November 4, that it will lift a ban on gay men giving blood, but only if they abstain from sex in the months beforehand – an exclusion denounced as discriminatory by rights groups. The lifting of the ban, introduced in 1983 to halt the spread of AIDS, amounted to “lifting a taboo,” she announced, making good on an election promise of French leader Francois Hollande. At first, donation of “whole blood” – the combination of red cells, plasma and platelets – will be open to gay men who report not having had sex for the preceding 12 months, the minister specified. For donations of only plasma, the liquid component of blood, donors will be considered if they have not had sex with another man for 4 months, or were in a monogamous relationship. Experts will then analyze whether the change in policy has increased risk, after which measures may be relaxed further in 2017, the minister said.

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A researcher who accused former United Nations (UN) climate panel chief Rajendra Pachauri of sexual harassment has quit her job at the think-tank he formerly headed, alleging it treated her “in the worst possible manner,” her lawyer said Wednesday, November 4. The 29-year-old woman in February accused Pachauri, 75, of repeated sexual harassment soon after she joined The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) based in the Indian capital. The researcher, who cannot be named for legal reasons, accused him of constantly harassing her through inappropriate emails, text and WhatsApp messages. In her resignation letter, she accused TERI of failing to uphold “my interests as an employee” while at the same time protecting Pachauri, despite the think-tank’s own internal inquiry finding him guilty of misconduct.

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Mozilla announced Tuesday, November 3 (November 4 Manila time), that Firefox 42’s Tracking Protection feature will allow users more control over their local privacy. Aside from not saving browser histories and cookies in private browsing mode, users will also be able to determine how much or how little information they share about themselves with third parties that aren’t part of the site a user is visiting. Private Browsing with Tracking Protection “actively blocks content like ads, analytics trackers, and social share buttons that may record your behavior without your knowledge across sites.” 

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