March 6, 2015 Edition

While many of her fellow lawmakers are concerned about the timeframe for passing the proposed Bangsamoro law in June, constitutional law expert Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago said the government should start a new round of peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front since the problem is the legality of the measure. It proposes to create a substate for Muslims in Mindanao. “It is absolutely ridiculous, it’s a stinker in constitutional law for another party in a non-international armed conflict to insist that certain constitutional provisions must be negotiated. That is the height of hallucination. Nananaginip sila (They are dreaming),” Santiago said, in reference to the MILF. Meanwhile a former armed forces chief said if the government fails to “win” peace in the south, it is likely that extremists from neighboring counties will flock to Mindanao to establish a base.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Information from Oxford University and a few of its alumni confirmed a Rappler investigative report that Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the late Philippine dictator, did not complete a bachelor’s degree but made a representation in his resumé. The senator said he got a “diploma” in political science when he graduate from the university. We gathered that what he got was a “special diploma in social studies,” and that in the United Kingdom’s educational system, a diploma is not equivalent to a degree. Marcos Jr has not corrected his resumé, as posted in the Senate and his own websites.

Read the full story and other related reports on Rappler’s Newsbreak section

The Philippine agriculture department is temporarily banning poultry products from California in the United States because of a confirmed outbreak of bird flu in the area. The ban covers poultry meat, day-old chicks, eggs, and semen.  The measure is meant to protect the health of the local poultry population from infection, the agriculture secretary said.

Read the full story on Rappler Business.

The Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation has filed with the justice department multiple charges against Australian Peter Gerald Scully, who allegedly filmed sexual assault and abuse of children in Mindanao and streamed them to clients in Australia, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and other parts of Europe. He allegedly killed at least one of his victims. The suspect faces qualified trafficking, murder, child abuse, and statutory rape charges. The NBI based its complaint against Scully on the testimonies of at least 8 of his victims.

Read the full story on Rappler. Read also the testimony of a 13-year-old girl whom Scully violated and tried to sell for P100,000.

A district court in Indonesia has submitted to the Supreme Court its findings on the case a Filipina who is on death row for drug smuggling charges. The 30-year-old mother of two is seeking a judicial review of her conviction, arguing that she was deceived by a drug trafficking syndicate and was not given a competent translator during her first trial, which ended in her being sentenced to death. If the Supreme Court accepts the evidence, a judicial review will be conducted. This developed as Indonesia rejected the proposal of Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for a prisoner swap to save its two citizens who are facing execution for smuggling heroin into Indonesia. However, Indonesia’s Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo insisted the country is determined to put to death those “who have poisoned our nation,” and that the offer from Australia was “not relevant.”

Read the full story on Rappler Indonesia.

An New Delhi court has issued a ban on the broadcast of “India’s Daughter,” a Britain-produced documentary on the 2012 gang rape of a woman in India which features an interview with one of the rapists blaming the victim and justifying the assault. Police said the statement of the rapist, as aired, “are highly offensive and have already created a situation of tension and fear amongst women in our society.” A woman lawmaker, however, defended the film, saying, “Let’s be aware of it, and let’s not pretend that all is well.” Meanwhile, India’s censor board has blocked the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, a film about a sadomasochistic relationship between a billionaire and a college graduate that saw a record opening in North America.

Read the full story on the New York Times.

Brazilian lawmakers approved a bill recognizing “feminicide,” or the killing of a woman because of her gender. It “distinguishes violent crime against women from crimes in general,” said the minister for women’s affairs. “We are giving them an instrument of protection.” The new law covers cases of women killed for her gender following domestic violence or gender-based violent discrimination. It also stipulates that feminicide is an aggravated form of homicide and foresees a jail term of 12 to 30 years for perpetrators. According to government figures, 50,000 women lost their lives through violence over the past decade in Brazil.

Read the full story on Rappler World.

A newly discovered Internet security flaw, due to weak US encryption standards in the 1990s, could leave many websites vulnerable to hackers, according to French and American researchers. Dubbed as “FREAK,” the flaw comes from “a class of deliberately weak export cipher suites…introduced under the pressure of US government agencies to ensure that the NSA would be able to decrypt all foreign encrypted communication.” A blog post by Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University, said even some sites maintained by the National Security Agency and FBI appeared to be vulnerable.

Read the full story on Rappler Technology.

Hollywood actor Harrison Ford was injured after the vintage two-seater plane he was flying crashed into a golf course outside in Los Angeles, California. The 72-year-old actor – star of the famous Indiana Jones and Star Wars series, suffered multiple gashes to his head and was seen bleeding at the site. Several news reports quoted witnesses that Ford was helped out of the plane by bystanders on the golf course, and that he could use his legs. A picture of the downed plane, its nose cone ripped open, was also published.

Read the full story on Rappler Entertainment.

Tacloban City in Leyte, among localities hardest hit by Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013, has come up with a color-coded evacuation program just before the typhoon season begins this June. The first of its kind in the Philippines, the plan assigns to each family living near the coastline an ID corresponding to a color. The color indicates what evacuation center the families must head to when the local government tells them to evacuate. Families only need to find the evacuation center with the same color as their ID in the evacuation map of their barangay. The new evacuation system was based on topographic and hazard maps given to Tacloban by aid group Japan International Cooperation Agency.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Make it also a habit to check out Rappler’s #ProjectAgos page for helpful articles and tools for disaster preparedness and response.