Former police chief and Senator Panfilo Lacson said the President should explain why he did not involve acting Police Chief Leonardo Espina and instead went straight to Special Armed Forces commander Getulio Napeñas. The Former senator took to social media to support the Philippine National Police Board of Inquiry (PNP-BOI) on its report on the Mamasapano incident, even as Malacañang criticizes its findings.
The BOI report cited the lapses of President Benigno Aquino III when he broke the PNP chain of command in the operation to hunt down international terrorist Marwan.

Read the full story on Rappler.

President Benigno Aquino III had strong words for critics of his administration’s reform agenda: the state will not hesitate to go against you. In his speech to the new graduates of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Sunday, Aquino said in Filipino, “If you are ready to talk sincerely, the state is open to reasonable and truthful dialogue. But if you continue to put the country in danger, we will not hesitate to crush you.” His message comes at a time when calls for his resignation abound, after the bloody Mamasapano clash last January 25 that left 67 dead.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Sandiganbayan sheriffs found only P7,580.98 left in the bank accounts of former chief justice Renato C. Corona and his wife, Cristina R. Corona, when they served writs of attachment issued by the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan in connection with a P130.6-million forfeiture case. An attachment on a bank account effectively freezes the account, preventing a bank depositor from withdrawing money. In the case of the Coronas, the court order came only after the bank accounts had been drained.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Cyclone-devastated Vanuatu declared a state of emergency Sunday, March 15, as relief agencies scrambled to get help to the remote Pacific nation. Reports say entire villages were “blown away” when a monster storm swept through. Aid workers said the official death toll of 6 was likely just a fraction of the fatalities nationwide, with communications still down across most of the archipelago’s 80 islands. The government said it was still trying to assess the scale of the disaster unleashed when Super Cyclone Pam, a maximum Category 5 system, vented its fury on Friday night, with winds reaching 320 kilometers (200 miles) an hour. The UN said Super Cyclone Pam had killed 44 people in one province alone and Oxfam said the destruction in Port Vila was massive, with 90% of homes damaged.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Prayers were said at churches across India Sunday, for an elderly nun who was gang-raped at a convent. The attack intensifies the anger over sexual violence and fueled fears among Christians. It comes just days after India banned a documentary about the 2012 gang-rape of a student in Delhi. The 71 year old was attacked late Friday after a gang of about half a dozen robbers broke into a convent school in eastern West Bengal state and ransacked the premises. The nun is now recuperating at a hospital. The gang-rape has added to the sense of fear and dismay among the country’s Christian minority which has been deeply upset by a spate of attacks on churches.

Read the full story on Rappler.

Friends and loved ones remember actress Liezl Martinez, who succumbed to cancer on Saturday, March 14. She battled breast cancer in 2008 and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011. Husband Albert and daughters Alyanna and Alyssa took to Instagram to share photos of Martinez. Industry colleagues Ruffa Gutierrez, Jim Paredes, Dawn Zulueta, and several others tweet their condolences to her family. Martinez started out in show business as a child star. She is the daughter of former celebrity couple Amalia Fuentes and Romeo Vasquez. Her husband Albert said, “ am grateful to her. I owe everything to her.”

Read the full story on Rappler.

Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao will either “bore us to death or pump us to heavens.” Rappler correspondent Edwin Espejo says Floyd Mayweather possesses the best defense in boxing today while Pacquiao’s whirlwind offense makes him the most exciting fighter in his generation. Mayweather has his sturdy shoulder-roll, while Pacquiao has his fatal right hook. Both boxers can dictate the tempo of the fight, methodically cut down their opponent, and end the fight quickly. In the end, he who solves “the problem that his opponent is” will go home the winner.

Read the full story on Rappler.

A New York Times report that says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have violated federal regulations by using private email for government business is being questioned by The Daily Beast. Michael Tomasky writes those rules weren’t in place when Clinton was alleged to have broken them. The new regulations apparently weren’t fully implemented by the State Department until after Clinton left. Clinton left the State Department in February 2013. Despite being signed into a memorandum by President Obama back in 2011, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) didn’t issue the relevant guidance until August 2013. NARA issued the guidance on personal email use in September 2013. The Beast asked: If this is true, why did the Times not share this rather crucial piece of information with its readers?

Read the full story on The Daily Beast.

It’s been 30 years since the first .com domain – Symbolics.com – was registered, with the now-ubiquitous suffix. Way back then, adoption of the domain happened in “trickles” instead of exploding into the world wide web. CNN reports about 10 years after, an influx of domain registrations created a digital revolution – the dotcom bubble – that got investors on a spending spree on tech firms. When the bubble burst in 2000, several companies went bankrupt, leaving tech watchers wondering about the future of the dotcom. Fast forward to the future, the dotcom still endures as the prime domain of choice.

Read the full story on CNN.

A woman born with with two rare conditions – Marfan and lipodystrophy – was bullied online for the way she looks. BBC reports, Lizzie Velasquez was 17 when she stumbled across a YouTube video entitled “The World’s Ugliest Woman”. What she didn’t expect was that the woman featured in the video would be her. It was an eight-second clip and had been watched over four million times.

Read the full story on BBC.