Daily News Highlights – April 26, 2015 Edition

Unless the last-minute legal efforts to save her work, or by some miracle clemency is granted, Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso could be executed onTuesday, April 28, along with 8 other convicts on death row. The 30-year-old Filipina on death row in Indonesia said she had been informed of her execution date on Saturday afternoon, just hours after a reunion with her family, including her two sons.

Philippine embassy officials who were at Nusakambangan prison with Mary Jane when she was informed confirmed the news after they left the island some two hours later. 

Read more on Rappler.

Death and destruction across large parts of Nepal after a magnitude 7.8 quake hit the country Saturday, April 25. The quake hit 77 kilometers northwest of the capital city Kathmandu at around noon local time, and as of early Sunday morning (April 26) the official death count has reached 1,805. The quake is considered to be the strongest quake on the planet since June 2014.

International aid groups rushed to respond as aftershocks and severed communications hampered rescue efforts. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said it was extremely concerned about the fate of rural villages close to the epicenter of the quake, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital Kathmandu.

Read more on Rappler’s World section.

Thousands of people, from New Zealand to Turkey, commemorated two gruesome events from a century ago this weekend. First was in Armenia, where leaders of France and Russia on Friday, April 24 joined ceremonies marking the centenary of the massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces, a hugely emotional event that remains a diplomatic minefield.

The following day, leaders of Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand led the commemoration of the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, a formative event that helped forge their identities as independent nations. Dawn services were held across the two countries and in Turkey on the anniversary of the ill-fated 1915 campaign of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that left 11,500 of them dead in what is now Turkey during World War I.

Read more on Rappler’s World section.

The first draft of the electric vehicles (e-vehicles) road map for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member-economies will be ready in September, a committed output from the 22nd Automotive Dialogue Meeting which concluded Friday, April 24.

Ma. Corazon Halili-Dichosa, director of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Board of Investments (BOI), said the United States proposed a 10-point template to guide member economies in formulating the road map.

Read more on Rappler.

New Customs Commissioner Alberto Lina on Friday, April 24, vowed to “double down on reforms” and continue “the good governance and process reforms” initiated by his predecessor.

Lina made the commitment in his speech at the Bureau of Customs turnover ceremonies, in the presence of former Customs Commissioner John Sevilla, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, and BOC officials and employees.

Read more on Rappler.

China’s creation of new island footholds in contested seas will hover over this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which will start on Monday, April 27, in Malaysia.

ASEAN states Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei claim parts of the strategic South China Sea, but Beijing claims nearly all of it and has moved aggressively to back that up. The bloc has a history of failing to reach consensus on any robust response, due to both its members’ dependence on China’s huge economy for trade and because not all ASEAN states have a stake in the maritime disputes.

Read more on Rappler.

For Floyd Mayweather Jr, life is about winning. But before he was “Money” Mayweather who set pay-per-view and casino gate records, he was “Lil’ Floyd,” taking on all comers in the unpaid ranks. And on a few occasions, he even lost.

Augie Sanchez and Martin Castillo are two fighters who can say they hold victories over Floyd Mayweather Jr. Decades later, they recall their nights of glory. 

Read more on Rappler.

Globalization and ASEAN integration are opening up larger markets for Philippine agricultural products. The question is, do our products have what it takes to take on the world?

A visit to the trade exhibit at Madrid Fusion Manila 2015 gives a glimpse of the huge potential of home-grown products. Featured at the exhibit are award-winning chocolates and liquor, sustainably-harvested fish, certified-organic vegetables, and much more.

Here are some products to be curious about at Madrid Fusion Manila.

Olympic champion and current television star Bruce Jenner talked about his gender transition journey in a tell-all interview with ABC News journalist Diane Sawyer on Friday, April 24 (Saturday, April 25 in Manila).

“For all intents and purposes, I am a woman,” confirmed Bruce when asked by Diane. “People look at me differently. They see you as this ‘macho male.’ But my heart and my soul and everything I do in life.. it is part of me. That female side is part of me. That’s who I am.”

Watch and read more on Rappler.

Hubble, the first telescope to revolutionize modern astronomy and change our view of the universe by offering glimpses of distant galaxies, marks its 25th year in space this week.

Launched on April 24, 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery, Hubble orbits the Earth. It doesn’t travel to faraway stars but instead snaps incredible pictures of them. The 24,000-pound (10-ton) telescope has taken more than a million pictures, including some that have allowed astronomers to more precisely calculate the age of the universe – about 13.8 billion years old.

Read more about Hubble’s historic milestone, and take a look at this year’s birthday photo, on Rappler.