September 20, 2012 Edition

The most senior member of the Philippine Senate tangled with the chamber’s youngest over accusations of unwarranted meddling in foreign policy. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile exposed alleged backchannel moves by Sen Antonio Trillanes IV with Chinese officials over the disputed South China Sea, which reportedly angered Philippine diplomats. Trillanes insisted he was getting orders from President Benigno Aquino III and that Enrile took out of context the notes made by Ambassador to China Sonia Brady about her meeting with him. But Enrile called him a “fraud.” Trillanes, on the other hand, described Enrile a lackey of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It was one of the Senate’s most vicious word war in recent history.

Read the full story on the Enrile-Trillanes war here

Read Trillanes’ criticism of Enrile here

Ayala Corp chairman and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala concedes that the telecoms industry needs to adjust to consumers’ changing needs given the challenges brought about by the world’s fast-moving data search. In an interview on #TalkThursday, Zobel de Ayala also talks positively about how their exposure to world-class standards is transforming overseas Filipino workers’ values and demands on how government and the private sector should work. Filipinos’ engagement with the rest of the world “creates the right kind of tension” that augurs well for business and society in general, Zobel de Ayala says. The profitable telco industry pays its back  by spending a lot of money on infrastructure, he adds.

Watch the full interview on Rappler

France braced for a backlash over a French magazine’s publication of obscene caricatures depicting the Prophet Mohammad, stepping up security at its embassies and banning demonstrations on its own soil as senior officials and Muslim leaders appealed for calm. Paris said that on Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, it would shutter its diplomatic missions, cultural centers and French schools in around 20 Muslim countries for fear of violent protests. More than 30 people have been killed in attacks and violent protests linked to the film “Innocence of Muslims,” including 12 people who died in an attack by a female suicide bomber in Afghanistan on Tuesday. In Pakistan, around 1,000 students from the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party took to the streets in the eastern city of Lahore on Wednesday, chanting anti-US slogans and burning the American flag.

Read the full story on Rappler

Lawyers will ask the courts to nullify a new Philippine law that makes electronic libel a criminal offense. Lawyer and UP professor Harry Roque says this means that unlike ordinary libel complaints which are oftentimes brought against printed newspapers, any Twitter and Facebook user is now liable for prosecution. The law violates freedom of expression, Roque says. “We will see the PNoy administration in court on this one. And we will prevail. For unlike other laws that enjoy the presumption of regularity, this Cybercrime law, insofar as it infringes on freedom of expression, will come to court with a very heavy presumption of unconstitutionality.”

Read Roque’s analysis of the law on Rappler

The United States has lifted sanctions on two of Myanmar’s top leaders on Wednesday as the Congress hailed Aung San Suu Kyi as a hero of democracy in a lavish ceremony unthinkable only months ago. The move to end the sanctions on Myanmar President Thein Sein and parliamentary speaker Thura Shwe Mann came just hours after Suu Kyi had called for US sanctions crippling her impoverished nation to be lifted. She also met fellow Nobel Peace laureate President Barack Obama for the first time, after being presented with the Congressional Gold Medal in the imposing surroundings of the historical Rotunda on Capitol Hill.

Read the full story on Rappler

NASA’s Curiosity Rover will study its first martial rock Friday, September 21, more than a month after landing on the Red Planet, mission officials said. Mars Science Laboratory project scientist John Grotzinger said the rover drove for another 100 feet on September 19 for a total travel distance of 950 feet so far. The science team plans to have Curiosity pause for a few days in order to perform the mission’s first “contact science” by using instruments on the vehicle’s robot arm to photograph and analyze a pyramid-shaped rock. The rock measures about 10 inches high by 16 inches wide at the base.

Read the full story on Rappler

The Philippines commemorates the 40th anniversary of the declaration of martial law on Friday, September 21. Victims of the Marcos dictatorship have been doing the rounds in schools to tell students about the human rights abuses that followed martial law’s declaration. Anti-Marcos activist Susan Quimpo says many students barely know anything about that dark period in Philippine history. She blames this on the fact that the martial law period is hardly covered in the elementary and high school textbooks of Filipino kids. Most teachers perpetuate the Marcos myth of a Singapore-like economy during martial law by mouthing these textbooks, she laments.

Read the full story on Rappler

The 2013 mid-term elections will measure, to a certain degree, the extent of the administration’s commitment to President Benigno Aquino III’s “daang matuwid” platform in 2010. Running on an anti-corruption campaign then, Aquino now faces the challenge of dominating the local and senatorial races without compromising his promise of good governance. Several factors may make this difficult. Reform-minded groups will also be eager to see if the same familiar faces and names will continue to dominate the elections and the political scene, and if any of them will be worth considering for the 2016 presidential contest. Senatorial and local candidates have until the first week of October to file their certificates of candidacies for the elections that will be held 8 months from now.

Read the analysis on Rappler

An actress in the anti-Islamic trailer that set off violent protests in the Muslim world has sued the reputed producer, saying he duped her into thinking it was about ancient Egyptians. Cindy Lee Garcia is one of 3 actresses in the film to have come forward with similar accusations since the explosion of violence that ripped through Muslim countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia last week. Garcia is suing in a Los Angeles court on grounds of invasion of privacy, fraud, slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She is targeting Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian Copt and convicted fraudster — out on parole — who lives in Los Angeles and has admitted to working on the film, “Innocence of Muslims.”

Read the full story on Rappler

Gadget lovers have flooded Apple with pre-orders and set up camp outside the company’s real-world stores to get their hands on the new generation iPhone 5 set for release Friday, September 21. Aspiring iPhone 5 owners started a queue outside the Apple store in Manhattan last week and similar vigils have begun outside the California company’s shops at other spots around the world. Apple said that it received more than two million orders for its new iPhone 5 in the 24 hours after it began pre-sales online on September 14.

Read the full story on Rappler