Rappler Newscast | May 16, 2013

Story 1: 6 SENATORS TO BE PROCLAIMED
The National Board of Canvassers proclaims the top six candidates senators: Grace Poe, Loren Legarda, Alan Peter Cayetano, Chiz Escudero, Nancy Binay, and Sonny Angara.

Story 2: UNA TO COMELEC: WHY WAS ELECTION FILE DELETED?
The United Nationalist Alliance asks the Commission on Elections to explain who has access to election data after discovering someone from Smartmatic “inadvertently deleted” an election file.
In a press conference, UNA’s IT consultant Gadburt Mercado says he discovered the supposed deletion of what he called a “regional file.”
Mercado says it was an “aggregation file” of party list and senatorial results.

GADBURT MERCADO, UNA IT SPECIALIST: The regional file stopped updating at 2:43 am and at around 6:21 pm of the same day, we ceased to receive the regional file. The explanation they provided to us later in the day was that Smartmatic conducted some routine maintenance, I’m using their words, and the original file in question was inadvertently deleted. As IT people the question we’re asking is, if the process is automated and we’re receiving the data as it comes, it seems there was an intervention point.

Mercado says Smartmatic’s Database Analyst, Cerino Datoy, admitted he deleted the file.
UNA says it is not alleging irregularity but asks the poll body to explain and investigate.

TOBY TIANGCO, UNA CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Bakit hindi nila sinasabing may naburang files ng hindi sinasadya kung hindi sila tinatanong? (Why didn’t they disclose there were files that were inadvertently deleted without someone asking them about it?)

Story 3: COMELEC TO STOP ‘TRANSPARENCY’ COUNT
Comelec will stop the media and watchdogs from publishing election results from the Transparency Server and the Comelec-Rappler mirror-server once the board of canvassers starts proclaiming the senators.
In a press conference, Comelec chair Sixto Brillantes says groups using the server can continue using it after the NBOC proclaims the winning senators.
He says this will prevent “confusion.”

SIXTO BRILLANTES, COMELEC CHAIR: Hindi namin pinapatigil ang transparency, sinususpend lang naming, meaning we are just suspending the transparency while we are proclaiming the winners. Nagta-tabulate pa kayo ng unofficial eh nagpro-proclaim na kami ng official. HIndi naman magandang tingnan. (We are not stopping the transparency server, we are just suspending it while we are proclaiming the winners. You’re still tabulating unofficial results while we’re already proclaiming what’s official. It doesn’t appear good.)

The National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections questions the decision, saying this would result in a lack of transparency in the transmission of the remaining election results.

Story 4: BAM AQUINO: TV ADS PLAY BIG ROLE IN WINNABILITY
Speaking about his experiences on the campaign trail, Team PNoy senatorial candidate Bam Aquino says media plays a large role in elections.
He says voters get more than 80% of their information from television ads, which are necessary to win.

BAM AQUINO, SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: It’s really more the control of media in terms of the people who can win and who can’t win on the national level. You need to be on TV to be able to win. And to be able to be on TV you need a lot of money. So it’s not the equalizer that people thought it would be.

Aquino adds, he wants future election reforms to consider candidates who can’t afford TV ads and level the playing field.

BAM AQUINO, SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: In the future if there are reforms to be done, aside from strengthening political parties…One I think is supporting candidates who can’t afford the ads, and having them at the level playing field with candidates who can afford the ads.

Story 5: CURATO: VOTERS DECIDE BASED ON EMOTIONS
UP Diliman sociology professor Nicole Curato discusses the social and political trends in the 2013 midterm polls elections.
Curato, convenor of UP Election Watch, says there needs to be conversations about the automated election process.

NICOLE CURATO, PROFESSOR IN SOCIOLOGY, UP DILIMAN: One of the challenges in terms of automation is how to explain to the public what the glitches are, where are we having difficulties, because it’s such an esoteric, complicated function. And this is one of the things I think we need to have a conversation about because we tend to assume that when it’s automated, it’s necessarily good.

Curato says voters tend to choose candidates they can relate to.
But she adds, emotion-based choices have to be balanced by rational thinking.

NICOLE CURATO, PROFESSOR IN SOCIOLOGY, UP DILIMAN: I don’t mind that people decide based on emotions…I think these emotions have to be tempered by rational thinking although we have to be careful what we mean by rational thinking. I’ve always held the position that we have to be very understanding on the different sets of rationality that people have when it comes to voting.

Story 6: 4 SUN FLARES IN 48 HOURS
The Sun releases four huge bursts of radiation in 48 hours, releasing the biggest solar flare of 2013 on Tuesday.
BBC reports the intense bursts of energy are all “X-class” flares — the strongest type.
Robert Massey of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society says an X-class flare is equivalent to a billion hydrogen bombs.
The flares send out charged gas into space, which can interfere with satellite and communications systems when they reach Earth.

Story 7: THE wRap: YOUR WORLD IN ONE READ
At number 3, The White House releases about a hundred pages of email messages related to an attack on a US consulate in Libya to dispel claims of a cover-up.
The assault on the US mission in September 2012 killed four Americans, including US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
The email messages showed that in the hours after the assault, various agencies debated which talking points to use in describing the attack and its causes.
President Barack Obama’s critics say the release of the documents left unanswered questions about the handling of the Benghazi attack.

At number 6, A review of thousands of studies finds “overwhelming” consensus among scientists that humans are to blame for global warming.
This contradicts a widely held view that scientists are deeply divided on the topic — a misconception that complicates efforts to win public backing for climate policy.
Researchers review more than 4,000 scientific papers published between 1991 and 2011 and written by more than 10,000 scientists.
Over 97 percent of scientists agree manmade warming is a reality.

And at number 9, US scientists say human cloning is used to produce early embryos, marking a “significant step” for medicine.
The cloned embryos are used as a source of stem cells, which can make new types of cell in the body.
The technique used – somatic cell nuclear transfer – has been well-known since Dolly the sheep became the first mammal to be cloned in 1996.