AGUSAN DEL SUR (MindaNews/14 Jan) — Some 16,000 people have been displaced when flashfloods hit seven towns of the province due to continuous heavy rains since Jan. 9. One person was also declared missing.
ILIGAN CITY (MindaNews/14 Jan) — Where is Commander Bravo?
This has been the question being asked by local politicians here who have grown impatient as to when this “rogue” rebel commander would be arrested and put behind bars “to bring justice” to his innocent civilian victims.
“It’s been months since the attack in Lanao del Norte and the bombings in Iligan’s hotels, yet there is still no report on the capture of this MILF commander?” asked city councilor Voltaire Rovira.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/14 Jan) — There was a time that His Excellency, Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta, President of Timor-Leste and Nobel laureate — was simply Jose to me.
I first met him over breakfast at a quaint hotel in Bangkok sometime in 1992. We were both attending a conference called "Peoples Plan for the 21st Century" that, well, wanted to chart a common framework for the broad social movement in the region at the dawn of the new millennium . He was there to speak on behalf of his forgotten people, some 600,000 East Timorese who were under the yoke of a then occupying force, Indonesia. A third of his people — around 200,000 — had been slaughtered, starved, killed or impaled by the military and police of the dictator Suharto who in 1975 sent in a Catholic army general to lead the invasion of this puny, gentle, territory. Jose was one of the Timorese resistance leaders and became the indefatigable spokesperson as he was sent abroad to gather international support for their lonely crusade.
