Our heart-felt condolence to the family of our late friend and fellow media practitioner Jimmy Torres. Jim, as close friends fondly called the late television and radio broadcaster, died the other day. According to our common friend and fellow Davao journalist and communications executive Jun Ledesma, Jim died of complications due to diabetes.
For now we have no details as to the burial of Jimmy. However, we learned from former fellow employees of Radio Mindanao Network, Inc. Jimmy’s wake will be at the UCCP church along Bonifacio st., Davao City.
Well, bon voyage to our friend. You just happen to be ahead of us in the journey to the great beyond. For certain you will be having a reunion with some of our contemporaries like Tony Ajero. Roger Flaviano, Rene Lumawag, Rudy Rebolledo, Freddie Vergara, Joe Velasco and many more whose names we could not anymore recall as they were much older and ahead of us in the journalistic profession in the city.
Come to think of it! A year or so ago our former publisher Nilo Claudio intimated to us that he wanted to have a reunion meeting cum lunch to be attended by Jim, Jun Ledesma, Ricky Jimenez, ourselves and some others . For some reason or another it did not materialize. So, if it still will, then we will be minus Jim, or perhaps even anyone of us.
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So the owner of the P6.9 million worth of shabu recovered from a house at NHA Ma-a belonged to a person who claimed to be a businessman and was earlier arrested in possession of the same illegal substance in the checkpoint in Toril? And it was during the intensive grilling of the arrested illegal drugs trader that he eventually confessed to the elements of the Toril Police station that he still has in his stash a bagful of the prohibited substance.
Well, the drug merchant is lucky he made it up to the time that he decided it was safer for him to disclose he still has hidden a substantial volume of the illegal drugs without him getting “erased” from the face of the earth.
We could only imagine the number of lives the one bag of shabu will destroy had it gone out to its intended market the – youth.
Now we are strongly suggesting that he be grilled further. Perhaps the arrested drug suspect will be able to help the police trace the identities and the whereabouts of the source or sources of the illegal substance whether they are somewhere in Mindanao, the Visayas or in Luzon.
We, as well as the police, know he can be the beginning of the link towards the sources.
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So there is a plan by the Philippine National Police (PNP) to probe former President Rodrigo Duterte on his statement that he knows the whereabouts of his fugitive friend Pastor Apollo Quiboloy?
Let us see how far the planned probe on the former President can go. Let us also find out if the law enforcers can goad the former Chief Executive into leading them to where the religious leader is hiding – assuming that he indeed knows where the pastor is holed up.
As we have written earlier we even doubt if the police can file charges against the elder Duterte for harboring an escapee from the law whose alleged crimes committed are still to be proven in the courts.
Yes, what is certain to be criminally actionable is when a person hides a criminal – meaning one who is caught in the act of committing the crime, or already convicted by the courts. But as to a person who is still a suspect, allowing him or her to stay in one’s abode or not disclosing where he/she could be, the criminal liability of the one accommodating still has a lot of room for debate. And the former President, being a clever lawyer and a long serving prosecutor, knows about that exactly.
Again, let us see how far can the planned investigation by the police on the Duterte claim can go. For all we know it could be the former President’s gambit for the administration to bite. And once the police do as planned, the possibility is that it will give the Duterte group a wide opening for an attack against the administration.
Duterte, like an astute boxer, knows the importance of faking an opening for his adversary to attack. But a much devastating counter attack may already be hatched in the boxer’s mind. In the present political squabble, that of the former President’s.
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Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (IDIS) is pushing for the increase in Green Spaces for housing subdivision projects from 10 percent to 15 percent.
Sadly the 10 percent currently mandated is even hardly complied by developers. How much more for a 15 percent of the total area of the residential subdivision? Think of this: open spaces not even planted to anything green are either the road or playground most often used for construction of covered courts where events celebrated by subdivision residents are held. Also basketball tournaments are conducted inside the covered court with corresponding rent.
Besides most developers sell almost every inch of vacant spaces to make the most out of their investment.
So, making the ten percent open area for green spaces even bigger at 15 percent is like punching the sky nowadays. In fact we have yet to hear of government regulators doing physical monitoring of ongoing and even completed residential subdivision projects.
