Report: At least 11 people killed in Parañaque City plane crash

(Updated 3:30 p.m.) At least 11 people were reported killed when a light aircraft crashed at a residential area in Parañaque City Saturday afternoon.

In an interview on GMA's News TV Live, Prañaque City Mayor Florencio Bernabe Jr. said that based on an initial and unofficial body count, 11 people perished in the accident.

Earlier, Chief Inspector Enrique Sy of the Parañaque police confirmed five people were killed in the accident and the subsequent fire it created.

Foreign news service Associated Press, meanwhile, reported that seven were killed in the incident.

On the other hand, radio dzBB reported that over 20 people were rushed to the Parañaque Doctors Hospital shortly after the crash.

Minutes after the crash, Bernabe cited initial reports indicating the incident occurred past 2 p.m., with the plane crashing near an elementary school.

"Apparently may tinamaang bahay (Initial reports indicate it may have hit some houses)," he said in an interview on dzBB radio.

He said the general area where the plane crashed was a "depressed area."

Volunteer firefighter group TXTFire said the crash caused a fire at the Doña Soledad Extension in Better Living subdivision area.

It said the fire had reached the fifth alarm as of 2:50 p.m.

Meanwhile, an eye witness, Earl Esto, told GMA News Online the plane crashed around 2:30 p.m. in F. Serrano Subdivision.

Esto, a worker of a printing company, said the crash site is around 50 meters away from her place of work. — with Bea Cupin /LBG/TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Solenn Heussaff, ibinisto ang paboritong panty na suot sa pagtulog

Game na sinagot ng Kapuso “it girl" na si Solenn Heussaff ang mga tanong na ibinato sa kanya ng mga host ng GMA News TV's Showbiz Exclusive kabilang na ang paborito niyang suot at posisyon sa pagtulog.

Sa panayam nina Aubrey Carampel at Tim Yap ng Showbiz Exclusive nitong Huwebes, sinabi ni Solenn na mas gusto niyang matawag na “jologs" kaya “socialite."

“Kasi nakaharap sa tv ngayon (kaya maayos ang itsura) pero sa totoong buhay like naka-slippers lang ako, short, t-shirt, tapos game ako sa lahat ," paglalarawan ni Solenn bilang isang “cowboy."

Pagdating sa pagkain, sinabi ng multi-talented Kapuso star na sinigang at corned beef ang kanyang paborito.

Bukod sa pagiging artista at modelo, nagpipinta rin si Solenn, make-up artist, singer, at minsan ding naging bartender.

Ang mahaba raw naman niyang legs ang paborito niyang parte ng kanyang katawan.

“Kasi yung mga tao they think na sobrang tangkad ako. Pero sa totoong buhay, ‘ah maliit ka pala,’ ganun. Five-six (tall) lang ako pero mukha akong matangkad dahil sa legs," paliwanag niya.

Pagdating sa pagtulog, ibinisto ni Solenn na “granny panties" ang paborito niyang suot dahil kumportable siya sa mga walang garter.

At ang paborito niyang posisyon kapag natutulog, natatawa niyang sagot: “Fetus… naka-ballerina parang ganyan (nakataas ang kamay na nakatihaya)."

Sa kanyang pagiging calendar girl ng isang brand ng alak para sa 2012, sinabi ni Solenn na masaya at excited siya dahil very successful ang actress-model na kanyang sinundan na si Anne Curtis. -- FRJimenez, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Miss Philippines is runner-up in Miss World in London

LONDON—A human resources graduate from Venezuela, who grew up an orphan and spent five years in an orphanage, was crowned Miss World 2011 at a glittering beauty pageant in London on Sunday.

Ivian Sarcos, 21, took the ultimate beauty accolade at Earls Court in London, the city where the first Miss World was staged in 1951. Miss Philippines, French-Filipina Gwendoline Ruais, a buxom six-footer from Muntinlupa City, was named the first runner-up, or second place.

Ruais tied for the highest finish for the Philippines in the Miss World pageant, which the pageant-crazy nation has never won. Evangeline Pascual was also first runner-up in 1973.

Miss World is considered a British Commonwealth rival to the US-organized Miss Universe pageant. Shamcey Supsup was third runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant in July.

Nervous

In a telephone interview aired on GMA News TV's "News to Go" on Monday morning [Manila time, Ruais said she was nervous, but she chose to focus on herself and her country.

"Syempre po, I'm competing against 112 gorgeous girls from all around the world, so mahirap po 'yan. Pero, 'yan lang, nag-focus ako sa sarili ko. Hindi ko po iniisip 'yung ibang kandidata. Ako lang po and 'yung buong country ko po, 'yung Pilipinas," Ruais said.

"You never know what will happen, so hindi ko talaga iniisip kung anong mangyayari. Inisip ko lang na I should do my best talaga to make the Philippines proud. 'Yun lang po ang nasa isip ko," she added.

Ruais' return to the Philippines is not yet scheduled, but she hopes she has made her country proud.

"Sana lahat po kayo proud sa akin. Ginawa ko talaga 'yung best ko para sa buong Pilipinas. Sana happy po kayo," she said.

'Woman of responsibility and reason'

Wearing a pink dress with diamante studs that had giant frills slashed below the waist, the 22-year-old Ivian Sarcos threw her hands to her face as she was announced the winner.




“I believe that the next Miss World should be a woman of responsibility and reason," Sarcos said before winning the title.

“I believe the woman should be committed to the organization and help people in need. Beauty with a heart," added the Venezuelan, who works for a broadcasting company. She and her seven siblings lost their parents when she was eight years old.

Miss Philippines, Gwendoline Ruais, was named the runner-up, while Miss Puerto Rico, Amanda Perez, came third in the contest, which was back in its home city to celebrate its 60th anniversary.





Some 113 beauty queens from Albania to Zimbabwe took their place on the stage, with the show being broadcast live to an estimated audience of more than one billion viewers in 150 countries.

'Being a woman is not a competition'

Around 50 feminists staged a demonstration outside, waving placards reading “Objectification won’t achieve world peace", “Being a woman is not a competition" and “Sexism is pretty ugly".

Around a half dozen were veterans of the 1970 pageant protest, which caused a major disturbance.

Inside the Earls Court Two auditorium in west London, the few thousand fans cheered, waved national flags and shouted for their favorites.

To whittle them down to the 15 semi-finalists, several point-scoring rounds were held during the contestants’ tour of Britain over the previous two weeks, with the results revealed on stage.

Miss Venezuela topped the interview round; Miss Dominican Republic, Marianly Tejada Burgos, was named the general sports champion; home favorite Miss England, Alize Lily Mounter, won the beach beauty title, while Miss Kazakhstan, Zhanna Zhumaliyeva, was named top model.

The crowd were played clips from the talent round — where performers sang, danced and gave piano recitals — won by Miss Chile, Gabriela Paz Pulgar Luco.

Miss Ghana, Stephanie Adwoa Agyeiwaa Karikari, and Miss Indonesia, Astrid Ellena Indriana Yunadi, were the joint winners of the beauty with a purpose category, where contestants can highlight a charity project.

With the scores in and only the top 15 going through to the semi-final, Miss Puerto Rico topped the leader board, ahead of Miss Venezuela, Miss Philippines, Miss Ukraine and Miss Scotland.

The final seven, chosen by the judges, were Miss England, Miss Korea, Miss Philippines, Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Scotland, Miss South Africa and Miss Venezuela.

It was announced that Ordos in Inner Mongolia, China, will host the 2012 competition. - with Carmela Lapeña, AFP, Reuters/HS/RSJ, GMA News


Source: gmanews.tv

Why do Guy Fawkes masks animate Occupy Wall Street?

The topic of this piece is a mask – the face of a dead man who made the fifth of November a day to remember; the visage of Vendetta, in comic books and a popular Hollywood film; the avatar of Anonymous, the group of hacktivists who are legion online; and the image worn by Occupy Wall Street activists, who now occupy not only the streets of New York but of many other cities the world over. This was first posted on a blog by the author, a former editor of GMA News Online better known to colleagues and friends as Jun Verzola.

November 5 is a very special day in Britain, but the masks used for the occasion have gotten so popular this year they have become top-selling store items in Western countries. What’s up, que pasa, anyare?

My first reaction was that the mask is a very creepy mask: a man’s pale face with glowing pink cheeks, mustache and goatee, and an unnerving smile that’s almost like a leer. You wonder, “Where have I seen this mask before?" Then you suddenly realize. It’s those Guy Fawkes masks worn by growing ranks of demonstrators in American and European cities and have come to symbolize Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests.

But who is Guy Fawkes and how did he become a modern protest icon anyway? If you haven’t been a keen observer of the OWS phenomenon, you’re in for a surprising answer.

Fawkes was a 17th century English Catholic conspirator who joined a group that plotted to kill Protestant King James. The so-called Gunpowder Plot was discovered, and Fawkes was caught in flagrante delicto and tortured. He and several other conspirators were later tried and executed by the utterly civilized method of hanging, drawing and quartering. Every November 5 since1605, the British would celebrate Guy Fawkes Night almost exactly the way we Filipinos celebrate New Year’s Eve—through a rowdy street celebration of bonfires, fireworks, and effigy burning.

Could one then fairly speculate that OWS protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks since the Wall Street action began on September 17 are actually calling for either a gunpowder putsch to topple some unidentified head of government, or for city-wide street ruckus across the globe like it was Guy Fawkes Night? No, don’t be too quick to prejudge OWS that way. The message of the Guy Fawkes mask is more subtle than that.

Get ready to be surprised.

There’s this imageboard website, 4chan.org, that’s incredibly popular among young computer and Internet culture enthusiasts. The site, set up in 2003 by a 15-year-old New York student, encouraged anonymous posting and swarming, and soon became a hotbed of hackers, online activists, and Internet meme creators.

At first, 4chan’s anonymous gimmicks were in the nature of online pranks, typically witty and whimsical but sometimes vicious, like gangs of youth looking for a cause and painting senseless graffiti on virtual walls. But from 2007 onwards, this anonymous community of hacktivists would begin to flex its muscles in hitting bigger targets—often mainstream institutions and personalities that earned the ire of rebellious youth—and in churning out lulz actions by spin-off hacker groups with names like Lulzsec and Anonymous.

These groups vandalized sites that they perceived to represent oppression and repression. They also directed their Internet actions to defend besieged online groups such as Wikileaks and Pirate Bay. They idolized rebels, such as the hero of a 1980s comic series, “V for Vendetta", an anarchist revolutionary who dressed up and wore a mask that looked like—you guessed it right—Guy Fawkes.

Then the inevitable happened. Lulzsec and Anonymous began to get the attention of mainstream media, and their representatives, wearing business suits and Guy Fawkes masks, started to grant interviews. The media attention quickly shot up especially after July this year when they hacked sites affiliated with the FBI, CIA, and PayPal as part of their campaign to defend WikiLeaks personality Julian Assange.

On July 13, a Canada-based group, AdBusters, which maintained a blog and described themselves as “a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society," called for all “redeemers, rebels and radicals out there" to occupy Wall Street starting on September 17.

On September 8, some Anons announced that they were supporting the OWS movement by using social media tactics, which included creating and publicly releasing a program that enabled online activists to massively generate Twitter messages (tweets) and ride on the “top trends" mechanism “to culture-jam your message into the public consciousness."

OWS organizers and early supporters quickly caught on, and in a few days their tweets pushed #occupywallstreet messages to the top of the Twitter charts. Anons, wearing Guy Fawkes masks of course, were also among the first informal groups that camped on Wall Street on the first OWS day.

And, as they say, the rest is history. But what a living, glowing, flowing, fast-moving history.

I still don’t like the Guy Fawkes mask. As I said, it gives me the creeps. Given a choice, I’d rather have another iconic image of a rebel heroine, or even the female dancer balanced atop the Wall Street bull, to symbolize the rapidly growing global protest movement started by OWS.

But, hey, the Guy Fawkes persona has deep historical roots too, and young hacktivists across the globe seem to be very fond of it. Like it or not, we will be seeing more of it in the next few days and weeks. So, with a clenched fist salute to express solidarity with the Occupy movement, let me greet everyone with a strangely familiar “Happy Guy Fawkes Day!" - MRT/TJD, GMA News Online

source: gmanews.tv

Bong Revilla: Ramona's flight to HK is a 'sign of guilt'

An agitated Senator Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. told a national TV audience Friday night that he was "as shocked as everyone" that his half-sister Ramona Bautista, 21, had taken a flight to Hong Kong as accusations swirled around her that she was involved in the murder of her older brother Ramgen.

"It's a sign of guilt," Bong Revilla told Saksi news anchor Vicky Morales. "Bakit siya aalis in the first place? Kung talagang wala siyang kasalanan, dapat harapin niya ito."

Revilla denied that Ramona was ever in his custody, and revealed that his half-sister's mother, Genelyn, had become angry at him for not stopping the police from arresting her son, RJ Bautista, another suspect in plotting the October 28 crime.

In a sworn statement, Ramgen’s stay-in personal assistant, Ronaldo Ancajas, said the victim and his two younger siblings implicated in the killing—Ramona and Ramon Joseph or RJ—had not been on speaking terms for the past months due to a disagreement over money.

“Ang alam ko ay matagal nang may tampuhan sila tungkol sa budget ng bahay, dahil si boss Ramgen ang humahawak at sinisiraan daw siya sa daddy nila, at mga ilang buwan din silang hindi nagkikibuan," Ancajas said in his statement, a copy of which was obtained by GMA News.





Bong Revilla, Ramgen, Ramona and RJ all share the same father, screen legend and former senator Ramon Revilla Sr., now nearly incapacitated due to illness. With his father inactive, Bong has assumed de facto leadership of the sprawling clan of some 72 children sired by his father. The slain Ramgen, 23, was an actor too and supposedly a favorite of the elder Revilla, 84.

Ramona was placed at the scene of the crime by Ramgen's girlfriend, Janelle Manahan, who told police that she pleaded with Ramona to call for help but she did not do so.

Ramgen's personal assistant stated in an affidavit to the police that he spotted Ramona and RJ exiting the subdivision on foot after the crime as if nothing had happened.

Ramona later told the police that she was abducted by Ramgen's killers and was driven around before being let down outside a Las Piñas mall. Ramona in an interview with ANC on Friday retracted the abduction story and said that she was too shocked to respond to Janelle's plea for help.

Bong Revilla said that Ramona had told him the same abduction story during the last conversation they had in a Las Piñas police station. He revealed that his entire family was shocked to learn of Ramona's retraction, followed by her sudden flight to Hong Kong.

"Nalulungkot kami. Dapat hinarap niya ito. Pero (long pause) wala. Ano pang iisipin ng lahat ng tao? Ano pang iisipin ng buong pamilya sa ginawa niya?" Revilla said. "Namatay kapatid naming si Ramgen, dapat panagutan. Kung sino mang may sala dapat makulong."

Revilla's tone was one of resignation mixed with grief, much different from his combative public statement emailed to media on Tuesday expressing disbelief that anyone in his family was a suspect. Rumors abounded that Revilla would use his considerable influence to protect his siblings from prosecution.

By Friday, with the corroborating testimony of at least three witnesses, and Ramona's flight out of the country, Revilla seemed to have come to the same conclusion as many fixated followers of the unfolding family drama. - Howie Severino/TJD, GMA News


Source: gmanews.tv

Aide affirms Ram Revilla’s rift with siblings over money

The personal assistant of slain actor Ramgen “Ram" Revilla, half-brother of Sen. Ramon Bong Revilla Jr., has affirmed that there was a rift between Ram and his siblings when Ram was killed inside his Parañaque home last Friday.

In his sworn statement, Ronaldo Ancajas, Ram’s stay-in personal assistant, said the victim and two of his siblings implicated in the slay case—Ramona and Ramon Joseph or RJ—have not been in speaking terms for the past months due to disagreement over money.

“Ang alam ko ay matagal nang may tampuhan sila tungkol sa budget ng bahay dahil si boss Ramgen ang humahawak at sinisiraan daw siya sa daddy nila, at mga ilang buwan din silang hindi nagkikibuan," he said in his sworn statement, a copy of which was obtained by GMA News.

He added that he was with Ram minutes before the killing, but had to go up to his room to take a nap. He said that upon waking up, he saw Ram’s two siblings making their way out of the subdivision where he and Ram live.

“Nakaidlip ako dahil sa pagod at puyat at mga ilang minuto, bigla akong nagising. Pagsilip ko sa bintana ng kwarto ko ay nakita ko si Joseph na naglalakad palabas ng gate ng subdivision. Mga ilang minuto, sumunod naman si Mara (Ramona)," he said.

The aide likewise said that he thought RJ and Ramona were on their way to Baguio City. He added that he only learned about Ram’s killing when police forced him out of the house and brought him to a nearby headquarters.

‘Cover up’

In a report on the shooting incident dated November 1, Parañaque police chief Senior Superintendent Billy Beltran said two of the subdivision’s security guards also spotted RJ and Ramona walking toward the gate after the crime was committed.

He said security guards Joyrex Asimbrado and Niño Tabada saw RJ walking alone and going outside the gate at 10:54 p.m. Friday, and was followed by Ramona minutes after.

The police report added that the one of the gunmen who shot Ram and his girlfriend, Janelle Manahan, wore a Halloween mask, an Army green jacket, and was armed with a handgun with a silencer.

Beltran said in the report that the testimonies from Ancajas and the security guards showed that Ramona “was not telling the truth and tried to make a cover-up" when she claimed that she was kidnapped by her brother’s assailants after the shooting and was later abandoned in Las Piñas City.

Ramona and RJ have already been slapped with murder and frustrated murder complaints for their brother’s killing and the attack on Manahan, respectively. RJ was arrested last Tuesday, while Ramona remains at large after police stopped operations against the suspects due to the filing of the case.

Members of the Revilla clan, including Senator Revilla, however, cast doubts on the results of the police probe, even calling for a reinvestigation of the incident.

Genelyn Magsaysay, mother of Ram, RJ and Ramona, also said her children would not resort to murder to settle their differences. She said she raised them as God-fearing people.
Members of Task Force Ramgen and the Parañaque City police however stood by the results of their probe and maintained that the case is already closed. — KBK, GMA News

source: gmanews.tv