Autobiography of mynardo macaraig el

MANILA: A senior Philippine Islamic militant on the US government’s “most wanted” list was arrested in Manila on Wednesday, authorities said after a manhunt lasting seven years.
Khair Mundos, who had a $500,000 US government reward on his head, was detained at 9:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) close to the capital’s airport where he was staying with relatives, the police and military said after a joint raid.
The US State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” website describes him as a “key leader and financier” of the Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic militant group blamed for the worst extremist attacks in the Philippines.
The group, founded with seed money from Al-Qaeda, is believed to have only a few hundred militants but has successfully carried out deadly bomb attacks and kidnappings, often targeting foreigners and Christians.
Mundos had been captured in 2004 in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao, a largely lawless area roughly 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Manila where the Abu Sayyaf is based.
He was arrested “on the first-ever money laundering charges against terrorists,” according to the “Rewards for Justice” website.
It said Mundos confessed in custody to having arranged the transfer of Al-Qaeda funds to the Abu Sayyaf’s top leader for bombings and other criminal acts throughout Mindanao.
He was also charged in the Philippines with multiple murder charges.
However, Mundos was among dozens of militants who escaped from Kidapawan City prison in Mindanao in February 2007, as part of a well-planned break.
Insurgents using grenade launchers blasted their way into the jail before dawn, then pinned down a handful of guards with rifle fire while Mundos and the others fled.
Manila’s criminal investigation chief, Senior Superintendent Roberto Fajardo, said on Tuesday Mundos had fled to the capital to avoid pursuit in the south, but he would not disclose how long the militant had been hiding in the city.
“It was getting too hot (in

By doing so, tens of millions of poor people who depend on rice as a staple could get a vital nutrient, potentially averting hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness each year.

The idea for what came to be called “golden rice”- thus named for its bright yellow hue -was proclaimed as a defining moment for genetically-modified food.

Backers said the initiative ushered in an era when GM crops would start to help the poor and malnourished, rather than benefit only farmers and biotech firms.

“It’s a humanitarian project,” Ingo Potrykus, professor emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), one of the co-inventors of golden rice, said in a recent interview with AFP.

Yet the rice is still a long way from appearing in food bowls - 2016 has become the latest date sketched for commercialisation, provided the novel product gets the go-ahead.

With $30mn invested in it so far, the odyssey speaks tellingly of the technical, regulatory and commercial hurdles that have beset the “biofortified food” dream.

First, it took scientists years to find and insert two genes that modified the metabolic pathway in rice to boost levels of beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A.

After that came the biosafety phase, to see if the rice was safe for health and the environment - and if beta-carotene levels in lab plants were replicated in field trials in different soils and climates.

There were also “bio-efficacy” experiments to see whether the rice did indeed overcome vitamin deficiency, and whether volunteers found the taste acceptable.

These tests are still unfolding in the Philippines, Indonesia and Bangladesh, said Bruce Tolentino, deputy director general of the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

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EARLY HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPINES

It is thought that the earliest modern human inhabitants of the Philippines arrived around 50,000 years ago or earlier. On Palawan human bones have been found that date to about 47,000 years ago (See Hominins Below). Analysis of the stone tools found in Palawan reveal that they have similar features to tools found on Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).

Negritos, proto-Malay, and Malay peoples were the principal peoples of the Philippine archipelago in pre-historic and ancient times. The Negritos are believed to have migrated by land bridges some 30,000 years ago, during the last glacial period. Later migrations were by water and took place over several thousand years in repeated movements before and after the start of the Christian era. During pre-historic Ice Ages sea levels dropped and exposed land bridges between Asia and islands in what are now the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. When sea levels rose, ocean waters covered these land bridges, cutting off the islands from the Asian mainland. Early settlers on the Philippines may have also arrived by boat.

People have lived in Australia for at least 60,000 years and no land bridges connected Australia to anywhere during the Ice Ages. During ice ages land bridges connected Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo with Southeast Asia. The Philippines and the Indonesian islands of Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor and the Moluccas were not connected by land bridges to Southeast Asia. Land bridges connected New Guinea and Australia with each other but not with Indonesia or Southeast Asia. It was long thought that early man was unable to migrate past the 15-mile-wide Lombok Straight between Bali and Lombok. Stone flakes possibly produced by humans have been found in 730,000-year-old deposits on Flores, which has been offered as evidence that early man was able to cross the Lombok Strait.

The Philippines were probably first occupied by people who arrived in s

MANILA: A relentless Catholic Church campaign to derail a birth control law in the Philippines entered its final phase at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, with the verdict to have a monumental impact on millions of poor Filipinos.
The court began hearing arguments against a family planning law that President Benigno Aquino, defying intense church pressure, helped steer through parliament late last year.
It is the last legal recourse for the Church, which for more than a decade led resistance to birth control legislation in the mainly Catholic nation.
The Church, which had threatened Aquino and other supporters of the law with excommunication, held prayer vigils, protests and masses near the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
“We ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten and inspire the lawyers who would be arguing for our position... and enlighten the justices of the Supreme Court,” Bishop Gabriel Reyes told a mass at a nearby church.
The law requires government health centers to hand out free condoms and birth control pills, benefiting tens of millions of the country’s poor who would not otherwise have access to them.
More than a quarter of the Philippines’ nearly 100 million people live on the equivalent of 62 cents a day, according to government data.
The law also mandates that sex education be taught in schools and that public health workers receive family planning training, while post-abortion medical care was legalized.
Proponents say the Reproductive Health law will slow the country’s population growth, which is one of the fastest in the world, and reduce the number of mothers dying in childbirth.
“To deny RH services from our people would be a denial of human rights and a grave social injustice, especially against women and the poor,” said Senator Pia Cayetano, one of the architects of the law.
The Supreme Court suspended the law in March so that the judges could hear the 15 formal petitions from a range of Church-backed gr