Mindanao Daily NEWS
Volume II, No. 204
web portal: www.businessweekmindanao.com
Friday
February 28, 2014
P15.00
northmin . westmin . caraga . davao Your Regional Mindanao-wide Community Newspaper
Fortun admits rough sailing but hopeful for FOI passage The bill allows full public access to government official records
By PAT SAMONTE Regional Editor-Caraga
M’nao plunges into darkness
BUTUAN City––Agusan del Norte First District Rep. Lawrence Lemuel Fortun has admitted that the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill faces “a rough ride” in the Lower House but expressed optimism the 16th Congress will eventually approve the measure.
By CRIS DIAZ, Executive Editor GERRY GORIT, Staff Member with a report from MINDANEWS
See FULL STORY, page 4
Bambi departs from capitol tradition of holding office MISAMIS Oriental––Misamis Oriental Governor Yevgeny Vincente Emano has departed from the provincial capitol’s timehonored tradition of holding office at the second floor of the post war provincial capitol building here. Emano said that he would transfer his office to the ground floor of the provincial capitol building in order to be accessible to the public, especially the old and the persons with disabilities, who See departs, page 19
Ayala Centrio Mall and Ayala Property Management Corporation have set a March 2 launch for its Recyclables Fair. The event will be held every last Sunday of the month from 10AM-5PM and would provide Centrio Mall goers with the opportunity to sell or dispose of their recyclable wastes and trash. Photo by Shaun Alejandrae Uy
NASA discovers 715 new planets outside solar system UNITED States space agency NASA said Wednesday its Kepler spacecraft has verified the existence of 715 more planets orbiting stars outside the solar system. The latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets beyond the solar system to nearly 1,700, Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center told a press teleconference.
CAGAYAN de Oro City–– The whole island of Mindanao plunged into a mysterious five-hour power blackout at 3 a.m. Thursday morning sending power providers and generators in dilemma. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) that transmits power to the island’s private distributors did not issue a statement detailing the possible cause of the blackout. An NGCP official in Cagayan de Oro City said that the power firm was experiencing “disturbance” in the power transmission
but did not elaborate. Officials of the Iliganbased National Power Corporation (Napocor) said that the power generators of the hydropower plants in Iligan City and Lanao Del Norte were running normally. Napocor spokesman Romero Pacilan said that there was “low voltage” on the transmission of the electricity which they could not determine. People in Mindanao expressed apprehension on the “unscheduled” blackout in See darkness, page 19
“We’ve almost doubled just today the number of planets known to humanity,” Lissauer said. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, meaning many are in “multipleplanet systems much like our own solar system,” NASA said. Nearly 95 percent of these planets See solar, page 19
Solon fear blackout will be used to ‘project phantom power crisis’ By Davao Today
DAVAO City––A partylist lawmaker said they “fear” that the island-wide Mindanao blackout early morning today “will once again be used by the Aquino government to once again project a phantom power crisis and push or fast tract the privatization of the remaining government power assets like the Agus-Pulangi power complex.” In an emailed statement to the media, Bayan Muna partylist representative Karlos Ysagani Zarate said that
the blackout “showed how precarious still is our power situation more than a decade after the government’s power assets were privatized and handed down and sold, some for a song, to a few players.” He said that on “top of high power prices,” many parts of Mindanao “even continue to suffer intermittent brown-outs that sometimes lasted for hours.” Zarate said that this “only show how the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) also miserably failed us all these years. “
Zarate also scored the Aquino government whom he said “still wants to further our sufferings by implementing the Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM).” He describes the IMEM as “the same corporate scheme that is one of the main cause(s) of the high power prices in Luzon and the Visayas” and that is “the same greedy mechanism used by power players to game the electricity industry, to the utter detriment of the hapless consumers.” See power, page 19
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