Travel Guide – Choose Philippines:Choose Tacloban

Philippines, pearl of the orient seas is a mixture of Eastern and Western cultures. Tacloban City, is a tourism hub and the primary gateway to Eastern Visayas. The region is world-renowned for its natural ecological beauty and diversity and for its historical significance in the Second World War. This guide will feature 3 landmarks of Tacloban City.

LANDMARKS:

Hotel Alejandro – for its World War II memorabilias

Anyone who loves history will love this hotel, the walls are lined with 1930s-1940s era black and white photos and World War II memorabilia. Located along P. Paterno Street, Tacloban City, Hotel Alejandro is one hotel that boasts of a storied past dating many decades of pre and post war days.

San Juanico Bridge, about 15 minutes away north of Tacloban City, is a 2.16-kilometer long S-shaped span connecting the islands of Leyte and Samar. It is considered one of the most beautifully designed bridges in Philippines. This steel structure was built in 1973 during the Marcos administration.

It is said to have been presented as a Gift and “Testimonial of Love” by the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to the first lady, Imelda, a native Leyteño.

Sto. Nino Shrine and Heritage Museum

The Santo Niño Shrine is one of the 29 presidential rest houses that the late President Ferdinand Marcos had built. It was built for his wife Imelda Marcos, who was born in Tacloban. It is considered the number 1 tourist spot in Tacloban because of its association with Imelda.

Inside the mansion you can find collections of paintings of historical events in Leyte. The shrine was also a palace during the Marcos regime, with Olympic-size swimming pool, state dining rooms, 13 guest and private bedrooms for Imelda, Ferdinand and their children.  The place is filled with antique ceramics, pottery and vintage collectibles.

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Man faces ‘eye-for-an-eye’ justice in Iran

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TEHRAN – Iran’s supreme court has upheld a sentence of blinding with acid for a man who blinded his lover’s husband, under the Islamic “eye-for-an-eye” justice code, a government daily said on Saturday.

The convict, named only as Mojtaba, 25, threw acid in the face of Alireza, 25, a taxi-driver in Iran’s clerical hub city of Qom, after an “illicit affair” with the victim’s wife, Mojdeh, also 25, said the newspaper Iran.

The supreme court has upheld a lower court ruling that Mojtaba be blinded with drops of acid, in line with Islamic justice, which allows for “qisas,’ or eye-for-an-eye retribution, in cases of violent crime, it said.

Qom prosecutor Mostafa Barzegar Ganji said the victim had used his right to qisas. “We have asked for forensic specialists to oversee the blinding of the convict,” he said, quoted in Iran. Several acid attacks have been reported in Iran.

In February 2009, Majid Movahedi was sentenced to be blinded in both eyes for having hurled acid in the face of a university classmate, Ameneh Bahrami, who refused a marriage proposal.

There has been no reported confirmation that the sentence was carried out.

SOURCE:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20101211-308395/Man-faces-eye-for-an-eye-justice-in-Iran

Rio (Movie Review)

IMAGE SOURCE: http://tokyomi.com

Rio presents a flavorful, family friendly adventure that goes down in the richly beautiful and cultural setting of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It’s an awesome movie! The graphics were amazing and the story line was beautiful. I absolutely recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys animation. Kids will love it, as well. It’s funny and romantic and emotional at times. It’s sure to give you goosebumps at certain points in the movie! Again, I highly recommend this movie!

OVERVIEW

Blu (voice of Jesse Eisenberg) is a brainy and pet blue macaw who lives with his adoring owner, Linda (voice of Leslie Mann). Their quiet and cozy life in Minnesota is disrupted when they get a visit from Tulio (voice of Rodrigo Santoro), a Brazilian ornithologist. Tulio informs Linda that Blu is the last male of his kind, and he convinces her to take a trip to Rio de Janeiro, so Blu can meet Jewel (voice of Anne Hathaway), the last female blue macaw.

When he arrives in Rio, though, Blu finds that Jewel is not as receptive as he had hoped. He wants nothing more than to go home, but suddenly, he and Jewel are nabbed by a band of smugglers. Jewel’s free-spirited determination and Blu’s brain power come in handy as the two escape from the smugglers and their bitter henchmen, Nigel the cockatoo. But, the two are not free yet. They are chained together, and there’s one major problem: Blu cannot fly.

Thankfully, Blu and Jewel are befriended by birds like Rafael the toucan (voice of George Lopez), Nico (voice of Jaime Foxx) and Pedro (voice of Will.i.am), who not only lend them a wing, but also get them in the festive spirit for Carnaval. The entire city is alive with preparations for the big Carnaval parade, but Blu and Jewel must focus on removing their chains and getting back to their homes before Nigel comes along again to spoil the party.

Did you know???

1. More than ten people a year are killed by vending machines.

2. Hippo milk is pink.

3. Women have a better sense of smell than men.

4. The human brain has the capacity to store everything that you experience.

5. Ice Cream is chinese food!

6. On an average work day, a typist’s fingers travel 12.6 miles.

7. 80% of all pictures on the internet are of naked women.

8. Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women.

9. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

10. The most children born to one woman was 69, she was a peasant who lived a 40 year life, in which she had 16 twins, 7 triplets, and 4 quadruplets.

SOURCE: http://www.funfactz.com

Daily HIV pill use yields strong results

Men who faithfully take a daily pill that contains drugs to treat HIV can reduce their risk of catching the deadly virus by up to 73 percent, the National Institutes of Health said in a study released Tuesday.

In a May 2006 file photo, Gilead Sciences Inc. Chief Executive John Martin holds a Truvada pill bottle in a lab in Foster City, Calif. Scientists have an exciting breakthrough in the fight against AIDS. Daily doses of Truvada, a pill already used to treat infection with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, helped prevent healthy gay men from catching it through sex with an infected partner.

Researchers cautioned, however, that Truvada, an anti-retroviral drug now used by people already infected with HIV, achieves such stunning success only when taken diligently and used in combination with other prevention strategies.

Nevertheless, such eye-popping results, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, produced applause from gay-rights and AIDS-activist groups and from the White House.

“I am encouraged by this announcement of groundbreaking research onHIV prevention,” President Obama said after the NIH study findings were announced. “While more work is needed, these kinds of studies could mark the beginning of a new era in HIV prevention.”

“These results represent a major advance in HIV prevention research,” said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention.

“For the first time, we have evidence that a daily pill used to treat HIV is partially effective for preventing HIV among gay and bisexual men at high risk for infection, when combined with other prevention strategies,” Dr. Fenton said. This is “exciting and welcome news.”

The approach is called “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” or PREP.

In the NIH study, led by Dr. Robert M. Grant, some 2,500 homosexual or bisexual men, all of whom wereHIV-negative, participated in six countries from July 2007 through 2009.

The men were given pills to take daily without knowing whether it was Truvada or a placebo. They were then checked regularly for HIV status, and assessed on how well they adhered to safe-sex strategies and pill regimen.

Some 110 of the men acquired HIV — 64 were taking placebo pills, and 36 were taking Truvada.

Based on this outcome, researchers said, the men who faithfully took the Truvada pills on 90 percent or more days lowered their risk of gettingHIV by about 73 percent. In general, the risk reduction for all men was about 44 percent. According to the CDC, though, that the HIV risk for the least-compliant group of men declined by only 21 percent.

Taking the drug also doesn’t seem to encourage risky behavior in response. The NIH study also found that after the men started the study, their risky sexual behavior “decreased substantially” and “remained lower” than usual during the drug trial.

Dr. Fenton cautioned that these results were only for Truvada use in a male homosexual and bisexual populations. There are no data regarding Truvada’s ability to prevent AIDS among heterosexuals, women or intravenous drug users, he said.

It also was effective only with men who were confirmed HIV-negative and who practiced additional prevention strategies such as consistently using condoms, getting treatment for other sexually transmitted diseases and reducing the number of sex partners.

The hope is that high-risk populations — men who have sex with men (MSM) and bisexual men — will use an HIV-prevention pill. Surveys indicate that “the majority” of men in these groups would consider using such a product if it was proved to be safe and effective, the NIH study said.

SOURCE:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/23/study-new-pill-greatly-reduces-hiv-risk-men/

Billy Hunter doubts entire ’11-12 NBA season

IMAGE SOURCE: http://photos.indystar.com

Players Association executive director Billy Hunter says the 2011-12 NBA season will likely be canceled entirely because the commissioner’s negotiating leeway is in danger of being undermined by a group of hard-line owners.

“The circumstances have changed among [David Stern’s] constituency,” Hunter told a group of lawyers Wednesday, as quoted in the Baltimore Sun. “In the last six or seven years, there is a new group of owners to come in who paid a premium for their franchises, and what they’re doing is kind of holding his feet to the fire.”

Hunter told an American Bar Association conference that if he “had to bet on it”, he would wager that there will be no NBA season.

“We’re $800 million apart per year,” Hunter said Wednesday, adding, “something has to happen that both of us can use as leverage to save face.”

NBA owners and players held a formal collective bargaining session for the first high-level negotiations in a month Monday but after nearly three hours of discussions the sides emerged as far apart as they were when the day began. Stern said the sides were “at the same place” as they were when the lockout began July 1 just before the old collective bargaining agreement ran out.

Owners are seeking significant changes to the league’s salary structure, claiming $300 million in losses last season and hundreds of millions more in each year of the previous agreement, which was ratified in 2005. Players have acknowledged the losses but disputed their size, and they’ve balked at the league’s push for a hard salary cap and reduction in salaries and maximum contract lengths.

The union has encouraged players to find work rather than give in to the owners’ economic demands, with the hope that owners would offer better proposals if they see their players have other options. Hunter recently sent a memo to all players endorsing locked-out players to consider playing overseas.

Nets All-Star Deron Williams agreed to an overseas deal with Besiktas of Turkey, the only superstar with an overseas deal thus far, though some lesser players have one. Many elite players say they are keeping it as an option.

SOURCE:

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/6832574/billy-hunter-expects-entire-nba-season-canceled

Paris Hilton flying to Manila on Aug. 13

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She broke the news on Twitter. Paris Hilton, star of the reality TV show “The World According To Paris” and businesswoman with a fashion design empire and 17 product lines to her name, posted, “I’m flying to Manila, Philippines, on August 13 for a few days.”

Century Properties is bringing in Hilton as designer for The Azure Beach Club. She is set to arrive for her first meeting with the company’s creative and design team.

The beach club will be the central amenity of Azure Urban Resort Residences, one of Century Properties’ landmark projects in the southern part of Manila.

The six-hectare residential development will include a man-made beach, a zen garden, pools and multiple playgrounds.

Zest for the good life

Robbie R. Antonio, the managing director of Century Properties, met with Hilton and her father Richard earlier this year to talk about the collaboration.

“We chose Ms Paris Hilton because of her exposure to travel and her predisposition to many aspects of design—from fashion, beauty, lifestyle to world-class service. Deciding to work with her was the logical choice as we found no other personality more suited to embody the upscale fashionable beachgoer,” Antonio said.

“Her unparalleled style that made her a successful businesswoman and a style icon, as well as her zest for living the good life are the qualities that we would like to incorporate into our vacation-inspired residential property,” said John Victor R. Antonio, Century Properties chief operating officer and project head of Azure.

Hilton said she was looking forward “to working with Century Properties.”

“I will personally help design The Azure Beach Club, creating a unique and special place that will bring happiness to many people. I’m excited for people to experience it,” she added.

Hilton will also be in the country for a media conference and shoots for Azure.

SOURCE:

http://entertainment.inquirer.net/8095/paris-hilton-flying-to-manila-on-aug-13

Scientists stunned by surface of asteroid Vesta

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The first close-up pictures of the massive asteroid Vesta reveal a northern hemisphere littered with craters — including a trio nicknamed “Snowman” — and a smoother southern half, researchers reported Monday.

Running along the asteroid’s equator are deep grooves — a surprise to scientists who did not expect to see such features.

IMAGE SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com

“We’re seeing quite a varied surface,” said chief scientist Christopher Russell of the University of California, Los Angeles. The images were taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which began orbiting the 330-mile-wide rocky body last month and beaming back incredible surface details that the team is only beginning to pore over. It’s the first time that Vesta has been viewed up close. Until now, it has only been photographed from afar.

Since entering orbit, Dawn has taken more than 500 pictures, while refining its path and inching ever closer to the surface to get a better view. The probe will officially start collecting science data next week once it is 1,700 miles from the surface. It will get as close as 110 miles while it orbits Vesta for a year.

Vesta’s southern section is dominated by a giant crater, the result of a collision eons ago that’s believed to have pelted Earth with numerous meteorites, or broken off pieces of asteroids. The northern side is filled with older craters including three that scientists dubbed “Snowman.”

Vesta is “so rich in features” that it will keep scientists busy for years, said Holger Sierks, of the Max Planck Society in Germany, who helps operate the camera.

Currently some 117 million miles from Earth, Vesta is the second-largest resident of the asteroid belt, a zone between Mars and Jupiter filled with hundreds of thousands of space rocks orbiting the sun. The belt formed some 4.5 billion years ago around the same time and under similar conditions as Earth and the inner planets.

It’s thought that larger chunks such as Vesta could have merged into planets had they not been foiled by Jupiter’s gravity. Despite being denied planethood, asteroids are of interest to researchers because they date back to the early solar system.

Powered by ion propulsion instead of conventional rocket fuel, Dawn slid around Vesta on July 15 after a 1.7 billion-mile cruise. Most orbit insertions are tricky because a speeding craft has to slow down or risk overshooting its target.

Since Dawn has been traveling slow relative to Vesta, the orbit capture was a ho-hum event.

“It wasn’t dramatic, but it is exciting,” said chief engineer Marc Rayman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Launched in 2007, Dawn is the first mission to explore Vesta and Ceres, the two largest members of the asteroid belt. It’s also the largest interplanetary probe launched by NASA, measuring 64 feet tip to tip with its solar panels unfurled.

Though the $466 million project was conceived long before the United States decided to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, the data gathered by Dawn should help future manned missions.

After a year, Dawn will move on to Ceres, where it will arrive in 2015.

Unlike dry and rocky Vesta, Ceres is icy and may have frost-covered poles. Due to the possible presence of frozen water, Dawn will not be able to venture as close to Ceres’ surface for fear of contaminating the asteroid.

The team does not plan to post raw images online as other NASA missions have done. Instead, there will be just one picture released daily.

SOURCE:

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-stunned-surface-asteroid-vesta-204550456.html

The Most Unforgettable ‘School-Related’ Experience of My Life

Youth for the Environment Summer Camp (YES Camp) was simply remarkable. Last May 1-5, 2011, together with Michael Cordial, Jessica Daffon, and of course Mrs. Estrella Feliciano. I never thought there would be anything associated to school that would be fun, but I guess I was mistaken. Since Day 1 of the camp everything we did was FUN, FUN, and MORE FUN. From the hundreds and thousands of steps to climb in Baguio City, to the freezing climate, and most definitely the SHOPPING. I had the time of my life. We encountered people who came from different regions, who speak different dialects, but we were still able to communicate with each other in order to save Mother Earth.

One of our newly found friends was also our roommate. Jessica named him Archie, literally named him ‘cause that wasn’t his real name, we were afraid to approach him because we were embarrassed to speak ‘broken tagalog’ so Jessica said that our roomy looks like an Archie so that’s what we started calling him. It turns out his real name is David Daza. David, being the good friend that he is, introduced us to one of his friends Joemark Anqui, he is a very humorous guy, we laughed like there was no tomorrow when he was around.

We were honored that one of the speakers of the seminars was none other than the Vice-President himself, Jejomar Binay. He gave a speech on our last day at camp about, of course, nature and that all Filipinos should collaborate with each other in preserving and caring for Mother Earth.