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CATARMAN - Australia is granting P2 million to selected communities in Northern Samar to finance their development projects for five years, an official has said. David Swete Kelly, program director of the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Program, made the announcement at the recent launching of community projects in the towns of Catarman and San Isidro in this province. He cited the special relations between Australia and the province of Northern Samar, which has been in place for 35 years.

Australia first financed construction of the road between San Isidro and Rawis in Laoang, in the late 70s.

CEBU CITY - As dry run to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in December, the local task force for the event will also handle security for the Apec Business Advisory Council (Abac) conference from Aug. 11 to 16. President Arroyo is expected to be in Cebu to meet with 30 chief executives of top international corporations and discuss strategies on making the Philippines more competitive for the global outsourcing demand.

VISAYAS - CAMP JAMINDAN, Capiz -A bemedalled officer of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division was gunned down early this month by suspected communist guerrillas in Central Panay, an official said. Maj. Lyndon Sollesta, spokesman of the 3rd Infantry Division, condemned the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army for killing 2Lt. Abelardo Motia in Barangay Poblacion Ilaya, Dumarao, Capiz, around 6:30 p.m. He was ambushed after celebrating a town fiesta in that barangay.

DAGUPAN CITY - The local city police station has been adjudged as the Best City Police Station in the country for 2006 for its continuous effort of bringing the police closer to the community.

Dagupan City Police Chief Edgar Basbas received the award last July 31 during the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) observance of the 11th Police Community Relations (PCR) Month in Camp Crame. The Plaque of Merit was handed by Presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor and PNP Chief Oscar Calderon.

TACO ISLAND, Masbate - Fugitive ex-Senator Gregorio Honasan has escaped a police dragnet a third time recently at his Hacienda Butuan on Ticao Island, Masbate.

Honasan was no longer around during the raid, but police arrested his caretakers for having several guns and ammunition in their possession, said Dir. Jesus Verzosa, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group. Three Honasan hacienda caretakers were arrested and assorted firearms were seized following the raid, Versoza said in a statement.

Winning the grandslam award in the recent Asia Pacific Dance Competition held in Singapore late last month were 72 Filipino children, aged 6 to 19, during an international two-day competition held at the Overseas Family School auditorium in the heart of the Lion City. Led by artistic director Shirley Halili-Cruz, the group won 23 gold, eight silver and nine bronze trophies as well as 18 medals, besting 23 other teams from Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Thailand and Indonesia. The Filipinos won the perpetual trophies in the classical, neo-classical, modern solo, groups under 13, groups under 16, and duos/trios open categories. Philippine Ambassador to Singapore H.E. Belen Anota hosted the group to a dinner reception to celebrate their feat.

After targeting tax evaders with its Run After Tax Evaders (RATE) program  which brought big-time celebrities and entrepreneurs to court the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is now eyeing erring accountants. The revenue agency is set to launch its Expanded RATE (E-RATE) program in a bid to further cut red tape and graft and corruption in the BIR’s tax collection system. It is RATE with a twist,said BIR Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters Gregorio Cabantac. This new program will target accountants who are instrumental in perpetrating tax evasion schemes for their clients. Cabantac said E-RATE will render the revision of BIR forms and returns to require taxpayers accountants paying more than P500,000 to verify and attest to the truthfulness and correctness of the tax return. This will impose accountability on accountants and large taxpayers by making them attest to their tax returns, he added.

A week after President Arroyo vowed to end political killings after concerns were aired by human rights groups, a student leader was killed  and a leftist activist were wounded in an ambush in Sorsogon and Kalinga province. Reimon Guran, 21, a spokesman for the League of Filipino Students (LFS) was shot dead by two gunmen as he waited for a bus to school in the town of Bulan in Sorsogon late last month and an hour later, Constancio Claver, a doctor and a provincial leader of the leftist political party Bayan Muna, and his wife were ambushedin the northern province of Kalinga. Claver, 49, is fighting for his life while his wife Alice died in the hospital, police Senior Superintendent Pedro Ramos said.

The materials and specifications used to build the mothballed Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA-3) failed to meet safety requirements, the Association of Structural Engineers of the Philippines (ASEP) has said. ASEP conducted an inspection of the terminal after a portion of NAIA-3’s ceiling collapsed last March 27, just four days before the terminal’s scheduled test run. In its report to the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), ASEP cited five concerns. The structural engineers said the ceiling was constructed without the benefit of detailed shop drawings containing the ceiling plan, as well as the as-built conditions of the ceiling area, which should have included the positions of existing utilities, connection details of the ceiling framing system and other important information that could have better guided the construction. ASEP also observed that some materials used, like the wall angles, did not meet the minimum required specifications and that there had been a wrong choice of ceiling or wall components.

The Supreme Court has suspended Leonard de Vera from the practice of law and barred him from assuming the presidency of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines. De Vera, a private prosecutor in the plunder trial of President Joseph Estrada, was suspended for misusing $12,000 he had received in trust for a client in California.

NEW YORK - Nestor Sulpico, the honest Filipino American cab driver here who was hailed by the city as “New York’s Most Honest Taxi Driver when he returned $78,000 worth of rare Micronesian black pearls to a passenger who left them in his cab. Sulpico, now 49, is enrolling next month at the Phillips Beth Israel School of Nursing in Manhattan as a full-time nursing student under a scholarship grant awarded by the school for his honesty.

Ousted President Joseph Estrada has filed a P30-million libel suit against a former beauty queen, her mother and the publisher, editor-in-chief and a reporter of the newspaper Manila Standard Today. Estrada affixed his signature on the 19-page complaint-affidavit before Rizal Provincial Prosecutor Danilo Lim at his Tanay, Rizal rest house where he is being detained on charges of plunder and perjury.

The United Kingdom no longer has a shortage of general nurses and employers have stopped recruiting Filipino nurses since vacant positions have already been filled, the Department of Labor and Employment announced. But while general nurses have been removed from the list of industries with a shortage of workers starting Aug. 14, UK still has a need for specialist nurses, particularly in the medical fields of audiology, sleep or respiratory physiology, neurophysiology, cardiac physiology, surgery, clinical radiology, pathology, critical care and renal dialysis.

Labor Secretary Arturo Brion said that while there is still a need for specialist nurses, UK health firms have to certify that they can not find qualified specialist nurses from their nationals.

The Philippines and United States will conduct a one-week bilateral naval exercise as part of joint efforts aimed at enhancing their forces skills in combating seaborne terrorists.

Philippine Navy spokesman, Cdr. Giovanni Carlo Barcodo, said the bilateral exercise dubbed, Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training Exercise 2006, will be held from Aug. 14 to 21 in several training sites in Zambales and La Union provinces.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered the training of domestic workers who had to flee Lebanon because of the war there to become supermaids and to be redeployed in safer areas in the Middle East. She said the domestic help who fled Lebanon will be retrained by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda). They [domestic help] will be upgraded with a higher price, said Tesda chief Augusto Syjuco.