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MANILA – This was the question uppermost in the minds of Filipinos as the Sandiganbayan Special Division prepared to hand down the verdict on the plunder and perjury cases of President Joseph Estrada on September 12.

Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio said the prosecution team is confident that Estrada will be convicted and Rene Saguisag, co-lead counsel for Estrada, said the defense panel is resigned to a verdict of conviction.

He said the three justices of the Sandiganbayan Special Division are bound by the pronouncements of the Supreme Court which have supposedly rendered virtually nil any chance of an acquittal.

QUEZON CITY – Ousted former President Joseph Estrada was found by the Sandiganbayan court Wednesday guilty of plunder and sentenced to life imprisonment. It acquitted him of the perjury charge.

The anti-graft court also ordered the forfeiture of the P542-million worth of Estrada’s bank accounts and the so-called Boracay mansion in New Manila, Quezon city. It allowed the former President to remain in his Tanay resthouse “until further notice.”

SYDNEY—President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo finally got her pull-aside meeting with US President George W. Bush at 11 a.m. September 8, the first day of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit here.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer said that in this meeting, Mrs. Arroyo succeeded in getting a promise from the US President to sign the Filipino veterans’ bills if the US Congress passed them. Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said Bush was seen jotting down notes as he told Arroyo: "Hey, Gloria, did you finish everything we talked about?

WASHINGTON D.C. – Evidence has emerged to cast doubt on whether the Filipino American community is justified in giving its full support to Dr. Noel N. Chua, 45, who is accused of murder in Camden county, Georgia. And a Filipino American professor in Georgia, Raymundo Marquez, has urged the Filipino American media to explore the several issues raised against Chua.

This came as the Sept. 15 jury trial of Dr. Chua who is accused of the murder of James Carter III has been postponed to an undetermined date.

Bloggers in the internet claim that Dr. Chua is gay which explains why Carter was staying in his house from October up to his death in December 2005.

MANILA – Basketball superstar Kobe Bryant captivated the hearts of tens of thousands of Filipino fans during his one-day stay in Manila to promote his new line of shoes and to encourage kids to pursue their dream in sports.

“I love Manila,” a beaming Bryant told a crowd that started gathering at 6 a.m. Sept. 5 outside a store in Taguig City. “The energy here is off the charts,” said the star of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Manila was the first stop of his tour of Asian nations sponsored by Nike.

MANILA – President Arroyo has signed a proclamation granting amnesty to communist rebels and ordering the release of P500 million in initial funds for social integration and livelihood assistance.

This came as:
-Defense lawyers of the Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Ma. Sison who was recently arrested and charged with murdering two former communist NPA leaders in the Philippines said they will question the jurisdiction of the Dutch government, claiming it has no authority to arrest him on the basis of two crimes that happened in the Philippines.

Washington D.C.- They call it the uncoupling of the Couples for Christ (CFC), one of the biggest Catholic lay organizations founded in the Philippines which has now spread around the world, including the United States.

Founded in 1993 by Frank Padilla after splitting with another Catholic group, Ang Ligaya ng Panginoon, CFC announced recently that it has agreed to split into two. It said that the bigger group of CFC, which now has membership in 160 countries, will retain the name of Couples for Christ while the splinter group will be called the Restoration Movement or the Easter Group.

The main reason for the split is the continued expansion of CFC’s social arm, Gawad Kalinga Foundation, which has grown into a multi-million-peso international non-profit group that helps build houses for the poor in the Philippines and elsewhere.

THE HAGUE – A Dutch court heard defense arguments yesterday for dropping murder charges against Philippine rebel leader Jose Maria Sison, and said it would rule next week on whether to continue the case, his lawyer said.

Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has denied involvement in the killings of two political opponents in Manila in 2003 and 2004, which Dutch prosecutors claim he ordered. Defense lawyer Victor Koppe said the judges “were very interested in the arguments and they want to take a full week to consider." Koppe saw that decision as positive. “He has a good chance,” the lawyer said.

Last year, on the fifth anniversary of September 11, Rachel Sistoza of Woodbridge , Va. reflected on the meaning of that tragic morning in light of what happened to her cousin, U.S. Army Cpl. Shannon L. Squires of Virginia Beach . “There would have been no Iraq War if the attacks in New York didn’t occur," she said then. “My cousin would still be alive.

I hated it when Bush started this war on terror. I hate it even more now. It took away someone close to me, someone I grew up with, someone so young and full of promise. That’s what hurts."

MANILA - Politics, as the word is commonly understood, is nothing but corruption.

This has been proven beyond cavil about Gloria Arroyo, who has used every dirty trick in the book of politics and corrupt practices to satisfy her intense desire for power and pelf. She has built structures of deceit and corruption ever since she usurped the presidency from Joseph “Erap” Estrada in 2001, and, once again, when she cheated Fernando Poe Jr. on her way to six more years in Malacanang in 2004.

Indeed, in the last six years of her purloined presidency, she has raised corruption to a new level of magnitude unmatched by past administrations. And this dismaying fact has not escaped the attention of Filipinos in all levels of society.

MANILA - Government troops have captured two encampments of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) in separate combat operations in Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro and General Nakar town in Quezon province late last month, the Philippine News Agency reported. In his report, 2nd Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Fernando Mesa said that Reconnaissance Platoon of 4th Infantry Battalion while on combat operations seized and cleared an abandoned NPA camp without enemy resistance at Sitio Kulitob, Barangay Balug, Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro.

In a separate report to Solcom chief Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Obaniana, Mesa reported that Scout Ranger troops led by Lt. Bermundo discovered an abandoned NPA encampment at Barangay Umiray, General Nakar, Quezon that can accommodate more or less 100 rebels.

MANILA – Former intelligence agent T/Sgt. Vidal Doble told senators that a confidante of President Arroyo had offered him help on condition that he not testify on the “Hello Garci” controversy. Appearing at the Senate inquiry on the “Hello Garci” wiretapping controversy, Doble said he met “Medy,” later identified as Remedios Poblador, at the quarters of then AFP chief Gen. Efren Abu in Camp Aguinaldo, where he was reunited with his wife Arlene and children Darren and Danica in June 2005.

SYDNEY, Australia – The much-ballyhooed bilateral one-on-one luncheon meeting between Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and US President George W. Bush here prior to the start of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit Sept. 6 did not materialize.

Instead, Bush hosted a luncheon for the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) which included the Philippines. It was here that Mrs. Arroyo and Bush was able to talk briefly. Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Claro Cristobal confirmed that the scheduled meeting was cancelled but he said the Home Office was not aware of the reason behind the cancellation. But the US protocol officer said it was not in Bush’s schedule.

MANILA - It is sometimes necessary to kill the chicken to scare the monkey". That's how Mao Zedong fobbed off his murder of party leaders who bucked his paranoid rule. This grisly proverb resonates in the Netherlands where police arrested, for murder, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder : Jose Ma. Sison From Utrecht, the 68-year old Sison “gave orders to Murder his former political associates in the Philippines, Romulo Kintanar, in 2003 and Arturo Tabara in 2004," the Dutch national prosecutor’s Office said. Courts in the Hague will now determine whether Sison can be detained further until trial begins. Kintanar and Tabara, who led a faction that broke away from the Sison’s group in the early 1990s, never got a trial. They were rubbed out by the New People’s Army assassins. Thus, the US and European Union list CPP and NDF as terrorist organizations.

It has been six years since the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington. Some 3,000 innocent people had perished in that act of terror by the Al Qaeda-led Islamic fanatics, more than the number of Americans killed in the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.