BUSINESS: BIR condones tollway tax B1

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CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK

CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW BLACK

Vol. XXV No. 160 16 Pages 3 Sections • P18.00 Manila, Philippines • www.manilastandardtoday.com • mst@manilastandardtoday.com

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MONDAY, August 22, 2011

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ENTERTAINMENT: Perfect endorser C3

■ Administration allies to grill Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman about exit plan for conditional cash transfer

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Lawmakers challenge govt on dole, dismiss WB report

Libyan guerrillas closing in on Gadhafi stronghold

New tuna limits may cut fi sh production

Central bank urges public to stop hoarding coins

Reds score Aquino for scuttling talks

Palace cites crisis-handling improvements

Court backs games board vs. jai alai fi rm

WEATHER FORECAST

Vol. XXV No. 160 16 Pages 3 Sections • P18.00 Manila, Philippines • www.manilastandardtoday.com • mst@manilastandardtoday.com

Temperature Range: 24OC to 31OC Source: PAG-ASA

The Bicol Region, the Visayas and Mindanao will have cloudy skies with scat-tered rain showers and thunderstorms.

Southern Luzon will have mostly cloudy skies with scattered rain show-ers and thunderstorms, while the rest of Luzon will be partly cloudy to cloudy with isolated rain showers or thunder-storms.

Light to moderate winds blowing from the northeast to east will prevail over Northern and Central Luzon, and from the southwest to west over the rest of the country.

The coastal waters throughout the archipelago will be slight to moderate.

Fiery exhibition. Mindanao tribal dancers perform a fi re dance during the 26th Kadayawan Festival in Crocodile Park in Davao City. LINO SANTOS

Rebel armor. A captured tank bearing a rebel fl ag fi res on a street in Zawiya, Libya, Friday as the gurerrillas battled for control of the strategic central square against forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi . AP

Remembering Ninoy. Yellow confetti fl ies around a statue of the late Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., right, as Filipinos commemorate his death anniversary. APTHE Aquino administration has

invested P169.9 million in a spe-cial police unit that will handle hostage situations to prevent a repeat of the bungled rescue at-tempt during the Aug. 23 hostage crisis in Manila last year that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead.

Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. said the creation of the Crisis Action Force under the National Police was part of the reforms that the government had undertaken to prevent a repeat of last year’s incident, which strained the relations between the Philip-pines and Hong Kong as well as China.

TRIPOLI—Libyan rebels said they were less than 30 kilometers from Moammar Gadhafi ’s main stronghold of Tripoli on Sunday, a day after opposition fi ghters launched their fi rst attack on the capital itself.

Fighters said a 600-strong rebel force that set out from Zawiya had reached the outskirts of the village of Jedaim and was coming under heavy fi re from regime forces on the eastern side of the town.

Murad Dabdoub, a fi ghter who returned to Zawiya from the front, told The Associated Press that Gadhafi ’s forces were pound-ing rebel positions with rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft fi re.

The rebels’ arrival at Jedaim

was also confi rmed by Abdul-Bari Gilan, a doctor in Zawiya. He told the AP that he had treated a rebel who was wounded in the fi ghting at Jedaim.

An AP reporter in Tripoli, meanwhile, said the city was largely quiet on Sunday after a night of gunfi re and explosions.

Libyan rebels said Saturday they had launched their fi rst attack on Tripoli in coordination with Nato and gun battles and mortar rounds rocked the city. Nato aircraft also made heavy bombing runs after nightfall, with loud explosions booming across the city.

State Libyan television on Sat-urday aired what appeared to be

THE country’s fi sh production may decline by 5 percent this year fol-lowing the government’s imposi-tion of conservation measures, an offi cial said over the weekend.

“We will see a decline in fi sh production in the coming weeks after we have fully enforced mea-sure to arrest all illegal fi shing methods,” Bureau of Fisheries

and Aquatic Resources director Asis Perez said.

He said that fi sh caught using illegal fi shing methods such as dynamite fi shing were included in the survey of fi sh production since the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics had no means to deter-mine where the fi sh came from.

Perez said the government

could no longer allow the use of illegal fi shing methods if it want-ed to sustain fi sh production.

“If we are to seriously deal with the problem of illegal fi sh-ing, the corresponding decline in production is inevitable,” he said.

“It’s a bitter pill that we have to swallow. Once it’s done, we will

THE Court of Appeals has reaf-fi rmed the Games and Amuse-ment Board’s authority to stop Meridien Vista Gaming Corp. from operating off-fronton jai alai betting stations.

In a decision dated Aug. 18, the court’s Special Third Division overturned a decision by a re-gional trial court in Aparri, which had stopped the board from en-forcing its cease-and-desist order against Meridien.

Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes, who wrote the decision, said the games board had “amply demonstrated” that the regional trial court had gravely abused its discretion.

“The GAB has regulatory au-thority over the jai alai operations of [Meridien], which admittedly had not yet secured any permit from the board,” the appellate court said.

Associate Justices Estela Per-las-Bernabe and Samuel Gaerlan agreed with the decision.

The court ruled in response to a petition fi led by the Offi ce of the Solicitor General criticizing the lower court’s order.

The Solicitor General argued that the Aparri court had no juris-diction to hear the petition fi led by Meridien, since the games board

By Roderick T. dela Cruz

THE Bangko Sentral on Friday asked the public to stop hoarding coins to help it save millions of pesos in minting expenses.

Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo says most coins are stored in piggy banks and gam-ing and vending machines and are not being circulated, hence forcing the central bank to keep minting new ones.

“If the coins were circulat-ing more effectively, the Bangko Sentral would not have to mint more coins,” Guinigundo said.

“This would enable the Bang-ko Sentral to save hundreds of millions [of pesos] and remit a bigger dividend to the national government.”

Guinigundo says the central bank had to deliver 713 million coins worth P753 million in the fi rst seven months of the year as a

result of the poor coin circulation. In 2006 it even discovered that an international syndicate was smug-gling out the copper one-peso coins, so it switched to nickel when minting the denomination.

Guinigundo says the per-capita holding of coins in the Philippines is about 176 pieces per person com-pared with less than 100 coins per person in other Asian countries.

But the coin circulation here is poor, with people sometimes using

them for tokens in video games, which is illegal, or betting them on illegal games such as jueteng. And the central bank always loses when minting coins with a face value lower than fi ve pesos because the average cost of minting them is two pesos per coin.

“The issue is the [poor] circu-lation of coins in the Philippines,” Guinigundo said.

“People do not spend their coins.”

By Joyce Pangco Pañares

THE communists on Sunday ac-cused the Aquino administration of “scuttling the peace negotiations” by rejecting their offer to hold for-mal talks in Oslo next month.

Fidel Agcaoili, spokesman of the National Democratic Front’s negotiating panel, said the gov-ernment also violated the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immu-nity Guarantees in shelving the talks on the release of detained rebels until the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Eco-nomic Reforms was signed.

He cited an Aug. 19 letter from government chief negotia-tor Alexander Padilla to his NDF counterpart, Luis Jalandoni, in which Padilla insisted on fi nish-ing the talks on reforms fi rst be-fore resuming formal talks.

“The government position expressed in writing by Padilla brazenly violates the [immunity guarantees] and the entire peace process and alerts the NDF that

By Christine F. Herrera

THE congressional allies of President Benigno Aquino III are headed for a clash today with Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman over when the government will end its multi-billion-peso dole program and how many recipients there should be.

The lawmakers, led by Negros Oriental Rep. Pryde Henry Teves, Batangas Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza, and Agham Rep. An-gelo Palmones say the handouts must stop by 2014, before the campaign period for the 2016 presidential elections begins, but Soliman says the administration plans to end the program a year later, or by 2015.

“We want Secretary Soliman to explain to us why we have to wait for 2015 to exit from the condition-al cash transfer program,” Teves told the Manila Standard.

“The government might fi nd it diffi cult to get out by then be-cause it is already the campaign

Central bank urges public to stop hoarding coins

Palace cites

New tuna limits may cut fi sh production

Libyan guerrillas closing Court backs

Lawmakers challenge govt on dole, dismiss WB report

Central bank urges public to stop hoarding coins

Remembering Ninoy.commemorate his death anniversary.Remembering Ninoy.commemorate his death anniversary.Remembering Ninoy.

By Roderick T. dela Cruz

THE Bangko Sentral on Friday asked the public to stop hoarding coins to help it save millions of pesos in minting expenses.

Guinigundo says most coins are stored in piggy banks and gam-ing and vending machines and are not being circulated, hence forcing the central bank to keep minting new ones.

Central bank urges public to stop hoarding coins

■

By Christine F. Herrera

THE congressional allies of President Benigno Aquino III are headed for a clash today with Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman over when the government will end its multi-billion-peso dole program and how many recipients there should be.

Oriental Rep. Pryde Henry Teves, Batangas Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza, and Agham Rep. An-gelo Palmones say the handouts must stop by 2014, before the campaign period for the 2016 presidential elections begins, but Soliman says the administration plans to end the program a year later, or by 2015.

explain to us why we have to wait for 2015 to exit from the condition-al cash transfer program,” Teves told the

it diffi cult to get out by then be-cause it is already the campaign

Mendoza, and Agham Rep. An-gelo Palmones say the handouts

Libyan guerrillas closing

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Libyan guerrillas closing in on Gadhafi stronghold Libyan guerrillas closing in on Gadhafi stronghold Libyan guerrillas closing

Rebel armor.a street in Zawiya, Libya, Friday as the gurerrillas battled for control of the strategic central square against forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi .

TRIPOLI—Libyan rebels said they were less than 30 kilometers from Moammar Gadhafi ’s main stronghold of Tripoli on Sunday, a day after opposition fi ghters launched their fi rst attack on the capital itself.

force that set out from Zawiya had reached the outskirts of the village of Jedaim and was coming under heavy fi re from regime forces on the eastern side of the town.

who returned to Zawiya from the front, told The Associated Press that Gadhafi ’s forces were pound-ing rebel positions with rockets, mortars and anti-aircraft fi re.

Libyan guerrillas closing

Missed your copy of Manila Standard Today? Call or text our Circulation Hotline at 0917-8848655 or email: circ@manilastandardtoday.com

Court backs games board vs. jai alai fi rmgames board vs. jai alai fi rmgames board

THE Court of Appeals has reaf-fi rmed the Games and Amuse-ment Board’s authority to stop Meridien Vista Gaming Corp. from operating off-fronton jai alai betting stations.

the court’s Special Third Division overturned a decision by a re-gional trial court in Aparri, which had stopped the board from en-forcing its cease-and-desist order against Meridien.

Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes, who wrote the decision, said the games board had “amply demonstrated” that the regional trial court had gravely abused its discretion.

thority over the jai alai operations of [Meridien], which admittedly had not yet secured any permit from the board,” the appellate court said.

Associate Justices Estela Per-las-Bernabe and Samuel Gaerlan agreed with the decision.

The court ruled in response to a petition fi led by the Offi ce of the Solicitor General criticizing the lower court’s order.

The Solicitor General argued that the Aparri court had no juris-diction to hear the petition fi led by Meridien, since the games board

from the board,” the appellate court said.

Court backs