Local News

KORONADAL CITY – Admitting the crime, a man wanted by law for hacking to death a close friend voluntarily surrendered to a jail official in South Cotabato Friday.South Cotabato provincial jail warden Juan Lanzaderas, a pastor, told DXOM-AM Radyo Bida that Alfie Tulabing, 38 of Koronadal City showed up to him and admitted the crime. He told me he was afraid to surrender to the Koronadal City PNP or village officials, Lanzaderas said.Tulabing admitted hacking Leonardo P. Catroverde, 51, following a heated argument Thursday night.

NORALA, South Cotabato - A fire believed to have been triggered by electrical short-circuit gutted down buildings a commercial area here Friday morning, fire officials said.Senior Fire Officer (SFO4) Isidro Benosa, Norala fire marshall, said the fire that came at past 9 a.m.

COTABATO CITY --- Officials will declare the city under state of calamity if floodwaters from rivers swelled by heavy rains will continue to spread through low-lying villages around.Rivers straddling through Cotabato City started to overflow last week, inundating 20 barangays and affecting more than 12,000 residents whose needs the city government is now helping provide.Halima Satol-Ibrahim, chief city information officer, said on Friday that Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi is just waiting for the final flood assessment by the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council as basis for declari

COTABATO CITY --- The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency will file today criminal charges against a staff of a regional lawmaker arrested Wednesday for possession of shabu and an unlicensed gun.Juvenal Azurin, director of PDEA for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), said Thursday that Buhari Samad Basir is now in their custody, to be prosecuted for violation of the Philippine Dangerous Drugs Act and possession of an unlicensed Glock pistol.Basir is a senior legislative staff of Assemblyman Sidik Salilama Amiril of ARMM’s 24-member Regional Assembly.

NORTH COTABATO --- Soldiers shot dead one of the rebels who attacked presidential guards while passing by a stretch of the Davao-Bukidnon Highway in Arakan town in North Cotabato early Wednesday.The encounter in Barangay Napalico, Arakan between retreating New People’s Army guerillas that fired at vehicles carrying members of the Presidential Security Group and responding soldiers erupted an hour after the ambush incident.The scene of the encounter, which resulted in the death of an NPA guerilla, is about four kilometers from Barangay Katipunan, also in Arakan, where rebels attacked the PSG

COTABATO
CITY – Eighteen of Cotabato City’s 37 villages have been under
water since Wednesday due to torrential rains affecting the SOCCSKSARGEN and Maguindanao,
officials said.

Mayor
Cynthia Guiani Sayadi has ordered all village officials to closely monitor the
water level of the villages, mostly located on the eastern part of the city
facing Maguindanao province.

KORONADAL CITY – An overseas Filipino worker on vacation here was hacked to death by his close friend for still unknown reason Wednesday night.Village chair Rogelio Joquino of Barangay Concepcion identified the victim as Leonardo Catroverte, 51, a local resident and the suspect as 38-year-old Alfie Tulabing, his best of friend. Prior to the hacking, Joquino said, the two were talking at past 6 p.m. in the village, a regular thing that villagers noticed almost everyday until last night.

CAMP SK PENDATUN, Maguindanao -- One of the inmates of Marawi City district jail set free by Maute terrorist and Abu Sayyaf Group after they seized the city on May 23 has voluntarily surrendered to police in Lanao del Sur, Chief Supt. Reuben Sindac today said.Sindac, regional director for the police in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), identified the escapee turned surrenderee as Jaber Macabago Lao, 40 years old.Quoting a report from Lumbatan town police office in Lanao del Sur, Sindac said the surrender of Lano was made possible with the help of Mayor Allan Lao of Lumbatan.

KIDAPAWAN CITY -- Legislators here have declared ‘persona non grata’ traffic personnel from the Land Transportation Office in Soccsksargen Region (LTO-12) and banned them from doing highway operations in the city, a councilor said.City Councilor Francis Palmones, former trial court judge-turned-lawmaker, said they based their resolution on the complaints and concerns raised by many drivers and operators of tricycle and passenger vans when LTO 12 personnel conducted traffic operations along the Kidapawan highway, two weeks ago.According to Palmones, many of those drivers who were issued temp

MAGUINDANAO --- Agents arrested 17 large-scale drug traffickers in community-supported operations the past two days in Maguindanao, police said Monday.The first to fall were 15 members of a drug ring, two of them minors, in Parang town in the first district of Maguindanao.They were cornered in a drug den in the town proper of Parang by personnel of the municipal police office, acting on tips from local officials and barangay leaders.Tello said on Monday some of the suspects were caught sniffing methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in their hideout.