Local News

COTABATO CITY -- Lawmen arrested 139 drug offenders here and seized 15 firearms and 14 fragmentation grenades in joint operations in the past three months by the police and the city mayor’s office.

PIKIT, North Cotabato – A former town councillor was killed during big time anti-drug operations here at dawn today, police said.Supt. Maximo Sebastian, Region 12 police Anti-Illegal Drug Special Operations Task Force (RAIDSOTF), who led the raiding team, identified the slain former town councillor as Dindo Piang.Piang failed in his bid for thetown vice mayor of Pikit in last May 2016 local polls.

MAGUINDANAO --- Many of them were wounded painfully in action but Thursday’s bloody ordeal was different, something they are ready to do again so that lives on the line and in pain with their plasma they can help regain.

NORTH COTABATO --- Government forces backed by Moro rebels took over Thursday the hideout of drug trafficker Mokz Masgal at the Liguasan Delta and found there assorted firearms and materials for home-made bombs.
Masgal, most known as Commander Madrox, and his more than 50 followers, mostly armed with assault rifles, managed to escape upstream when they sensed the raiding teams approach their lair in Midsayap town in North Cotabato from three directions riding watercrafts borrowed from fishermen as a camouflage.

COTABATO CITY – The Aboitiz-owned
Cotabato Light and Power Company (Cotabato Light) has granted scholarships to
33 students of different public schools in its franchise area as part of its
corporate social responsibility, officials said.

Anna Lea Lee Nataño, Cotabato
Light Human Resources and Reputation Enhancement Head, said the power firm
strongly believed on education as a way to bring out the best among poor yet
deserving students.

COTABATO CITY - They were once nemesis in the battlefield, Moro rebels and the government military forces normally engaged themselves inbloody and vicious war in the past decades.But this time in the war against drugs of President Rodrigo Duterte, they joined forces in acommon battle that is to eliminate groups behind the proliferation of narcotics in Central Mindanao.

COTABATO CITY --- Investigators are still clueless on the abduction here Tuesday of a businessman and his aide by gunmen riding vehicles without license plates.

The victims, Tee-Jae Tagadaya Macabalang, owner of a small computer-generated billboard graphics and signage production outfit, and his assistant, Wendell Factuan, were to meet buyers of used motorcycles in a commercial district in an uptown area but got kidnapped as they arrived at the designated meeting site.
Macabalang is also engaged in buy-and-sell of second hand motorcycles.

COTABATO CITY -- Local officials were elated with how the city government’s human security initiatives are gaining headway with the continuing support of benefactors, among them the Samaritan’s Purse.
The Samaritan’s Purse, which is based in Boone, North Carolina in the United States of America, is engaged in humanitarian missions around the world for over three decades now.

KORONADAL CITY -- A job order employee of Tampakan, South Cotabato ignored calls by authorities for illegal drug personalities to mend ways and do away with illegal activities.And he paid for it.Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in the SOCCSKSARGEN region, have long been tailing him after his name cropped up as among the illegal drug pushers in town.And over the weekend, Eric Famoso, 27 of Barangay Maltana, Tampakan and temporary works at the town hall, was arrested along with his friend, Mark Malan, 27 of Barangay Sta Cruz, also in Tampakan, according toPDEA 12 Inform

KORONADAL CITY -- Joint police and military authorities in Lebak, Sultan Kudarat recovered a high powered firearm, ammunition and prohibited drugs during an anti-drug operation and implementation of an arrestwarrant.But authorities missed the suspect, a certain Mads Pagabangan, when lawmen raided his house in Barangay Kinudalan, Lebak, Sultan Kudarat at 1 a.m. Monday.Chief Inspector Benhur Catcatan, Lebak town police chiefand Lt.