From: butch@wet.UUCP (Butch Katigbak)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.filipino
Subject: Manila News: MIA Controllers strike; Miram is sane(?)!; Subic
Date: 8 Apr 92 03:45:20 GMT
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco


PRODIGY(R) interactive personal service        04/07/92       11:14 PM

COMPANY NEWS (sm) provided by Dow Jones/News Retrieval
Copyright (c)19 S Dow Jones & Company

 4/7/92 Striking Air Controllers In Manila Defy Orders To
Return


  MANILA -AP- Officials shut down the radar approach to
Manila's airports as striking air controllers defied
government back-to-work orders for a third day. 
  The country's air controllers walked off the job Saturday
demanding that their operations be privatized. 
  President Corazon Aquino's chief aide, Franklin Drilon,
called the strike illegal and said the change in
controllers' status would require an act of Congress. 
  The strike has crippled both international and domestic
air service.  Four international carriers - Japan Air
Lines, Thai International Airways, Singapore Air and Kuwait
Airways - canceled scheduled flights to Manila. 
  Officials said that nine of 20 scheduled flights had
departed Manila's domestic airport as of midday and only
three of the regularly scheduled arrivals had actually
landed. 
  Only one supervisor had been manning the radar approach
since the strike began and he had asked for a rest,
officials said.  Ordinarily, a total of 15 controllers,
divided into three shifts, work each day at the Manila
tower. 
  Since the strike began, officials said four were manning
the tower through the entire day. 
  There was no estimate on the economic impact of the
strike. 
  11:26 AM


















 

Reply-To: Southeast Asia Discussion List <ucsfcca!UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU!SEASIA-L%MSU.bitnet>
From: "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <ucsfcca!UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU!apakabar%IGC.ORG>
Subject:      Manila Airport Radar-free
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list SEASIA-L <MSU.ucsf.EDU!SEASIA-L>
Status: R

    Reuter, Manila, Ruben Alabastro, April 7 - Ten airlines cancelled
flights to the Philippines on Tuesday after the strike-bound Manila airport
shut down the radar system that guides landing planes.
    Striking air controllers gave warning that the airport could soon be
paralysed.
    Air traffic services chief Louie Guanzon ordered the closure of a
vital radar approach control centre to allow the skeleton staff manning
it to rest after working for three days without relief, officials said.
    More than 300 government air traffic controllers, demanding a share
of profits from running the airport, walked out on Saturday, crippling
airport operations nationwide and leaving thousands of passengers
stranded.
    The government mobilised a crew of former controllers to enable
airports to carry out limited daytime operations.
    Tuesday's radar shutdown forced Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines,
Thai Airways International, Cathay Pacific Airways, Malaysian Airlines,
Emirates airline, Kuwait Airways, United Airlines, Northwest Airlines
and Pakistan International Airlines to cancel flights, the operations
office said.
    The government has rejected the strikers' demands, suspended 44 of
their leaders and threatened to fire all of the country's 317 air
controllers taking part in the four-day-old walkout.

From: "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <ucsfcca!UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU!apakabar%IGC.ORG>
Subject:      Santiago Sane
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list SEASIA-L <MSU.ucsf.EDU!SEASIA-L>
Status: R

    Reuter, Manila, April 7 - A leading candidate in next month's
Philippine presidential election on Tuesday dismissed newspaper reports
that she had undergone psychiatric treatment as black propaganda spread
by her rivals.
    Allegations that feisty ex-judge Miriam Santiago was not mentally
fit to run were invented by her enemies "because she is now the
front-running presidential candidate," her campaign headquarters said in
a statement.
    "(Santiago) never had an alleged nervous breakdown, and was never
confined in any alleged institution," the statement said.
    The newspapers said allegations about Santiago's mental condition
were made in a paper distributed anonymously around Manila.
    The paper has increasingly been a subject of media speculation,
prompting an election commissioner to call on candidates in the May 11
poll to prove they are sane.
    Santiago, who has consistently emerged in opinion polls as the
voters' favourite of the seven presidential candidates, is a former
judge who worked as immigration commissioner and agrarian reform
minister under President Corazon Aquino.

From: "Indonesia Publications/Task Force" <ucsfcca!UCSFVM.UCSF.EDU!apakabar%IGC.ORG>
Subject:      Marines Save Rainforest
X-To:         seasia-l@msu.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list SEASIA-L <MSU.ucsf.EDU!SEASIA-L>
Status: R

    Reuter, Subic Bay, Philippines, Jeremy Clift, April 7 - "Here everything
is lush and green and there everything is brown and dirt. There's a definite
line," said U.S. marine staff sergeant Charles Clancy, pointing to the
surrounding bare hills.
    Like a neatly coiffured parting, the treeline of the thick jungle
ends abruptly at the edge of the sprawling U.S. naval base at Subic Bay.
    Although the massive eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo volcano last
June badly damaged Subic, deluging the base in a heavy layer of ash and
mud that buckled buildings and left palm trees folded like closed
umbrellas, the surrounding rainforest is recovering rapidly.
    Outside the perimeter of the base's 20,500 acres (8,300 hectares) of
forest, the denuded hills stand in stark contrast to the green jungle
inside.
    The white sand from Pinatubo's eruption still carpets the floor of
the jungle, but Captain Jerome Jackson says the undergrowth is thicker
than before.
    "Pinatubo's ash acted like a super-fertiliser. Things are sprouting
up everywhere," he told reporters as he escorted them on a seven-hour
foot patrol.
    Subic, an ammunition and supply depot for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, is
one of the few American military bases in the world to use jungle forest
as a natural barrier against intruders.
    The U.S. navy is proud that it has preserved the forest intact,
while large swathes of jungle across the rest of the northern Philippine
island of Luzon have been cut down.
    For the Americans, the tropical forest has a threefold purpose.
    It provides one of the best jungle survival training grounds in the
world, it protects the base and its large naval magazine, and preserves
the watershed from which the U.S. military extracts drinking water for
the base and nearby town.
    U.S. marines patrol the jungle against possible attacks by the
communist New People's Army (NPA), and against "economic intruders" --
people hunting for food or trying to cut down bamboo and lumber.
    The Philippines plans to turn Subic into a commercial ship repair
yard, oil terminal and industrial zone, and promises to preserve the
forest watershed area.
    The marines fear that without regular foot patrols, illegal loggers
could whittle away the jungle within a few years.
    "I hope they preserve this," said Lieutenant-Commander Al Twyman.
"It's really something valuable."
    Clancy said the key to preserving the forest from encroachment was
regular armed patrols, although these have not prevented all illegal
logging.
    "Without being able to tell the future, I would say that unless
someone takes up the active patrolling that we do now on a day-to-day
basis, 24 hours a day, this forest will disappear," he said.
    The Philippines is fighting a rearguard battle to preserve its
tropical rainforest, as smugglers, communist guerrillas, influential
local politicians and some members of the military cash in on a
widespread trade in illegally cut timber, officials and
environmentalists say.
    In the Philippines, forests are being cut down at the rate of
180,000 hectares (437,000 acres) a year. To halt the trend, the
government ordered a total ban on logging in virgin forests such as that
around Subic from last January.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.filipino