Remains of Pinoy tour guide brought down from Mayon

The remains of one of five people who died in the wake of Mayon Volcano's steam-driven eruption last Tuesday were brought down from the volcano early Thursday.

A report on "Unang Hirit" said the remains of Filipino tour guide Jerome Berin were brought by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines-Tactical Operations Group.

Berin died in Tuesday's incident along with two German men and a German woman, and a Germany-based Spanish national.

The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council also said a Thai climber previously reported as missing was rescued but with injuries.

Boonchai Jattupornpong, 35, suffered burns and a broken right arm when he was found at 3:07 p.m.,the NDRRMC said.

A report on dzBB radio said Jattupornpong was to be brought down from Mayon on Thursday, along with the remains of the five fatalities.

The NDRRMC said eight other injured were brought to the Bicol Regional Training and Teaching Hospital. They were identified as:

- Kenneth Jesalva, Filipino tour guide, 21
- Bernard Hernandez, Filipino, 25
- Calixto Balunso, 30
- Nicanor Mabao
- Udomkiat Taweebhurut, Thai, 45
- Tanut Ruchipiyrak, Thai, 26
- Nithi Ruangpisit, Thai, 26
- Benjama Sansuk, Thai, 40

Unharmed were an Austrian woman, Filipino tour guide Jorge Cordovilla, and Filipinos Arvin Bellen, Ruel Llarena, 28; Marlon Bunao, 25; Alfredo Baio, 30; and Bonifacio Deeluis, 25.

The NDRRMC said the Austrian was off to Manila while Bellen, Llarena, Bunao, Baio and Deeluis were "found unharmed and went home safe." — LBG, GMA News

Fast, Cheap, Dead: Shopping and the Bangladesh Factory Collapse

By Bryan Walsh    
April 29, 2013

                           MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFT/GETTY IMAGES

       Rescuers comb the shattered remnants of a textile factory near 

Dhaka, Bangladesh. Nearly 400 people havedied in the building's collapse

The collapse of a factory building near Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed at least 362 people, is almost certainly the worst accident in the history of the garment industry. It’s worse than the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 that you learned 
about in American history class and which helped lead to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards. It’s worse than the 1993 Kader Toy Factory fire in Bangkok, which killed 188 people, nearly all of them women and teenage girls. It’s worse than the Ali Enterprises Factory fire in Karachi, which killed at least 262 people — and which I’m guessing nearly all of us had forgotten about, or never knew it occurred, even though the disaster happened only eight months ago.

Bangladeshi officials are still investigating the causes behind the factory’s collapse on April 24, although Sohel Rana, the building’s owner, was arrested over the weekend as he attempted to flee the country. There’s no shortage of possible reasons — building codes in Bangladesh are too rarely enforced and corruption in the country is rampant. Nor, sadly, are such disasters rare. A major fire in a textile factory in Dhaka killed over 100 people just last November. While thousands of Bangladeshi protesters have taken to the streets in the wake of the building collapse, and the political opposition has called for a national strike on May 2, there’s little hope that the catastrophe will be the last that the country’s garment workers suffer.

(MORE: Mr. Green Jeans: Levi’s Detoxifies Its Supply Chain)

The clothes that the doomed workers in Dhaka were laboring over when their factory collapsed include some Western brands, like Primark and Joe Fresh. Is there anything we as clothing consumers can or should do about these deaths? In a post written last week as the dead were still being tallied in the building collapse, Slate’s economics blogger Matthew Yglesias suggests, not really:

Yglesias was raked over the coals by, as he put it in a later piece, just about the entire Internet. (This one was particularly good.) Yglesias was guilty of, at the very least, bad taste — the economic wonkery can wait until the dead have been counted. He makes the neoliberal point, just as the sweatshop defenders did during the Nike Wars of the 1990s, that Bangladesh’s low, low cost of doing business has helped the country take needed textile jobs — including from China — and build an $18 billion manufacturing industry. But there’s a difference between accepting that workers are being paid sweatshop wages to make our incredibly inexpensive clothes — the minimum wage is $36.50 a month — and accepting that they must labor in deathtraps. And they do: according to the International Labor Rights Forum, an advocacy group in Washington, more than 1,000 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in fires and other disasters.

Even Yglesias backtracked later, emphasizing that there are on-the-ground improvements that can be made to labor standards in Bangladesh that could mean the difference between life and death. (See this interview with Kimberly Ann Elliott of the Center for Global Development for a few ideas.) And those improvements shouldn’t drastically increase the cost of clothes made in Bangladesh — which is a good thing, given our addiction to cheap and fast-changing fashion:      

International retailers can do more to advocate safer standards at textile factories that manufacture their wares, in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Customers can do their part by putting a little pressure on their favorite brands, though that would require placing as much value on the cost of a life as you might on the cost of a T-shirt.

MORE: Fashion: Why Green Is Not the New Black

Hontiveros remains cautious despite improved survey standing

By Maila Ager        
 INQUIRER.net          
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013



MANILA, Philippines – While elated by the latest Pulse Asia survey that put her for the first time in the list of possible winners, Team PNoy senatorial bet Risa Hontiveros said she would take the survey results “with a grain of salt.”

From the previous 17th to 18th in the March 16 survey of Pulse Asia, Hontiveros now ranked 12th to 17th based on the survey conducted by the same polling firm from April 20 to 23.
“I am definitely happy with the survey results, but I’m taking it with guarded optimism. Rather than being complacent, I need to campaign harder and make my message sharper and more focused,” she said in a statement on Tuesday.

Hontiveros attributed her gains in the latest survey to “alampay magic,” which she used in her latest TV ad as a device to underscore her track record in fighting abuse and corruption. “My alampay, which I have color-coded to symbolize my advocacies, is helping me tighten my message,” she said.

The Team PNoy bet also thanked her supporters and ordinary Filipinos, who she said believed that the Senate should not be an exclusive club for the very few.

“We need to wage another People Power in the ballots. An ordinary Filipina with the right principles and the right track record should have the fighting chance to get into the Senate,” she said.

Hontiveros admitted that her biggest challenge was her unfamiliar name.

“Compared to all the other winning candidates, my awareness level remains low,” she said.

“Unlike them, I don’t have a traditional, familiar surname, and I cannot match the resources that they have for their TV ads. I am relying on my track record and the support of marginalized sectors whose aspirations I carry in my heart.”

Hontiveros remained confident that Team PNoy could still make a 12-0 sweep.
“The most important ‘survey’ is on Election Day. It isn’t over until every country-loving Filipino has [cast] his or her vote. I think that Team PNoy still has a strong chance to make former Senators Jun Magsaysay and Jamby Madrigal and myself win this crucial senate race,” she added.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/399973/hontiveros-remains-cautious-despite-improved-survey-standing#ixzz2S05Mdbq4