Boracay grabs 3 major Prizes at Travel+Leisure awards in New York

Discovery Shores Boracay was voted Asia's Top Hotel . Spa at the Travel+Leisure Magazine's World's Best . Awards 2012.

1. World's Best Overall Island
2. Asia's Top Island
3. Asia's Top Hotel Spa

The Philippines walked away with three major awards at the Travel+Leisure Magazine's World's Best Awards 2012 held at the newly opened Conrad Flagship Hotel in New York on July 19, 2012.

Chosen by readers of the travel publication, this year's awardees included Boracay Island, which was voted World's Best Overall Island and Asia's Top Island.

One of the top hotels in the island, Discovery Shores, Boracay, meanwhile, was voted Asia's Top Hotel Spa.

The winners were announced earlier by the magazine's editor Nilou Motamed on the US morning TV show, "Today," on July 6, 2012.

Vernie Velarde-Morales, tourism representative of the Department of Tourism (DOT) office in Chicago and concurrent officer-in-charge of the DOT office in New York, and Abigail Yap, the wife of Malay Mayor John Yap received the awards in behalf of Boracay.

Discovery Shores general manager Jose C. Parreño accepted the award for the hotel

The awarding ceremony was also attended by Deputy Consul General Theresa Dizon-de Vega, Filipino Reporter publisher Bert Pelayo, Fairways and Blue Waters Resort, Boracay chairman Wilbur Chan, Discover Suites resident manager David Pardo de Ayala, and Filipino-American entrepreneur and former President of the Aklan Association in the US Northeast Ray Rogan.

Filipino-American special projects editor of Travel+Leisure Irene Edwards was also at the event.

The awards were handed out by Travel+Leisure Magazine editor-in-chief Nancy Novogrod and the magazine's vice president and publisher Jean-Paul Kyrillos

Other major winners included Red Mountain Resort, Ivins, Utah (Top Destination Spa), Singita Grumeti Reserves, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania (Top Hotel), Bangkok (Top City), Singapore Airlines (Top International Airline), and Virgin America (Top Domestic Airline).

The World's Best Awards, now on its 17th year, is an annual tribute to the world destinations, hotels, resorts, tour operators, cruise lines, airlines, and other major tourist services which have been voted by readers of the magazine as being the best in the world.

According to Novogrod, for the 2012 awards, an unprecedented number of the magazine's readers cast their votes for their favorite travel destinations.

She also said the awards for Boracay and Discovery Shores were both well-deserved and speak volumes about the lasting positive impressions made by these Philippine destinations.

Discovery Shores also ranked No. 5 on the list of top 100 hotels in the world and No. 2 among the top resorts in Asia.

"This is an affirmation of our unwavering commitment to giving our guests unmatched service standards complemented by our dedicated staff and our world-class facilities," Parreño said in a statement.

ABS-CBN News

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Farmer stumbles across suspected NPA mass graves of 30 skulls in Quezon

Discovered 30 skulls in Luzon

A Philippine farmer unearthed a mass grave with the skeletal remains of up to 30 people believed to be victims of an internal purge by communist rebels in the 1980s, the army said on Sunday.

Rommel Malinao was ploughing his field in a remote village in Quezon province, southeast of Manila, when he made the discovery on Saturday, army spokesman Major Harold Cabunoc said.

The army deployed a team to cordon off the site and with the help of police forensics experts exhumed the skeletons.

"As of last count, there were about 30 human skeletons," Cabunoc told AFP.

"We believe these were victims of the New People's Army (NPA) 'kangaroo courts', which sentenced to death many members they had suspected as government intelligence agents."

The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging a Maoist rebellion since 1969 -- one of the longest-running communist insurgencies in Asia.

At its peak in the 1980s, NPA numbers were believed to have reached 26,000, but that is now down to only 4,000 fighters due to losses on the battle field.

The government alleges that in the mid-1980s, the NPA set up so-called 'kangaroo courts', which condemned to death hundreds believed to have become agents for the state.

Their bodies were believed to have been dumped in secret mass graves.

Various mass graves have been unearthed by the military since 2009, but Saturday's find was believed to contain the biggest number of skeletons so far, Cabunoc said.

Cabunoc added that villagers interviewed by the army near the site said many of their relatives whom they had suspected of joining the NPA went missing in the 1980s and had not been heard of since.

Some of the skeletons showed the hallmarks of torture, although further verification was needed, he said.

New People's Army (NPA) rebels are seen in 2009. A Philippine farmer unearthed a mass grave with the skeletal remains of up to 30 people believed to be victims of an internal purge by communist rebels in the 1980s, the army said on Sunday.

President Benigno Aquino re-opened peace talks with the communists in February last year but the negotiations have been delayed by the rebels' demand to release detained comrades.

It was not immediately clear how the discovery of the latest mass grave could affect the talks.

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5000 China Fishing Ships in West Philippines to be armed as Militiamen

A leading Chinese fishing-industry official is urging the Chinese government to provide arms and military training for 100,000 Chinese fishermen to roam the South China Sea and defeat Vietnam and other countries in the region that are challenging China's sweeping claims of sovereignty in those waters.

He Jianbin, chief of the state-run Baosha Fishing Corp., based in Hainan province, urged the Chinese government to make fishermen into Chinese militiamen.

"If we put 5,000 Chinese fishing ships in the South China Sea, there will be 100,000 fishermen," Mr. He stated in a June 28 commentary in the state-controlled Communist Party newspaper the Global Times.

"And if we make all of them militiamen, give them weapons, we will have a military force stronger than all the combined forces of all the countries in the South China Sea," he said.

The fisheries official confidently disclosed that at present, China would have no problem deploying that many fishing ships. "In Hainan province alone, we now have over 23,000 fishing ships, with over 225,000 experienced and mature captains," Mr. He said.

"Every year, between May and August, when fishing activities are in recess, we should train these fishermen/militiamen to gain skills in fishing, production and military operations, making them a reserve force on the sea, and using them to solve our South [China] Sea problems," he continued.

China's government has been using fishing vessels in recent weeks to ratchet up tensions with almost all its maritime neighbors, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. In several high-profile skirmishes, most noticeably with the Japanese and Philippine maritime vessels, Chinese fishing vessels have played a central role, followed by vessels belonging to the government's China Maritime Surveillance bureau [Haijian] and Bureau of Fishery [Yuzheng].

The People's Liberation Army's Navy is poised in the region but so far has not been directly involved in initial confrontations with several foreign vessels in an apparent effort to avoid direct challenges from the navies of other countries, including Japan, South Korea and possibly the United States.

China, in particular, regards the U.S. Navy as its main obstacle and the most formidable enemy in its South China Sea gambit. By making fishermen a maritime militia force, Mr. He argues, "we can make the PLA Navy our rear echelon for now but not the forward echelon in the South China Sea. This will alleviate our nation's burden, because if we put the PLA Navy at the front line now, we fall right into the trap set up by the U.S. government."

TANKS FOR OIL

China is set to provide $500 million worth of amphibious assault tanks and vehicles to Hugo Chavez's military in exchange for Venezuela's oil exports, according to remarks by the Venezuelan strongman at a promotion ceremony for several generals near Caracas on July 3, 2012.

China has eyed Venezuela's oil exports for years and is eager to cultivate good relations with the leftist regime of Mr. Chavez, who has shown an increasingly strong interest in Chinese-made weapons to arm his military.

China has been highly receptive of Mr. Chavez's efforts to beef up his control over the military. Chinese navy vessels recently visited the country. Additionally, Chinese paratrooper and sniper teams have conducted joint exercises with Mr. Chavez's special operations forces in the South American jungle earlier this year.

In 2008, Mr. Chavez visited Beijing and signed a deal with the PLA to buy 24 Chinese-made K-8 jet trainers. The planes were delivered to Venezuela in 2009.

The main item for the current $500 million deal will be China's ZTD-05 amphibious armored assault vehicles and a few older Type 63A amphibious tanks.

ZTD-05 is China's knockoff version of Russia's BMP-3 armored infantry fighting vehicle. It functions much like a regular amphibious tank with a 106 mm rifled gun that can fire armor-piercing high-explosive anti-tank shells. It has an advanced stabilizing mechanism enabling it to fire accurately while operating in choppy waters.

The ZDT-05 is viewed as one of the fastest and most deadly amphibious assault vehicles in the world

Washington Times

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