NPA RAID LEAVES LAWMAN DEAD
One policeman died, while a civilian was injured after leftist rebels attacked on Friday a construction firm in the northern Philippine province of Aurora. Lt. Tala Servidad, spokesman of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, said that New People’s Army rebels went to Villa village in Ma. Aurora town and burned a backhoe and a dump truck owned by A.P. Palacios Construction. The company has been contracted by the government to build a road that will connect Aurora province to Metro Manila. Servidad said that the rebels attacked Palacios because the owner refuses to pay the revolutionary tax. She said that soldiers from the Army’s 48th Infantry Battalion and local policemen went to Villa village to secure the company. But they were attacked by rebels, who killed a policeman and wounded a civilian in the area. XINHUA

CORDILLERA TRADE FAIR RAKES IN P55M
BAGUIO CITY: The IMPAKABSAT 2012, Cordillera’s regional market encounter and trade fair, held recently at the Festival Mall in Alabang Muntinlupa, Metro Manila, earned a total of P55 million in actual and book sales. Department of Trade and Industry-Cordillera information officer Art Tibaldo said that about 80 entrepreneurs, including small and medium enterprises joined the event, selling various Cordillera products such as wood-based furniture, gifts, toys, house ware, souvenir items and Christmas decors and woven products as well as food and organic vegetables. GABY B. KEITH

ARMM RECEIVES TRAINING FACILITY
THE Department of Education (DepEd) has donated training facility to Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), as a regular training venue for upgrading teaching and school management skills in the region. Education Secretary Armin Luistro, in a statement, said that the move is a manifestation of the steadfast and continuing support of the national government to improve the standard of education in the ARMM region. “We believe that this training center will enable the ARMM teachers and school administrators to further enhance their capabilities which will ultimately contribute to the cause of peace in Mindanao,” Luistro added. NEIL A. ALCOBER

CULPRIT IN UP COED SLAY GIVES UP
THE suspect in the killing of a nineteen-year-old UPLB student yielded to the authorities on Friday, a day after the provincial government of Laguna offered a bounty of P400, 000 for his arrest. Benigno Cayetano Nayle was accompanied by his grandfather when he yielded himself to the local police on Friday, said by Senior Supt. Fausto Manzanilla Jr., provincial director of Laguna police. The police official said that Nayle was seen by at least two witnesses, bloodied and running away from the house of the victim, Ma. Victoria Reyes, a third year Agriculture student of UP Los Baños. Reyes’s body was discovered last November 19 inside her room with a deep stab wound in her left chest and was declared dead on arrival in the hospital, police reports said. ANTHONY VARGAS