TWO ROBBERS CLEAN OUT BUSINESSMAN
A businessman lost a huge amount of cash and valuables from two unidentified armed men that attacked her on Saturday in Surigao del Sur province, police reports said on Monday.

Belated reports at Camp Crame operations center identified the trader as Carol Guerta, 36, of Barangay Magosilom, Cantilan, Surigao del Sur. The reports said that she was about to close her store, Guerta Rice and Feeds, when the robbers armed with .45 pistols barged in at about 6:30 p.m. on Saturday. At gunpoint, the suspects took the victim’s sling bag containing blank checks, passbook, ATM cards and cash of P110,000 and then fled, the reports said. ANTHONY VARGAS

LAWMEN COLLAR FIVE DRUG PEDDLERS
HERMOSA, Bataan: Police on Saturday arrested five suspected drug pushers, one of them a barangay tanod, in three separate entrapment operations. Senior Insp. Joey Sampaga, Hermosa deputy police chief, said that the arrest was the result of days of surveillance after receiving reports from concerned citizens in the barangays. Confiscated from the suspects were 10 heat-sealed plastic sachets containing white crystalline substance suspected to be methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu and the marked money used in the entrapment, he said. These were all brought for testing at the Bataan police crime laboratory in Balanga City, Sampaga said. Apprehended were Federico Layug, 51, a barangay tanod of Balsik, Hermosa; Marcos Calderon, 28, of Cataning, Hermosa; and Romeo Ronquillo, 47; Jun de Leon, 27 and Jayson Baluran, 40; all of Dinalupihan, Bataan. ERNIE B. ESCONDE

WESTERN MINDANAO COMMAND BANS MEDIA
ZAMBOANGA CITY: The Western Mindanao Command has banned journalists from covering the traditional New Year’s Call of military commanders in Zamboanga City on Monday. This after the media criticized the western Mindanao command for its failure to regularly provide the media with news update on matters related to military and civil operations in the region, where kidnappings and threats of Abu Sayyaf attacks still remain a serious problem. Gen. Rey Ardo, who heads the Western Mindanao Command, also failed to hold regular news conferences or brief the media about its ongoing operations against the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, which is still holding at least four foreigners in the region. Ardo, former commander of the Army’s Sixth Infantry Division, assumed as Western Mindanao Command chief in October 2012 following the promotion of Gen. Noel Coballes as Armed Forces deputy chief. During Ardo’s stint, he also banned media from covering the arrival of soldiers who were wounded in clashes with Abu Sayyaf inside the military base, which former commanders had allowed. AL JACINTO

GAISANO EXPANDS BASE IN ILOILO
ILOILO CITY: Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog welcomes the new addition of skyscrapers in this southern city with the proposed of over P1 billion investments of Gaisano Capital to build Twin Peaks Gaisano City Iloilo Center along the west diversion road in Barangay San Rafael, Manduriao district. Plans for the complex will be launched and unveiled on January 18, 2013 with Gaisano top officials, Sen. Franklin Drilon, Rep. Jerry Treñas and Mabilog in attendance to see the start of another major investment that will expectedly alter the skyline of Iloilo. Mabilog said that the expansion program of Gaisano in Iloilo in a 20-hectare lot is a clear manifestation of investors’ confidence on the positive business climate and the opportunity to generate business employment in this part of the country. Gaisano earlier completed its Gaisano Oton in the municipality of Oton, Iloilo in servicing the customer needs of people from the southern part of Iloilo and the province of Antique. The Gaisano center will have two main buildings of 40 stories high, each surrounded by a man-made lagoon going to the nearby Dungon Creek and eventually out to the Iloilo River. LYDIA C. PENDON

PUBLIC SUPPORT ASKED FOR NSO SURVEYS
BAGUIO CITY: The National Statistics Office (NSO) is calling for public support on the surveys it is set to conduct this January. NSO-Cordillera Regional Director Olivia Gulla said that the Statistics office will conduct the enumeration of the 2013 Labor Force Survey (LFS) and the second round of the 2012 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) starting this January 14 to February 4. The LFS is a nationwide quarterly survey, aims to provide a quantitative framework for the preparation of plans and formulation of policies affecting the labor market. It was also designed to provide statistics on levels and trends of employment, unemployment and underemployment for the country as a whole and for each of the regions, including provinces and key cities. The FIES, meanwhile, the main source of data on family income, sources of income, family expenditure and related information affecting family income and expenditure levels and patterns in the Philippines, as well as income distribution, levels of living and spending patterns and the degree of inequality among Filipino families, which could provide benchmark information to update the weights used in the estimation of consumer price index and the country’s poverty threshold and incidence. This is a nationwide survey conducted every three years, but according to Gulla , starting this year the FIES will become an annual survey due to the need to regularly monitor the poverty statistics in the country. GABY B. KEITH