Bishop: Offshore mining
boils down to conscience
BY LISA GAPAC

Any offshore mining that will have long term effects on the environment and the lives of people should be stopped, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra said Saturday.

“I appeal to the conscience of those engaged in it,” he said.

Navarra was reacting to questions from the media during the Feast Day of John Paul II Saturday about the dredging of two rivers in Sagay City, where magnetite is being extracted from the sludge.

Romeo “Roy” Gamboa, former vice governor of Negros del Norte and Occidental, passed away at the Pablo O.

Torre Memorial Hospital in Bacolod City at  10:20 p.m. Saturday, five months after it was discovered that he had lung cancer.

He was 69.

Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon Jr., who is leaving for Australia, yesterday asked Acting Governor Genaro Alvarez to issue an executive order for the Philippine flags in the province to fly at half mast for Gamboa until his burial.

Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra Saturday condemned the attacks of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that left 20 members of the Army’s Special Forces dead in a nine-hour encounter in Al-Barka, Basilan province Tuesday last week.

Suspected Muslim rebels also shot dead three soldiers and five rubber plantation workers yesterday in the latest bout of violence that has killed dozens in the southern Philippines in days.

Yesterday’s casualties brought the number of deaths blamed on the MILF to 35 since last week, in what is the deadliest eruption of violence involving the separatist group in recent years.