Attached below is the personal account of the victim. I read the incident thru Facebook. While I have no way of verifying the validity of the story, it is best to be careful just the same. There were previous stories of robbery incidents happening in amusement centers like Timezone, etc. where the suspects pose as security personnel apprehending the kid. The suspects will then bring the kid to a secluded corner to rob the victim of his personal belongings. But I think this is the first time the victim was moved to a different location.
“My name is Carlo Rivera, male, 17 years old, high school graduate from Xavier School.
I want to share my pseudo-kidnapping-robbery incident with everyone and hopefully warn you and your friends to be more cautious when hanging around in the malls this summer.
On April 25, 2012, at 1030a.m., my girlfriend and I were at the SM Megamall. Too early to have lunch, we just hanged out.
My girlfriend had to meet up with her mom at 11:15 who was at the Slimmer’s gym on the lower level. We agreed to meet up at 11:45 at Cyberzone. I went to the top floor of Building B, using the escalator nearest to the parking lot. As I was heading to Cyberzone, a man with medium built body, around 5’8” in height, square-faced, dark skin, black regular hair cut, wearing a black shirt and khaki pants approached me from behind and put his arms tightly over my right shoulder and said in Filipino: “Kamukha mo yung isang suspect na hinahanap naming sa nangyaring hold-up kaninang umaga sa UP.” The man said I had to be “brought-in” to be verified sa “barangay hall”. With his right arm holding my shoulder tightly, he led me down to the ground floor using the escalator near the parking lot. He told me not to look behind because two (2) other barangay tanods were walking behind us. We walked on the pedestrian lane at EDSA until we reached Robinsons Galleria and we took a bus that was labelled “north edsa”.
While on the bus, he got my iPhone, iTouch saying that they need to present them at the barangay police station. We got off at SM North. We had a 15 to 20 minute walk through a couple of side streets until we reached Congressional Avenue corner Cagayan Street. He got my wallet, took my money and gave back my wallet and said “ayaw naming ng bastos, boy. Kung pinapalakad ka, huwag kang lilingon. Hindi ka naming sasaktan basta sumunod ka sa amin. May mga kasama ako sa paligid kaya huwag kang gumawa ng maski ano. Hindi kami masamang tao basta sumunod ka lang, hindi kita sasaktan.” He told me to walk towards EDSA and not to look back.
Upon reaching EDSA, I walked briskly to SM North. I had to talk to several people to request them to lend me their cellphone because I just got kidnapped and robbed. A teenager believed me and let me use his phone so I could contact my girlfriend who immediately called my driver to pick me up at SM North.
I am sharing this experience to everyone so that you can be more cautious and careful when you are out in the malls especially this summer. As a precaution, always go in groups. Be mindful of the people around you. Do not bring your iPod, iTouch or whatever gadgets that you do not really need to carry around. Do not wear your earphone so that you can hear what is going on around you. Always have a couple of change hidden somewhere aside from your wallet for emergency.
By the way, it has been more than seven days since we requested SM Megamall to view the CCTV cameras for the incident. As of this writing, they have not called us for viewing.”
Today anonymous hackers leaked more than 55.000 hacked twitter accounts username and password through Pastebin. It was very shocking to see such a massive number of Twitter accounts are hacked. Also celebrity accounts are hacked.
‘The micro blogging platform is aware of this hack and was taking necessary actions to save those people’s account from malicious activity’, said a Twitter insider.
It was huge, 55.000+ accounts has been hacked and it wasn’t possible to share such a huge pile of usernames and passwords in a single paste. So it took the hackers five Pastebin pages to leak the data. This hack is just an alert to other millions of Twitter users that they could be hacked anytime.
Unbelievable that Twitter isn’t taking any necessary steps to keep its users data safe. Even after encountering a huge number of hacks in the past including celebrities account. All they need to do is to add a password strength checker during signup while changing passwords. And guide the users to create a strong password. That could save a lot of users frustration.
To check if your account is hacked, go through this five Pastebin pages ( page 1 | page 2 | page 3 | page 4| page 5 ) and to find your account easily just by using the find feature in your browser (CTRL+F for Windows, Command+F for Mac) and type your email id/twitter id/twitter username.
SHANGHAI — China is investigating claims vegetable sellers are spraying cabbage with harmful formaldehyde to keep it fresh, an official said on Tuesday, in yet another food safety scare to hit the country.
Dozens of vegetable dealers in the eastern province of Shandong, a major vegetable supplier, are using the chemical to keep produce fresh on the way to market, media and Internet reports said this week.
Formaldehyde — commonly used as a preservative for laboratory specimens and embalming — can be fatal if ingested and is also a cancer-causing substance.
A local government official confirmed the practice and said authorities had started an investigation.
“We are investigating this matter,” an official from Dongxia town — where the practice was originally uncovered — told AFP. He declined to give details.
The practice is widespread in Shandong and neighbouring Hebei province, especially in warmer months, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.
“It’s a common practice to keep the cabbage fresh. Otherwise, the vegetables stacked tightly in the trucks would rot in two to three days,” a farmer in Dongxia was quoted as saying.
Cabbage is a staple of the Chinese dining table, especially in the country’s north.
Chinese media say formaldehyde is used on other products, such as seafood and mushrooms. Officials say some sellers do not use costly refrigerated trucks for vegetable transport.
China’s government has repeatedly vowed to improve food safety as people grow increasingly alarmed about the quality of what they eat, but scandals still occur due to weak enforcement and unscrupulous business practices.
Milk was at the centre of one of China’s biggest food safety scandals in 2008 when the industrial chemical melamine was found to have been illegally added to dairy products to give the appearance of higher protein content.
Last year, authorities arrested more than 30 people over the sale of cooking oil made from leftovers taken from gutters.
More recently, employees of a leading Chinese poultry company sold diseased ducks to consumers, while a major dairy producer sold milk with high levels of a cancer-causing toxin, caused by cows eating mouldy feed.
I just saw this but I don’t know if it’s true. One of my pet peeves driving in Manila is when you get caught and they say your violation is “swerving” which is ridiculous. It’s a violation for you to swerve, but not for Jeepneys to swerve.
Kapag hinuli ka ng traffic enforcer at alam mong wala kang violation:
1. kunin mo ang mission order nila upang malaman mo ang kanilang area of responsibility, time of duty and official function;
2. “SWERVING” ay HINDI isang traffic violation.
Tandaan:
1.Hindi maaaring kunin ang iyong driver’s license maliban na lamang kung ikaw ay sangkot sa traffic accident o nakalikom na ng 3 o higit pang traffic violations.
2. Walang karapatan ang traffic enforcer na pababain ng sasakyan ang driver.
Ipadala ang pangalan ng traffic enforcer at ang reklamo sa email@mmda.gov.ph
Taipei, April 19, 2012 (AFP) – Taiwanese police said Thursday they arrested 22 people including two leaders in several cities throughout the island suspected of forming a telephone scam ring based in the Philippines.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau said the arrests took place Wednesday in coordination with police in the Philippines, where another 78 Taiwanese suspects were also detained for alleged involvement in the scams.
The ring allegedly called people in China, pretending to be judicial officials, telling their victims that their bank accounts had been frozen.
They then persuaded the victims to transfer their money into dummy accounts, and finally withdrew the money from those accounts, according to the bureau.
The suspects, mostly young people, were detained in raids on three houses in the southern Philippine city of Davao where police said they also confiscated computers that were allegedly used in committing the widescale fraud.
Taiwanese fraud rings have recently relocated to Southeast Asia after the island’s police joined forces with Chinese authorities to bust their operations on the mainland.
This year nearly 400 suspects, including 241 Taiwanese, were arrested during joint operations with the police in Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, according to the bureau.
