Heavy security as Philippines closes Boracay to tourists
April 26, 2018 by admin
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The Philippines shuttered its most famous holiday island Boracay to tourists on Thursday for a six-month clean-up, which the government has imposed with a muscular show of its security forces.
Coast guard boats were on patrol and assault rifle-wielding police were posted at entry points to the once-pristine island that has become tainted by heavy commercialisation and overdevelopment.
Regional police head Cesar Binag told AFP the shutdown began past midnight, with tourists barred from boarding the ferry that is the main way onto the island.
“Boracay is officially closed to tourists. We are not closing establishments but tourists cannot enter. We are implementing the instruction of the president,” Binag said.
About 600 policemen were deployed, with some performing life-like drills including riot officers battling bottle-hurling protesters and mock hostage taking of sunbathers — all before startled locals.
“My nephews and nieces were afraid,” Filipino tourist Tara Calcetas told AFP. “It was scary because there were people swimming yesterday (at the beach) and the police were firing guns as if there was a criminal here.”
The government conceded on Thursday there was no real threat, with interior ministry assistant secretary Epimaco Densing telling AFP the security presence was “just part of preparing for the worst”.
President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the shutdown this month after calling the resort a “cesspool”, dirtied by tourism-related businesses flushing their raw sewage directly into the ocean.
During the closure, only residents with ID cards are allowed to board ferries to Boracay, which is home to around 40,000 people.
People on the so-called “party island” held a final bash on the beachfront on the eve of the closure, complete with a fireworks display and cheers of “Bye, Bye Boracay”.
But on Thursday, residents had the swaying palms, turquoise waters and usually mobbed white-sand beaches mostly to themselves.
“This is what you call an island, a paradise. Boracay looks like its original beautiful self,” said restaurant cook John Reymar.
The Philippines has pledged to take advantage of the calm to spruce up the 1,000-hectare (2,470-acre) chunk of bruised paradise.
There are plans to bulldoze illegal or dilapidated structures, to shore up the island’s infrastructure and clean up the mess left by years of unchecked growth.
However, plans to help the up to 30,000 people who had been employed by the island’s bustling tourist trade were less clear. Though Duterte has promised some $38 million in funds to help workers, they say they haven’t seen a cent yet.
The workers were drawn by the relatively good wages on the island that has seen the number of visitors roughly quadruple to two million since 2006.
Those tourists, a growing number of whom are Chinese and Korean, pumped roughly $1 billion in revenue into the Philippine economy last year.
But its growth from a sleepy backpacker hideaway into a mass-tourism hub with fast food outlets on the beach has taken a toll.
Unchecked construction has eaten away at the island’s natural beauty, while slimy algae-filled waves in some areas and mountains of discarded drink bottles are problems acknowledged even by critics of the shutdown.
“I’m all for rehabilitation and preserving it but clearly this is not the way to do it,” Philippine politics expert Ashley Acedillo told AFP.
He called the closure an “ill-thought through, unplanned and knee-jerk action” that did not take into account the economic impact on the island’s workers and business community.
Reymar, the restaurant cook, agreed: “But maybe without tourists, what is the use of having a beautiful island?”
President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the shutdown this month after calling the resort a “cesspool”, dirtied by tourism-related businesses flushing their raw sewage directly into the ocean
Map and factfile on the Philippines’ best known holiday island Boracay.
Critics say the Boracay closure is a knee-jerk reaction that will put thousands out of work
Volunteers help to clean up Boracay’s Bulabog beach
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Dallas police arrest suspect in triple shooting
April 25, 2018 by admin
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Authorities have arrested the man accused of shooting three people, including two police officers, in North Dallas on Tuesday.
Armando Juarez, 29, earlier identified as a person of interest, and an unidentified female were apprehended after a police pursuit that ended near uptown, authorities said.
“We got our man,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said at a press briefing.
Rawlings did not take questions, but he did ask for prayers for those who were shot. All three victims were out of surgery.
Emergency dispatchers received a call shortly after 4:12 p.m. to go to a Home Depot, Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall said in a press conference Tuesday night. After the responding officers arrived, a subsequent call for assistance was made after the shooting began.
Two officers were critically wounded, the Dallas Police Department posted on Twitter shortly after the shooting. The civilian who was shot is a loss-prevention officer for Home Depot, Hall said.
The officers were transported by the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Police didn’t immediately release their names out of respect for their families, Hall said.
Rawlings earlier had described the aftermath of the shooting as a “two-front battle,” referring to the victims’ battles for their lives at the hospital as well as “the battle out in the community” to find the person of interest.
“I want to ask each and every one of you for your prayers … for our officers, for their families and for our entire DPD family, because we need you right now,” Hall said. “Our hearts are very heavy.”
State, local and federal law enforcement agencies responded to the scene.
In 2016, five Dallas law-enforcement officers were shot and killed and seven more injured after they were ambushed by a 25-year-old former Army reservist named Micah Xavier Johnson, who later died in a standoff with police.
Former Dallas Police Chief and ABC News contributor David Brown said the most recent shooting of two Dallas police officers is “too much to bear for one department in such a short time frame.”
“Once again,” Rawlings said, “it sobers us to realize what officers walk into day in and day out, how quickly they can become victims.”