Why the SAF Grenades did not Explode?

SAF grenades defective, did not explode
MANILA, Philippines – The police commandos who clashed with Muslim rebels in Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Jan. 25 did not run out of bullets, contrary to reports and testimonies in congressional hearings.

They still had ammunition for their rifles, but their grenades were defective and apparently did not explode.

This is according to Superintendent Raymund Train, intelligence officer of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) who led the 38-member assault team.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/02/16/15/saf-grenades-defective-did-not-explode

BSP: Beware of fake money, shortchanging at foreign exchange shops
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is reminding Filipinos to be careful against fake money and “shortchanging” in foreign exchange shops, GMA News TV’s Balitanghali reported on Sunday.

“Dapat laging niyong binibiliang bago kayo umalis kasi mahirap talagang i-dispute na kulang yung nakuha mong pera specially if nakalabas ka na ng money changer,” said Prudence Kasala, OIC of the BSP’s Financial Consumer Protection Department. The central bank does not regulate exchange rates, it however, prohibits shortchanging.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/392549/economy/moneyandbanking/bsp-beware-of-fake-money-shortchanging-at-foreign-exchange-shops

All of our PRANKS and JOKES are honorable – Not for the sake of having fun with people but sharing the FUN with them. We’re currently recruiting a lot of volunteer agents to join our huge army. There are no requirements of joining other than just having fun and the passion to surprise people. Whether you’re rich or poor, jobless or an executive – You can join our group for free! We do everything with our heart’s content… from flash mobs, surprise musicals, inspirational experiments, etc.
http://www.projectawesome.ph/

Getting Caught Up In Telling Stories
A lot of folks are trying to make sense of what would drive Brian Williams, a reporter, the face of NBC news, to make up easily fact-checkable stories about his experiences as a reporter embedded with troops during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. His apology has only made things worse.

He says he made a “mistake.” But it just isn’t plausible that a mistake of memory could have led him to believe that he’d been in a helicopter shot down over enemy territory. No, he lied about it. The question is, why? Ego? Self-aggrandizement? Trying to make himself seem better, braver, tougher, more experienced than he really is?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/02/06/383975796/getting-caught-up-in-telling-stories

Serial Plane-Hopper Strikes Again

‘A notorious 62-year-old stowaway who was arrested six times trying to sneak onto flights at San Francisco International Airport, US, has managed to fly from Mineta San Jose International Airport to Los Angeles without a ticket.

‘This marks the second significant security breach at the US airport in the past four months.

‘Marilyn Jean Hartman was arrested late Monday at Los Angeles Interational Airport (LAX) after she sneaked past security at the San Jose airport and onto a Southwest Airlines flight to Los Angeles. ..’
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10 Myths About Sugar
‘We know one thing for sure. Sugar consumption in America has skyrocketed. In 1990, Americans ate an average of 4 teaspoons (16 grams) of added sugar per day

. By 2014, that number had shot up to 20 teaspoons (80 grams) daily

. In addition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says Americans obtain 16 percent of their total calories from added sugars, namely soda, energy and sports drinks, grain-based desserts, sugar-sweetened fruit drinks, dairy-based desserts and candy. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendation? We should only be getting less than 10 percent of our daily calories from added sugar. In 2014, the WHO even proposed slashing that recommended rate to less than 5 percent…’

Clearly, we need to pay attention to sugar and our consumption rate. But first, we need to learn the truth about our favorite sweetener.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutr…

Sad Truth of Small Farming: No One’s Making Any Money
‘Whenever a customer asked how things were going, I replied, Great. I thought about the sinking ship, and never said, Well, we’re making ends meet, but we work 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and pay ourselves only what we need to cover food and household expenses: $100 per week. I didn’t tell anyone how, over the course of the last three years since Ryan and I had started our farm, I’d drained most of my savings. I didn’t admit that the only thing keeping the farm afloat was income Ryan and I earned through other means — Ryan working as a carpenter and I as a baker. I didn’t say that despite the improvements we made to the land— the hundreds of yards of compost we spread, the thousand dollars we spent annually on cover crop seed to increase soil fertility, every weed pulled — we gained no equity because we didn’t own the land. I didn’t say I felt like I was trying to fill a bathtub when the drain was open…’
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Hula Hoop and Twisted Intestines
‘BEIJING (AP) _ After pushing hula hoops as a way to stay fit, the official media today warned that some Chinese who belatedly caught on to the American 60s craze are overdoing it and bending themselves out of shape.

‘The China Sports News (Zhongguo Tiyu Bao) said Beijing worker Xu Denghai was hospitalized with what it called a twisted intestine after playing with a hula hoop on Feb. 26 with his co-workers. It did not elaborate.

‘Xu was the third person in Beijing to suffer intestinal injury because of improper use of a hula hoop, the newspaper said, citing information from an article in the Beijing Youth News (Beijing Qingnian Bao).

‘The Sports News said Dr. Yang Hua of Beijing No. 3 Hospital warned that the gyrating motion of twirling a hula hoop around the body is a strenuous activity. Yang urged people to limit the time they use the novelty rings, the newspaper said. ..’
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Why You Shouldn’t Hand an iPad to Your Toddler

‘Study finds that for children too young, mobile devices can harm
Researchers with the Boston University School of Medicine have now weighed in on those questions in a new set of recommendations published on Friday in the journal Pediatrics. “Mobile devices are everywhere and children are using them more frequently at young ages,” Jenny Radesky, a clinical instructor at Boston University’s Developmental-Behavior Pediatrics, said in a statement. “The impact these mobile devices are having on the development and behavior of children is still relatively unknown.”

‘Nevertheless, the researchers have arrived a series of unsettling conclusions. They said children younger than 30 months “cannot learn from television and videos as they do from real-life interactions.” And to use a mobile device before that age on tasks that aren’t educational can be “detrimental to the social-emotional development of the child.” …’
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With employee help, ID theft ring allegedly stole $700,000 in Apple gift cards
‘On Thursday, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said it has indicted five people for using personal information stolen from around 200 people to fund the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple gift cards, which in turn were used to buy Apple products.

‘The DA’s office alleges that Annie Vuong, a 27-year-old from the Bronx, stole the names, address, birth dates and social security numbers of patients at the Manhattan dental office where she worked. That data was passed to Devin Bazile, a 30-year-old former Apple sales associate from the Bronx, who used it to apply for Apple “instant credit,” the lawsuit alleges…’
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New Japanese hotel to be staffed by robots
‘We’re not sure if the robotic staff at a planned hotel in Japan will be tucking guests into their beds at night, but they’ll be performing plenty of other traditional hospitality tasks.

‘Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park modeled after the Netherlands in Japan’s Nagasaki Prefecture, has announced plans to open a hotel with robot staff and other advanced technologies.

‘The hotel will be called Henn-na Hotel, which translates as Strange Hotel…’
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Man buys Apple MacBook on eBay for £300 – but only gets PICTURE of laptop in mail
‘A man has been left devastated after he bought an Apple MacBook on eBay for hundreds of pounds – but was sent a photocopy PICTURE of the laptop instead.

‘Gutted Paul Barrington, 38, fell victim to the cruel scam after winning the auction for a state-of-the-art Apple MacBook on the website.

‘His winning eBay bid was £300 for the top-of-the-range computer, which can cost up to £1,500 when bought new.

‘But the bargain proved to good to be true when a feather-like package arrived a few days later in a small, square box…’
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Did you know that pigeon poop is a deadly poison?

Pigeon allergy, pneumonia claim life of 72-year-old
‘A HAMPSHIRE grandad has died after suffering from a pigeon allergy. Peter Willoughby allowed a friend to keep pigeons at the bottom of his garden and spent more than 25 years cleaning bird mess off windscreens at Ford.

‘But the 72-year-old did not know that an allergy to the birds was slowly killing him. It was not until years later that he found out that an allergy to the pigeons was scarring his lungs.

‘Last summer Peter was rushed to Southampton General Hospital, where he died on August 13, surrounded by family. ..’
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Top 10 Richest Billionaires in the Philippines
So what are these people doing for humanity? One thing sure: they’re destroying ecology
‘The Philippines economy is one of the fastest growing in all of Asia, good news for the country’s billionaires, of which there are 16, according to Forbes’ latest rich list.

‘The top 50 richest people in the country have a total net worth of $74 billion (AU$93.2 billion) with many of the richest people in the Philippines starting from the bottom to make their billions. The top 10 billionaires in the Philippines have a net worth ranging from $2 billion up to over $12 billion with interests in everything from real estate to beer…’
Here’s our run down of the Filipino high flyers…

Teenager cut off his own HAND to try and cure internet addiction
He was not entirely foolish. He was just making sure
‘A Chinese teenager cut off his own hand in a drastic move to cure his internet addition. The 19-year-old from Nantong in the Jiangsu province was rushed to hospital after using a kitchen knife to severe his left hand.

‘Local broadcaster Jianngu TV reported that the youth had chopped his arm off while sitting on a public bench. The teenager’s mother had gone into his room last Wednesday night to find it empty with a note from her son…’
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The original lydia’s paksiw na lechon recipe
A neighbor gave mom some paksiw na lechon yesterday. I tasted the sauce and I was suddenly back in 1972! The amount of vinegar and sugar was perfect. Lydia’s Lechon La Loma made lechon famous including the paksiw. I got this Pinterest recipe and I hope it’s exactly same as Lydia‘s:

300 SAF commandos refused to reinforce comrades

Rappler even learned of a botched SAF operation to get Marwan in December 2014.

‘The elite cops tried to seek refuge in the cornstalks and some of the elevated portions of the soil by the river. They were well-trained and well-armed, each with 300 rounds of ammunition. But this was no match for the number of heavily armed men who surrounded them, pintakasi style (free for all). The bullets were coming from all sides.

‘About 300 SAF men remained by the roadside with the tanks of the Philippine military. Questions are now raised why they failed to reinforce their comrades…’
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SAF heroes’ last text messages were pleas for help
‘Philippines–In their last moments before Moro rebels mowed them down, the ill-fated members of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) phoned and texted relatives and friends, pleading for help, asking them to tell their superiors that they had been surrounded and that they needed reinforcements.

‘Some appealed for cell phone loads. Another trooper, apparently fearing his hour had come, joined his mother on the other end of the phone and prayed the rosary with her.

‘Recto said the SAF commandos’ widows, mothers and other loved ones could provide added insights on what really transpired during the SAF operation to arrest a Malaysian terrorist hiding in Maguindanao province…’
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[New post] FBI confirms Marwan’s death
DNA match, as confirmed by FBI, proves Marwan was killed
‘On Wednesday afternoon, according to highly reliable News5 sources, the FBI sent a simple message to Philippine authorities: “DNA matched,” a signal that the process of verifying whether the sample obtained had indeed belonged to the Malaysian terrorist had been completed.

‘More detailed confirmation was provided to News5 in a statement from David Bowdich, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office. “Although the results of the DNA examinations do not provide absolute identification, the results do support that the biological sample provided by Philippine authorities came from Marwan,” said Bowdich…’
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WATCH: Sequence of events in Mamasapano clash according to AFP