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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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Phony doctor pleads innocent in death
of Fil-Am bank analyst
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LEFT: FIL-AM BANK ANALYST. Maria Cruz, whose body was found buried in Faiello's NJ house
RIGHT: FAKE DOCTOR. Dean Faiello, suspect in Maria Cruz killing
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NEW YORK, May 26, 2005 --- The fake doctor who fled to Central America pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder Thursday in the death of a Filipino-American bank analyst.
Dean Faiello, 45, who was extradited Monday from Costa Rica, appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court for the murder trial of Maria Cruz, who disappeared two years ago after she had gone for him for treatment of a growth on her tongue.
After a few months of searching, police authorities found Cruz’s body wrapped in a garbage bag and buried in Faiello’s house in northern New Jersey.
Faiello had been arrested in October 2002 for practicing medicine without a license and illegally possessing medical drugs, but he continued to see patients after that arrest, reports said.
“I cried all night and couldn’t sleep. It’s still painful for us. Faiello killed my daughter, and then concealed his crime by dumping my daughter’s body under his home,” said Irenea Cruz, 68, mother of Maria. “We don’t want to take revenge. We just want him punish for his crimes, according to the laws he violated.”
Last year, Irenea said, she and her husband, Rodolfo, flew to the Philippines to bring the ashes of their slain daughter to her native land.
As they vowed to keep Maria’s memory alive, Irenea said, they built a 2.7 million-peso mausoleum for Maria in Manila to honor her.
Irenea also said that every morning, they pray and light candles in the mausoleum.
Last Monday, she said, their prayers were answered: The fake plastic surgeon wanted in Maria’s killing was extradited from Costa Rica to New York.
“I’m happy, that after two long years, our prayers have been answered. The case must go on,” Rodolfo Cruz, 74, father of Maria, said in a telephone interview.
Since Maria vanished, her family has put all her memorabilia and photos in their home in Manila, to remember their good and bright daughter. They clean and take care of the mausoleum for Maria who is decorated with flowers and grasses.
For her parents, Maria was a loving and generous daughter who had a promising career as an investment analyst at Barclay’s Capital in Manhattan.
Maria lived alone on the Upper West Side. She had an MBA degree from Fordham University.
When she was reported missing in April 2003, her family flew from Manila to New York and distributed fliers around the city in a bid to find her.
Her family was devastated when Maria’s corpse was discovered in Faiello’s house in New Jersey in February 2004.
“Every night, I’ve been praying to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that the suspect be arrested,” Irenea said.
Rodolfo and Irenea currently live in Manila, but will fly to New York once the murder trial of Faiello begins.
Jose Navarro, Maria’s uncle, said that he had an interview with officers working at the office of District Attorney Robert Morganthau.
Navarro gave the family’s evidence and testimony on the case.
“The arrest of Faiello won’t bring back Maria to life. I gave up everything to God,” he said.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer issued a warrant for illegally practicing medicine without a license which led to Faiello’s extradition, the New York Post reported.
Faiello, who was reported a homosexual, lived a flamboyant lifestyle in Costa Rica, where he fled after Maria’s disappearance. He could face one to four years in jail if convicted of illegally practicing medicine.
Faiello was arraigned last Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court on charge of second-degree murder, but didn’t enter a plea. Second-degree murder carries 15 years to life sentence in jail.
“He destroyed the life of my daughter. I want justice be served,” said Irenea.
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More Filipinos leave for Canada for better future
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MANILA, May 26, 2005 --- Despite its cold climate, Canada is fast becoming the country of choice for many middle-class professional Filipinos who are leaving the tropical Philippines in droves to seek a better future for themselves and their families overseas.
Armed with a college degree and a good career history with a multinational electronics firm in Manila, Ferdie del Rosario plans to quit his job and immigrate to Canada.
Taking a day off from his job as a supervisor at Amkor Technology, he has brought one of his small children along to a seminar on becoming a Canadian citizen.
Del Rosario points to his daughter, playing on the aisle during a seminar break, and says he is doing it “for the future of my kids.”
He says his life here is comfortable but even he is worried about what lies ahead for the Philippines.
“You can see the situation: there are so many graduates but not enough jobs. In my job, there are college graduates who are just machine operators.”
Unemployment is running at about 11 percent nationally and rising, and, with 700,000 new college graduates every year, the economy cannot create enough skilled jobs to accommodate them.
A million Filipinos are expected to leave the country this year, most of them in search of temporary, higher paying jobs. But a growing number are pulling up stakes for good in a country where 51 percent live on $2 a day or less.
For the optimistic crowds who attend the seminars organized by the Canadian government’s Citizenship and Immigration ministry, there is little sign of wistfulness about leaving the land of their birth.
Offered free twice a week to those approved immigrants to Canada, the seminars prepare Filipinos about the realities of their new country: the cold weather, the culture shock and having as much as 30 percent of their salaries go to taxes—a sharp adjustment for Filipinos who are used to evading taxes back home.
Canadians based in the Philippines say there is much to love in the Southeast Asian country: a comfortable, tropical climate, beautiful beaches, fresh fruits and fresh seafood.
But at one recent seminar, the would-be migrants, mostly professionals or skilled workers, said they would be glad to leave “the pollution” and “bribery.”
The only things the Filipinos said they would miss are the friends and family they will be leaving behind—and the low-cost household-help that every middle-class Filipino family can afford.
Filipinos are the largest group of immigrants to Canada, just behind the Chinese and Indians. Approximately 12,000 immigrated last year alone, Canadian officials said.
The number excludes 2,000 Filipino caregivers allowed into Canada each year under a special program that lets them become permanent residents after about three years.
In the past, the United States was the migrants’ first choice. But stricter US immigration regulations, Canada’s more open policy to skilled workers, state-subsidized schools and health care are attracting more Filipinos.
The Canadian government advises migrants to bring enough money to survive for six months because it may take them that long to settle and find a job.
The immigrants are not intimidated by advice that their educational and professional qualifications may not count as much in Canada—or tales from earlier migrants about how they had to start working at the bottom of the ladder.
Teachers in government schools get paid about $200 a month here in the Philippines, about half what they can earn as domestic helpers in Hong Kong. Government doctors earn around $400-$500 a month in the Philippines but in North America they can earn many times that each month as nurses.
Many are willing to endure this because they have lost hope in a home country that suffers from sluggish economic growth, political squabbling and corruption.
Gloomy sentiments about the Philippines have been growing for years. A July 2002 survey by Manila-based polling outfit Pulse Asia Inc. found that 24 percent of adults said they would “migrate to another country and live there” if given a chance.
Options of preventing the country’s best and brightest from leaving are few. “Well, what can we do about it? Tell me, can I prevent you from leaving? I don’t think so,” says Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas.
One prospective migrant, dancer Jojo Lucila proudly recalls how he choreographed some of the official Philippine Independence Day parades in recent years.
But on his trips abroad, he was impressed by the discipline and way of life in Canada. “It is a good place to raise kids. Once there, you hardly see people blow their horns when they drive.”
Lucila says “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was joining his children in watching the televised corruption trial of deposed Philippine president Joseph Estrada.
His kids seemed more impressed by the eloquence of the lawyers rather than the moral issue of a president being tried for plundering his country, he recalls.
“You can’t tell what the obvious values [here] are. Our system is too disorderly. You don’t know whom to trust. We want our kids to have a choice of understanding a better country, [learning] what are right and what should be done,” he said.
Louise Belanger, Philippine manager of the Canadian Orientation Abroad project does not recall any case of a Filipino going to Canada and then returning home in disappointment.
One woman wrote to her, saying she wanted to give up after only six months. She was advised to stick it out and in a year, she found her desired job as a chartered accountant, Belanger recalls.
Glenda Carabit, assistant professor at a small provincial college, says she is going because “at my age, 40, I have served the country that long. I can spend the rest of my life as a Canadian.”
She is confident that the she will be able to cope with the new environment. “I’m a Filipino. We can handle these things,” Carabit says.
“It’s a trend. Everybody is going now,” she adds. — By Mynardo Macaraig, AFP
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Preliminary hearing moved to June 27
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FALLEN SUPERSTAR. Actress Nora Aunor in pensive mood during her arraignment over drug-possession charges in L.A.
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Los Angeles, CALIFORNIA, May 26, 2005 --- A Los Angeles judge has postponed the preliminary hearing of Nora Aunor’s drug possession case to June 27, according to Aunor’s defense lawyer.
Aunor had pleaded not guilty to the charge before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paula Adele Maybrey last April 21 at the Los Angeles Airport courthouse.
The Filipino actress’ lawyer, Claire Espina of the Edelberg and Espina law office, said Judge Maybrey also granted three motions for evidence split, for the waiver of appearance by the defendant except for trial and other evidentiary hearings, and for a Tagalog interpreter at all hearings.
“We were also granted the request to have her personal appearance waived while discovery is ongoing and except when testimony is required,” Espina said. “She is required to appear, though, at the next date in June.”
Espina also explained that “if and when the preliminary hearing takes place, it should take no more than a couple of hours as the police officers will likely do this under Proposition 115.”
Proposition 115, also known as the Crime Victims’ Justice Reform Act in 1990, affirms that in criminal cases, the people of the State of California have “the right to due process of law and to a speedy and public trial.”
The case against Aunor stemmed from her arrest at the Los Angeles International Airport on March 30 for alleged possession of eight grams of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu). (MNS)
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Carl, Clarence Aguirre wear plastic helmets to continue therapy
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BIG MIRACLE, TRUE INSPIRATION. Surgeons of the separated Filipino twins, Carl and Clarence Aguirre, hold them with glee as the boy's mom, Arlene, looks on.
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NEW YORK, May 23, 2005 --- Formerly conjoined Filipino twins Carl and Clarence Aguirre have begun wearing custom-built plastic helmets so that the rebuilding of their skulls can be postponed to allow them to continue therapy that will help them walk and talk, doctors said.
Staying out of the operating room is “a luxury they’ve earnedî by responding so well to the series of major operations that climaxed with their separation in August, said Dr. David Staffenberg, chief of plastic surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
“They’re just soaking everything up,” he said. “They’re gaining by the day. The benefits of therapy outweigh the benefits of any of the reconstructive surgeries.”
The three-year-old boys from the Philippines are taking steps with the aid of little walkers and could be toddling on their own “in a month or two,” said Dr. Robert Marion, their pediatrician, at a news conference at Montefiore.
There’s been much less progress in their speech, however, and Marion said, “We don’t really understand why. Doctors did find some blockage in the boys’ ears and have inserted tiny tubes there, a common procedure to relieve pressure and fight infection, in hopes that better hearing might make for better speech.
“They know what people are saying and they understand,” Marion added. “They really are cognitively OK.” The boys manage a few words, including “hi,” “bye” and “thank you,” doctors say.
Dr. James Goodrich, the neurosurgeon who led the separation operation, said the slow start “isn’t surprising if you consider that they spent 18 months in social isolation in the Philippines, then came to the US and an entirely different language.”
In addition, he said, the boys were often sick, “and when you’re sick you don’t learn,” had blocked, infected ears; and apparently were ìhard-wired togetherî by the bit of brain they shared and could probably communicate in some form without speaking.
The new white helmets, made of polypropylene on the outside and foam padding on the inside, replaced the twins’ heavy bandages and “didn’t seem to bother them at all,” Marion said. They are meant to protect the tops of the boys’ heads, where they were once attached and which are now covered only by leathery layers of skin, from normal three-year-old activity-like the fight he witnessed a few days ago.
Marion said he saw the brothers “going at each other” when they were in the same crib.
“They were fighting, grabbing, pushing each other into the bars. They were fine, but it was clear that if weíre not going to reconstruct the skulls, theyíll need more protection.”
When the boys eventually do undergo skull reconstruction, Goodrich said, that might happen in the fall. But Staffenberg said a few square inches of bone has regenerated on its own in both skulls, a surprising development in children as old as three. (MNS)
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