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For the past 20 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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NEW YORK CITY -- A Filipino American woman won an Emmy Award for a television feature she coproduced for CNN.
Chris Gajilan, 29, senior medical producer of CNN, was one of three producers of “Charity Hospital”, which was named “Outstanding Feature Story in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast at the 27th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards presented by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences on September 25.
“Charity Hospital” was one of the segments of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
“Charity Hospital” is about the doctors and nurses at a hospital of the same name in New Orleans who worked tirelessly to keep their patients alive and struggled to get them to safety in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Gajilan, together with CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta were able to reach the hospital a few days after Katrina and document the dire circumstances facing the medical team.
Sleeping and surviving inside the hospital for two days, they captured the passion and dedication of this unbelievable rescue effort.
“In a week where heroes emerged against the odds, Charity Hospital doctors stood out for their selfless mission to save their patients,” Gajilan said.
“Charity Hospital” was also given an award by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Aside from Gajilan and Gupta, the other members of the news staff who produced “Charity Hospital” were senior executive producers David Doss; executive producers Sid Bedingfield, Kathleen Friery; senior broadcast producer Charlie Moore; managing editor Bud Bultman; executive director of production Jody Gottlieb; post-production producer Matt Scheibner; and producers Robert Howell, Heather O’Neill and Dave Timko.
Gajilan is the daughter of Lito A. Gajilan Jr., publisher of The Filipino Express.
She used to help her father and an elder sister in editing and running the family-owned publication.
“My passion for journalism begins with the tutelage of my sister Arlyn and father Lito in journalism and my mother Aurora in the importance of story-telling,” Gajilan said.
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EDISON, New Jersey -- The family of Jaime and Elenita Malimban celebrated their first grandchild on Sunday, October 15, welcoming their daughter’s baby boy home from the hospital. It was a proud moment for the inseparable Malimbans, a couple since they were high school sweethearts in the Philippines.
But on Thursday, October 19, relatives gathered outside their modest Edison home, dumbstruck by the news that Jaime had bludgeoned his wife to death while she lay in bed, then hanged himself in their garage after writing a lengthy suicide note, police said.
The bodies of Elenita, 55, and Jaime, 56, were discovered by a cousin who came to the Agatha Drive home shortly before 7 a.m., police said. The Malimbans’ son, James, 24, lived with the couple, and told police nothing seemed amiss when he left for work an hour earlier.
Autopsies performed on the Malimbans on Friday, October 20, revealed that the husband and wife actually died on Wednesday, authorities said yesterday.
Jaime and Elenita died between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Wednesday, authorities said.
Although Elenita suffered multiple stab wounds from a pocket knife with a 3-inch blade, the cause of her death was mechanical asphyxiation, authorities said. Her husband, Jaime Malimban, died of asphyxiation by hanging.
Investigators are still probing the apparent murder-suicide discovered Thursday morning by a cousin who lived with the married couple at 47 Agatha Drive, authorities said.
“We’re still waiting on toxicology reports and the final autopsy,” said Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Julie Davidson.
Police called to the scene on Thursday morning found a suicide note penned by the husband, authorities said. Davidson said the motive for the slaying is still being investigated.
On Thursday, relatives began arriving at the home in the morning, staring at the scene in disbelief.
“I can’t believe this happened,” said Rudy Castillo, Elenita Malimban’s older brother, appearing dazed as he clutched at his chest. Castillo said he raced to the home with his wife, Editha, when he learned what happened.
“My legs are shaking,” Editha Castillo said, as she dabbed tears from her eyes. “She was my best sister.”
Castillo, 60, of Old Bridge, said he had no idea there was any trouble between his little sister and her husband. In addition to the recent birth of their grandchild, Jaime Malimban’s 56th birthday was Tuesday.
Police said Elenita Malimban was struck several times with a blunt object that left shallow puncture wounds. Davidson said the exact causes of the deaths were pending autopsy results.
Elenita Malimban was a registered nurse at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, and Jaime Malimban was self-employed as an insurance broker, registered as the Professional Provider Financial Group in 2003. He previously worked as a clerk at the Joyce Kilmer U.S. Mail facility in Edison until 1991. Elenita Malimban immigrated to the United States in 1973, and records show she took her first nursing job in Alabama. Relatives said she sponsored Jaime to live in the United States when he immigrated in 1980. The couple bought their home in Edison five years later.
Shortly before noon Thursday, investigators removed the bodies of Jaime and Elenita Malimban. Crime scene investigators were inspecting the garage, which was partially covered with a white cloth and housed an older-model Mercedes-Benz sedan.
Castillo, Elenita Malimban’s brother, said the couple was married for more than 20 years and high school sweethearts at the Bailand Western Cavite Institute in Cavite, a province south of Manila.
Elenita was the third oldest in a family of six, and Jaime had three siblings, Castillo said.
“They were very much in love,” said Marilyn Lopina, the mother-in-law of the Malimbans’ daughter, Eileen Lopina.
The Malimbans were known for parties they threw at their house, including a celebration just last month, relatives said. They had karaoke sing-alongs and huge catered spreads of traditional Filipino food, from egg rolls to pancit noodles.
Castillo said they were a good couple, and his brother-in-law was a happy person.
“He used to joke all the time,” Castillo said. “They are very good people. They are very religious.”
Neighbors also described Jaime as a happy, smiling man who loved to garden.
“He was always out in his yard,” said neighbor Devyani Patel, a stay-at-home mother. He was planting and watering flowers, trimming the bushes and mowing the lawn while the radio played, she said.
The Malimbans were members of St. Matthew the Apostle Church in Edison, where their children attended school.
Castillo said the family had not decided on funeral arrangements. He said the Malimbans’ children would have to decide if their parents are buried here or in the Philippines.
Lopina said at the party on Sunday for the new baby boy, Ethan, there was no hint Jaime was even upset.
“It’s so hard to picture him with problems,” Lopina said. “He was so happy, this was his first grandchild ... no, it’s not him, it’s not him.”
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MANILA -- The Supreme Court has dismissed the petition filed by pro-Charter change advocates for a people’s initiative to amend the 1987 Constitution.
Voting 8-7, the high tribunal, in its ruling penned by Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, upheld its decision on a similar case in 1997 involving the Commission on Elections vs Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.
The justices have decided to use Carpio’s dissenting opinion after they were not convinced by Associate Justice Reynato Puno’s argument that there was a sufficient law and that the 1997 Santiago ruling could not be considered a precedent.
Aside from Carpio, the seven other justices who voted against a people’s initiative were Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, Associate Justices Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez, Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Romeo Callejo Sr., Alicia Austria-Martinez, Conchita Carpio-Morales, and Adolf Azcuna.
Those who voted for a people’s initiative aside from Puno were Associate Justices Leonardo Quismubing, Renato Corona, Dante Tinga, Cancio Garcia, Presbitero Velasco, and Minita Chico-Nazario.
The Sigaw ng Bayan (Cry of the People) and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) elevated the case to the high tribunal after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) dismissed their petition, citing the lack of an enabling law to justify a signature campaign that would have set the stage for implementing constitutional reforms.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has campaigned to replace the current US-style two-chamber legislature with a unicameral parliament, saying the gridlock of the current system makes the government inefficient at addressing poverty and other problems.
Opposition and civil-society groups disagree however and accuse Arroyo and her allies of pushing the changes to consolidate their grip on power by abolishing the opposition-dominated Senate.
Sigaw ng Bayan and ULAP have presented the Comelec with a petition purportedly signed by 6.3 million people, but critics have questioned its legality.
Prior to its ruling on August 31, the Comelec had verified the signatures.
Before a national plebiscite can be held to seek approval for specific changes to the Charter, the Constitution requires that signatures collected must represent at least 3 percent of total voters in each legislative district, and that they total at least 12 percent of 40 million registered voters nationwide.
Under the proposed parliamentary system, Arroyo would serve as head of state until her term ends in 2010, and would be given powers to nominate the prime minister from among members of the interim parliament. (MNS)
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MANILA -- The American National Council of State Boards of Nursing has rejected President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s request to include the Philippines as an accredited venue of the United States licensure exam for foreign nurses.
Mrs. Arroyo met with the council’s president, Faith Fields, and associate executive director Dr. Casey Marks on Wednesday, October 25, to brief them on what was being done to address the leak of test questions during the June board exams for nurses.
But they told the President that the Philippines—up for consideration as a venue before the scandal—would have to wait “some time” before its application could be taken up again.
“Some time needs to pass, and that is definitely after a final decision is made clear,” Fields said in an interview after the meeting.
“I think the entire nursing world is looking at what your action will be. We are very interested to see how you handle the crisis... You don’t want to waste opportunity to make your own system better.”
Commission on Filipinos Overseas chairman Dante Ang said the President was told that some 14 states in the US did not want to reconsider the Philippines’ application as an accredited testing center after the June test leaks.
About 17,000 nursing graduates passed the tainted exams, and many of them oppose a government plan to administer new tests.
Filipinos make up about 83 percent of the American council’s examinees in its international testing centers in Hong Kong and Saipan.
The council administers the National Council Licensure Examination, which is taken by more than 9,000 Filipino nurses yearly.
You have to understand that the entire world is watching what the Philippines does here and so you definitely will need to take some action, but that is up to the Philippines to do,” said Dante Ang, chair of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas and task force on NCLEX, who accompanied Fields and other officials to the Palace meeting.
Ang said the government should show that “we do not condone leakages or anomalies. Itatama natin siguro dapat dahil hahanap nila kung ano gawin natin after this (We have to correct this perhaps because they will watch what we will do after this),” Ang told reporters.
Malacañang later issued a statement about the meeting, quoting Fields and other NCSBN officials with her that they were “still hopeful and confident of our partnership in terms of nursing education.”
The statement quoted Arroyo as telling the officials that she was aware of the negative impact of the nursing leak exam controversy on Filipino nurses seeking work abroad. “But we are able to identify those who were involved in the nursing leakage and we are bent on filing criminal charges,” the President told them.
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