NEWSBRIEFS

NEGROS OCCIDENTAL

More lands for tillers

More than 175,000 hectares of land have been distributed to nearly 132,000 beneficiaries in Negros Occidental from 2008 to April 2012, a Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) report showed.

“We expect to deliver 32,000 ha more in the province for  2012,” North Negros Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer Enrique Paderes said.

Paderes said the DAR is working to speed up the processing of claims by landowners. Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas

LAGUNA

2 women killed

Two women were killed in separate incidents in the province last week, one of whom was suspected to be a victim of strangling by her husband while the other may have been raped before being stabbed by a neighbor, police said.

Police and village officials found the body of Mary Ann Vergara, 25, inside her house in Barangay San Miguel, San Pablo City, on Tuesday, after her husband Jerwin, 34, called up a relative and admitted to strangling his wife. Jerwin had escaped after the killing.

In Calamba City, police suspected that Emerita Guillen, 23, was  raped before she was stabbed dead in her house in Barangay Looc on May 14. A suspect has been arrested, police said. Maricar Cinco, Inquirer Southern Luzon

BATANGAS

Towns without dumps

The Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) has  issued a final notice to nine towns and cities in the province to begin constructing a sanitary landfill in place of open dumps as mandated by law.

Although the notices were served in 2011, Calabarzon EMB Director Metodio Turbella said the agency is still being “lenient” to the local government units, especially those  second or third class municipalities.

Luis Awitan of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office identified the nine municipalities as Taysan, Bauan, Balayan, Nasugbu, Lobo, San Pascual, Mabini, Agoncillo and San Juan. Maricar Cinco,  Inquirer Southern Luzon

EVENT

Solo exhibit in Bacolod

Ongoing till June 10 is “Sugar Coated Pill,’’ a solo exhibit by artist Derrick Macutay in Museo Negrense at University of La Salle in Bacolod City.

It is the second one-man show by the Pasig City-based Macutay after his 2008 “Techknow,” and a new step for an artist who has participated  in nearly 20 group exhibitions and produced 25 commissioned works, including paintings for patrons in the Philippines and abroad, and murals for institutions like Adamson University, Pasig Cathedral, and his high school alma mater, Pasig Catholic College, according to a news release.

Macutay explores how supposed advancing technology can warp a person, and how the resulting maladies go unchecked beneath these new conveniences. Exhibit notes say that Macutay also hopes to show how society tries “not to see and hear what is negative. We only want the things acceptable and morally palatable to us. We don’t look at the bigger picture of the issues that are presented.”