PEP: Gretchen Barretto, Pops Fernandez subjects of threatening text messages

May text messages na kumakalat ngayon sa ilang showbiz circles na nakarating sa PEP (Philippine Entertainment Portal) nitong Miyerkules. Umuusok ang tono ng text at binabanggit dito ang mga pangalang "Gretchen," "Pops," "Ana," "Dodie," at "Senator Miriam Defensor."

Sinasabi ng text na "may konting katotohanan sa sinasabi ni Senator Miriam Defensor" tungkol umano sa mga artistang may "percentage ng komisyon sa road safety at road works ng mga raket ni Dodie."

Nang pagtagni-tagniin ng PEP ang mga praseng ito, nabuo namin na ang tinutukoy ng mga ito ay ang isinusulong na hearing ni Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago laban kay Rodolfo "Dody" Puno, dating executive director ng Road Board.

Ang Road Board ay nasa ilalim ng Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), at ang DPWH ay isa sa pinagtutuunan ng pansin ng Economic Affairs Committee ng Senado, na pinamumunuan ni Miriam Santiago, mula pa noong Setyembre ng taong ito.

Dahil binanggit ang "Gretchen" at "Pops," tinumbok naming ang aktres na si Gretchen Barretto at Concert Queen na si Pops Fernandez ang tinutukoy ng text, lalo pa't sinasabi sa text na "artista" ang dalawa at alam sa showbiz circles na ang dalawa ay malapit sa isa't isa. Dagdag dito, minsan nang na-link si Gretchen kay Dody, at si Pops ay matagal nang kaibigan ni Dody.

Mula roon, madali nang tukuyin na ang "Ana" ay si Ana Abiera, ang matalik na kaibigan nina Gretchen at Pops, at kaibigan din ni Dody. Base sa text mismo, si Ana ang pinadalhan ng text na ito.

Malinaw na idinadawit ng text sender sina Gretchen at Pops sa kontrobersiyang ito. Ayon sa text message, "nakikikomisyon" daw ang dalawang artista sa mga road projects na isinasagawa ni Dody.

KUMPLETONG TEXT. Narito ang kabuuan ng tatlong text message na diumano'y ipinadala kay Ana sa mga petsang hindi pa natutukoy:

Unang text: "Kung meron mas malala kaysa sa mga bagyo na pinagdaanan ng bansa natin is that may konting katotohanan sa sinasabi ni Sen. Miriam Defensor pati ang mga artistang sina Gretchen Baretto at Pops Fernandez ay kasama na nakikikomisyon sa mga proyekto. Mas matindi pa sa buwaya ang mga ito at pati source ng pinahanap nila ay na-123 nila. Kung ebidensya ang pagbabatayan mismong sulat kamay ni Gretchen ang percentage ng komisyon sa road safety at road works ng mga raket ni Dodie.

"Alam ni Gretchen at Pops kung sino ako. Matagal akong nananahimik at nagpapagaling pero ayaw nila akong tantanan. Puwes sa senado kami magkikita. Wala akong kinakatakutan kahit sino pa. Alam ko Ana na humingi kayo ng 500k na advance sa Serena kasama mo si Gretchen. I recorded my conversation with Jenny Munar.

Pangalawang text: "Pakisabi sa dalawa mong alaga, mga putang ina sila! Hindi ko sila tatantanan at hindi ko sila uurungan. Mismong tatay ko binaril ko, mismong anak ko hindi ko inuurungan. Sino sa tingin nyo kayo? Gusto kong malaman kung gaano kayo katapang. Nananahimik ang buhay ko pa-letter-letter pa kayo. Antayin ninyo ang sagot ko.

Pangatlong text: "Tingnan ko lang kung anong presinto kayo ni Dodie babagsak sa mga raket ninyo."

GRETCHEN SA TELEPONO. Nakausap ng PEP editor-in-chief na si Jo-Ann Maglipon si Gretchen Barretto kagabi. Tinanong ni Jo-Ann kung alam nito ang tungkol sa texts na kumakalat.

Inamin ni Gretchen na nakarating na sa kanya ang mga text na tinutukoy namin. Kumakalat na nga raw ang mga ito. Kinumpirma rin niyang ipinadala ang mga ito kay Ana Abiera, at sinabi nitong ang nagpadala ng maiinit na text ay si Mikaela Bilbao.

Si Mikaela Bilbao ay may-ari ng Philosophy by Mikaela Advanced Aesthetic Center, isang beauty and wellness clinic. Naging endorser ng Philosophy si Pops, kasama sina Ruffa Gutierrez at Rufa Mae Quinto. Nag-pose si Pops kasama ang isang malaking ahas para sa billboard ng naturang clinic. Endorser ngayon ng Philosophy si Nadia Montenegro.

Kamakailan lang ay boluntaryong nag-bow out si Mikaela sa Celebrity Duets, ang celebrity singing contest ng GMA-7, dahil daw sa "stress." Isa siya sa siyam na napili para sa contest, na ini-launch ng GMA-7 sa isang malaking press conference sa Annabel's restaurant.

Ito ang pahayag ni Gretchen sa PEP: "Mikaela came to us around February or March this year. Mikaela is a friend of Pops and Ana. Ipakilala raw namin siya kay Dody kasi may contractor siyang kaibigan na gustong ilapit. 'You hook me up with him,' sabi niya. At sinabi niyang may 25 percent to 30 percent daw kaming commission."

Sa pagpapatuloy ni Gretchen: "But nothing prospered. We didn't get anything. The project never happened. Pero eto ngayon siya na nagte-threaten ng kung anu-ano. Gusto ko siyang ipa-blotter at kasuhan. I'm consulting with lawyers now."

Naging maiksi lang ang panayam ng PEP kay Gretchen. Hindi nailinaw ang pinagsimulan ng isyung ito: ano ang motibo ni Mikaela, ano ang proyektong pinag-uusapan, ano ang role nila sa mga business deals ni Dody Puno, ano ang pinagmulan ng gulo.

Ang sabi ni Gretchen, "I will discuss this with you. But it has to be a sit-down interview. This is a long one. And it would be best to have Pops and Ana there."

(Mayroon ng tentative date para sa interview. Ilalabas dito sa PEP ang mapag-uusapan doon.)

HINDI MAKONTAK SI MIKAELA. Matapos mabanggit ni Gretchen ang pangalan ni Mikaela, pinilit kontakin ng PEP ang huli.

Mayroon kaming cellphone number ni Mikaela, na binigay niya mismo kay Karen Pagsolingan, managing editor ng PEP, nitong Setyembre lang. Lahat ng tawag namin magmula alas-tres ng hapon kanina hanggang mga alas-sais ay hindi pumasok. Sa Sun Cellular, ang sagot ay: "The number you dialled is incorrect. Please check the number and dial again." Sa Globe, ang sagot ay tanging tunog ng error tone.

Humingi kami ng iba pang number ni Mikaela sa isang field reporter ng Star Talk, na alam naming may direct line sa kanya, ngunit ang tanging number na maibigay nito ay iyon ding number na nasa amin.

Nagtanong din kami sa advertising department ng Summit, dahil may mga transactions si Mikaela sa Summit advertising department, ngunit ang number nila ay ganoon din.

SENATE HEARING. Si Dody ay nanungkulan bilang executive director ng Road Board ng DPWH mula 2005 hanggang sa mga unang buwan ng 2008. Nakababatang kapatid siya ni Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo "Ronnie" Puno, na tatakbong bise-presidente ni presidential aspirant Gilbert "Gibo" Teodoro ng Lakas-NUCD.

Sa Senate hearing na isinagawa noong September 25, binatikos ni Senador Santiago si Dody dahil sa paggastos diumano nito ng bilyun-bilyong nakukuha sa road tax para sa iba't ibang proyekto na wala naman daw kinalaman sa dapat puntahan ng road tax.

Ayon kay Sen. Santiago, "anomalous" ang hindi pagsusumite ni Dody ng mga dokumentong hinihingi ng Commission of Audit (COA). "Why is the executive director so reluctant to tell the public about the allocation of the funds, what actual procedures he followed, and the criteria and basis for selecting the roads? This is a big stink," pahayag ni Senador Santiago.

Inirekomenda rin ng senadora ang pagsasampa ng reklamo sa mga opisyales ng Road Board, partikular na kay Dody. - Erwin Santiago, PEP

The man behind Slumdog Millionaire: Hollywood's calling A.R. Rahman

MUMBAI, India – Hollywood is finally getting to know A.R. Rahman, the short, humble and deeply religious man who took two Oscars home to southern India for his work on "Slumdog Millionaire."

In the eight months since Slumdog's surprise Oscar sweep, Rahman has survived the rage of felicitation that hit him when he returned to India — even the prime minister offered his congratulations — and embarked on countless lunches with studio executives in L.A. eager to match him with that perfect new film.

In between, he's managed to score two movies, hatched plans with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics to start a band, and is putting together a new solo album.

The Oscars, Rahman said, "got me an identity in the West."

"There won't be any doubts looking at me: Who are you? What are you doing here?" he said by phone from Medina, Saudi Arabia. "I don't have to prove again I can do this and that, and rather can just be cool about my musical statement."

His latest composition is for "Couple's Retreat," a yoga-inflected romantic comedy written, produced by and starring Vince Vaughn, released Friday by Universal Studios.

He spent nearly three months working on "Couple's Retreat," first in London and then in L.A.

"L.A. helped me hide," Rahman said. "I can walk on the streets, which I can't do in India. I can go to a coffee shop and sit there. I have so much freedom, whereas in India I get mobbed."

In India, Rahman enjoys a fanatical pop-star fame that stretches from barefoot slum kids playing cricket to the richest matrons of Mumbai. He has won 18 Filmfare Awards, three MTV Awards, and six Tamil Nadu State Awards, among others. In 2000, he was conferred the highest civilian honor in India, the Padma Shri, for his contributions to the film industry.

But that somehow didn't translate. "Slumdog" did.

Now, Rahman said, he's not just getting work from Hollywood, he's getting good work — projects for which he can set his own artistic terms.

"Since the Oscars and all the appreciation, people come for what I am," he said.

The new album — for Interscope Records, which produced the blockbuster soundtrack to "Slumdog" — is still in its early stages, but Rahman said he hopes to bring together experienced artists like Lady GaGa and M.I.A. with "some really new talents."

"After 'Jai Ho' became number one in 17 countries, they were very excited and said, 'Why don't you do a whole album?'" Rahman said.

He keeps working on his pet project: A classical conservatory he opened two years ago in his hometown of Chennai, in southern India. About 130 students are learning the vanishing arts of the viola, violin and acoustic piano. Rahman said he's also teaching them Indian classical music and electronic composition — the same motley but fortuitous set of skills that holds together his own career.

The "Couple's Retreat" soundtrack veers from the South Indian Carnatic harmonies of "Undressing" to the hip-hop inflected "NaNa." Shyam Benegal, an award-winning Indian director — he also got the Padma Shri — who hired Rahman to make music for two of his films, says Rahman has created "a musical bridge."

"He has bridged the musical distance between the way the Western ear responds and the way the Indian ear responds," he said. "It's very difficult to say how."

The foundations of that bridge were laid when Rahman was a child. After his composer father died, Rahman took up playing the keyboard for movies in south India's burgeoning Tamil-language film industry. He was just 12.

"I had to work because we had the keyboards," he said. "My mother said, 'Why don't you learn them? It's such an advantage for you to have them.'"

"I was almost the breadwinner of the family," he added.

After studying under several masters of classical Indian music, he won a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music in London and took a degree in Western classical music. His break in India came when he was 23 and noted director Mani Ratnam asked him to score his film "Roja."

Since then he's worked on over 100 movies in India.

"His fees have gone up a lot," said director Benegal. "He may be the most expensive composer in India today working on films. That he is. But what he gives to you, even in financial terms, the recovery is almost instantaneous."

Still, Hollywood's remunerative embrace could price India's favorite son out of his home market.

"If he charged me Hollywood rates," Benegal said, "I wouldn't be able to pay." - AP

Elizabeth Taylor: Heart procedure went 'perfectly'

LOS ANGELES – Elizabeth Taylor is feeling fine after a heart procedure.

The 77-year-old actress says in a post on Twitter Thursday that the treatment "went off perfectly" and she feels like she has a "brand new ticker."

Earlier in the week, Taylor tweeted that she would be going into the hospital for the procedure and asked her 164,239 followers for their prayers.

"I know they all helped," she tweeted.

U.N. plane crash in Haiti kills 11

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Eleven U.N. peacekeepers died on Friday when their surveillance plane crashed into a mountainside in Haiti during a routine patrol, U.N. officials said.

A U.N. rescue team confirmed there were no survivors among the 11 crew and military personnel on the plane, a Casa-212, when it went down near the town of Fonds-Verrettes, near the border with the Dominican Republic.

The dead were Uruguayans and Jordanians, U.N. spokeswoman Vannina Maestracci said.

The cause of the crash was unknown.

"The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti announces with sadness that a MINUSTAH plane, carrying 11 passengers, including the crew, crashed southeast of the commune of Ganthier," the United Nations said in a statement.

"The Casa 212 aircraft was making a reconnaissance flight at the time of the accident before hitting a mountainside."

The U.N. peacekeeping force has been in Haiti since 2004. It consists of some 9,000 troops and police.

Local officials said the plane went down in a remote area near the village of Pays-Pourri in the district of Ganthier, a farming region area east of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

"It's in a very inaccessible area, about six hours on foot from Ganthier," Ralph Lapointe, the mayor of Ganthier, told Reuters by telephone.

"It happened shortly before noon. I saw several U.N. helicopters flying toward the area," he said. "It seems that they have already recovered the bodies."

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations; Editing by Jim Loney and Peter Cooney)

Top Stories Today

Moon crash: Public yawns, scientists celebrate

WASHINGTON – NASA's great lunar fireworks finale fizzled. After gearing up for the space agency's much-hyped mission to hurl two spacecraft into the moon, the public turned away from the sky Friday anything but dazzled. Photos and video of the impact showed little more than a fuzzy white flash.

In social media and live television coverage, many people were disappointed at the lack of spectacle. One person even joked that someone hit the pause button in mission control.

Yet scientists involved in the project were downright gleeful. Sure, there were no immediate pictures of spewing plumes of lunar dust that could contain water, but, they say, there was something more important: chemical signatures in light waves. That's the real bonanza, not pictures of geyser-like eruptions of debris, the scientists said.

The mission was executed for "a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public," said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.

Scientists said the public expected too much. The public groused as if NASA delivered too little.

The divide was as big as a crater.

"We've been brainwashed by Hollywood to expect the money shot, like 'Deep Impact' or when Bruce Willis saves us from a comet," said physicist and television host Michio Kaku, who was not part of the mission. "Science is not done that way."

But Kaku and other experts also faulted NASA for overhyping the mission, not being honest with the public about the images being a longshot. "They should have put Steven Spielberg in charge," Kaku said.

NASA's LCROSS mission — short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and pronounced L-Cross — had all the makings of a blockbuster. Its main goal was to look for some form of water on the moon — something that could still turn up in those light wave chemical signatures.

A preliminary review of data from the Hubble Space Telescope indicated no signs of water in the debris viewed from the blast, NASA said late Friday, but added that more study was needed.

And water on the moon could change NASA's troubled plans for space exploration. It would make revisiting and putting a base on the moon far cheaper because the moon's water could be used, Kaku said.

It was relatively cheap and last-minute by NASA standards: Just $79 million, in about three years. It was elegant in its simplicity. An empty rocket hull that would normally be space junk remained attached to the plucky little LCROSS until pulling away Thursday night. On Friday morning, it smashed into a crater near the moon's south pole.

Then the little satellite flew through what was supposed to be a six-mile plume of dust from the crash, taking pictures and measuring all sorts of stuff, mostly looking for water. Moments after the first crash, the smaller spacecraft itself hit the moon for a second impact.

The crashes created a man-made crater about one-fifth the size of a football field, Brown University geologist and LCROSS scientist Peter Schultz told The Associated Press.

It all worked perfectly, according to NASA. But there were no pictures of a plume. There may not have been a plume at all, or maybe it was just hidden or too small, said LCROSS scientist Anthony Colaprete.

The spacecraft, instead of spewing six miles of dust straight out, could have compacted the lunar soil — sort of like a rock sinking quickly in water instead of making a massive splash.

"We saw a crater; we saw a flash, so something had to happen in between," Colaprete said. The crater was the aftermath of the crash, and the flash was the impact itself.

The key is not in photographs but in squiggly lines that show those complicated light waves, Colaprete said. Once they are analyzed — a task that may take weeks — the light waves will show whether water was present at the crash site.

"It wasn't a dud. We got a gold mine of data," said Kaku, a professor at the City College of New York and host of "Sci Q Sundays" on the Science Channel. If those squiggly lines show there is ice just under the surface of the moon, it would make the lack of pictures worth it, he said.

"Ice is more valuable than gold on the moon," Kaku said.

For about a decade, scientists have speculated about buried ice below the moon's poles. Then surprising new research last month indicated that there seem to be tiny amounts of water mixed into the lunar soil all over the moon, making the moon once again a more interesting target for scientists.

But a discovery of ice later this month would not be quite the same as seeing promised flashes through a telescope.

People who got up before dawn to look for the crash at Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory threw confused looks at each other instead. They tried to watch on TV because the skies were not clear enough, but that proved disappointing, too.

Telescope demonstrator Jim Mahon called the celestial show "anticlimactic."

"I was hoping we'd see a flash or a flare, evidence of a plume," he said.

___

AP Science Writer Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Types of Dolphins

With Prominent Beaks	Without Prominent Beaks
Tucuxi	Commersons Dolphin
Short-snouted Spinner Dolphin	Hector's Dolphin
Long-snouted Spinner Dolphin	Heaviside's Dolphin
Atlantic Hump-backed	Black Dolphin
Pantropical Spotted Dolphin	Hourglass Dolphin
Atlantic Spotted Dolphin	Dusky Dolphin
Southern Rightwhale Dolphin	Peale's Dolphin
Common Dolphin	White-Beaked Dolphin
Striped Dolphin	Pacific White-sided Dolphin
Rough-toothed Dolphin	Atlantic White-sided Dolphin
Indo-pacific Hump-backed Dolphin	Fraser's Dolphin
Northern Rightwhale Dolphin	Irrawaddy Dolphin
Bottlenose Dolphin	Risso's Dolphin

What are dolphins?

Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in seventeen genera. They vary in size from 1.2 m (4 ft) and 40 kg (90 lb) (Maui's Dolphin), up to 9.5 m (30 ft) and 10 tonnes (9.8 LT; 11 ST) (the Orca or Killer Whale). They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. The family Delphinidae is the largest in the Cetacean order, and relatively recent: dolphins evolved about ten million years ago, during the Miocene. Dolphins are among the most intelligent animals and their often friendly appearance and seemingly playful attitude have made them popular in human culture.

The name is originally from Ancient Greek δελφίς (delphís; "dolphin"), which was related to the Greek δελφύς (delphys; "womb"). The animal's name can therefore be interpreted as meaning "a 'fish' with a womb". The name was transmitted via the Latin delphinus, Middle Latin dolfinus and the Old French daulphin, which reintroduced the ph into the word.

The word is used in a few different ways. It can mean:

• Any member of the family Delphinidae (oceanic dolphins),
• Any member of the families Delphinidae and Platanistoidea (oceanic and river dolphins),
• Any member of the suborder Odontoceti (toothed whales; these include the above families and some others),
• Used casually as a synonym for Bottlenose Dolphin, the most common and familiar species of dolphin.

This article uses the second definition and does not describe Porpoises (suborder Odontoceti, family Phocoenidae). Orcas and some closely related species belong to the Delphinidae family and therefore qualify as dolphins, even though they are called whales in common language. A group of dolphins is called a "school" or a "pod". Male dolphins are called "bulls", females "cows" and young dolphins are called "calves".