CAGAYAN de ORO (UCAN):  Jerome Aladdin Succor Aba, a Filipino Muslim advocate, was denied entry into the United States of America (US) on April 17 and was believed to be in the holding facility at San Francisco International Airport, the Mindanao-based Sandugo-Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples for Self-Determination reported.
 
It is believed that Aba, chairperson of the group Suara Bangsamoro, was detained by American immigration officials over “visa problems.”
 

BAGUIO (UCAN): Tribal communities in the northern Philippines are threatened by a government-sponsored China-funded irrigation project on ancestral lands, tribal leaders claim.
 
On April 10, Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, said he was able to secure a loan agreement with China to fund the building of an irrigation project in the mountainous Cordillera region.
 

MANILA (UCAN): The 84-year-old St. Mary’s Cathedral in Marawi, Mindanao, will soon fall to the wrecking ball to pave the way for the rebuilding of the war-torn city.
 
Authorities said the cathedral and the bishop’s residence are no longer structurally sound because of bomb explosions, air strikes and exchanges of gunfire during the conflict.
 
Terrorist gunmen set the cathedral on fire on 23 May 2017 and took Father Teresito Suganob, the vicar general, along with several church workers and worshipers hostage.

MANILA (UCAN): “We call on Netflix to stop giving an audience to a show that aims to justify extrajudicial killings,” read a statement issued by a group of rights advocates, lawyers, and activists. 
 
They were demanding that the online entertainment giant stop streaming Amo (boss), an action series tackling the controversial and bloody war on drugs being waged by the government of Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte.
 

MANILA (UCAN): “We are not destined for slavery but to freedom. What is evil, we denounce; what is good, we affirm,” Maria Lourdes Sereno, the chief justice of the Philippines said amid moves to impeach her from the Supreme Court. 
 
She accused the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, of orchestrating her ouster and preventing her from testifying in an impeachment trial.
 

MANILA (UCAN): The president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, said at the beginning of April that he was giving the government and rebel peace panels “a timeline of two months” to resume the talks that bogged down last year.
 
He claimed that it was the rebel National Democratic Front of the Philippines that had been pressing for the resumption of negotiations.
 
Talks broke down in November after Duterte accused the rebels of attacking government installations especially in the provinces.
 

MANILA (UCAN): “Let those who have special intentions and petitions come in veneration and prayer,” read a statement from Manila Cathedral as the Archdiocese of Manila became custodian of a precious relic of Pope St. John Paul II—a vial of his blood, as of April 7.
 
A Filipino nun based in Poland brought the relic to Manila on 11 December 2017. It is the first ever blood relic of a saint still in liquid form in the Philippines.
 

MANILA (UCAN): Catholic and Protestant Church groups in the Philippines launched the Anawim Mission Network, which aims to promote political consciousness among the poor, on April 6.
 
The network is the a result of a gathering of Church groups to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
 
“We saw the need to transform the unity and harmony developed among Christian Churches into a mission for the poor,” said Carmelite Father Rico Ponce of the Institute of Spirituality in Asia.
 

MANILA (UCAN): “He was a secretary of injustice,” Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon said, in the wake of the resignation of Vitaliano Aguirre II, the justice secretary of the Philippines, which was announced by the president, Rodrigo Duterte, on April 5, amid questions over his job performance.
 
Bishop Bastes said he was “happy Aguirre decided to resign” because he “was not doing his job well as a secretary of justice.”