Australia announced Thursday it has donated an initial 500,000 Australian dollars (478,000 U.S. dollars) to the Philippines National Red Cross to help the typhoon victims.

Typhoon Fengshen struck the Philippines last week, leaving more than 280 people dead.

An AusAid officer has been dispatched to the disaster area to determine how much further assistance will be required, reported Australian Associated Press.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has sent a letter of condolence to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Jennifer Tarol Barrientos was born in San Mateo Rizal. She is also the Binibining Pilipinas titleholder for 2008. She is the official representative of the Philippines to the Miss Universe pageant which will take place in Nha Trang, Vietnam on July 14, 2008.

Jennifer Barrientos won the crown for Binibining Pilipinas Universe, Patricia Fernandez for International and Janina San Miguel World at the pageant’s coronation at the Araneta Coliseum late Saturday that was aired by GMA Network.

Jennifer took up Tourism in the University of Sto. Tomas, from San Mateo Rizal, previously worked in Holiday Inn and Macau Star World Hotel.

Why did you join? “It was my mother’s dream and now it’s mine.” “This will also help me achieve my other dreams such as being a model for high fashion magazines and fashion shows.”

What makes you stand out from the rest? “I always do my best. I know how to stay calm in a tight situation. My looks are also different. Many think I’m Indian but I am pure Filipino.” “I come from a Christian family so I really value my relationship with God.”

It is difficult to decide that weather a celebrity is singer, actor, or a model but at the end we know they are popular among the entire world. Shockingly most hot celebrities have very poor background and childhood. Almost all of them have worst relations between their parents so they started showbiz at very early age.

Her Early Life.

Nicole Scherzinger was born in Honolulu. Her mother was Hawaiian/Russian and her father was Filipino/Hawaiian so she is a combination of different cultures and countries. Her mother Rosemary was just 18 at the time of Nicole’s birth and separated from her father when Nicole was a baby. Louisville, Kentucky was their next destiny and they moved there with her half sister Ke’ala and German-American stepfather Gary Scherzinger, who adopted Nicole. While attending Youth Performing Arts School she began her life as performer in Louisville. She put her studies on hold in 1999 to sing backing vocals for the rock band Days of the New. Read the rest of this entry »

Yuppie Filipinos get the chance to be employed easily once they obtained their bachelor or diploma degrees because of the emergence of contact centers everywhere in the Philippines. These workers started to fill the 24-hour skyscrapers that gives a colorful background to metro Manila’s financial districts at nighttime.

This only shows that people employed in this job for a couple of years were used to on their ticking biological sleeping habit. They slept all day long just to regain their strength and wake up again at the wee hours to prepare themselves for a nightlong work. Clad in casual attire with matching fashionable coats are the most common props if you are a customer service representative. During break time some even used to occupy the al fresco various dining areas in Manila. In Ortigas for instance, call center agents enjoy their 30-minute to 1 hour break at McDonald’s, Starbucks, among others. For those who have extra pennies, they enjoy the hot aroma of Brazilian coffee in various blend. Others may sit on the corner and lit up their cigarette in a way of releasing their stress from work. It is enjoying isn’t it?

At 8 pm. about 100 people, most 25 younger, sit in a room of enclosed cubicles outfitted with phones and computers. They’ll be working until 4 am. or depends on the schedule of their shifts. Read the rest of this entry »

Myleene Angela Klass (born 6 April 1978) is an English actress, singer, model, pianist, radio and television presenter, formerly a member of the short lived UK pop band Hear’Say. Musician, writer and, latterly, M&S model, Klass has been playing the piano and violin since she was four and was recently nominated for a Classical Brit award for an album of her own compositions. She presents the morning show at weekends on Classic FM and her new BBC show will bring choral music to prime-time TV

Before finding fame via Popstars, Klass provided backing vocals on tour with the likes of k.d. lang, Michael Crawford and Robbie Williams. She has also toured with Cliff Richard.

In 1998, Klass spent a short period as part of a reality show for Bravo, called The Doll’s House.

On 13 November 1999, Klass was also a featured back up singer for Cliff Richard’s ITV1 An Audience With TV special, appearing on stage with him for a rendition of the recent number-one single The Millennium Prayer. Read the rest of this entry »

Members of a fraternity at the University of the Philippines held their annual ritual of running naked on campus six months early on Wednesday — by official request — to celebrate the state-run school’s centennial anniversary. Hundreds of cheering students lined the main campus avenue, jostling for positions with their digital and cell phone cameras.

The “Oblation Run” — named for the university’s iconic symbol of a naked man with outstretched arms that symbolizes his selfless offering of himself to the nation — started in 1977 as a gimmick by the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity to promote the screening of a movie about oppressed plantation workers called “Naked Hero.” The film had been banned by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Since then, the fraternity has used the stunt to make political statements, from raising AIDS awareness to demanding the resignation of the Philippine president, said Armand Padilla, a fraternity alumnus and organizer of the centennial run.

He said the university’s centennial committee requested the fraternity stage the annual nude demonstration as one of the activities to mark the school’s 100th foundation year. Read the rest of this entry »

Philippine fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. announced Friday it had acquired 70 percent of Taiwanese restaurant chain Lao Dong for 61.1 million pesos (1.37 million dollars).

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, the publicly-listed Jollibee said that as part of the sale, it would invest an additional 30.6 million pesos while Lao Dong’s owners would put 13.1 million pesos into the new joint venture.

The new venture will work to expand Lao Dong’s restaurant chain in Taiwan and China.

The owners of Lao Dong will help Jollibee develop food products and other services for its business units in China, the Philippines and other countries.

Jollibee is the biggest restaurant chain in the Philippines, operating almost 1,500 outlets for its signature Jollibee hamburgers along with pizzas, baked goods, French pastries and other dishes.

It has 194 outlets abroad including China, the United States, Dubai and Indonesia.

Lao Dong, a full-service restaurant specialising in noodles, has eight outlets in Taipei, the disclosure said.

Last year, Jollibee Foods Corp. acquired the Chinese restaurant chain Hongzhuangyuan for about 50.5 million dollars.

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics is to invest one billion dollars in a “state-of-the-art” microchip manufacturing facility in the Philippines, it was reported Friday.

The Manila Bulletin newspaper said the facility will be built on a 30-hectare (74-acre) site in the Clark Special Economic Zone near the former US airforce base north of Manila.

Quoting unnamed sources, the paper said “it will be a state-of-the-art” facility with construction starting “within the year.”

At present, Samsung has two operations in the country, Samsung Electronics Philippines Manufacturing Corp. and Samsung Electronics Philippines Corp.

The entry of Samsung in Clark will boost the zone as a hub for electronics chipmaking, an unnamed official said.

“This means the country can move upstream to design and manufacturing, as opposed to the low value-added testing and packaging operations,” the official said. Read the rest of this entry »

CNN’s Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz, his 17-year-old daughter and a corporate marketing executive will represent overseas Filipinos to carry the Olympic flames in the forth-coming torch relay of the Beijing Games, the Philippine government said Wednesday.

In a report released by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Philippine Ambassador to China Sonia Cataumber Brady said it is a “great honor” for the Philippines to be represented in the Olympic torch relay through the trio.

FlorCruz and his daughter Michelle were selected by the Beijing Municipal government for their contribution to China, Brady said.

FlorCruz is scheduled to carry the Olympic torch on August 6 in Beijing, two days before the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. His daughter Michelle, a student at the International School in Beijing, will carry the Olympic torch on August 3 in Tangshan City.

Marco Antonio Torres, 38, a Beijing-based Filipino marketer for M Moser Associates, will carry the Olympic torch on July 5 in Lanzhou, Gansu province, the foreign affairs department said. Read the rest of this entry »

The first Philippines-made, double-hulled oil tanker, designed to prevent oil spills, has set sail, local reports said on Tuesday.

“The ship is currently transporting bunker fuel in different parts of the country, from the Pacific Ocean to the Petron refinery in Bataan. It started last April 8. So far, the performance of M/T Matikas is far more than we expected,” Philippine TV network ABS-CBN reported, citing George Cottrell, president of the Herma Shipyard Inc., the biggest Filipino-owned shipyard in the Philippines.

Herminio Esguerra, chairman of the Herma Group of Companies, told reporters double-hulled ships such as M/T Matikas would help lower the incidence of oil spills.

With a double-hull, petroleum products are protected on all sides, he added.

“Any leaks caused by punctures will be absorbed by another hull.There is a hollow which will hold the products in case of an accident”, Esguerra said.

The Philippine government imposed double-layered ships as carriers of petroleum products after M/T Solar, a single-hulled oil tanker carrying more than two million liters of bunker fuel, sank at Guimaras Strait in the central Philippines on August 11, 2006. Read the rest of this entry »