PROSECUTOR'S GUT DIVE. Cebu City Assistant Prosecutor Lovey Lady L. Villanueva investigated the complaint for cyberlibel against dyHP reporter and anchorman Arnold Bustamante. She wrote the seven-page resolution that seeks to send Bustamante to jail, which her superiors approved, leading to his arrest last September 29. He's been out on bail.
Few people know that Lovey Lady -- there's no "l" in Lovey -- is herself a former journalist, a reporter like Arnold.
Antonio Antogop Jr. posted that Villanueva is his "former colleague at CDN (Cebu Daily News, the print version)." Ton said she "used to do features, sports and general assignments." Cebu Capitol's Katy Navarro-Bethune told me A.P. Lovey Lady was a correspondent when she joined CDN ("sometime 2002 to 2004"), first doing sports stories, then moved to Metro, covering Talisay City, with, among others, Toledo City Hall's Ferliza Calizar, who was then with The Freeman, said Lovey covered Cebu City Hall after the Talisay stint, then did the regional beat.
Was Lovey one of the guys? Maybe in her journo days.
Not in 2022, when she would look at a real libel case, not with the eyes of a St. Theresa's College mass-com student or a CDN beat reporter, but with the prosecutor's gut drive to put people, including former colleagues, behind bars.
DID YOU KNOW, you probably didn't, that...
[] ... The reason Bellgium Marketing, distributor of those herbal products, "ordered" broadcaster Bustamante to tell his audience not to buy from the complainants -- two retailers both bearing the name La Nueva -- was that his company believed La Nueva was no longer selling its items and the capsules moving from the stores were "counterfeit."
La Nueva disputed that suspicion or belief, daring the distributor to check La Nueva's inventory. Bellgium's rep allegedly admitted to a La Nueva rep that the instruction to Bustamante was intended to "warn" La Nueva. DYHP manager Atty. Rupil Banoc told me last September 28 the case is "actually between La Nueva and the herbal product distributor." But it was his anchorman Arnold who uttered the allegedly libelous words on radio -- and on the internet -- not Bellgium's rep. It's now the broadcaster holding the rap bag.
[] ... A.P. Villanueva's resolution was dated March 11 yet. But the warrant of arrest against Arnold Bustamante was issued and served only on September 29. So where did the resolution tarry for more than five months?
MARY ANN: 'HE WAS LYING.' Councilor Mary Ann de los Santos (BOPK) said twice, "He was lying," apparently referring to Atty. Gerry Carillo, the mayor's rep in the city's disaster council. Ex-councilor Gerry purportedly claimed in an executive session that there was already a Sanggunian-approved investment plan to support the City Government's donation of P50 million to earthquake-struck LGUs in Luzon. There's none yet, Mary Ann told her colleagues at the City Council's September 28 regular session.
'BE FAITHFUL TO (LOTTO) NUMBER.' A PCSO official explains the phenomenon of 433 bettors winning a jackpot of nearly P240 million last Saturday, October 1. They won, he says, because they were "faithful" to their numbers. "Just like being faithful to your wife," he says.
Harvard statistics professor Dr. Mark Glickman disagrees, says: "The odds of winning any given lottery remain the same despite the numbers selected or even if you buy a ticket for every drawing. Your odds only improve by buying more tickets."
The odds of winning lotto are placed at one in 3,575,880. The probability of more than 400 winners sharing the Grand Lotto jackpot? One out of a number followed by more than a thousand zeros, said an Octa Research mathematician.