Justin Bieber caught speeding ‘like a maniac’

LOS ANGELES – Teen heartthrob singer Justin Bieber was pulled over and cited for speeding “like a maniac” to shake off paparazzi Friday near Los Angeles, police and a lawmaker who witnessed the incident said.

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) spokesman said officers saw two vehicles speeding on the 101 freeway northwest near Coldwater Canyon northwest of Los Angeles, where the Canadian crooner lives.

“Officers made an enforcement stop on one of the vehicles, took him off the freeway,” CHP spokesman Vince Ramirez told AFP, adding that the driver “was identified as Justin Bieber.”

“He was issued a citation for speeding,” he added, saying he had no further details.

The 18-year-old was driving his eye-catching mirror chrome Fisker Karma, according to the celebrity news website TMZ.

LA City Councilman Dennis Zine, who witnessed the incident, told TMZ that Bieber was driving at over 100 miles per hour (160 kph).

“Bieber was driving like a maniac. He was weaving in and out of traffic. There was hardly any space between cars as he weaved from lane to lane,” he said.

Zine, who was an LAPD motor officer for 18 years, added: “If I was on patrol, I would have arrested him for reckless driving. I was going 60 and he drove by me like he was in a rocket ship. He was a maniac.”

He added that paparazzi behaved irresponsibly, driving on the freeway shoulder. At least four lensmen swarmed around Bieber’s car once it was pulled over, he added.

A spokesman for the Canadian singer declined to comment.

Last August, Bieber was involved in a minor car crash in his black Ferrari, in an underground parking lot, in which a Honda Civic “tapped” his car from behind. He was not cited over that incident.

source: interaksyon.com

BPO sector payroll to hit P247 billion this year

MANILA – The country’s business process outsourcing sector is expected to shell out a total of P247 billion in salaries to its workers this year, boosting consumption spending, a lawmaker said Thursday.

“No matter how we look at it, P247 billion represents a huge amount of money being coursed through the economy every year, and helping to drive consumption spending,” Pasig Representative Roman Romulo said.

The consumption spending will help create recurring demand for goods and services, thus perking up domestic industries, he said.

The P247 billion represents about 40 to 45 percent of the sector’s revenue, projected to hit up to $13 billion this year.

“To put the P247 billion into perspective, it is equal to around 14 percent of the national government’s P1.816-trillion spending program this year, and larger than the budgets of the top five departments,” Romulo said.

A previous survey by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas showed that BPO employees on average receive P383,863 in annual compensation.

Romulo said the P247 billion is also some 53 percent greater than the P161 billion in combined annual benefits paid by the Social Security System, Government Service Insurance System and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to their respective members.

The SSS and GSIS paid P76 billion and P50 billion, respectively, in benefits to their members in 2011, while Philhealth paid P35 billion.

The BPO industry is projected to rake in up to $27 billion in annual revenues and directly engage some 1.3 million Filipino workers by 2016. It posted $11 billion in revenues on a labor force of 638,000 in 2011.

This year, the sector hopes to create 126,000 new jobs and generate $2 billion in extra earnings, according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines.

The industry encompasses contact center services; medical, legal and other data transcription; animation; software development; engineering design; and digital content.

source: interaksyon.com

Filipino Jasmine Lee makes history, wins in South Korea election

MANILA, Philippines – Call her Representative Jasmine Lee.

Filipino-Korean actress and civil servant Jasmine Bacurnay-Lee, 35, has been elected as a proportional representative in South Korea’s National Assembly election following her party’s majority victory in the polls held on April 11.

With her win, the Davao City native has made history in South Korea as the first Filipina and naturalized Korean to become a lawmaker.

Lee’s win is a result of the stunning victory of the ruling Saenuri Party, to which she belongs.

According to Korean media, the Saenuri Party won 152 seats including 25 proportional representation seats out of the 300 positions that needed to be filled.

The opposition Democratic United Party (DUP) won 127 seats including 21 in proportional representation, while the United Progressive Party won 13 seats (6 in proportional representation), Liberal Forward Party with five seats (2 in proportional representation) and independents won three seats.

In the election, voters chose 246 district representatives and 54 for proportional representation. On the ballot, a voter chose a district representative and a political party.

The proportional representation seats have been allocated to political parties that have garnered at least 3 percent of the total valid votes.

Lee is No. 15 on the Saenuri Party’s proportional representation list and will be one of the party’s 25 proportional representatives in the 19th National Assembly.

She was active in the campaign, supporting her party’s district representative candidates in cities and provinces.

An actress, TV host and public servant, Lee is also an advocate of multiculturalism and migrant women in Korea.

On her official Facebook page, Filipinos began congratulating Lee on her victory.

With her win, Lee overcame a barrage of criticisms pertaining to her education. An Internet café forum called “Antimulticulture” on Korean portal Daum.net raised questions on Lee’s academic background. This was immediately picked up by the Korean media.

In an email last week to this writer, Lee said the press “can sometimes exaggerate things, not to mention being 'lost in translation,' specially when Korean reports are translated in English. Also differences in the educational system do exist, as well as culture-related misunderstandings.”

Lee completed three years of the four-year Biology course at the Ateneo de Davao University.

She met Korean Lee Dongho in Davao in 1994 and they got married in 1995. She moved to South Korea in the same year and became a naturalized Korean in 1998. Her husband died in 2010 in an accident. They have two children.

Lee worked as a panelist on TV and is very active in helping foreign migrants in Korea.

Last year, she starred as the Filipino mother of Korean actor Yoo Ah-in in the hit Korean film “Wandeuki” (international title “Punch”).

She is also the executive secretary of Waterdrop Korea and works at the Seoul government’s Foreign Residents Assistance Division.

Last January, Lee became the first Filipino to receive the Korea Image Millstone Award from the Corea Image Communication Institute (CICI) for

her contribution to promoting multiculturalism in South Korea.

source: mb.com.ph