San Carlos City and Agno town are being eyed as potential ‘hot spots’ during the 2010 electoral campaign period, and to be listed as among the “areas of immediate concern” in the province. Senior Supt. Percival Barba, police provincial director, said past electoral violence in San Carlos City and Agno…

POLITICAL POT HEATS UP LINGAYEN—For Second District Congressman Victor Agbayani, the die is cast in his bid to return to his old post as governor of Pangasinan. Agbayani announced on Wednesday that he has no other plan in the May 2010 election but to run for governor, which he held…

LINGAYEN—Only a few Pangasinenses heeded the call for General Amnesty for Firearms from July 1 to October 31 this year, according to Police Provincial Director Percival Barba. Barba reported that only 1,600 firearms were registered in the province during the four-month amnesty period out of the 10,430 firearms that were…

SAN NICOLAS—Despite his vehement denial, Mayor Leoncio Saldivar III of this town is under probe for his possible links with an armed robbery gang operating in the province and in other parts of the country. Saldivar is suspected to be behind the Alvin Flores Gang that was involved in the…

FOUR members of the opposition in the House of Representatives won’t back the proposal calling for the decommissioning of the San Roque Dam in San Manuel town. The proposal was made by Pangasinan mayors led by Urdaneta City Mayor Amadeo Perez Jr. in the immediate aftermath of the major flooding…

ARCHBISHOP Socrates Villegas, officially installed as the new head of the Lingayen-Dagupan Archdiocese on Wednesday, called on the people in his mission to be the “salt of the earth”. Using the Filipino word for salt, asin, from which the name Pangasinan (pang-asin) originated, he exhorted his flock, the Catholic laity…

DAGUPAN’S agriculture office is under fire from the city’s finance committee for its poor collection of fees and permits from fish pen operations as half of the operators are doing business illegally. And City Agriculture Officer Emma Molina feels helpless about it. The city council has said it will look…

FATHER SOC AND THE PRINCES—Newly installed Archbishop Socrates Villegas (middle) is flanked by Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales and Cardinal Ricardo Vidal and other archbishops and bishops, along with Papal Nuncio Edward Joseph Adams shortly after his canonical installation at the Saint John the Evangelist Metropolitamn Cathedral in Dagupan on Wednesday. (Punchphoto by Willie…

I SHALL RETURN—Second District Rep. Victor Agbayani, who recently bolted from the administration party to join the Liberal Party, announces to the local media his plan to run in the 2010 election for governor, a position he held for three straight terms from 1998 to 2007. (Punchphoto by Cesar S….