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MANILA, Philippines – Being in the Senate brings a sense of excitement not only to rookie senators but even to those who are returning to the chamber. ”It’s a sweet return, happy and exciting return,” returning Sen. Francis  “Kiko” Pangilinan told reporters on Thursday. Pangilinan last served as a senator  from 2016 to 2022.  Instead

A courageous Thai security guard successfully thwarted a knife-wielding thief attempting to rob a bank in the Isaan province of Buriram yesterday, June 18. Officers from Nonsuwan Police Station received an emergency alarm from the Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives, Nonsuwan branch, and rushed to the scene. Upon arrival, they found the suspect, 38 …

The story Bank robbery thwarted by brave security guard in Buriram as seen on Thaiger News.

MY world fell apart on New Year’s Eve 2008 when my fiance of six years told me he didn’t love me anymore. 

I moved out of his flat that we shared the next day – heartbroken and lost. I didn’t know what to do with the emotional pain, so I drank. 

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Amy now, having been sober for six years[/caption]

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Amy’s relationship with alcohol was a desperate coping mechanism[/caption]

My relationship with alcohol quickly shifted from something social to a desperate coping mechanism. 

Nights were spent in a local pub with friends, and bottles of wine consumed with my mum Caroline until the anger or sadness passed.

I wouldn’t go out sober. Drinking felt essential. It gave me confidence, made me feel fun. 

But things began to spiral. I lost my job at New Look not long after. Someone had complained I smelled of alcohol. 

That part wasn’t upheld – but instead of seeing it as a warning sign, I used it as justification. 

I told myself it was their fault I’d lost my job. It didn’t stop me drinking – I drank more.

In the jobs that followed, mainly in retail, I’d count down the hours until I could get home and pour a glass of wine. 

I was high-functioning enough that no one really knew. Or, at least, no one said anything.

By 2015, I started hiding bottles of booze. That’s when I knew, deep down, that something wasn’t right.

But I convinced myself it was no one else’s business. I was living at my mum’s while saving to move to Cambodia. 

A friend had told me it was really nice and I thought a change of country might change me.

But one night I came home from drinking, and my mum had lined up all the empty booze bottles on the kitchen side. There were about 15. 

She had found them shoved at the back of my wardrobe. I still remember the look on her face. There was no shouting – just quiet heartbreak.

Moving to Cambodia on my own in 2016 gave me total freedom – but it also gave me a deep sense of loneliness.

I was teaching English as a foreign language to young children, and lived with a woman from New Zealand in an apartment in Phnom Penh.

But my behaviour didn’t change. One night I’d ended up at a casino with a group of men I’d met in a bar, phone dead, no way for anyone to reach me. 

My housemate panicked so called my mum. I thought they were overreacting. That was my mindset.

I hoped coming back to the UK after a year would fix me – but even on the flight back, and drinking a beer at the airport, I knew it wouldn’t.

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Amy once drank so much she fell and fractured her face[/caption]

I got my own place, which meant there was no one around to see what I was doing.

My mum tried to talk to me gently about it sometimes, and I’d make these half-hearted promises to cut down. But the truth is, living alone made it way too easy to carry on.

Then came Christmas 2018 when I was 38. I was working in a pub, and after one of my shifts, I drank way too much. I ended up drink-driving home. I don’t even remember doing it.

My colleagues were so concerned they called the police. But again, I didn’t see the danger – or my own responsibility. I blamed them. In my head, I was the victim.

I never went back to that job but I also didn’t drive again until I got sober in 2019, so a part of me knew.

By the end, I was drinking between three and four bottles of wine a day. That had become my normal. I didn’t even think it was excessive – it was just what I needed to get through the day.

I stopped going out as much because it was easier to drink at home. When I did go out, I’d usually end up black-out drunk. I’d fall over, lose my keys, wake up in places I had no memory of ever going.

It became too risky, too unpredictable. So I started choosing the sofa, a bottle – or four – and my own little bubble of self-pity.

Eventually, I couldn’t do anything without a drink in me. I needed at least two glasses of wine just to get ready for work because my hands would be shaking so much.

I isolated myself a lot because I was trying so hard to hide what was really going on, as I didn’t want to face questions from friends or family.

I wasn’t in a romantic relationship during that time. But I was promiscuous. I had a lot of one-night stands, thinking they’d somehow make me feel better. They didn’t.

I’d wake up filled with shame and self-loathing, and then use that as another excuse to drink.

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On one occasion, Amy ended up driving herself home, drunk[/caption]

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In the summer of 2018, I experienced what should have been a rock bottom moment. That was when I fractured my face after a fall while drunk. But it wasn’t. Not yet.

I had to stop drinking for eight days while I was on antibiotics. But, the following week I celebrated by drinking again. A reward. I knew then I was in trouble.

I went to my first AA meeting in January 2019. I was drunk when I went. I don’t even remember much about it, but that was the first time I admitted something was wrong – even if I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet.

Alcohol and addiction had affected my confidence, my sense of self, my ability to trust my own thoughts. I stopped making plans for the future. I lived day-to-day, hour-to-hour, bottle-to-bottle. It robbed me of time.

And, it impacted my health – my body was exhausted, my hands shook, I sweated constantly, my anxiety was through the roof. But I didn’t care – my main concern was hiding the truth, from others, and most importantly, from myself. I told lies. I lived a double life: the version I showed the world and the one that sat at home pouring another glass.

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Amy called the Samaritans for help[/caption]

The moment it all stopped wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was May 2019, and I passed out at work working as a store manager of a retail shop. I was drinking all day, every day – even at work. When they found me unconscious, I felt pure shame. But still not surprised.

At the same time, I was also in therapy, trying to cope without actually telling my therapist I was still drinking. Years of buried pain came up – heartbreak, my parents’ divorce, the fallout from my cancelled wedding. I had no idea how to cope. So I drank more.

But, that day, something cracked. I didn’t want to live like this anymore. But I didn’t want to die either. I’d been given the number for the Samaritans, and I called them.

That call saved my life. After that, I rang my mum and told her I needed help.

My mum suggested rehab. And four days later, I was in. Now, I’ve been sober for six years, since 8 May 2019.

If I’m honest, I haven’t found my recovery that hard – not in the way people expect. I accepted very early on that I just couldn’t drink. I loved rehab. I soaked up everything. I started going to 12-step meetings and worked through a programme.

The real shift came in October 2020, when I finally shared on social media that I was in recovery. I was tired of pretending. And the outpouring of love and “me too” messages flipped something in my mind. Maybe I didn’t have to hide.

That’s when I began helping others – and helping others helped me. That’s how it works.

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Amy now helps others get sober[/caption]

On the outside, the changes are obvious – I look healthier, I show up, I’ve built a business. In 2022, I decided to write a book to help others. How Did I Get Here: Building A Life Beyond Alcohol wasn’t just about sharing my story – it was about telling the truth.

Even when I got sober, there weren’t enough stories that talked about the identity crisis, the grief, the rediscovery, the unlearning, the rising.

I wanted women to know they weren’t broken.

Drinking has been normalised, glamourised, romanticised to the point where not drinking makes you the weird one.

But here’s the truth: you don’t need alcohol to have fun, to fit in, or to survive the day.

And once you realise that, once you live that – you start to see the lie for what it is.

Daniel Padilla received a warm welcome from the people of Marawi Supreme Idol Daniel Padilla thanked the people of Marawi for the kindness he received from them. Daniel is currently part of the Kapamilya primetime series Incognito. This became his showbiz return after taking a break. He took his short hiatus after his breakup with ... Read more

The post Daniel Padilla Expresses Gratitude To The People Of Marawi appeared first on PhilNews.

A SEVEN-year-old girl who fled the war in Ukraine to receive life-saving leukaemia treatment in Israel has been tragically killed.

Nastia Borik, her grandmother and two young cousins were all reported dead following the Iranian blitz on a Bat Yam apartment building in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

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Members of Israel’s Home Front Command search for missing people under the rubble of apartment block Bat Yam[/caption]

Her mother Maria Peshkurova, 30, remains missing, the Times of Israel reports.

The attack, which is believed to have wounded 180 people and killed at least six, comes amid six nights of heavy missile exchange between the two warring countries.

Nastia Borik arrived in Israel in 2022 with her mother, grandmother, Lena Peshkurova, 60, and two of her cousins, Konstantin Totvich, 9, and Ilya Peshkurov, 13, to seek life-saving treatment for Leukemia.

The girl’s father, Artem, reportedly stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war against Russia.

He could not accompany his daughter due to a government order barring men under the age of 60 from leaving the country during the conflict.

Her tragic killing comes as tensions between Israel and Iran have reached cataclysmic heights, as a major Israeli hospital and an Iranian nuclear reactor were both blitzed this morning.

Soroka Hospital in Beersheba was severely damaged when it was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile, with Israel reporting around 70 casualties overnight – some serious.

The IDF confirmed it attacked an “inactive” plutonium nuclear reactor in Arak to “prevent it from being restored and used for nuclear weapons”.

After days of speculation, Trump on Tuesday night approved plans to attack Iran, but is holding off in case Tehran agrees to abandon its nuclear programme, reports the Wall Street Journal.

If given the go-ahead, the plans would see the US join Israel in pounding Iran’s nuke sites – which Tehran has warned would spark “all out war”.

The UK is yet to declare whether it would stand with the US should Trump decide to go ahead with military action.

But Sir Keir Starmer has been warned by Attorney General Lord Hermer that the UK’s involvement could be illegal.

It comes as Sir Keir held a Cobra crisis meeting on Wednesday with a potential US-led strike reportedly being discussed.

Trump has become much more vocal on the conflict, though refuses to confirm his plans: “I may do it, I may not do it,” he said on Wednesday.

If the US does collaborate in the attacks, Iran’s Fordow nuclear development area could be its first target.

A fearsome 15-ton mega bomb known as a Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bomb could be used to strike the core of the plant, which Israel is unable to reach with its own weapons.

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office Trump acknowledged the US is the only nation capable of blitzing the key nuke site.

But he added: “That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it – at all.”

Trump also fired a two-word warning to Iran’s Supreme Leader after revealing Tehran was trying to return to the negotiating table.

When a White House reporter asked Trump about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s declaration that he will “never surrender”, Trump simply responded: “Good luck.”

Trump even directly threatened Khamenei as he said the US knows where he is hiding but will not kill him “for now”.

Khamenei responded by saying: “The battle begins. This nation will never surrender.

“America should know that any military intervention will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage.”

US officials indicated the next 24 to 48 hours will be crucial in determining whether diplomacy could ever be achieved with Iran, ABC News reports.

It comes as warmongering Russia ironically warned the world sits “on the brink of catastrophe” as the raging Middle East conflict entered day six.

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The war has entered its sixth day[/caption]

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Emergency and Rescue soldiers search for trapped people following Iran’s overnight strikes[/caption]

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The two countries have launched fierce attacks on one another in the last few days causing heavy civilian casualty[/caption]

An arrest has been made of a 70 year old man, accused of operating an illegal soil excavation site in Chiang Mai’s San Kamphaeng district, which has caused disturbance for over 20 years. Police seized equipment, including two excavators and three dump trucks, at the site located in Buakkang subdistrict. Ayree has been suspected of …

The story Elderly man arrested for illegal excavation in Chiang Mai as seen on Thaiger News.

MANILA, Philippines — A netizen recently shared her experience of being scammed by a friend who used artificial intelligence tools (AI), specifically ChatGPT, to manipulate bank transaction screenshots. In a now-viral Facebook post, the netizen warned the public to be vigilant when doing online transactions. Her story began when her batchmate, who owed her money,

MANILA, Philippines – As the nation commemorates the 164th birth anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal, Senator Loren Legarda called on every Filipino to draw from the national hero’s life and legacy as a model of moral courage, deep social consciousness, and enduring compassion for the Filipino people. “More than being revolutionary through his writings, Rizal