{"id":314935,"date":"2020-01-03T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T20:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=314935"},"modified":"2020-01-03T06:00:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T20:00:43","slug":"2010-to-2019-a-look-back-at-the-10s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/2010-to-2019-a-look-back-at-the-10s\/","title":{"rendered":"2010 to 2019: A look back at the \u201910s"},"content":{"rendered":"
Super Typhoon Yutu clobbered the CNMI near the end of 2018. The Coral Ocean Point is one of the hotels in the CNMI that is considered to have sustained the most damage. (Ferdie De La Torre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2010<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Partial government shutdown and payless paydays.
\n\u2022 Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) is reelected in a sweeping victory.
\n\u2022 The Palms Resort closes two years after it took over Hotel Nikko in February 2008.
\n\u2022 Qingmei Cheng, a 28-year old masseuse who was detained in Susupe on federal charges of trying to sneak into Guam, ignites a political firestorm after it was revealed that she was temporarily released from her cell to provide massage therapy to Gov. Benigno R. Fitial during the early morning hours of Jan. 8.<\/p>\n

2011<\/strong>
\n\u2022 From work hour cuts to joblessness, shrinking consumer base, high cost of living, and even delayed release of tax rebate and scholarship checks\u2014almost everything that went wrong boiled down to a single factor: the dismal economy.
\n\u2022 The mysterious disappearance of the Luhk sisters\u2014Faloma and Maleina\u2014near their residence in As Teo on May 25.
\n\u2022 Judge Ramona Villagomez Manglona sworn in as chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the NMI for a 10-year term.
\n\u2022 Rep. Raymond Palacios (Cov-Saipan) was arrested on ice-trafficking charges.<\/p>\n

2012<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Arctic Circle Air launches cargo services.
\n\u2022 More China and Russian flights arrive. Tourists were welcomed aboard China Eastern Airlines and AviaCharter DV.
\n\u2022 E-Land Group, through its subsidiary E-Land Park, bought Palms Resort Saipan for $20 million from United Micronesia Development Association. The real estate company also became the majority owner of Coral Ocean Point and purchased stocks of Pacific Island Club Saipan.
\n\u2022 Saipan Grand Hotel was rebranded as Kanoa Resort Saipan. <\/p>\n

2013<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Gov. Benigno R. Fitial resigns on Feb. 20, 2013, days after the House of Representatives impeached him on charges of corruption, felony, and neglect of duty.
\n\u2022 Three die in Star Marianas plane crash\u2014pilot Luis Silva and two Chinese tourists, a 29-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman.
\n\u2022 CNMI community pitches in to help Haiyan victims in the Philippines
\n\u2022 Conviction of Sen. Juan M. Ayuyu for smuggling endangered fruit bats from Rota to Saipan.<\/p>\n

2014<\/strong>
\n\u2022 CNMI government and Best Sunshine International Ltd. ink $7.1-billion casino development agreement.
\n\u2022 Gov. Eloy S. Inos and then-Lt. Gov. Ralph DLG Torres top the general elections.\u2028
\n\u2022 A police officer fatally shoots his former girlfriend with his service firearm and then himself.
\n\u2022 Bench trial of former attorney general Edward T. Buckingham in Superior Court. He was found guilty of all public corruption charges except one and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison, all suspended.
\n\u2022 The jury trial of Joseph A. Crisostomo over the kidnapping, rape, killing, and robbing of bartender Emerita R. Romero began on April 7.
\n\u2022 Chinatsu and Natsuki Yamasa disappear in Marpi on June 30. Their car rental was recovered at Wing Beach.
\n\u2022 Rota Sen. Juan M. Ayuyu sentenced to 41-month prison term for conspiring to violate the Endangered Species Act.
\n\u2022 Best Sunshine gives the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. $10 million, allowing CUC to distribute $635.71 worth of vouchers to CNMI residential accounts in early October. <\/p>\n

2015<\/strong>
\n\u2022 From what was forecasted as a Category 2, Typhoon Soudelor later turned out to be a ferocious Category 4 cyclone, with overwater wind intensity of 130 miles per hour and peak gust of 165 mph.
\n\u2022 Gov. Eloy S. Inos dies. He was 66 years old.
\n\u2022 Former governor Benigno R. Fitial pleads guilty to misconduct in public office and conspiracy to commit theft of services.
\n\u2022 Best Sunshine International, Ltd. launched Saipan\u2019s first and only live-gaming casino on Nov. 28.
\n\u2022 The Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino closes its doors on Aug. 14.
\n\u2022 Department of Public Lands opens bid for Mariana Resort lot; resort assigned lease to Best Sunshine. <\/p>\n

2016<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Lack of manpower continues to hound the CNMI,.
\n\u2022 Imperial Pacific International Holdings, the lone casino licensee on Saipan, is thrust into the spotlight after an article on Bloomberg claimed that the U.S. Department of the Treasury is looking into its casino operations.
\n\u2022 The CNMI had a mid-term election in November; Republican Party candidates dominated the polls.
\n\u2022 Japanese investor Takahisa Yamamoto sues Lt. Gov. Victor Hocog and the owners\/ operators of Luta Mermaid LLC, that owns the M\/V Luta for allegedly refusing to pay back the $3.4 million that he put up for the vessel. <\/p>\n

2017<\/strong>
\n\u2022 A total of 3,000 slots are removed from the CNMI-only Transitional Worker Program, or the CW-1 program, for fiscal year 2018. The numerical limit for the CW-1 program is set at 9,998, down from 12,998.
\n\u2022 Sen Sun, an alleged overstaying tourist, is indicted for operating a birth tourism business on Saipan.
\n\u2022 Three Filipino workers are killed inside a sewer lift station of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. in San Antonio on July 7.
\n\u2022 Construction workers stage protests over the lack of payment of contractors hired by Imperial Pacific International LLC.
\n\u2022 The Public School System\u2019s Board of Education sacks Education commissioner Cynthia I. Deleon Guerrero. <\/p>\n

2018<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Super Typhoon Yutu and Typhoon Mangkhut hit the CNMI in the latter part of this year.
\n\u2022 Several Public School System campuses sustained damage from Super Typhoon Yutu, including the Francisco M. Sablan Middle School, Hop-wood Middle School, Oleai Elementary School, and Marianas High School. The Northern Marianas College also sustained heavy \u2022 damage, causing it to cancel classes for over a month since the typhoon.
\n\u2022 Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Senate President Arnold I. Palacios of the Republican Party win the Nov. 13 general election for governor and lieutenant governor.
\n\u2022 The CNMI legalizes the medicinal and recreational use of marijuana on Sept. 21.
\n\u2022 U.S. President Donald Trump extends the CW program by 10 more years on July 25, 2018.
\n\u2022 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services terminates the humanitarian parole of close to 2,000 workers.
\n\u2022 A federal grand jury indicted Rota Mayor Efraim M. Atalig in federal court in September on fraud charges.
\n\u2022 TanHoldings Corp., together with its charitable arm, the Tan Siu Lin Foundation, pledged to donate $1 million to recovery efforts in the CNMI.
\n\u2022 Delta Air Lines, ends its service to Saipan and Palau last May 6, 2018.
\n\u2022 The CNMI economy grew by 25.1% in 2017 based on the gross domestic product estimates released by the U.S. Department of Commerce\u2019s Bureau of Economic Analysis. <\/p>\n

2019<\/strong><\/strong>
\n\u2022 On Nov. 7, 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed several search warrants on the Governor\u2019s Office; Gov. Ralph DLG Torres\u2019 house; an office of casino operator Imperial Pacific International (CNMI) LLC; the office of Alfred Yue of Marianas \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 Consultancy Services LLC, a consultant for the casino; Legend Realty Saipan; and the Torres Brothers\u2019 law office, to look for evidence of possible fraud, money laundering, and other federal violations.
\n\u2022 A Skymark Airlines Inc. Boeing 737-800 plane carrying 177 passengers touched down at the Francisco C. Ada\/Saipan International Airport last Nov. 29 for its inaugural non-stop daily regular direct flight from Tokyo to Japan.
\n\u2022 Twenty-two-year-old Akiyama Eiki drowned on Bird Island on Jan. 1, 2019. On Jan. 4, Aurelio del Prado, 74, died after being hit by a car as he was crossing the street across Joeten Dandan. On Oct. 26, a car drove off Banzai Cliff; a body has yet to be found. A car collision on Dec. 16, killed Sergio Apostol, who later succumbed at the hospital to multiple injuries.
\n\u2022 On March 23, police found a decomposing body in Kagman. On April 5, a dead man is found under a concrete bench in Chalan Kanoa\u2019s district 4. On May 13, a man is found dead near Dandan Middle School.
\n\u2022 On May 28, police officers came upon an unconscious Dong Pabalinas along Beach Road. He was later pronounced dead at the Commonwealth Health Center.
\n\u2022 On Aug. 13, an elderly woman was found dead in a home in Finasisu. On Nov. 25, a decomposing body of a still unidentified person was found in the outer cove of Bird Island.
\n\u2022 On Nov. 12, an inmate of the Department of Corrections prison in Susupe was found dead, with unofficial reports claiming that he hung himself.
\n\u2022 On Dec. 13, two women, Li Na Lim, 42, and Linhua Cui, 54, were found dead inside Rice Cake Best Food Restaurant in San Antonio. The women were shot.
\n\u2022 CNMI government mplements a 72-hour bi-weekly work schedule beginning June 23, 2019, as the government prioritized recovery efforts in the wake of Super Typhoon Yutu. It was lifted on Nov. 24, 2019.
\n\u2022 Effective Oct. 3, 2019, the length of time that Chinese tourists are allowed to stay in the CNMI was cut from 45 days to just 14 days instead.
\n\u2022 The Commonwealth Cannabis Commission was created in early September 2019.
\n\u2022 H.R. 559 is enacted on June 26, 2019, providing CNMI-only residence for an estimated 1,039 humanitarian parolees.
\n\u2022 Last Oct. 3, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stopped the entry of Russian tourists to the CNMI and Guam without first obtaining a U.S. visa.
\n\u2022 The Pacific Epidemic and Emerging Disease Alert confirmed the presence of dengue fever in the Marianas in November. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2010 \u2022 Partial government shutdown and payless paydays. \u2022 Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":308642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}