The officials are accused before the Ombudsman of allowing a cockfighting establishment to operate in Victorias City, Negros Occidental, without a franchiseThe officials are accused before the Ombudsman of allowing a cockfighting establishment to operate in Victorias City, Negros Occidental, without a franchise

Ex-Victorias mayor Benitez, 26 others face complaint over cockfighting pit

2026/01/09 09:28

NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, Philippines – Negros Occidental 3rd District Representative and former Victorias City mayor Javier Miguel “Javi” Benitez and 26 others have been accused of dishonesty, grave abuse of authority, and graft before the Office of the Ombudsman over the operations of a cockfighting arena in the city.

The officials were accused of allowing the facility to operate without a franchise. The complaint was filed in June 2025 but was only made public on Wednesday, January 7.

The complaint was filed by Bernard Ferraris, a resident of Hacienda Estrella, Barangay 14, Victorias, against Benitez, current Mayor Abelardo Bantug III, and Vice Mayor Francis Frederick Palanca.

Benitez’s father, Albee, is the former mayor of Bacolod City and now the city’s representative. The elder Benitez, a gaming mogul, is a first cousin of Mayor Bantug.

Also named in the complaint were incumbent Victorias councilors Daylen Hofileña, Hermie Millan, Dino Acuña, Dexter Senido, Eric Alcobilla, Warlito Undar, Joji Adorio-Laraga, and Trishia Mae Maja. 

Former councilors Teresita Sta. Ana-Bartolome, Danilo de Asis Jr., and Audie Malaga were also included, along with five city hall department heads: City Planning and Development Officer Evangeline Alo, Engineer Mary Jean Majaducon, Licensing Officer Flossie Galla, former administrator Lindof De Castro, and Treasurer Maria Rosielyn Gustilo.

Seven officials of Barangay 14, including village chief Angelo Dorado, completed the list of respondents.

Ferraris alleged the officials erred in issuing barangay, business, and mayor’s permits to Jimmy Banguanga of Sitio Litib-Litib-Litib, Barangay 3, Victorias, to operate Cockpit 6119 in December 2024, despite the facility having no franchise and no resolution of no objection (RONO) from the city council.

He said Benitez, who was Victorias mayor in 2024, allegedly bypassed the authority of the local legislature. Benitez declined to comment when Rappler sought his statement.

Ferraris also said Mayor Bantug, then vice mayor, and several councilors refused to issue a RONO for Cockpit 6119. He argued that under the Local Government Code, mayors can only sign contracts and incur obligations with approval from the local legislature, including project clearances such as RONOs.

In his complaint, Ferraris said Cockpit 6119 lacked sufficient parking, violating a Victorias City ordinance. He added that a barangay basketball court is now being used as a parking lot as a result.

The officials, in a joint counter-affidavit, said the Victorias Traffic Authority has been coordinating with the barangay to manage parking and traffic flow in the area.

Ferraris also questioned the location of Cockpit 6119, noting it sits across from a Gawad Kalinga residential village and a Roman Catholic church, which, he said, is a violation of the 1974 Cockfighting Law. The law requires such facilities to be built and operated in areas designated by zoning laws or ordinances. 

He said the law prohibits cockfighting establishments within 200 meters of residential areas, commercial establishments, hospitals, schools, churches, or public buildings.

The respondents, in their joint counter-affidavit, denied any wrongdoing, calling Ferraris’ complaint “untrue and fabricated,” and dismissed allegations of graft, dishonesty, and abuse of authority.

A portion of the counter-affidavit showed Benitez stating that Victorias has an existing local law, City Ordinance No. 2023-35, or “An Ordinance Regulating the Establishment, Operation, and Maintenance of Cockpits of Victorias.” 

He said the Negros Occidental provincial board approved the ordinance under Resolution No. 0688 on June 20, 2023, noting it complied with existing laws and regulations. Victorias is a component city of Negros Occidental.

Benitez, in the affidavit, added that a franchise is no longer required to establish and operate cockfighting facilities. 

Mayor Bantug, who was vice mayor and presiding officer of the city council at the time, also said that under City Ordinance 2023-35, a RONO is no longer needed for Cockpit 6119.

Ferraris, however, asserted on Thursday, January 8, that the relevant provisions of the Local Government Code have not been amended. He said the Code devolved all regulatory powers over local cockfighting to the legislature.

“So, anything contrary to the existing law is illegal,” Ferraris said. “Franchise to operate from Sangguniang Bayan/Panlungsod must come first before the barangay, business and mayor’s permits to be granted to any cockpit arena across the country. It’s as simple as that.”

He added, “That’s why no local ordinance can simply amend or supersede Sections 447 and 458 of the Local Government Code of 1991.”

On November 28, 2025, Ombudsman Philip Camiguing issued a subpoena directing Victorias City Secretary Julien Olis to produce a certified copy of a city ordinance granting the supposed franchise. Olis has yet to issue a statement as of this posting. – Rappler.com

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Summarize Any Stock’s Earnings Call in Seconds Using FMP API

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Turn lengthy earnings call transcripts into one-page insights using the Financial Modeling Prep APIPhoto by Bich Tran Earnings calls are packed with insights. They tell you how a company performed, what management expects in the future, and what analysts are worried about. The challenge is that these transcripts often stretch across dozens of pages, making it tough to separate the key takeaways from the noise. With the right tools, you don’t need to spend hours reading every line. By combining the Financial Modeling Prep (FMP) API with Groq’s lightning-fast LLMs, you can transform any earnings call into a concise summary in seconds. The FMP API provides reliable access to complete transcripts, while Groq handles the heavy lifting of distilling them into clear, actionable highlights. In this article, we’ll build a Python workflow that brings these two together. You’ll see how to fetch transcripts for any stock, prepare the text, and instantly generate a one-page summary. Whether you’re tracking Apple, NVIDIA, or your favorite growth stock, the process works the same — fast, accurate, and ready whenever you are. Fetching Earnings Transcripts with FMP API The first step is to pull the raw transcript data. FMP makes this simple with dedicated endpoints for earnings calls. If you want the latest transcripts across the market, you can use the stable endpoint /stable/earning-call-transcript-latest. For a specific stock, the v3 endpoint lets you request transcripts by symbol, quarter, and year using the pattern: https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={q}&year={y}&apikey=YOUR_API_KEY here’s how you can fetch NVIDIA’s transcript for a given quarter: import requestsAPI_KEY = "your_api_key"symbol = "NVDA"quarter = 2year = 2024url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={API_KEY}"response = requests.get(url)data = response.json()# Inspect the keysprint(data.keys())# Access transcript contentif "content" in data[0]: transcript_text = data[0]["content"] print(transcript_text[:500]) # preview first 500 characters The response typically includes details like the company symbol, quarter, year, and the full transcript text. If you aren’t sure which quarter to query, the “latest transcripts” endpoint is the quickest way to always stay up to date. Cleaning and Preparing Transcript Data Raw transcripts from the API often include long paragraphs, speaker tags, and formatting artifacts. Before sending them to an LLM, it helps to organize the text into a cleaner structure. Most transcripts follow a pattern: prepared remarks from executives first, followed by a Q&A session with analysts. Separating these sections gives better control when prompting the model. In Python, you can parse the transcript and strip out unnecessary characters. A simple way is to split by markers such as “Operator” or “Question-and-Answer.” Once separated, you can create two blocks — Prepared Remarks and Q&A — that will later be summarized independently. This ensures the model handles each section within context and avoids missing important details. Here’s a small example of how you might start preparing the data: import re# Example: using the transcript_text we fetched earliertext = transcript_text# Remove extra spaces and line breaksclean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip()# Split sections (this is a heuristic; real-world transcripts vary slightly)if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1)else: prepared, qna = clean_text, ""print("Prepared Remarks Preview:\n", prepared[:500])print("\nQ&A Preview:\n", qna[:500]) With the transcript cleaned and divided, you’re ready to feed it into Groq’s LLM. Chunking may be necessary if the text is very long. A good approach is to break it into segments of a few thousand tokens, summarize each part, and then merge the summaries in a final pass. Summarizing with Groq LLM Now that the transcript is clean and split into Prepared Remarks and Q&A, we’ll use Groq to generate a crisp one-pager. The idea is simple: summarize each section separately (for focus and accuracy), then synthesize a final brief. Prompt design (concise and factual) Use a short, repeatable template that pushes for neutral, investor-ready language: You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call sectionfor {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise.Return:1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets)2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened)3) Forward outlook (specific statements)4) Risks / watch-outs5) Q&A takeaways (if present)Text:<<<{section_text}>>> Python: calling Groq and getting a clean summary Groq provides an OpenAI-compatible API. Set your GROQ_API_KEY and pick a fast, high-quality model (e.g., a Llama-3.1 70B variant). We’ll write a helper to summarize any text block, then run it for both sections and merge. import osimport textwrapimport requestsGROQ_API_KEY = os.environ.get("GROQ_API_KEY") or "your_groq_api_key"GROQ_BASE_URL = "https://api.groq.com/openai/v1" # OpenAI-compatibleMODEL = "llama-3.1-70b" # choose your preferred Groq modeldef call_groq(prompt, temperature=0.2, max_tokens=1200): url = f"{GROQ_BASE_URL}/chat/completions" headers = { "Authorization": f"Bearer {GROQ_API_KEY}", "Content-Type": "application/json", } payload = { "model": MODEL, "messages": [ {"role": "system", "content": "You are a precise, neutral equity research analyst."}, {"role": "user", "content": prompt}, ], "temperature": temperature, "max_tokens": max_tokens, } r = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=60) r.raise_for_status() return r.json()["choices"][0]["message"]["content"].strip()def build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year): template = """ You are an equity research analyst. Summarize the following earnings call section for {symbol} ({quarter} {year}). Be factual and concise. Return: 1) TL;DR (3–5 bullets) 2) Results vs. guidance (what improved/worsened) 3) Forward outlook (specific statements) 4) Risks / watch-outs 5) Q&A takeaways (if present) Text: <<< {section_text} >>> """ return textwrap.dedent(template).format( symbol=symbol, quarter=quarter, year=year, section_text=section_text )def summarize_section(section_text, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024"): if not section_text or section_text.strip() == "": return "(No content found for this section.)" prompt = build_prompt(section_text, symbol, quarter, year) return call_groq(prompt)# Example usage with the cleaned splits from Section 3prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol="NVDA", quarter="Q2", year="2024")final_one_pager = f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks — Key Points{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()print(final_one_pager[:1200]) # preview Tips that keep quality high: Keep temperature low (≈0.2) for factual tone. If a section is extremely long, chunk at ~5–8k tokens, summarize each chunk with the same prompt, then ask the model to merge chunk summaries into one section summary before producing the final one-pager. If you also fetched headline numbers (EPS/revenue, guidance) earlier, prepend them to the prompt as brief context to help the model anchor on the right outcomes. Building the End-to-End Pipeline At this point, we have all the building blocks: the FMP API to fetch transcripts, a cleaning step to structure the data, and Groq LLM to generate concise summaries. The final step is to connect everything into a single workflow that can take any ticker and return a one-page earnings call summary. The flow looks like this: Input a stock ticker (for example, NVDA). Use FMP to fetch the latest transcript. Clean and split the text into Prepared Remarks and Q&A. Send each section to Groq for summarization. Merge the outputs into a neatly formatted earnings one-pager. Here’s how it comes together in Python: def summarize_earnings_call(symbol, quarter, year, api_key, groq_key): # Step 1: Fetch transcript from FMP url = f"https://financialmodelingprep.com/api/v3/earning_call_transcript/{symbol}?quarter={quarter}&year={year}&apikey={api_key}" resp = requests.get(url) resp.raise_for_status() data = resp.json() if not data or "content" not in data[0]: return f"No transcript found for {symbol} {quarter} {year}" text = data[0]["content"] # Step 2: Clean and split clean_text = re.sub(r'\s+', ' ', text).strip() if "Question-and-Answer" in clean_text: prepared, qna = clean_text.split("Question-and-Answer", 1) else: prepared, qna = clean_text, "" # Step 3: Summarize with Groq prepared_summary = summarize_section(prepared, symbol, quarter, year) qna_summary = summarize_section(qna, symbol, quarter, year) # Step 4: Merge into final one-pager return f"""# {symbol} Earnings One-Pager — {quarter} {year}## Prepared Remarks{prepared_summary}## Q&A Highlights{qna_summary}""".strip()# Example runprint(summarize_earnings_call("NVDA", 2, 2024, API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY)) With this setup, generating a summary becomes as simple as calling one function with a ticker and date. 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