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Man-made disasters cost Philippines 164.87 mln USD in 2023
MANILA, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Man-made disasters caused the total damage in the Philippines worth 9.29 billion pesos (164.87 million U.S. dollars) in 2023, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Tuesday. The agency said that out of the total annual damage, 4.93 billion pesos (87.5 million dollars), or 53.1 percent, was due to the oil spill. "The reported oil spill in various regions resulted in dam.....»»
Philippines accuses Chinese coastguard of firing water cannons at supply boats
Manila [Philippines], March 23 (ANI): The Philippines has accused China's coastguard of firing water cannons at one of its supply boats in South China Sea, Al Jazeera reported. The Armed Forces of the Philippines said that BRP Cabra managed to manoeuvre and reach Unaizah May 4 to provide assistance to the Philippine supply boat, which had sustained "significant damage."According to the Philippine military, the confrontati.....»»
Philippines accuses Chinese coastguard of firing water cannons at supply boats
Manila [Philippines], March 23 (ANI): The Philippines has accused China's coastguard of firing water cannons at one of its supply boats in South China Sea, Al Jazeera reported. The Armed Forces of the Philippines said that BRP Cabra managed to manoeuvre and reach Unaizah May 4 to provide assistance to the Philippine supply boat, which had sustained "significant damage."According to the Philippine military, the confrontati.....»»
China coastguard uses water cannons against Philippine ships in South China Sea
MANILA/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s coastguard said it had taken measures against Philippine vessels in disputed waters of the South China Sea on Saturday, while the Philippines decried the moves, including the use of water cannons, as “irresponsible and provocative”. China’s actions led to “significant damage” and injury to personnel on a civilian boat hired to resupply.....»»
ADB approves USD 100 mln loan to support small and medium-sized enterprises in Sri Lanka
Manila [Philippines], March 19 (ANI): The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a USD 100 million loan to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka more access to finance and build their resilience to external shocks, such as the economic crisis and climate change. SMEs play a critical role in Sri Lanka's economy, contributing 52 per cent to the country's gross domestic product and employ 45 per c.....»»
‘As long as we have AC’: Phoenix heat shows gap between US rich, poor
Melanie Floyd took her kids to the zoo in Phoenix in the morning, when temperatures in the heat wave roasting the city and much of the US southwest were still bearable. Standing before a turtle exhibit, she downplayed this extreme weather event in a world grappling with climate change. "As long as we have AC and as long as everyone is making smart choices," this stay-at-home mother aged 32 told AFP, "staying hydrated, going in the shade, staying cool, not overexerting themselves, I think it's tolerable." At her home it is, indeed, nice and cool. She keeps the air conditioning between 75 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit (23 and 26 degrees Celsius) so she can look after her kids, aged two and six, comfortably as they play with coloring books and crafts. Outside, day after day for more than three weeks, the temperature in Phoenix is surpassing a hard-to-fathom 110F. The heatwave affecting much of the southwest and southern United States -- including the record temperatures in Phoenix -- is igniting debate on how fast global warming is moving. For Floyd, this particular weather event is no big deal. "You have to fluctuate as the weather fluctuates, so you have to be flexible with it," Floyd said. In this desert city many people that spoke to AFP expressed similar views about the rising frequency of brutally dangerous heat as global warming caused by human activity grinds on: One must learn to live with it. - Living without AC - For many of them life is a series of mad dashes from offices to restaurants to shops, all with air conditioning cranked up good and frosty. In the city center and well-to-do suburbs, people do not think twice about leaving their car running while they get out to do an errand, so as to keep it cool for when they come back. But in less wealthy areas, heat like this is another thing altogether. "If the temperatures go on like this, many people will not be able to cope," said Rosalia Licea, 37, who is raising five kids on her own. She lives in a mobile home park where most of the trailers are from the 1950s. Early in this heat wave her air conditioning broke down. For two days the temperature inside their mobile home hit 97F. The whole family had to take refuge in the room of the eldest child, which had a window AC unit. One of the smaller kids started having headaches. Licea, who hails from Mexico, works several low-paying jobs to make ends meet. She does not have the $2,000 it would cost to buy a new AC system. So she came up with a makeshift solution: spend $800 to fix the broken one. "I had no choice, what with my kids," she said. "It was the priority, more than buying groceries or paying my rent." Even with the new motor in the old AC unit, one of the air conduits is broken so the cold does not reach her living room. That is something else she will have to pay to have fixed. - AC going full blast - Licea tried but failed to qualify for aid offered by the city or some utility companies for people to upgrade their air conditioning units. A study in 2022 by Arizona State University found that while mobile homes make up five percent of all housing in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, they account for 30 percent of indoor heat-related deaths in the city. "It is easy to say 'we can adapt' when you have access to everything," Licea said. "It is different for us." A fire broke out some days ago at her mobile home park, where the residences are hooked up directly to electrical pylons through shoddy connections. One mobile home was destroyed. The fire is believed to have started because of an electrical overload, with washing machines, dryers, fridges and full-blast air conditioning all operating at once. After 19 years in Arizona, Licea lives in fear of an electrical short circuit. So she mainly prepares salads for meals and tries to avoid turning on the lights to keep her electricity consumption, and the temperature, as low as possible. "If I could move to a state that is not so hot I would do it," Licea said. rfo/dw/bfm © Agence France-Presse The post ‘As long as we have AC’: Phoenix heat shows gap between US rich, poor appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Senate tackles airlines’ booking glitches, offloading mess
Growing complaints from various passengers against budget carrier, Cebu Pacific’s overbooking, offloading, and booking glitches have reached the Senate inquiry on Wednesday. This came after Senate committee chairperson, Senator Nancy Binay, filed Senate Resolution No. 575 pushing for an investigation on the customers’ complaints against Cebu Pacific due to recent flight cancellations. During the hearing, Binay said her office was able to compile at least 3,000 complaints from the passengers, which have been aired through social media platforms. “We have since seen it fit to invite our other airlines to this hearing because these problems, it seemed, have only grown in number. Our passengers face inconveniences on multiple fronts on account of flight delays, cancelations, offloading, and overbooking,” Binay stressed. Overseas worker, James Bartolome, said he has yet to receive his refund from Cebu Pacific after his flight going to Qatar was canceled. After knowing that his original flight was canceled, Bartolome opted to book another airline as the budget carrier won’t be able to give him an earlier flight. Senator JV Ejercito said the airport and airline operations will provide the “first and last impressions” to the tourists and potential investors entering the country. “We need to systematize this for our tourism and business climate,” he said, sharing that he was not even spared from experiencing flight delays. Binay emphasized the need to identify problems and immediately craft strategies to prevent similar complaints in the future. Senator Christopher “Bong” Go said that Cebu Pacific and other similar airline companies should acknowledge the impacts of flight cancellations and other airline mess. “Incidents like these could discourage tourists so this hearing should serve as a platform to air the grievances of the frustrated and helpless passengers,” Go said, citing that these may affect the country’s tourism industry and the economy. “Remember that we are still reviving from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. Go said the airlines must immediately act and rectify these issues by imposing proper mechanisms for compensating affected passengers—which includes food provisions during flight cancellation and alternative flight schedules. During the hearing, several Cebu Pacific passengers also complained about apparent website errors that resulted in them being charged multiple times for transactions yet it appeared to be unsuccessful. Cebu Pacific chief marketing and customer experience officer, Candice Iyog, explained that there is a part of the flow where if a passenger clicks proceed, it commits the changes even before the passenger pays. “We recognize that and we are taking that feedback as well,” Iyog said. The Cebu Pacific, she added, is already working on “a fix or an enhancement” to the interface of the website, which will likely be ready at the end of this month. “Depending on when it's ready, we're looking at possibly, end of July that we will be able to implement this change in the user experience,” she said. Senator Risa Hontiveros lamented that in several instances when passengers’ original flights were canceled, Cebu Pacific offered flight rebooking and passengers were immediately made to pay before they could confirm their purchase of travel tickets. Citing a passenger’s experience, the airline’s website technical issue made them pay a bill of P16,000-worth of add-ons after availing of Cebu Pacific’s free rebooking option, following the cancellation of flights. Iyog said they recently reminded their customer service agents to allow passengers to get back to their original flight or to remove add-ons that were “accidentally added.” “We don’t want to cancel flights for our passengers. It’s bad business and we don’t want to disrupt our passengers—that’s why we give options,” Iyog noted. Tougher passengers’ rights Meanwhile, Senator Grace Poe slammed the budget carrier for lacking customer service agents directly responding to these complaints. Poe called on for a tougher policy on air passengers' rights to address the cancellations and delays in flights by local airlines besetting travelers. "This pressing public service issue calls for urgent effective solutions as it involves not only the air passengers' rights but also the overall impact on the country's tourism and economy,” she added. While overbooking is a globally accepted practice, Poe said "systematic delays and cancellations are not." Also, Hontiveros pressed that the government agencies should step in to prevent more passengers from being disrupted in their travels due to canceled, rescheduled, and delayed flights in Cebu Pacific and other airline companies. “These kinds of inconveniences disrupt the travel experiences also of tourists, and as the chair said, could negatively affect the tourism sector,” she added. Aside from the reported overbooking, offloading, booking, and flight cancellations, Senator Raffy Tulfo said that adding extra flights daily amid lacking proper airplane maintenance can be called “abuses of the airline companies.” He lamented that it could pose danger and compromise the safety of all airline passengers, “There were safety issues surrounding the uploading, overbooking, and flight cancellations of airlines. If these airlines don’t care about fulfilling their obligations to provide air transport for their passengers, I will not be surprised that they are cutting corners when it comes to safety as well,” Tulfo pressed on. Tulfo said extra flights can also cause fatigue in pilots and flight attendants. For his part, Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa wants the Civil Aeronautics Board to become proactive in resolving the massive airline mess in the country. Dela Rosa asked CAB if it is amenable to institutionalize the Air Passenger Bill of Rights in order to protect the public from erring airline companies. "What is your position? Do you agree with the proposal to create a law that will institutionalize the Air Passenger Bill of Rights?" asked Dela Rosa. In response, CAB Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla, said they have been very supportive of the proposal. “But it seems it is not among the priorities of Congress,” he said. Dela Rosa said he is mulling to proposed the bill in the Senate “not to discourage the airline industry but to protect the public interest. The post Senate tackles airlines’ booking glitches, offloading mess appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Exemplar: One company’s purpose-led transformation for social change
Reflecting its long-standing commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Globe Group is participating in the UN’s Vision 2045, a campaign that features documentary films about how businesses from around the world are taking collective action for a better global future. In its documentary, the Globe Group’s senior leaders talk about the company’s purpose-led transformation — innovating with compassion, care and kindness to deliver life-enabling services to Filipinos. Globe Group president and CEO Ernest Cu looked back at how Globe transformed from telco to techno, turning the business around from a far-second player when he came in 2008 to an industry leader and game-changer. Behind this success is Globe’s mission to serve. “Key to every telecom company is the quality of its network infrastructure. A good network spells a good service experience for our customers. We brought the Filipinos and introduced to the Filipino the concept of what a smartphone was. This brought about a new age of data, which in turn spelled partners and new life-changing experiences. We then asked ourselves ‘what was next?’ We decided that we would become a purpose-led company,” Cu said. Globe chief commercial officer Issa Guevarra-Cabreira shared how Globe’s expansion is rooted in the company’s desire to help enrich and enable the digital life of its prepaid users, the bulk of Globe’s customer base, through greater access. “Speaking to customers, I realized that prepaid users — the vast majority of whom come from the lowest socio-economic brackets — had the same desire for innovation as everyone else and, arguably, an even greater need for digital enablement. Thus we began to explore how we could make it financially feasible for Filipinos to access the benefits of the Internet,” Guevarra-Cabreira said. Globe’s transformation was further accelerated by the pandemic when many day-to-day transactions and activities swiftly shifted to online platforms. During the crisis, Globe’s platforms shone through as life savers. There’s GCash, the country’s number-one financial services app, which enabled convenient digital payments and fund transfers, and even provided options for a savings account, investments and a credit line to those in need. KonsultaMD, the Globe Group’s telehealth app, meanwhile, provided accessible doctor consultations when Philippine hospitals and their personnel were stretched beyond capacity. As it continues to grow, the Globe Group is on the constant lookout for startups from around the world with an aligned vision for the future and a mission to make positive change. Through its venture capital firm Kickstart Ventures, Globe has been supporting companies that tackle some of the world’s biggest problems, from food security to pollution, among others. The bedrock of Globe’s expansion and transformation is its core telco business, where it continues to operate sustainably. Globe was the first publicly-listed Philippine-based company to commit to setting science-based targets and was recently recognized by Standard Insights as the Most Sustainability-Driven Network Operator in the Philippines. The company was also included as one of Asia Pacific’s Climate Leaders in a list developed by the Financial Times and Global Market Research Firm, Statista. Key to this is its efforts to green its network and supply chain and push for greater energy efficiency across its operations. As Guevarra-Cabreira said: “We are working on taking our network beyond reliability to sustainability. We continue to green our network operations as part of our net zero strategy.” Even as it expands to new business horizons, Globe is committed to creating a positive societal impact. Through its flagship campaign, The Hapag Movement, Globe aims to address involuntary hunger through supplemental feeding and livelihood programs, leveraging a network of partners and the power of digital platforms. The post Exemplar: One company’s purpose-led transformation for social change appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Philippines logs 40 pertussis deaths this year
MANILA, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Forty children have died of whopping cough, a respiratory infection also called pertussis, since this year, the Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) has reported. The DOH said in a statement on Wednesday that cases have continued to increase since the start of this year, recording 568 cases from Jan. 1 to March 16. "The total number of cases for the same period in 2023 was.....»»
Dela Rosa considers war with China but admits: ‘Hindi naman natin kaya’
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa is already fed up with China’s persistent harassments in the West Philippine Sea, prompting thoughts of engaging in war with Beijing. But he knows, war is not an option. “Naubos na ang sasabihin ko dapat dyan. Short of declaring war na tayo dyan against sa kanila e,.....»»
Pertussis or whooping cough: 40 child deaths so far this year – DOH
MANILA, Philippines — Assistant Health Secretary Albert Domingo reported on Wednesday that as of March 16 this year, some 40 children had died of whooping cough — a respiratory infection also called pertussis. An increase in new pertussis cases nationwide had been observed nationwide, with 28 cases reported from March 10 to 16. READ: What.....»»
EAM Jaishankar visits Indian Coast Guard Ship Samudra Paheredar in Manila
Manila [Philippines], March 27 (ANI): External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Indian Coast Guard Ship Samudra Paheredar on Tuesday during its port call to Manila and said that India's Act East policy and Indo-Pacific vision will continue to give it a more contemporary form. He presented his remarks at the Indian Coast Guard Ship Samudra Paheredar on Tuesday and said that his visit and the ship's presence signify th.....»»
India backs Philippines in dispute with China
New Delhi has drawn a strong response from Beijing after reiterating its support for Manila in a territorial dispute India has "firmly reiterated" its support for the Philippines and its "national sovereignty," as Manila remains locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea. Ten.....»»
India backs Philippines in sea dispute with China
New Delhi has drawn a strong response from Beijing after reiterating its support for Manila in a territorial dispute India has "firmly reiterated" its support for the Philippines and its "national sovereignty," as Manila remains locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea. Ten.....»»
What s Wrong With Secretary Kim star Park Min Young making first-ever Manila visit in May
The Korean star of "What's Wrong With Secretary Kim" and "When The Weather Is Fine" Park Min Young will be having her first-ever fan meeting in the Philippines this May......»»
Philippines FDI ‘bound to improve’ in coming years – HSBC
The Philippines would be able to attract more foreign direct investments (FDI) in the coming years amid reforms that improved the country’s business climate, HSBC Global Research said......»»
‘Our Dream’: K-pop boy band BtoB to hold fan-con in April
The K-pop boy band BtoB, also known as Born to Beat, is poised to come back to Manila on April 7 at the SM Mall of Asia for a fan-con labeled as “2024 BTOB Fan-Con Our Dream.”.....»»
Coast Guard ship Samudra Paheredar on overseas deployment to ASEAN, arrives im Phillipines
Manila [Philippines], March 25 (ANI): India Coast Guard ship Samudra Paheredar, a specialized Pollution Control Vessel, reached Manila, Philippines on Monday, marking the commencement of its (overseas deployment) OSD mission to Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) countries. ASEAN countries includes Brunei Darussalam, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, " acc.....»»
Coast Guard ship Samudra Paheredar on overseas deployment to ASEAN nations, arrives in Philippines
Manila [Philippines], March 25 (ANI): India Coast Guard ship Samudra Paheredar, a specialized Pollution Control Vessel, reached Manila, Philippines on Monday, marking the commencement of its (overseas deployment) OSD mission to Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) countries. ASEAN countries includes Brunei Darussalam, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, " acc.....»»
Philippines lodges strong protest with China over water cannon attack in disputed South China Sea
Manila [Philippines], March 25 (ANI): In the wake of accusation by the Philippines that the Chinese Coast Guard wounded three of its soldiers during a water cannon attack in the disputed South China Sea, Manila on Monday summoned Beijing's envoy to lodge its strong protest, Al Jazeera reported. The Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, in a statement said that Manila conveyed its "strong protest against the aggressiv.....»»