Day: September 24, 2024

Manila: The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the proposed PHP10.5-billion budget of the Office of the President (OP) for 2025, with Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin in attendance to represent the office during the plenary deliberation. The period of sponsorship and interpellation for the OP’s budget lasted for 33 minutes with only two interpellators – ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro and Northern Samar 1st District Rep. Paul Daza. In his speech, House Appropriations Committee vice chair and Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco cited the importance of executive-legislative collaboration to ensure that the country’s interests are advanced and essential government

Local government units in Western Visayas are encouraged to update their respective Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP), which covers 10 years. ‘CLUP is very important. It shapes the direction of an LGU. It is good if it is updated,’ said Environmental Planner Eva Maria P. Marfil, regional director of the Department of Human Settlement and Urban Development (DGSUD) Western Visayas, during the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas on Tuesday. She said the highly urbanized cities of Iloilo and Bacolod have updated CLUPs, while Negros Occidental has an updated provincial development and physical framework plan. Marfil said their office has been conducting

Manila: The Chinese military helicopter tailing a Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) air patrol over Bajo de Masinloc in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) is “unprofessional” and “unsafe”, a ranking Philippine Navy (PN) official said Tuesday. “These are unsafe maneuvers. They are uncalled for, unprofessional,” PN spokesperson for the WPS Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad said in a press briefing. He said they are leaving it to the BFAR to issue the “appropriate official statement” on the incident last Sept. 21 involving a Chinese Harbin Z-9. Initially, a Chinese warship issued a radio warning against the Philippine aircraft.

The private sector’s collaboration with the government has bolstered the Marcos administration’s effort to beat the almost 600,000 housing unit backlog in Central Visayas, a housing development official said on Tuesday. Lawyer Lyndon Juntilla, regional director of the Department of Human Settlement and Urban Development (DHSUD) in Central Visayas, said the region has only 588,386 housing unit backlog out of the 6.5 million nationwide that is targeted to be accomplished before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term ends in 2028. Juntilla, however, said only over 13,000 is the target number of housing units under the Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino Program

Manila: The value of counterfeit goods seized this year has reached PHP35.2 billion, according to the data released by Intellectual Property of the Philippines (IPOPHL) on Tuesday. The figures were released during the 2024 National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR) High-Level meeting at the Admiral Hotel in Manila. Data showed that the value of confiscated counterfeit products from January to September this year has surpassed the previous record of PHP26.89 billion in 2023. ‘The success of our coordinated enforcement strategies sends a clear message: we stand firm against intellectual property violations,” iPOPHL Director General and NCIPR Acting Chair Rowel