General

MANILA: The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) on Wednesday said the implementation of Executive Order No. 62 lowering the tariff on imported rice and other products may proceed until otherwise restrained by the Supreme Court (SC). ‘We do not know whether the Supreme Court will issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) or not in the days to come. I suppose the SC justices are also presently evaluating whether any injunctive relief is necessary. As far as the government is concerned, however, the EO will be implemented unless temporarily restrained by the SC,’ Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra told reporters. ‘We

KUALA LUMPUR, The ringgit was slightly higher against the US dollar in early trade today while steady demand continued to provide support for the greenback, an analyst said. At 9 am, the ringgit stood at 4.7050/7110 versus the US dollar compared to yesterday’s close of 4.7055/7105. Bank Muamalat Malaysia Bhd chief economist Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid said the US Dollar Index is still holding up, signalling a resilient demand for the greenback amid hopes of interest rate cuts. Earlier today, Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell’s testimony to the US Congress suggested that the Fed is on track to cut

TACLOBAN CITY: Developing the Babatngon port into a regional transshipment hub will soon proceed with the favorable outcome of technical and economic studies, the Regional Development Council (RDC) reported on Wednesday. Citing the results of a feasibility study, the RDC said the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) will finally begin constructing the PHP934.206 million port in Babatngon, Leyte, a town next to this city. In a statement, the RDC said the project was found to be technically feasible and economically viable based on the feasibility study conducted by the Gammacon Builders, Inc., as presented by the PPA to the region’s highest

WATERLOO, Canada, Teledyne DALSA is pleased to announce that its AxCISS family of high-speed and high-resolution fully integrated line scan imaging modules are now available in color. These easy-to-use Contact Image Sensors (CIS) combine sensors, lenses, and lights all-in-one, offering a lower cost inspection system for many demanding machine vision applications including battery and print inspection. Powered by Teledyne’s multiline CMOS image sensors, AxCIS delivers superior image quality with up to a 60 kHz x 3-line rate of native RGB colors, at a pixel size of 28 µm or 900 dpi resolution, so that defects can be detected with unprecedented

ILOILO CITY: MORE Electric and Power Corp., the electricity provider here will spend around PHP1 billion in the next four years to improve power services in Bohol, its top official said. ‘For Bohol, that [investment] should be between… perhaps a billion would be more or less doable in the next four years,” MORE Power president and CEO Roel Castro said in an interview at the sidelines of the 16th Media Seminar organized by the US Embassy in the Philippines on Tuesday. “It’s not also as big as Iloilo, and I was looking at the system hindi naman siya sirang-sira (not