SAN JOSÉ -- Mayor Sam Liccardo, San José Police Department Chief Anthony Mata, Councilmembers Maya Esparza (D7) and Dev Davis (D6), and San José’s Department of Transportation (DOT) Director, John Ristow, on March 16 recognized the 20 traffic fatalities that have occurred since the start of 2022, and the alarming rise of collisions on San José streets. The Mayor underscored updates to safety projects and enforcement measures coming this year and future efforts to slow vehi...

Partido Reporma presidential candidate Sen. Panfilo Lacson and running mate Sen. Vicente Sotto III say they don't feel that “Solid North” is real. The so-called Solid North mentality of some voters committed to a specific candidate in the May 9 elections was disproved by a sortie of the Lacson-Sotto tandem to northern provinces over the weekend. Following a two-day visit to Baguio City and stops at Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija, the Lacson-Sotto tandem was warmly received ...

Stressing that he needs to bolster their candidacy in the upcoming May 9 elections, Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko” Moreno Domagoso did not give a categorical response to controversial blogger Mocha Uson support to his presidency. Uson has been famous for spreading fake news, contrary to Domagoso’s hardline stance against online disinformation. Uson has been strongly criticized for using her Facebook page to make misleading or outright false claims and to vilify media cri...

MANILA -- Twitter pledged on March 18 to bolster its policy to prevent election manipulation, interference, and misinformation ahead of the May 9 Philippine elections. “Twitter is where important election-related conversations are taking place. We are closely monitoring abusive behavior, this includes content in Filipino, and will not tolerate any rule-violating activities, such as spam,” the company said. “Our policies are designed to help protect against inauthentic i...

MANILA -- Department of Health (DOH) Undersec. Maria Rosario Vergeire presented on March 18 data showing a 29 percent lower average of daily COVID-19 cases in the country from March 10 to 16 or a total of 534 infections from the previous week's average of 752 cases daily. "Our epidemic curve shows that while a swift decline followed a peak of cases, this decline has markedly slowed down over the past weeks," Vergeire said. Vergeire also confirmed that the country is yet...

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) last week confirmed that it had sent a letter to the Marcos family demanding settlement of unpaid estate taxes totaling PHP203 billion (about US$4.06 billion). The BIR supported the claim of presidential bet and current Manila Mayor Isko Moreno that the family of fellow candidate Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. still owed the government PHP203.819 billion. During the Comelec-sponsored debate over the weekend, most candidates said that the Marc...

The camp of presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. was caught by local media doling out PHP500 bills (about US$10) in white envelopes to attendees at a rally in Nueva Ecija last week. One of the country’s top broadcast organizations showed footage of attendees at the rally trooping to a long table where money was being handed out. Some even showed the contents of the envelopes they were handed to the media organizations present. Recipients said they didn’t know wh...

By Harvey Barkin Santa Clara County’s Office of Immigrant Relations (OIR) recently released this year’s New Americans Fellowship application in late February (NAF; not to be confused with the think-tank New America National Fellows). Since its inception six years ago, NAF provided Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients an opportunity to amplify and uplift the voices and contributions of the County’s immigrant communities. NAF is a paid professional dev...

Business leaders agreed at an economic-security forum that the Philippine economy has been stagnant for the last five years because of President Duterte’s foreign policy shift away from the United States and European Union toward China and Russia, for which reason they rejected the candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as one “no different than Duterte’s.” Michael Ricafort, chief economist of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), noted Marcos’ pro-China bias and could not be ...

In deference to the Philippines’ neutral position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russian Ambassador to the Philippines Marat Ignatyevich Pavlov said on March 21 he expects bilateral cooperation with the Philippines to continue amid growing global sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine. “We have many fields of cooperation, so we hope the Philippine side will continue to cooperate with us and interact with us in different fields and it will be considered an act of our...