MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard spotted a Chinese navy warship, along with coast guard vessels and militia boats, in the vicinity of Scarborough or Panatag Shoal in the West Philippine Sea.

Parolo-class multirole response vessel BRP Malabrigo recently concluded a four-day patrol in the Scarborough Shoal, which locals also call Bajo de Masinloc.

PCG spokesman Captain Armand Balilo said two China Coast Guard ships, two militia boats and one naval ship were seen in the area.

Two China Coast Guard vessels, two militia boats and one naval ship, a military ship, were spotted during Philippine Coast Guard’s four-day patrol via BRP Malabrigo (MRRV 4402) in the Scarborough Shoal. | @EZMacairan pic.twitter.com/CqKOGQhhmY

— The Philippine Star (@PhilippineStar) June 10, 2019

Aside from the Chinese vessels, the PCG also saw Filipino fishing boats while patrolling Scarborough Shoal.

“Tatlong malalaking bangka ng mga Pilipino ang nakita ng mga tauhan ng PCG na natuwa naman sa kanilang presensya sa [Bajo de Masinloc],” Balilo said.

(PCG personnel saw three big Filipino boats, which were happy with their presence at Bajo de Masinloc.)

According to Balilo, there was no incident of harassment despite the presence of Chinese ships near the traditional fishing ground off the coast of Zambales.

“Maliban sa regular na pagtatanong sa PCG ng China Coast Guard sa kanilang presensya sa area, wala namang untoward incident sa loob ng apat na araw,” Balilo said.

(Aside from the regular questioning of the China Coast Guard on the presence of the PCG in the area, there was no untoward incident in the four days.)

Asked if the foreign vessels left the area when the PCG patrol ship arrived, Balilo said the Chinese vessels maintain a presence near the shoal.

In April, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said the Philippine government was taking legal action against Chinese nationals harvesting giant clams or “taklobo” in the Scarborough Shoal.

Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the continuous extraction of giant clams by Chinese nationals in the West Philippine Sea violate the country’s sovereignty.

“They are performing acts of ownership… If it’s our territory, therefore, it is an affront to our territory and to our sovereignty,” Panelo said in April.

Source: philstar.com

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Photo Credit: carmudi.com.ph

THE Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) has approved new toll rate adjustments for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX), authorizing the collection of an additional P0.51 per kilometer.

The new toll increase will be collected starting at 12:01 a.m. on June 14, 2019.

The petition for toll rate adjustments was filed by the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) in 2011.

Under the approval, motorists with Class 1 vehicles (ordinary cars) traveling from Mabalacat City (Mabiga Interchange) to Tarlac will pay an additional P20 under the new toll fee matrix. Motorists using Class 2 vehicles (buses and small commercial trucks) using the same corridor will pay an additional P40 and Class 3 vehicles (large trucks/trailers) will pay an additional P60.

Meanwhile, motorists travelling between Mabalacat and Tipo in Subic will be charged an additional P32, P66, and P98 for Class 1, 2, and 3 vehicles, respectively.

Although SCTEX toll rates have remained at 2011 levels, infrastructure improvements along the 94-kilometer tollway have continued. Since 2015, BCDA and NLEX Corporation have invested in various enhancement projects in the high standard expressway to maintain motorist safety and convenience.

One of the most notable improvements was the NLEX-SCTEX integration project in 2016 which unified the toll collection of the two expressways under one electronic toll collection system. This project reduced the cumbersome toll collection stops and made expressway travel hassle-free.

The entire stretch of the SCTEX between Tarlac and Tipo also underwent a massive asphalt pavement upgrade in 2017 which made for smoother and quieter rides. On the other hand, the Tipo Toll Plaza and the new Mabiga Interchange were boosted with additional toll lanes.

To improve 24/7 traffic monitoring and provision of roadside services, a modern traffic control room (TCR), with CCTV cameras and radio communications, was built in Mabalacat City. To enhance motorists’ safety, LED highway lights, emergency call boxes, crash cushions, and reflective delineator plates were also installed in key areas of the expressway.

Source: sunstar.com.ph

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Villagers watch television shows in Baliwet of San Marcelino, the Philippines, June 6, 2019. On June 7, a Chinese-funded solar project lit up Baliwet, a mountain village about 190 km northwest of Manila. (Xinhua/Zheng Xin)

SAN MARCELINO, Philippines, June 9 (Xinhua) — It’s a double celebration for Jaderick Castillo, 12, and some other 1,000 residents of a village of this town in Zambales province in the Philippine main Luzon island.

On June 7, which marked a beloved traditional festival in China, the Dragon Boat Festival, a Chinese-funded solar project lit up Baliwet, a mountain village in this town, about 190 km northwest of Manila. Electricity supply finally arrived at this remote village.

The Chinese staff working for the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) brought children who live in Baliwet dozens of zongzi, the sticky rice dumplings served during the annual Dragon Boat Festival and they tasted traditional Chinese food for the first time.

It was a brand new experience for the children and the whole village to have electricity, produced by solar stations donated by Chinese company SGCC.

The solar project not only brightens up the remote village, but also offers a ray of hope to the poor villagers who have no access to electricity for decades and depended solely on kerosene gas lamps and batteries to power their TV sets and flashlights.

Due to its remoteness, no local power company is willing to invest in Baliwet. Villagers had to travel several kilometers to town to charge their mobile phones.

As part of the closer ties between China and the Philippines, SGCC signed in Baliwet a memorandum of agreement in January with the Philippine National Electrification Administration (NEA) and the Zambales II Electric Cooperative (Zameco II) for the solar project.

Under the deal, SGCC’s “Brighten Up” project would install a solar panel system for Zameco II, capable of delivering power to over 1,000 residents including two schools with 108 students in the village. The project, which will be officially finished at the end of June, is hoped to lift the villagers out of poverty and lead them to a bright future.

According to Liu Ming, the deputy chief representative of SGCC Philippine Office, the “Brighten Up” project is the first charitable project independently launched by a Chinese-funded enterprise in the Philippines.

“The power supply project uses solar micro-grid to provide centralized power with a power generation capacity of 76kW and a battery storage capacity of 390 kWh. It basically meets the day-to-day needs of the villagers,” he told Xinhua.

Liu said the “Brighten Up” project “is one that evolves as it does not stop at simply installing the power supply.”

“It provides long-term operation, maintenance and interactive exchanges, enabling everyone to continue to build relationships that strengthen the human spirit.”

Elanie Cawagas, a teacher at the Baliwet Elementary School, lauded the project, saying the whole village and even the residents of nearby villagers are benefiting from the project particularly teachers and students.

She said villagers used to grope in the dark but now the villagers are enjoying the fruit of the Chinese-funded project.

She said it was difficult for the teachers to make use of the video presentation in teaching due to lack of electricity. “We are forced to stop the presentation when the computer battery is drained, and then wait for the next day when the battery is fully charged. That’s why we can’t maximize teaching time.”

Moreover, she said the students are having a hard time focusing on the lesson because of the stifling heat inside the classrooms. “We don’t have electric wall fans to cool down the heat because there is no electricity to make the fans run,” she added.

The installation of solar power has a tremendous impact on the village and its people. “Now, our pupils are more motivated in the teaching-learning process. They are more cooperative in all school class activities because they can study their lessons at night,” she added.

Speaking of recreational activities, Cawagas said the villagers can now watch television and listen to the radio. And because the village is well lighted, she said villagers can do activities even at night.

“We are grateful for those who made this possible, especially our Chinese friends for bringing light into our village,” Cawagas said.

The project also provided job opportunities for the villagers.

Dionesto Esteban, 27, a former hunter and farmer who earned 1,000 pesos (about 19.4 U.S. dollars) a week, now works for a GSCC sub-contractor in the station with a weekly wage of 2,450 pesos (about 47.5 U.S. dollars).

“The benefit of this project is huge. It brought us electricity. Even the residents of the neighboring villagers moved here to be able to take advantage of the electricity. Many of them come to charge their phone batteries for instance,” he said.

“This project will help us to be more productive and for sure it will open up more opportunities for us,” Esteban said.

Esteban said Chinese workers share their skills with the local villagers. “They are nice to us and very friendly. They teach us new skills,” he added.

Esteban’s mother, Elsie, who is a village chief, said: “With the installation of solar power, our people are more inspired to build actual houses and not just live in bahay kubo,” Elsie said, referring to the nipa hut, a type of stilt house indigenous to the culture of the Philippines. These houses are made out of bamboo, wood and nipa palm leaves.

“We have 10 new pupils enrolled here because they now see the positive outcome of this project,” Cawagas said.

“We hope that more Chinese people will come and ‘adopt’ our school so that we can achieve the vision and mission of our school particularly in developing our pupils to be multi-skilled learners,” she added.

Dionesto Esteban, a former hunter and farmer, checks electricity facilities in a solar station in Baliwet of San Marcelino, the Philippines, June 6, 2019. On June 7, a Chinese-funded solar project lit up Baliwet, a mountain village about 190 km northwest of Manila.

Students of an elementary school enjoy the cool breeze of an electric wall fan in Baliwet of San Marcelino, the Philippines, June 6, 2019. On June 7, a Chinese-funded solar project lit up Baliwet, a mountain village about 190 km northwest of Manila.

Source: xinhuanet.com

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By: Jaime Laude

File photos show the Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction-Philippines’ shipbuilding facility at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone (inset) and workers posing next to a newly completed vessel.

MANILA, Philippines — A retired US Navy official proposed that a private US shipbuilding firm could tie up with the Philippine government to operate the closed shipyard of the South Korean Hanjin company in Subic to build both naval and commercial ships.

In an article published by the US Naval Institute Journal, retired US Navy Capt. Brian Buzzel noted that since the closure last February of the Hanjin shipyard due to bankruptcy, there are foreign parties, including US and Chinese firms, that have expressed interest in taking over the operation of the shipyard.

He said the US Navy’s return to Subic Bay, through Hanjin, would also send a strong message to China that the Philippine-US alliance is strong and unbreakable.

Buzzel suggested that the US government should inform Philippine officials of a possible private-public partnership to reopen and operate the Hanjin facility.

With Hanjin shipyard now up for grabs, Buzzel said that the US Navy should move in quickly by informing acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan of its interest in the Hanjin facility in Subic.

Buzzel said Shanahan should inform the US State Department of the US Navy’s interest in Hanjin and the State Department, in turn, must inform the Philippine government.

He pointed out that at the height of Hanjin operations in Subic, the firm built 123 large cargo container vessels, bulk carriers and carriers for crude oil, liquified petroleum gas and mineral ore.

“It was the largest employer in Subic with more than 30,000 Filipinos, mostly skilled welders,” Buzzel said.

For this, he said, the US Indo-Pacific Command must initiate a study to analyze the impact on operational readiness of more repair facility in the western Pacific, including the impact on the current workloads at the Ship Repair Facility in Yokosuka, Japan and the Guam Shipyard Division.

“The Navy may not be able to grow 355 ships, but adding a fifth public-private shipyard will go a long way to ensuring the ships in the Pacific are available and ready to fight. The party with most to lose in the US return to Subic will be the Chinese. And they know it,” Buzzel said.

In recent years, the US has struggled to persuade the Philippine government and the country’s citizens that it is serious about honoring its commitments under the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

“China has been feeding growing mistrust, hoping to drive a wedge between the two long-standing allies to the point one or both will move to terminate the treaty,” Buzzel wrote.

“This compounded security in the Philippines defense establishment,” he said, adding that the confluence of all these factors gives the US Navy a perfect opportunity to return to Subic Bay, except this time as an equal partner with a private shipbuilding firm and respecting the laws and sovereignty of the Philippines, to the benefit of the Filipino people and the economy.

Source: philstar.com

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‘The most effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastics will likely be to reduce the production and use of plastics,’ authors of a recent study say

PARIS, France – Humans eat and breathe in tens of thousands of microplastic particles every year, according to a new analysis Wednesday, June 5, that raised fresh questions over how plastic waste could directly impact our health.

Microplastics – tiny plastic shards broken down from man-made products such as synthetic clothing, car tires and contact lenses – are among the most ubiquitous materials on the planet.

They have been found on some of the world’s highest glaciers and at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches.

Several previous studies have shown how microplastics may enter the human food chain, including one last year that found them in nearly all major bottled water brands sampled.

In Wednesday’s research, Canadian scientists analyzed hundreds of data sets on microplastic contamination and compared them to the typical diet and consumption habits of Americans.

They found that an adult male could expect to ingest up to 52,000 microplastic particles each year.

Taking into account the pollution we breathe in, that figure rose to 121,000 particles – equivalent to over 320 particles every day.

The study coincided with the United Nation’s World Environment Day, the theme of which this year is air pollution.

An additional 90,000 particles could be ingested each year if an individual only drank bottled water, according to the study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

The authors stressed that their figures were estimates. The amount of plastics consumed by a given individual would depend largely on where they live and what they eat, they said.

They also added that the impact on human health of microplastic consumption was still not well understood.

However microplastic particles smaller than 130 micrometers in diameter “have the potential to translocate into human tissues (and) trigger a localized immune response.”

Danger of microplastics not clear

Alastair Grant, Professor of Ecology at the University of East Anglia, said there was no evidence that the plastic particles identified in the study posed any “significant danger to human health.”

Grant, who was not involved in the research, added that it was likely that only a small percentage of particles inhaled actually reached the lungs.

“One of the two sources for particle concentrations in air says that the observed fibers are too large to be inhaled, so the numbers of particles that actually reach our lungs will be much smaller than the numbers quoted,” he said.

The authors said more research was needed to better understand how many microparticles reach the lungs and stomach, and what, if any, danger this poses.

“The most effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastics will likely be to reduce the production and use of plastics,” they said.

Source: rappler.com

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