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(CNNPhilippines) Japan has moved hundreds of troops, including missile units, into a new base built on a remote island near China and Taiwan as its seeks to bolster its defensive capabilities in the region.

Up to 570 Ground Self-Defense Force members will be stationed at the newly established garrison on Ishigaki island in Okinawa prefecture, the country’s military said, confirming the troops moved in on Thursday.

Ishigaki, which is famous among holidaymakers and scuba divers for its tropical waters, is located just 200 kilometers south of the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited island chain also claimed by China and Taiwan… Read More

(Interaksyon) Consumer finance provider Home Credit Philippines revealed that mobile phones are the most in-demand product for their consumers.

Puneet Suneja, Home Credit Chief Sales Officer, said they had financed over 10.5 million mobile phones in the country since 2013. This covers over half of their sales.

“Our most popular products typically are mobile phones…That’s the product that has the quickest upgrade lifecycle. People are changing their phones every year or [every] two years,” Suneja said in a briefing on Thursday.

The finance provider company is celebrating its 10th year of operations in the country.

Meanwhile, despite the huge mobile phone sales of Home Credit, International Data Corporation (IDC) data recorded that the smartphone market in the country had its biggest decline of 8.6% in 2022… Read More

(HeraldSun) Philippine vlogger Rosanel Demasudlay holds a heart-shaped “virginity soap” bar in front of the camera and assures her hundreds of YouTube followers it can be safely used to “tighten” their vaginas.

The video is part of a barrage of bogus and harmful medical posts on social media platforms where Filipinos rank among the world’s heaviest users.

Even before Covid-19 confined people to their homes and left them fearful of seeing a doctor, many in the Philippines sought remedies online because they were cheaper and easier to access.

During the pandemic, AFP’s Fact Check team saw an explosion of misinformation about untested cosmetic products and quick-fix treatments for chronic illnesses.

The majority appear as free posts or paid advertisements on Facebook, the most popular social media site among the 76 million internet users in the Philippines.

They can circulate for weeks or even months without detection as Facebook struggles to keep up with the torrent of misinformation flooding its platform.

While there is no vetting of posts before they go live, Facebook has a multi-stage, largely automated, review system to check ads before they are published… Read More

(FMT) NEW DELHI: India-based defence company BrahMos Aerospace expects to close a deal this year to sell Indonesia supersonic cruise missiles worth at least US$200 million, as it looks to expand its presence in Southeast Asia, its chief executive said today.

BrahMos, a joint venture between India and Russia, clinched its first foreign deal last year with a US$375 million sale of shore-based anti-ship missiles to the Philippines – part of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious push to triple defence exports.

The company has been in protracted negotiations with Indonesia and details about the size and timeline of a potential deal have not been previously reported.

BrahMos Aerospace CEO Atul D Rane said that it was in advanced discussions with Jakarta on a deal worth US$200 million to US$350 million under which it had offered to supply shore-based missiles and a version that can be mounted on warships… Read More

(Interaksyon) MANILA— The Philippines posted its widest trade deficit in five months for January as exports fell sharply, pointing to a worsening trade balance that could put pressure on the peso in the near term.

The trade gap in January ballooned to $5.74 billion, the biggest since the record monthly deficit of $6 billion in August, preliminary government data showed on Tuesday.

Exports PHEXP=ECI saw the steepest decline in nearly three years, down 13.5% to $5.2 billion from a year earlier, while imports PHIMP=ECI grew 3.9% to $11 billion from the same period in 2022.

It was the first monthly rise for imports in three months.

The January trade gap was worse than the deficit of around $4.3 billion that ING had projected.

“The persistent trade deficit in the Philippines points to depreciation pressure for…the Philippine peso in the near term,” ING senior economist Nicholas Mapa said.

The peso PHP= has fallen more than 2% since hitting 53.65 per U.S. dollar on Feb. 3, which was the strongest close so far this year. It was at 55.03, as of 0216 GMT… Read More

(The Manila Times) TWO Filipino lawmakers were elected on Saturday to key positions in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), marking a significant milestone for Filipino women.

Sen. Pilar Juliana “Pia” Cayetano was elected by fellow IPU members to occupy a seat in the IPU’s Standing Committee on United Nations Affairs representing the Asia-Pacific Group.

Meanwhile, Pangasinan Third District Rep. Maria Rachel Arenas was voted to the IPU’s Standing Committee on Sustainable Development.

The senator’s office on Sunday said the “feat coincided with the celebration of Women’s Month.”

“It’s an honor to be elected Bureau Member of the IPU’s Standing Committee on United Nations Affairs, representing the Asia-Pacific Group,” said Cayetano, who led the Philippine Senate delegation to the 146th IPU Assembly in Manama, Bahrain… Read More

(The Manila Times) THE best policy on jeepney operations is to simply leave the jeepneys, the drivers and their small operators alone. To their way of life. To their way of doing things.

To their small corner in the overall public transport architecture. To the incremental evolutions in the jeepneys’ physical configurations. And what should the minimal government intervention on jeepney affairs do? Just renew their franchises when franchise renewal time is up.

There is nothing from our 20th century heritage that is more worthy of preservation than these offspring of the World War 2 military jeeps that have served as backbone of public transport in the short and intermediate land transport routes across the country… Read More

(FactCheck) Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have been frequent targets of online misinformation and false claims, increasingly so since the foundation helped fund COVID-19 vaccine research.

Now posts on social media falsely claim that a Philippine court, the Heinous Crimes Court, has issued a warrant for Gates’ arrest for “premeditated murder.”

“Looks like the Philippines has issued an international arrest warrant for Bill Gates. Makes my heart happy,” read a Facebook post on March 4.

The claim stems from an article published March 2 on NewsPunch — a website known for spreading misinformation — with the headline, “Bill Gates Arrest Warrant Issued in Philippines For ‘Premeditated Murder’ Linked To Vaccine Roll Out.”

“The judge said Gates, as the founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is ‘wanted in connection with hundreds of thousands of deaths, a number which cannot be estimated at present and is certain to increase exponentially in time,’” NewsPunch said in its fabricated article.

“The Heinous Crimes Court in Manila issued the order for the arrest of Gates under article 248 of the revised penal code (RPC), which carries a minimum prison term of 20 years and one day,” the article continued… Read More