HEADLINES: MARCOS RULES OUT FIRING DUTERTE | APR. 24, 2024

Good day. Here are the stories for Wednesday, April 24, 2024.

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READ: Marcos rules out firing Duterte

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday rejected calls to replace Vice President Sara Duterte as education secretary, saying his working relationship with her would not be affected by his wife's anger at her. Speaking to reporters in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, the President expressed confidence that Duterte would understand how the first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos feels because she is also a wife. The President issued the statement after several lawmakers and groups questioned Duterte's continued stay in the Cabinet, with some calling for her resignation from the Department of Education.

READ: Self-rated poverty, hunger decline in first quarter - poll

ABOUT 11.1 million Filipino families, or about 42 percent of Filipinos, considered themselves poor in the first quarter of 2024, posting a slight decrease from the previous quarter, a survey by OCTA Research shows. "The 3 percent decrease, representing approximately 800,000 families, while modest, still represents a continuing downward trend in self-rated poverty observed since July 2023, where self-rated poverty was at 50 percent," OCTA Research said in its Tugon ng Masa survey, which was conducted among 1,200 adult respondents from March 11 to 14. In Metro Manila, self-rated poverty was at 29 percent in March 2024. In Balance Luzon, it was at 28 percent. In the Visayas, it was at 47 percent. In Mindanao, self-rated poverty rose to 71 percent from 68 percent in December 2023.

READ: ABS-CBN back on Channel 2

TAKEN off the air by the Duterte administration in 2020, many of the ABS-CBN shows will return to free TV, after the Lopez-owned network signed a content deal with Advanced Media Broadcasting Systems (AMBS) owned by billionaire and former Senate president Manny Villar. Earning the ire of then-president Rodrigo Duterte, the network was stripped of its congressional franchise in 2020, resulting in the migration of some of its shows to other TV networks. With the agreement, All TV — the official name of the AMBS TV station — will host ABS-CBN's "Kapamilya" shows under the Jeepney TV brand.

READ: Whereabouts of ex-poll chief still unknown

Former Commission on Elections (Comelec) chairman Andres Bautista's whereabouts will be determined once an arrest warrant is issued against him by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where a criminal complaint has been filed for money laundering charges related to a bribery scheme involving vote counting machines. The Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent who participated in the investigation involving Bautista, Colberd Almeida, recommended that a warrant of arrest be issued against the former Comelec chairman after finding probable cause. Almeida sought an arrest warrant in his affidavit, which was included in the unsealed court records obtained by The Manila Times. The affidavit of the US special agent presented complete details of the scheme allegedly perpetrated by Bautista, who served as Comelec chairman from 2015 to 2017, and the monetary transactions involved in the case. Based on the a02ffidavit, the case stemmed from the information given by Bautista's wife to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in August 2017. She told the NBI that her husband had large amounts of unexplained wealth, amounting to about 1 billion pesos or $20 million.

READ: Ratify P150 wage hike soonest, House urged

ORGANIZED labor has renewed its call on the leadership of the House of Representatives for the swift approval of the proposed 150-peso wage hike in time for the Labor Day celebration on May 1. On Tuesday, the Associated Labor Union (ALU) spearheaded the call to fast-track the passage of House Bill (HB) 7871 or the Wage Recovery Act, saying that the P150 legislated wage hike will go a long way in uplifting the lives of workers amid spiraling cost of living. The Senate has approved on third and final reading Senate Bill 2534 or the 100-peso Daily Minimum Wage Increase Act of 2023.

BUSINESS: Govt spending up 16.4% as of end-Feb

Heading to business, disbursements rose in the first two months of the year, latest Budget Department data showed, amid an effort to boost economic growth. Spending for the JanuaryFebruary period rose 16.4 percent to 722.5 billion pesos following higher interest payments, local government allotments, maintenance and other operating expenses, personnel costs, infrastructure and other capital outlays, and subsidies. Interest payments, in particular, rose by 50.5 percent to 122 billion pesos, which the Budget Department said was due to coupon payments for bond issuances, higher T-bill rates and interest on global bonds, and larger foreign interest payments. Capital transfers to local governments, meanwhile, grew 21.9 percent to 32.3 billion pesos, mainly due to the release of proceeds from national taxes.

SPORTS: Yulo open for new foreign coach

Over to sports, Filipino Olympic gymnast Carlos Yulo has been training and competing without an "official" head coach for about nine months now after he parted ways with long-time Japanese trainer Munehiro Kugiyama. And while he's open for a new one, he said that the current setup he has with coaches Aldrin Castañeda and Hazel Calawod are working just fine, feeling that they're working well as a team.

READ: Opinion and editorial

Rigoberto Tiglao, Francisco Tatad and Jeffrey Sachs are today's front page columnists. Tiglao compares current first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos to her mother-in-law, Tatad asks if the government can survive its internal conflicts, while Sachs looks into China's competitiveness.

Today's editorial says bad energy policy is the root cause of power shortages. Read the full version in the paper's opinion section or listen to the Voice of the Times.

For more news and information, read The Manila Times on print, subscribe to its digital edition or log on to www.manilatimes.net. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn; and be part of our communities on Viber, Telegram, and Mastodon.

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