News Roundup 10 June 2020
Jun 10, 2020 • 3 min Read
Pangilinan: Vagueness in anti-terrorism bill make it open to abuse | PHILSTAR.COM – Vague provisions in the looming new anti-terrorism law leave it prone to abuse, minority Sen. Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan said Wednesday. In an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel, Pangilinan said: “Given the authoritarian bent of the current administration… when these excesses are happening, who is to be confident that this law will not be abused or used to go after critics?” Pangilinan is one of the two — the other, Sen. Risa Hontiveros — who voted no when Senate deliberated on the anti-terrorism bill in February. The lawmaker cited the case of Sen. Leila De Lima, a staunch critic of President Rodrigo Duterte who has been detained since 2017 on drug-related charges, and ousted Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, who butted heads with the president on the latter’s drug war. Pangilinan continued in Filipino: “The 6,000 [deaths in] police encounters in drug war, they were said to have fought arrest. Then one who may be detained for 24 days under the anti-terrorism bill, they may also be accused of fighting back that’s why they would be killed.” “That is what we are afraid of,” he added. Lawyers have pointed out that the prolonged detention of a suspected terrorist of up to 24 days is against the Constitution.
COVID-19 cases in PH exceeds 23,000; death toll stands at 1,027 | INQUIRER.NET – Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the country exceeded 23,000 on Wednesday as the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 750 new cases. The total number of cases now stands at 23,732. A total of 4,895 have so far recovered from the viral illness with 159 new recoveries, while 1,027 succumbed to the disease, the DOH said.
ADB approves $500-M loan to keep Filipino children in school healthy | Manila Bulletin – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) today approved a $500 million loan to expand its support for the Philippine government’s conditional cash transfer program, which is helping millions of Filipino families across the country send their children to school and keep them healthy. The Expanded Social Assistance Project will help families maintain health and educational gains for their children achieved under the country’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), which was introduced in 2008. The 4Ps program, implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, provides cash payments every two months to about 4.3 million households—as long as the children meet school attendance targets and go for regular health checkups, women avail of pre- and post-natal care, and the parents participate in family development sessions.
UN to countries: Prepare for global food emergency | The Manila Times – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged countries to build food systems and provide more inclusive access to healthy and nutritious food as food supply has been severely affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. This comes after the UN launched a policy brief on the impact of the virus on food security and nutrition, which revealed key findings on how the virus affected food supply and nutrition across the globe. According to the brief, the world faces an impending “global food emergency,” which is defined as “an extraordinary situation in which people are unable to meet their basic survival needs, or there are serious and immediate threats to human life and well-being,” as hundreds of millions of people were suffering from hunger and malnutrition before the pandemic hit. “In the longer term, the combined effects of Covid-19 itself as well as corresponding mitigation measures and the emerging global recession could, without large-scale coordinated action, disrupt the functioning of food systems. Such disruption can result in consequences for health and nutrition of a severity and scale unseen for more than half a century,” the agency said.
