Maniolas

Incoming Department of Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol has lots of bright ideas to help turn around the moribund agriculture business in the Philippines. Piñol is in the United States this week to explore possibilities of acquiring farm machineries on long term loans to maximize rice production. During a press conference in Irvine’s University Research Park, arranged and hosted by the Filipino American Chamber of Commerce of Orange, Piñol disclosed that his number one priority once he assumes his post is to make sure that food will be available and affordable for all Filipinos He also vowed to stop the rampant corruption in the Department of Agriculture to ensure that government funds intended for farm workers will not be pocketed by corrupt officials and employees in the department. Piñol told members of the Fil-Am Chamber that among other things he also intends to develop the country’s fisheries, and aquatic resources, and make the Philippines rice-sufficient and to revive the once flourishing copra and abaca industries. He said he would encourage farm workers, with ample government support and funding, to maximize farm production. The Philippines has a total agricultural land area of 13 million hectares. In spite of this vast land area, however, the country sadly and shamefully continues to import rice from other countries to meet the growing demand of its expanding population. It will be recalled that when President Benigno Aquino became president, he promised to make Philippines self-sufficient. Well, that has yet to happen. Piñol said he would look Read More …

President Benigno S. Aquino III receives from Science and Technology Secretary Mario Montejo the Diwata 1 Microsatellite Book during the courtesy call of Department of Science and Technology (DOST) officials at the President’s Hall of the Malacañan Palace on Monday (June 20). (MNS photo) MANILA  (Mabuhay) – The Revised Anti-Carnapping Act, which imposes stiffer penalties for the perpetrators of carnapping, is now up for President Aquino’s approval. House Bill 4544, authored by re-elected Reps. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2nd District, Pampanga), Evelina Escudero (1st District, Sorsogon) and Winston Castelo (2nd District, Quezon City), aims to increase the years of imprisonment for carjackers and gives a more elaborate description of who can be considered as violators of the anti-carnapping law. Under the proposed measure, the person guilty of the crime regardless of the vehicle’s value shall be imprisoned for 20 years but not more than 30 years. The current anti-carnapping law only imposes 14 to 17 years and four months of imprisonment. When the crime is committed without violence, imprisonment years shall be 30 up to 40 years while carnapping with violence shall be life imprisonment as the penalty. HB 4544 also entails carnapping as a non-bailable offense especially if the evidence of guilt is strong. The bill also adds punishment from six to 12 years imprisonment to persons who participate in the concealment of the crime. Public officials and government employees who are involved are also subject to dismissal in service and shall be perpetually disqualified from holding any public office if Read More …

By Lilybeth G. Ison President-elect Rodrigo Duterte arrives via helicopter at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City on Wednesday to preside over the first meeting of his incoming Cabinet outside Davao City.(MNS photo) MANILA  (PNA) – As promised during his election campaign to have a “simple” inauguration if ever he wins, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte will be sworn in by a Supreme Court Justice as the country’s 16th President with only 500 officials and guests invited to Malacanang. Incoming Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol, in a statement on Monday, said that members of the diplomatic corps and retired generals would be among the 500 people who will witness the Presidential inauguration. Pinol said that during the last meeting of the Cabinet secretaries-designate, the incoming President told them that “we all have to come by our lonesome and that we could not bring any member of our family because of the lack of space.” He said the guest list would also include people very close to the President-elect and those who helped him during the campaign. Incoming Presidential Management Staff (PMS) Head Christopher “Bong” Go, in an earlier interview with the media, said that Duterte will take his oath before Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes at the Rizal Ceremonial Hall in Malacañang before delivering a speech on his plans and policies. Go said the President-elect will be wearing a Barong Tagalog made of cotton. Traditionally, incoming Philippine presidents hold their inauguration at the Quirino Grandstand in the Rizal Read More …

Dingdong Dantes & Marian Rivera (MNS photo) Dingdong Dantes has hinted that he wants to have three more children with wife Marian Rivera. Dantes, 35, said this in a post on his Instagram page as their family celebrated his first Father’s Day on Sunday. Sharing a picture of their family, Dantes said he could definitely afford to have three more little ones. Many of his fans agreed and told the actor that he and Rivera should have more babies to spread their “beautiful genes.” In another post, Dantes shared that he is still in cloud nine after all the surprises prepared for him by Rivera and baby Zia. “I still have a hangover from yesterday’s surprises. These two, who happen to be my employers, serve as a constant reminder that i have the best job in the world,” he wrote. Dantes and Rivera, in their past interviews, have said that they enjoy being hands-on parents to baby Zia. Rivera gave birth to Letizia in November 2015.(MNS)

If it has to make a choice, will your autonomous car kill you or pedestrians on the street? A self-driving car by Toyota, expected for release in 2020.© AFP The looming arrival of self-driving vehicles is likely to vastly reduce traffic fatalities, but also poses difficult moral dilemmas, researchers said in a study Thursday. Autonomous driving systems will require programmers to develop algorithms to make critical decisions that are based more on ethics than technology, according to the study published in the journal Science. “Figuring out how to build ethical autonomous machines is one of the thorniest challenges in artificial intelligence today,” said the study by Jean-Francois Bonnefon of the Toulouse School of Economics, Azim Shariff of the University of Oregon and Iyad Rahwan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “For the time being, there seems to be no easy way to design algorithms that would reconcile moral values and personal self-interest — let alone account for different cultures with various moral attitudes regarding life-life tradeoffs — but public opinion and social pressure may very well shift as this conversation progresses.” The researchers said adoption of autonomous vehicles offers many social benefits such as reducing air pollution and eliminating up to 90 percent of traffic accidents. “Not all crashes will be avoided, though, and some crashes will require AVs to make difficult ethical decisions in cases that involve unavoidable harm,” the researchers said in the study. “For example, the AV may avoid harming several pedestrians by swerving and sacrificing a Read More …