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HEADLINES: PH detects first Arcturus case | Apr. 26, 2023

Good day. Here are the stories for The Manila Times for Wednesday, April 26, 2023.

READ: PH detects first Arcturus case

THE Philippines has detected its first case of the Arcturus or XBB.1.16 subvariant, the Department of Health (DoH) said Tuesday. The subvariant was found in a sample from Western Visayas and is one of the 89 samples that had Omicron subvariants during the latest sequencing run of the University of the Philippines-Philippine Genome Center, Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, and San Lazaro Hospital from April 12-17. Arcturus is a sublineage of the XBB subvariant that was recently added to the list of subvariants under monitoring by the World Health Organization and the European Center for Disease Control. It has been detected in 33 countries.

READ: NDRRMC forms team to address El Niño woes

THE National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) has formed a team that will address the impacts of El Niño in the country. NDRRMC Executive Director and Civil Defense Administrator Undersecretary Ariel Nepomuceno said on Tuesday that the move was made to "harmonize" interventions of concerned government agencies for the climate phenomenon. This was also in accordance with a directive issued by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for the government to implement a whole-of-government and whole-of-nation approach to prepare for El Niño's impacts on the country by the last quarter of 2023 until the first quarter of 2024.

READ: Marcos OKs extended SIM card registration

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has approved a 90-day extension of registration of subscriber identity modules (SIMs) in the country, a move seen to increase the number of registrants to around 20 million, the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) said on Tuesday. The President gave the approval during a sectoral meeting with Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan John Uy and other government officials in Malacañang on Tuesday. At a Palace press briefing, Uy said "low turnout was not the main reason for extension" since there were already 82 million SIM registrations out of 168,016,400 total number of active SIMs in the Philippines.

READ: Comelec eyes mall voting for BSKE

THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is considering the holding of mall voting for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections (BSKE) in five places in Metro Manila. Speaking in a media forum organized by the Manila City Hall Reporters' Association (Machra), Comelec Chairman George Garcia said the election in villages would be transferred to nearby malls. The five places in Metro Manila are still being finalized. Garcia said the barangay and SK elections would be manual. The commission is also eyeing the pilot testing of automated BSKE in at least two places in Dasmariñas Cavite and District 6 in Quezon City.

READ: MMDA traffic enforcers to use body cameras

AN initial 100 units of body-worn cameras will be distributed to the traffic enforcers of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA). Lawyer Melissa Carunungan, MMDA spokesman, said the distribution will be done in the middle of May. She said all local government units (LGUs) in the National Capital Region (NCR) will also be provided with body cameras, which are now being procured.

BUSINESS: Dollar-hedging facility rules tweaked by BSP

Topping business, monetary authorities have approved operational amendments and expanded the coverage of a dollar-hedging facility in a bid to ease pressures in the foreign exchange (FX) spot market. The changes involve the BSP's Currency Rate Risk Protection Program (CRPP), under which bank clients looking to limit risks from eligible foreign exchange obligations enter into non-deliverable forward (NDF) contracts with the central bank. The NDF deals allow bank clients to lock in a peso-dollar rate for up to three months. The covered obligation should not be lower than $50,000 and only the net difference between the contracted forward rate, and the prevailing spot rate is settled in pesos upon maturity. The peso fell to a record low of P59 versus the dollar in October last year, a showing blamed on factors such as aggressive interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, concerns over the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and the imposition of tighter pandemic restrictions in China.

SPORTS: UST, NU aim to bolster bid for semis bonus

In sports, the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and National University (NU) look to bolster their bid for a twice-to-beat incentive in the Final Four when they face each other today, April 26, in the UAAP Season 85 women's volleyball tournament at the FilOil EcoOil Center in San Juan. Fighting for the number two spot which merits a semifinals incentive, the UST Golden Tigresses and the NU Lady Bulldogs collide at 11 a.m., the second match of a quadruple-header. The game day kicks off with the men's action between UST and NU. After the much awaited UST-NU women's encounter, University of the Philippines (UP) and University of the East (UE) lock horns at 3 p.m in the women's division and again at 5 p.m. in the men's division. The winner of the Golden Tigresses-Lady Bulldogs match will most likely end up as the second seed at the end of the eliminations although the loser of this match and even Adamson can still climb to number two depending on the results of their last elimination round assignments this weekend.

READ: Opinion and editorial

Rigoberto Tiglao, Fr. Ranhilio Aquino and Francisco Tatad are today's front page columnists. Tiglao continues his Panatag Shoal series, Fr. Aquino discusses the fallacy of the provocation thesis, and Tatad analyzes President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s upcoming trip to the United States.

Today's editorial believes climate change response must be a development priorityRead the full version in the paper's opinion section or listen to the Voice of the Times.

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For The Manila Times, this is Kim Isabelle Dignadice