Combatting lasting COVID-19...

capacity of ethnic news outlets to inform and engage diverse audiences on broader public issues with the goal of building more inclusive participatory democracy.

During the talks, Hickey has likewise put emphasis on the importance of context setting. “We all understand that viral misinformation is contagious and dangerous. It is, in some cases, as problematic than the actual viruses that are spreading. It can instigate people to make very poor decisions and put their health at risk,” he pointed out.

“We think about missing disinformation in ways that are very similar to the ways that we think about the spread of viruses," he added.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2022, the World Health Organization declared an "infodemic" with regard to the mis- and disinformation spreading about the origin of the virus.

Now facing plunder charges in relation to the pork barrel scam, Enrile – who served numerous terms in the Senate – patched things up with the Marcos family and accepted the offer to be a legal adviser of the late strongman’s son who now sits in Malacañang. Meanwhile, the Sandiganbayan Third Division continued hearing the plunder cases filed against Enrile.

ABS-CBN News reported that RJ

Deeper defense ties with US...

PAGE A4 as to whether the presence of U.S. military in the Philippines would bring good or not still persist, like ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, who stressed on February 4 that “as Filipinos, we have a responsibility to uphold the Constitution and never give up the sovereignty of the Philippines.”

“Let us not sacrifice our sovereignty on the promise that they are here for ‘mutual defense’ and supposed visit, because the damage and disadvantage to our people are greater than the gains. Let us end their excursion into our country and let us not allow ourselves to be used as pawns of their war,” she said. Castro also warned of the possibility of the Philippines being used as a testing ground for U.S. nuclear weapons based on the 123 agreements brandished by Harris on what she called “civil” nuclear cooperation.

The Edca expansion also prompted the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan to stress that the Philippines should not be allowed to be used as a “staging ground” for what it called U.S. military intervention in the region.

Even House Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto raised concerns on the expansion: “In principle, this is an administration prerogative I support. But I ask that whatever agreements be made public and the pros and cons be told.”

“National security is not harmed by that candor. But any secrecy will deal with transparency, an avowed

Bernal, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chief counsel for company registration and monitoring department, was presented to testify.

Enrile, who is out on bail, was not present at the hearing. In attendance was his former chief of staff and co-accused Gigi Reyes, who was recently ordered released by the Supreme Court on the condition that she attend all her hearings.  hallmark of this administration, a serious blow,” he said.

Recto then asked how the Philippines will benefit from expanding Edca sites in the country.

“Will the nation win with that move? And what are the possible nuisances that it may cause, if any?”

“How many more military bases will they have access to as time passes? Are we being built up as their armed garrison in the Pacific as a tripwire to Chinese expansionism?” he said while asking defense officials to thoroughly review the agreement’s “ramifications, specifically the potential reaction from other states and our planned responses,” Recto said. 

“It’s important to recognize that the problematic messages that we see and hear online have many different forms. Sometimes, we will call them misinformation, sometimes we will call them disinformation, sometimes we’ll call them rumors, conspiracies, even hate speech is problematic content, and my personal favorite, junk news, stuff that’s not totally false but still not healthy for you, just like junk food,” he added.

“We frequently see conspiracy theories. Usually, conspiracy theories reference an important boogeyman with an ulterior motive. When shared without the proper context it can be incredibly misleading. This comes in a wide range of forms,” he added.

He likewise emphasized the need to effectively verify numbers that are accurate and up-to-date. “When a statistic is shared on the Internet, but we don’t know, for example, what part of the whole that statistic represents, then that might be a much scarier statistic than the reality.”

According to Hickey, it is also important to be wary of pseudoscience. “In terms of public health, pseudoscience things like unproven cures for COVID-19, things that draw together, things that aren’t based on sound research, or medical science, or coming from trusted authoritative sources, spread quite a lot on the internet, and are off. As soon as you see things that have the hallmarks of that, it’s another clue to be skeptical,” he noted.

Another thing that warrants a closer look, he said, is “faulty logic." “They’re frequently arguments that while they can’t be proven to be false, aren’t necessarily exactly true either. They often come in the form of what we call logical fallacies. A good example of that is a false equivalence argument when you are comparing things and making the implication that ‘if this is true, then that should also be true, because they’re similar.’ But when they aren’t similar, when you’re comparing apples to oranges, then the underlying argument is no longer valid,” he said. He said being able to establish the timeliness of the data presented is also critical.“This is particularly important in the ever-changing world of Public Health Information. Content that is old, might have been true the day it was published, or the day it was originally shared, but when it gets re-shared today, it may no longer be the case,” he said.

“We see this across the spectrum. It can often happen when a multi-year-old news article or piece of research is shared, but it can also be the case when it’s an image. It does not have to be false to be a problem,” he noted.

But he was also quick to point out that whatever the form (misinformation, rumors, conspiracies, disinformation, junk news and hate), it all misleads.

“Overall, the point is, it does not have to be false to be a problem, it is important to keep that in mind, how to respond, how to craft high-quality journalism in response to the kind of problematic ideas that we see,” he said.

He also discussed several key health themes, such as sudden death, excess deaths, vaccine detox, gas stove risks, and the bird flu, among other issues where the spreading of false information has occurred.

He said, “People are taking this fact, connecting it to the things they believe, or fear, and then amplifying it across social media. There are these

BBC News posts, an accurate news article from a legitimate news source, but when it gets shared with this additional context, vaccine, or something else, or it’s only a coincidence, suddenly people are questioning the underlying news story, and they are using a legitimate trustworthy news source as essentially the evidence.”

“It’s critical to think about what headlines are used, what kind of information one tries to communicate, recognizing that things like this, risk people taking that reporting out of context and using it to fearmonger and amplify,” Hickey lamented.

“It’s important to note that this theme links to something that we see often in our disinformation research which is that folks often use sensational, concerning, or exciting things to amplify problematic or misleading messages in service of making money,” he said.

On H5n1, commonly known as the bird flu, Hickey said “there hasn’t been much misor disinformation spreading on this yet but there has been some new potential risk amplified by legitimate news coverage in the form of opinion from a trusted source, The New York Times from a trusted expert Zainabeki, who has the headline – ‘An Even Deadlier Pandemic Could Be Here Soon.”

“There’s good news. We do have a vaccine for h5n1. It is not as easy to produce and there’s not as much of it as there has been for other diseases, including the flu, COVID-19. But it is a considerably harder disease to infect humans. We rarely see human to human transmission,” he said Learning from COVID-19 experience, Hickey said, “It (bird flu) doesn’t mean it’s not something that we should be concerned about, but it is at a lower level of risk today. This is a not to say we should not be concerned about it, but we should be cautious about how we report about it, and we should be careful to share facts and pay close attention to it as the situation changes this."

"As we saw with COVID-19, the facts on the ground can shift quickly and it’s important to be responsible and thoughtful and up to date,” Hickey said. (By Donnabelle Gatdula Arevalo/ AJPress)

Private ights for tra cking

DESPITE the unending horror stories about overseas Filipino workers or OFWs suffering abuse and even murder, human traffickers continue to prey on Filipinos hoping for high-paying jobs abroad. And the human traffickers have enormous resources for luring victims. As detailed on Thursday, February 16 by Sen. Grace Poe, the traffickers appear to be breezing through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport with their victims on private jets.

This is believed to be the case, she said, in the departure of a private jet last Monday night, February 13 from the NAIA. Only seven of the 14 passengers were declared to authorities, she said. The Manila International Airport Authority has confirmed that the plane, operated by Hong Kong-registered Cloud Nine No. 1 Leasing Company Ltd. with local ground handler Globan Aviation Service Corp., received authorization to take off for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Editorial

mostly from Myanmar, where they ended up operating cryptocurrency scams under the supervision of Chinese crime rings instead of the promised high-paying jobs in business process outsourcing. A number of those who have been rescued or managed to escape have detailed stories of being locked up by the cryptocurrency scam rings, forced to work long hours and beaten if they refused.

Aren’t immigration authorities at airports supposed to check the working papers of departing OFWs before allowing them to leave? Poe said the MIAA, Globan as well as the Bureau of Immigration and the Philippine National Police Aviation Group must explain how the aircraft was cleared for take-off. She noted that in December last year, undeclared Chinese nationals on a private plane also skirted pre-flight clearance.

Several OFWs are still waiting to be rescued

Commentary

AN overwhelming majority of Asian Americans support tougher gun laws and are now in a position to influence the outcome of elections in states across the country.

President Joe Biden reasserted during his State of the Union address the urgency to act on gun violence. I know first-hand just what gun violence can do to a community because on January 21, 2023, the city I love and was elected to represent experienced one of the largest mass shootings in California’s history.

Like many other Asian Americans in Los Angeles County and across the country, I was excited to spend Lunar New Year with loved ones. An important holiday for Asian Americans, this Lunar New Year was the first time in a long time many of us were able to celebrate together. It was supposed to be a holiday full of love and light, and looking to the future.

Our lives were interrupted

Filipinos should not be a party to this abuse of OFWs. Senators, however, have presented victims of human traffickers who have pointed to the collusion of certain immigration personnel with the crime rings.

Apart from human smuggling, private flights can be used for transporting contraband, including prohibited drugs and guns. Whether authorities at the airport have been sleeping on the job or deliberately looking the other way for a fee, this racket must be stopped and those involved must be caught and punished. (Philstar.com) when we learned a gunman had targeted two dance ballrooms and killed 11 innocent people. The Monterey Park community was shocked, heartbroken, and scared. How could this happen here? A safe city that has been previously ranked as one of the country’s best places to live because of our schools, our local businesses, and our opportunities? And just as we began to process what happened, not even 48 hours later and about 400 miles north of us, another mass shooting unfolded in Half Moon Bay, California.

Unfortunately, shootings like these are not blips. These two incidents are all but just two more examples of a much wider tragedy long plaguing our communities: gun violence.

I came to Washington, D.C. this week to keep the stories of those impacted alive and shed a light on just how gun violence is tearing our communities apart. The issue of gun violence is nothing new to Asian Americans. We are still reeling and have suffered everywhere from California to Georgia to Indiana, from temples to spas to sidewalks. We are often viewed as a model minority, doing relatively well and devoid of problems. The truth is, Asian Americans have an array of our own social problems. Lack of accessibility to culturally competent mental health services, gender-based violence, and poor labor conditions all contribute to the violence against and within our community. Anti-Asian hate and blame has compounded these problems, and made us walking targets. But we cannot talk seriously about change without talking about what ties it all together: America’s gun laws.

The United States experiences more death and injury from guns than all other comparable countries combined. It is no coincidence; our country’s weak gun laws are the culprit. While my home of California has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation, those wanting to do harm may easily obtain their weaponry