PH, US, Japan coast guards hold first ever joint drills

MANILA — The Philippines, United States and Japan kicked off their first ever joint coast guard drills on Thursday, June 1 as the nations seek to strengthen their maritime cooperation to counter China's growing assertiveness.

The week-long exercises will be held near the mouth of Manila Bay in the hotly disputed South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely.

Four Philippine Coast Guard ships will be joined by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter and a Japanese Coast Guard cruiser for manoeuvres focused on law enforcement, and search and rescue.

"As a maritime nation, Japan has a stake to uphold and protect a rules-based maritime order," said Kenichi Matsuda, deputy chief of mission for Tokyo's embassy in Manila, at the arrival ceremony for the Japanese and US vessels.

The United States has been seeking to strengthen security alliances across the AsiaPacific region and beyond as part of efforts to deter Chinese aggression over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Manila and Washington recently agreed to restart joint maritime patrols in the contested waterway, and also struck a deal to give U.S. troops access to another four military bases in the Philippines.

Tokyo and Manila are in preliminary discussions over a key defence pact that would allow them to deploy troops on each other's territory for training and other operations.

It was the United States and Japan's proposal to hold the trilateral exercise, Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Armando Balilo said this week.

The United States and Japan are key suppliers of vessels used by the Philippine coast guard and navy to patrol waters off the archipelago nation. Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, ignoring an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis. (Philstar.com with reports from Agence FrancePresse)

MANILA – The United States Embassy in the Philippines is expecting a record number of visas to be processed in 2023 as the embassy works to restore and improve its operation since the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic in 2019.

employee.

“A year ago, the wait time for a non-immigrant visa was close to two years. It is now four to five months. We’re looking to lower that to 2 to 3 months by the end of the year,” he said.

during their interview.

Getting confused and lying, he said, are noticed by their trained personnel and may lead to doubt about their application.

Some Democratic lawmakers agree that not all hospitals need a bailout. Instead, they favor targeted relief such as a $150 million loan program that Newsom signed into law earlier this month to help struggling hospitals.

“I’m not a big fan of writing everybody a check,” said Democratic Assemblymember Jim Wood, chair of the Health Committee, who says hospitals ought to be more transparent about their finances before state taxpayers give them any more money. “If you’re a hospital system that’s doing well, I don’t believe you should be getting any additional resources from the state.”

KFF Health News senior correspondent Bernard J. Wolfson contributed to this report.

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

During a press conference at the embassy, US Embassy Consul General Mark McGovern said the Consular Affairs Section (CAS) of the embassy is on track to issue up to 330,000 non-immigrant visas for Fiscal Year 2023 (October 2022 to September 2023) compared to 188,000 in 2022.

“Last year, we got around 190,000 and we were at twothirds of our capacity last year,” McGovern said. The number of non-immigrant visas expected to be issued this year, he said, is higher than the pre-pandemic record of 290,000 issued in 2019.

“We're really trying our best and we're thankful for the patience the Filipino public is giving us,” he said.

The CAS, he said, has not yet been restored to its full capacity of 200 employees but improvements in the work flow have led to more visas being processed per

He encouraged those with expired visas to have them renewed as visas can now be renewed up to four years past the expiration date.

He noted that the current nonimmigrant visa fee of USD185 is the first fee increase in 10 years, with such visas -- tourist, student, business, etc. -- valid for up to 10 years.

“We have an increase in salaries, importation of visa foils and other materials. The fee increase is a worldwide change, not just in the Philippines,” he said.

Aside from non-immigrant visas, he said the embassy is also working “extra hard” on processing immigrat visas or green cards.

Tips for visa applicants

For those interested in getting a US visa, he shared some things to keep in mind to get approved.

Applicants, he said, must stay relaxed and always tell the truth

He also asked visa applicants to avoid scammers or those promising to have their visa approved for a fee and to protect themselves from disinformation by getting their information from the embassy website.

The embassy, he said, has a fraud team that investigates scammers.

“We work to make sure the victims have a chance to receive justice,” he said.

He noted that there is no checklist or “magic list” that applicants need for a visa, and debunked rumors that having a certain amount of cash in the bank or having endorsement letters from famous or powerful people would help in a visa application.

“Themoney in their bank account doesn't matter, we don't rely on that because we know people can just remove the amount the next day,” he said.

However, he said the embassy does look into a person’s ability to pay for their stay in the US such u PAGE 7

AS the country faced a super typhoon last weekend, there are families that are counting the days, weeks and years since their loved ones disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.

The last week of May is marked as the International Week of the Disappeared. And there are still too many victims of enforced disappearances who remain unaccounted for in this country.

Apart from activists, 34 online cockfight enthusiasts were kidnapped between April 2021 and January 2022. Their whereabouts are unknown, despite surveillance camera footage showing some of them being dragged into vans by armed men.

The ranks of the desaparecidos were highest during the Marcos dictatorship, when causeoriented groups counted 926 activists who were victims of enforced disappearances. The restoration of democracy did not end the disappearances. The advocacy groups count 206 activists who went missing during the nineyear presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, 29 in the time of Benigno Aquino III and 20 under Rodrigo Duterte.

Accountability has been abysmal in the cases. One high-profile case at least has led to the conviction of the perpetrators. In June last year, the Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of retired Army Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr. and two other military officers for the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of University of

FILIPINOS worldwide were dismayed to learn about the massive fire that gutted the Manila Central Post Office building, a 97-year-old structure considered to be an architectural treasure and declared as an “Important Cultural Property” by the National Museum of the Philippines in November 2018.

It was similarly heartbreaking to watch videos of the burning building which took 80 firetrucks and 30 hours before the firemen declared a “fire out” – with damage initially estimated at P300 million.

News about the fire was carried in the United States by the New York Times, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times and other media because the building carries a significant place in the relationship and shared history of the United States and the Philippines.

Designed in the neoclassical style by Filipino architects Juan M. Arellano and Tomas Mapua (who were both

FERDINAND “Bongbong”

Romualdez Marcos Jr. is the luckiest president in Philippine history.

He was elected in May 2022 with the largest number of votes garnered by any president, 31.6 million. The mandate enabled him to unify the country, combining the Solid North and the Disparate South in one full swing of an electoral exercise with a record number of participants.

He inherited an economy with strong fundamentals after coming from the deepest recession in 100 years. That strength manifested itself in a 7.6 percent GDP growth in 2022, the highest in 46 years.

The last time the economy showed higher growth rate than 7.6 was in 1976 (8.8 percent), under President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr. In the first quarter of 2023, GDP growth was 6.4 percent, the best in ASEAN.

BBM is hugely popular. So the Philippines students Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan. While Palparan was sentenced in 2018 to life in prison without parole together with Lt. Col. Felipe Anotado and Staff Sgt. Edgardo Osorio, the two victims remain missing.

Empeño was a 22-year-old sociology student while Cadapan, 29, was pursuing a course in human kinetics and was reportedly two months pregnant when gunmen seized them from a house the students were renting in Hagonoy, Bulacan on June 26, 2006.

Palparan, dubbed “The Butcher” by human rights advocates, has maintained his innocence and is seeking the reversal of his conviction. To this day, no one knows the fate of the two UP students.

Under the new Marcos administration, rights advocates are looking for missing activists Ariel Badiang, Dexter Capuyan, Gene Roz Jamil de Jesus, Lyn Grace Martullinas, Denald Laloy Mialen, Elgene Mungcal, Ma. Elena Pampoza, Leonardo Sermona Jr. and Renel delos Santos. Rights groups say the nine were kidnapped.

The second Marcos administration is getting relatively better assessments in the human rights department compared with the martial law regime and the Duterte administration. Perhaps