Electoral fraud, also called vote rigging, voter fraud or election manipulation, involves illegal interference in the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. Through the TNTrio’s scrutiny of hard data coming from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) itself and...
Category: News
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Tarlac rice farmers, retailers suffering losses due to price cap
Rice farmers and retailers are incurring heavy losses from the price cap imposed starting on Sept. 5 on regular-milled and well-milled rice even as it brings temporary relief to consumers. Executive Order No. 39 (EO 39) set the price of regular-milled and well-milled rice at P41 and P45 a kilo, respectively, amid soaring prices of...
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Petitioners want Smartmatic out of next polls for ‘meeting with Marcos Jr.’s wife before May 2022 elections’
Representatives of Smartmatic met with the future first lady before the May 9, 2022, presidential election, violating their contract as the automated election system (AES) provider for the Commission on Elections (Comelec), according to a motion to disqualify the company from involvement in the 2025 polls. The submission to the Comelec on Sept. 11 is...
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Family and Fossils: Million-year-old gifts from my wife and sisters
(Third of three parts) Family and fossils: My cousin Isko and my first precious find, Family and fossils: My grandchild Meg and a treasure trove I have in my hand a fossil—the remains of an ancient creature called a trilobite. This animal-looking rock resulted when the trilobite was buried and minerals replaced its body parts....
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Plastic producers should help Philippine towns, cities pay high cost of waste management
(Second of two parts) The Philippines is finally going after plastic producers, but some companies are not cooperating Tucked in a corner of the Dultra family’s garage are sacks full of used plastic packaging. There are water bottles and bubble wraps—remnants of the family’s daily living consumption. “Our family has made a practice of keeping...
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TV journalist Atom Araullo files P2-M suit against Red-taggers
Multi-awarded television journalist and documentarist Atom Araullo filed a civil suit claiming P2 million in damages against former anticommunist task force spokesperson Lorraine Badoy-Partosa and Jeffrey Celiz for allegedly Red-tagging him and jeopardizing his safety. Araullo said Badoy-Partosa and Celiz, anchors of a program on SMNI television network, made “a series of unsubstantiated accusations and...
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The Philippines is finally going after plastic producers, but some companies are not cooperating
(First of two parts) Environmental groups in the Philippines have long advocated for a single-use plastics ban, and hundreds of proposed laws and resolutions were filed in Congress in the past decade to support the call. Nothing prospered. Instead, Congress required the country’s biggest plastic-producing companies to pay to collect and recycle their materials. The...
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Marcos urged to push proposed Maritime Zones Act in the face of China’s ‘10-dash’ line map
China’s latest map should not distract the Philippine government from addressing the more “disconcerting” Chinese harassment of Philippine vessels in the West Philippine Sea, according to a foreign affairs and security analyst. If anything, said Lucio B. Pitlo III, the map with a new 10-dash line that still encompasses parts of the Philippines’ 370-kilometer exclusive...
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Inquirer.net takes down story on Martin Romualdez’s reported funding of Tagalog course in Harvard
Did Speaker Martin Romualdez give $1 million (about P56 million) to fund a new Tagalog course at Harvard University? On Thursday, Inquirer.net, one of the Philippines’ most-read news websites, asked that question in an article based on an exclusive report by The FilAm, an online magazine based in the United States with which it has...
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Family and fossils: My grandchild Meg and a treasure trove
(Second of two parts) First of two parts : Family and fossils: My cousin Isko and my first precious find I found my second fossil—and a third, a fourth, in fact several shoe boxes full—practically at my doorstep. It was in the summer of 2003 when I was vacationing in Mandaue, the same summer my...