Fil-Ams join Migrants Day rally against Trump’s mass deportation plan
LOS ANGELES – Filipino immigrants were among hundreds of people who marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on International Migrants Day to protest President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Pilipino Workers Center representative John Perales, who spoke during the rally on Wednesday, said Trump’s immigration policies are a “direct assault on values that all Americans hold: family fairness and freedom.”
A human trafficking survivor, Perales said he knows first-hand “how critical immigration protections are.”
“I know what happens when the system fails to protect us,” said Perales, addressing rallyists who carried signs that read, “Keep families together and safe,” “No person is illegal” and “Education, not deportation.”
What Trump’s second term could mean for US education
THE American education system is poised to be a battleground for funding, diversity and immigration issues under President Trump.
On his campaign trail, Trump has mentioned ending the U.S. Department of Education; rolling back federal funding of public schools, particularly those maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies; supporting vouchers allowing parents, even wealthy ones, to receive taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools; and overturning Title IX, a law prohibiting sexbased discrimination which was expanded under Biden to include sexual orientationand gender-based discrimination.
In late November, Trump picked Linda McMahon to be the next Department of Education (ED) secretary; McMahon, a major Republican donor, is also co-chair of his presidential transition team; former
MANILA — A Canadian surveillance aircraft uncovered a number of fishing violations on the Philippines’ eastern seaboard during a two-week patrol with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) personnel onboard.
“This is an eye opener. Before, we were focused only on deploying surface assets and [could] only cover much, and it’s very loose out in the sea,” officer in charge of the BFAR fisheries resources management division Roy Ortega said in early December.
“With this air asset, we were able to cover a vast expanse of maritime areas in a short span of time,” he added. Ottawa deployed a De Havilland DHC8 surveillance aircraft used for long-range patrols to detect fishing vessel activities within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and adjacent high seas for a 72-hour patrol that flew out of Cebu from Nov. 13 to Dec. 1.
They found 88 “potential violations” of fishing that will be subject to investigation by the Philippine government.
These activities included fishing with unregistered or unmarked vessels and the use
When fewer typhoons caused more deaths: What’s behind rising fatalities?
MANILA — Fewer tropical cyclones have struck the Philippines since 2021 compared to the yearly average of 21, yet fatalities have doubled or tripled. The culprit? The growing frequency of larger, more destructive storms, experts told Philstar.com.
Astrophysicist Gerry Bagtasa, professor at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman’s Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology, ties these more intense typhoons to climate change.
“Since the 2000s, and especially
in the 2010s actually, there have been more intense typhoons that hit Visayas and Mindanao. This is because of some changes in the atmosphere in the Pacific,” he said.
Mahar Lagmay, executive director of the UP Resilience Institute (UPRI), pointed out a troubling “spike” in fatalities since 2017. While 2016 saw 70 weatherrelated deaths — the lowest recorded since 2010 — the toll has remained consistently higher each year, often surpassing 100.
While a 2023 study showed a lower average of 284 fatalities from 2014 to 2022 compared to
Teodoro tirade vs China ruling party irks embassy
by Jane Bautista Inquirer.net
Wednesday, December 25 issued a strong
of Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro
comments against the Communist Party of China (CPC) as he defended Philippine plans to acquire midrange missiles from the United States. Ticking off the embassy once again was Teodoro’s statement on Tuesday, December 24 accusing the founding and sole ruling party of communist China of interfering in internal Philippine affairs when it warned that Manila’s weapons upgrade could intensify geopolitical confrontations and trigger a regional arms race.
The defense chief then said: “If the [CPC] is truly intent on reducing tensions and instability in the region, they should cease their saber rattling, stop their provocative actions, halt their interference in other countries’ internal affairs, withdraw their illegal presence from the Philippines’ (exclusive economic zone), and adhere to international law.” Teodoro, who had his first stint as defense chief during the Arroyo administration, accused the CPC
Erwin
Tulfo, Bong Revilla lead in SWS senatorial preference survey
by ZaCarian sarao Inquirer.net
MANILA — Senatorial candidates backed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. continue to lead in a commissioned senatorial preference survey, sponsored by Stratbase Consultancy, and released by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) on Thursday, December 26.
According to the SWS, the survey had 2,097 registered voters as respondents, who were asked to choose 12 individuals from a list of 70 names that they would vote for as senators.
The majority of respondents picked House Deputy Majority Leader Erwin Tulfo, who led the top spot with 45 percent. Reelectionist Sen. Bong Revilla followed in second, with a wide margin, at 33 percent.
Tied in third to fourth place were reelectionist Senators Bong Go and Pia Cayetano, who garnered 32 percent each.
In fifth place is former Senate President Tito Sotto, with 31 percent of respondents saying they will vote for him, followed by radio personality Ben Tulfo in sixth place with 30 percent.
Former Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson placed seventh with 27 percent, while former Senator Manny Pacquiao and TV host Willie Revillame tied for eighth and ninth with 26 percent each.
Incumbent Makati Mayor Abby Binay ranked tenth with 25 percent, followed by reelectionist Senator Lito Lapid in 11th place with 23 percent.
Meanwhile, barely reaching the “magic 12” were Camille Villar and Senators Bato Dela Rosa and Imee Marcos — who all tied at 12 to 14th place with 21 percent each.
Former Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan then closely followed at 15th with 20 percent.
Of the 15 names, 10 belonged to the senatorial slate endorsed by Marcos, namely: Erwin Tulfo, Revilla, Cayetano, Sotto, Lacson, Pacquiao, Binay, Lapid, Villar, and Imee Marcos.
Chart by Philstar.com / Dominique Nicole Flores
by FranCes Mangosing Inquirer.net
by Krixia suBingsuBing Inquirer.net
by Selen Ozturk Ethnic Media Services
From The FronT Page
Christmas 2025: Pres. Marcos...
PAGE 1
religious boundaries while highlighting its significance to Christians.
“While it heralds the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior, it also marks the moment we experience the presence of God in its nearest and most intimate form, evoking gratitude, kindness, and happiness to one and all,” he said.
“This makes both the celebration and significance of Christmas transcend the constraints of religion, extending its invitation of joy and thanksgiving to everyone no matter their background,” he added.
Marcos also earlier called on Filipinos to embrace the Christmas spirit despite this year’s challenges, particularly calling for sympathy with those still recovering from recent calamities.
VP Sara calls for forgiveness in Christmas message
In a separate statement, Vice President Sara Duterte wished Filipinos a merry Christmas while emphasizing the value of forgiveness and compassion.
Sa ating pagsariwa sa diwa ng Pasko tayong lahat ay tinatawag upang maging mapagpatawad, bukas-palad, at mapagmahal sa ating kapwa,” Duterte said in a statement.
Duterte emphasized that
Jesus’ birth represents a message of forgiveness rooted in God’s universal love. She urged Filipinos to look beyond material gifts, calling instead for understanding, respect, and love, particularly toward the poor and sick.
The holiday messages from the country’s top executives come as their political alliance continues to deteriorate, with recent surveys showing declining public trust in both leaders.
A Pulse Asia survey released on Monday, December 23 showed Marcos’ performance ratings dipping to 48% from 50% between September and November. His trust ratings also slipped from 50% to 47%.
Meanwhile,
Duterte’s performance ratings fell to 50%
from 60%. Her trust ratings also nosedived to 49% from 61%.
The president, through Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, acknowledged that leadership decisions may not always be popular and called surveys “dipstick readings of the well of the public opinion.”
Duterte did not issue a statement in response to the Pulse Asia survey.
These survey results have emerged against a backdrop of unprecedented hostility between the country’s two highest officials, with Duterte’s recent remarks about planning retaliatory killings against Marcos a stark departure from the unity they projected during their 2022 “Uniteam” campaign. n
Teodoro tirade vs China ruling party...
of expanding its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missile capability, sponsoring criminal syndicates and subversive organizations beyond its borders, and refusing to uphold human rights within China.
Against de-escalation
The Chinese Embassy on Wednesday said Teodoro was not only “baselessly smear[ing] China and maliciously attacking” the CPC but also contradicting President Marcos’ directive to ease tensions in the South China Sea through dialogue. Such statements, it said, undermined ongoing diplomatic efforts between Manila and Beijing to address differences through communication and consultation.
“[T]his is not the first time the incumbent Philippine [defense secretary] made such unprofessional and ludicrous remarks. In addition to habitually attacking and smearing China and its ruling party, he personally impedes and obstructs mil-to-mil (military-to-military) contacts and exchanges between China and the Philippines,” the embassy said in a statement. Army plan disclosed It also reiterated its call for Manila to withdraw the Typhon missile system that the U.S. Army brought to the Philippines earlier this year for large-scale military exercises. Its arrival marked the first deployment of the U.S. weapon system in the Asia-Pacific region. Earlier this week, the
Philippine Army disclosed plans to accelerate the acquisition of a midrange capability missile system, though not necessarily with the Typhon.
“It is planned to be acquired because we see its feasibility and its functionality in our comprehensive archipelagic defense concept implementation,” Army chief Lt. Gen. Roy Galido said. Hours after Galido’s briefing, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, called the plan “an extremely irresponsible choice for the history of its own people and the people of Southeast Asia, as well as for regional security.”
The region needed “peace and prosperity, not missiles and confrontation,” she added. n
Canada helps PH in seaboard...
PAGE 1 of prohibited gear.
Outside PH jurisdiction
Fifty of these violations were in the high seas, or outside the country’s jurisdiction.
“This is an area that doesn’t have a lot of traditional enforcement assets available. So this is something we see around the world where there’s a low deterrence for IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing. It tends to happen more often,” said Sean Wheeler of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
“That’s part of the reason why we’re here and we’re working really closely with BFAR to get more surveillance assets out there to understand the fishery more, understand the levels of IUU, and effectively to, in the end, deter IUU fishing from happening,” he
said.
Called Operation Bantay Lawud (Sea Guardian), the mission aimed to combat IUU fishing in the western Pacific, as part of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy.
The operation also builds on Canada’s cooperation with the Philippines on the deployment of the Dark Vessel Detection platform, which allows it to detect ships that have switched off their location transmitters to avoid detection.
“It’s a very uplifting experience for our flyers who did actual surveillance work alongside Canadian partners,” Ortega said.
DFO also provided training for Filipino officers on how to effectively conduct high-seas boardings and inspections to strengthen the Philippines’ capacity in fisheries law enforcement. n
Erwin Tulfo, Bong Revilla lead in SWS...
PAGE 1
SWS then said that 12 percent of the respondents were either undecided or refused to give a name at the time of the survey.
The survey was conducted from December 12 to 18, 2024, using face-to-face interviews nationwide: 342 in Metro Manila, 1,050 in Balance Luzon, 353 in the Visayas, and 352 in Mindanao.
The sampling error margins are ±2.1% for national percentages, ±5.3% for Metro Manila, ±3.0% for Balance Luzon, and ±5.2% each for the Visayas and Mindanao. n
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte answer questions from the media during the kickoff of Brigada Eskwela 2023 at Victorino Mapa High School in Manila on August 14, 2023. Photos by KJ Rosales / The Philippine STAR
DigitalVision/Getty Images
Obamacare sign-ups lag after Trump election, legal challenges
by Julie Appleby KFF Health News
NEW enrollments under the Affordable Care Act are on pace to trail last year’s record numbers by as many as a million as the outgoing Biden administration confronts upheavals in the program.
Donald Trump’s election to a second term has cast uncertainty around the future of the health law. In addition, the Biden administration implemented cumbersome policies to reduce fraudulent enrollment and is combating a lawsuit that aims to block immigrants who lack legal residency from buying insurance under the program.
So far, the number of new and returning enrollees using healthcare.gov — the federal marketplace that serves 31 states — is below last year’s. New enrollments were just over 730,000 in early December, compared with 1.5 million at the same time last year.
To give consumers in federal marketplace states more time to enroll, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services extended to Dec. 18 the deadline to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1. (The Jan. 15 deadline is for coverage that would begin Feb. 1.) Also in flux is a rule issued by the Biden administration allowing — for the first time — enrollment in ACA coverage by people brought to the U.S. as children without immigration paperwork, known as “Dreamers.”
The Biden team was granted a temporary stay on Dec. 16 by the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 8th Circuit regarding a Dec. 9 order by a federal judge in North Dakota. That district court judge had ruled in favor of 19 states that sought to block the Biden administration’s Dreamers directive. Without a stay, the decision in that case, Kansas v. the United States, effectively bars those who have qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in the 19 states from enrolling in or getting subsidies for ACA plans. It does not appear to affect enrollment or coverage in other states, lawyers following the case have said.
A final decision on the temporary stay was expected any day now. If granted, it could allow Dreamers to continue enrolling while the government’s appeal of the district court ruling is heard, which is unlikely to occur before Trump takes office.
In its court filings, the Biden administration argues that not granting a stay would be very disruptive in the middle of open enrollment, causing the federal government to incur costs in retooling its marketplace to reflect the change, and notifying those who have already enrolled that their plans are canceled.
The original case was filed in August in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota and is being heard by District Judge Daniel Traynor, who was nominated in 2019 by thenPresident Trump.
Previously, the federal government estimated that about 100,000 uninsured people out of a half-million DACA recipients might sign up for 2025 coverage. In its new filing,
the government says 2,700 have enrolled in those states that brought the suit and use the federal marketplace.
The Biden administration rule, finalized in May, clarified that those who qualify for DACA would be considered “lawfully present” for the purposes of enrolling in plans under the ACA, which are open to citizens and those who are called “lawfully present” immigrants.
The federal lawyers argue that North Dakota has not proved it would be harmed by the rule, so it has no standing to bring the case. North Dakota argued that it incurs costs for approximately 130 DACA recipients who live in its state, and that it would not have those expenses if they were barred from enrolling in the ACA and thus decided to leave the country. An exodus is unlikely, the federal government argued.
The legal brief also questioned North Dakota’s calculation that it incurs costs of $585 to issue driver’s licenses to the DACA recipients and about $14,000 annually to educate at least one DACA member or dependent.
All the states challenging the ACA rule say it will cause administrative and resource burdens as more people enroll, and that it will encourage additional people to remain in the U.S. when they don’t have permanent legal authorization.
The plaintiff states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. n
How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic
KEITH Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October.
A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.
But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They showed videos of systems they built to hydrate hundreds of cattle at once. In 14-hour shifts, dairy workers pumped gallons of electrolyte-rich fluids into ailing cows through metal tubes inserted into the esophagus.
“It was like watching a field hospital on an active battlefront treating hundreds of wounded soldiers,” he said.
Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 875 herds across 16 states have tested positive.
Experts say they have lost faith in the government’s ability to contain the outbreak.
“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”
To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed
nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more.
Together with emails obtained from local health departments through public records requests, this investigation revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.
Case in point: The U.S. Department of Agriculture this month announced a federal order to test milk nationwide. Researchers welcomed the news but said it should have happened months ago — before the virus was so entrenched.
“It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the covid-19 crisis reemerge,” said Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Far more bird flu damage is inevitable, but the extent of it will be left to the Trump administration and Mother Nature. Already, the USDA has funneled more than $1.7 billion into tamping down the bird flu on poultry farms since 2022, which includes reimbursing farmers who’ve had to cull their flocks, and more than $430 million into combating the bird flu on dairy farms. In coming years, the bird flu may cost billions of dollars more in expenses and losses. Dairy industry experts say the virus kills roughly 2% to 5% of infected dairy cows u PAGE 8
PNA photo by Avito Dalan
When fewer typhoons caused more deaths...
the average of 1,253 from 1986 to 2013, Lagmay emphasized that “one life lost is still one too many.”
Rising death toll
The 2024 cyclone season has taken a deadly turn. By September, Typhoon Julian and earlier weather systems had already claimed 146 lives, far exceeding the 84 fatalities in all of 2023.
Despite having fewer cyclones last year — just 11, the lowest in a decade — the death toll has nearly doubled. Julian, for one, was only the 10th cyclone of 2024, raising questions about the increased severity of these storms.
Wind engineer Joshua Agar, an assistant professor at the UP Institute of Civil Engineering, said there are three key factors to consider when assessing an area’s risk during inclement weather: hazard, exposure and vulnerability.
Fil-Ams
‘Hazard’
After Typhoon Julian, the death toll more than doubled from 146. When six consecutive cyclones — Kristine, Leon, Marce, Nika, Ofel and Pepito — battered the Philippines in October and November, fatalities climbed to 324.
Agar explained that hazard was “the primary factor” behind the higher number of casualties caused by Kristine. He said the storm’s rainfall on October 22 was equivalent to a month’s worth of rain in Daet, Camarines Norte. It also surpassed the rainfall of Typhoons Ondoy and Carina.
Typhoons in 2024, influenced by La Niña, also “posed more risk” as they brought “wetter” conditions compared to those during the El Niño period in 2023, he said. The death toll in 2024 is significantly higher than the fatalities recorded during the years 2017 to 2020, which saw an average of 21 cyclones annually. n
join Migrants Day rally against Trump’s...
Perales said that like other immigrants, he came to the United States with “hopes and dreams for a better future.” He said undocumented immigrants should fight for “safety, dignity and the opportunity to build a life” in the U.S. and that they should “not let anyone dehumanize” them.
There are more than 950,000 undocumented immigrants, including about 48,000 Filipinos, according to the Migration Policy Institute, but immigrant rights advocates believe the actual numbers are much higher. In honor of International
Migrants Day, local organizations and hundreds of people gathered in downtown Los Angeles in an act of solidarity with immigrants, who fear President-elect Donald Trump’s promised plans for mass deportation. Immigrant rights advocates, including members and supporters of the Pilipino Workers Center and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) led the 1.5-mile march, rallying at Placita Olvera, 125 Paseo de la Plaza. The event was part of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement national week of action, which calls on President Joe Biden and
Congress to protect immigrant families, and do what they can to enact measures to prevent incoming President Trump’s promised crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Biden and the 118th Congress can take action by voting against a proposal to increase funding requests for immigration enforcement and detention, according to CHIRLA. Additionally, federal leaders have an opportunity to extend protections for immigrants who have temporary protected status and deferred action for childhood arrivals, also known as DACA. (Inquirer.net)
What Trump’s second term could mean...
Small Business Administration head under his first term; and founder, former president and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE).
K-12 and higher education
“We can expect lots of resistance if Trump tries to proceed with plans to dismantle the Department of Education, and it will come from unlikely quarters, including other Republicans in Congress and the Senate,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. “Eliminating the department won’t eliminate public education, but it would jeopardize oversight.”
About 90% of general K-12 public education is state- and local government-funded, with 10% — about $800 billion in 2021 — coming from the federal government.
“There’s more federal funding at stake in compensatory cases, like special education and schools in impoverished areas,” he explained. “Many of these kids are from Republican families and areas, and cutbacks to that support are going to get pushback.”
Title I, a grant program established in 1965 for disadvantaged schools, commits the federal government to fund 40% of per-pupil special education costs, although actual funding has always remained below 20%, and was less than 13% in 2023.
Schools with at least 40 percent of students from low-income families are also eligible for Title I. In 2022, these and similar Title I funds for impoverished schools accounted for $15.6 billion; about 63% of public schools in the country’s over 13,000 districts were eligible.
In his first and upcoming administration, Trump has also supported private school choice proposals including tax credit vouchers, a measure overwhelmingly rejected in 2018 by voters in states including Arizona, Nebraska, Kentucky and Colorado.
However, backing from wealthy conservatives has led nearly a dozen states to create or expand private school voucher or savings programs in recent years.
Despite resistance to policies like these, often from their own voter base, “a lot of what is driving the administration right now is ideology aimed at launching and sustaining culture wars, like attacks on transgender students and DEI … without bridging the educational gaps our students face,” said Nogura.
According to ED data, 54% of Americans between ages 16 and 74 read below a sixth grade level.
“Our demographics are changing to include more students traditionally left out of our nation’s education priorities,
and I don’t see the incoming administration’s policies doing better by them,” said Thomas Toch, director of the FutureEd program at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Higher education policies supported by Trump include taxing endowments, nearly half of which are held by 22 out of nearly 6,000 U.S. colleges and universities; reducing oversight of for-profit institutions like the unaccredited Trump University, which ceased in 2010 after several lawsuits; reducing federal Pell Grants and workstudy programs like AmeriCorps; and ending loan forgiveness and DEI initiatives created under President Biden.
Toch added that “International students are also at risk, given the administration’s promises to limit legal and illegal immigration into the US,” particularly given Trump’s pick of first-term immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as the White House deputy chief of staff for policy.
Legal challenges
Legal precedents present major barriers to other Trumpsupported policies, like immigration status-dependent public school attendance and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) rollbacks, said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing every child the right to attend free K-12 public school, “is not in any imminent danger at all,” he explained.
“I know we’ve seen a court majority that has overturned long-standing precedent for reproductive choice and affirmative action, but both cases were results of decadeslong overturning campaigns by the right, which is not the case with Plyler.”
The Plyler decision, which has been incorporated into federal statutory law, would also prevent raids by ICE or individual immigration officers on public K-12 school campuses.
When the Supreme Court overturned Trump’s attempt to eliminate DACA in 2020, it did not have the six-to-three Republican-appointed majority it currently does.
However, eliminating DACA would be more difficult in Trump’s second term than the first attempt, which was done through an announcement by the Attorney General to change an Obama-era policy.
In 2022, the Biden administration strengthened DACA through a formal regulatory rule-making process. This means that eliminating DACA would require an extensive process involving a public proposal in the Federal Register with public comment and government response periods.
“Many of the antidiscrimination protections and civil rights we count on in education are even more protected by legislation which would require action from a Congress that, despite formal Republican control, is quite evenly split in the House of Representatives, where it would be difficult to enact anything without unanimous Republican support,” Saenz said.
“What we will get is a daily barrage of rhetoric that is antiimmigrant, anti-DEI, anti-civil rights and anti-public education, including overstated powers of the President to do what he wants,” he continued. “It’s a calculated campaign to convince local decision makers, including school district officials, to withdraw on their own from these issue … But that rhetoric can’t be made real in most cases without congressional action.”
“My biggest concern is that rhetoric still has repercussions. People get scared by it, even if it’s not followed up by action. We certainly saw that under the first Trump administration,” he added. “We need to do the best we can to prepare for that rhetoric, and remember that the President and his cabinet members do not have dictatorial power. They still have to follow due process for the major changes they’d like to see.” n
How America lost control of the bird flu
and reduces a herd’s milk production by about 20%.
Worse, the outbreak poses the threat of a pandemic. More than 60 people in the U.S. have been infected, mainly by cows or poultry, but cases could skyrocket if the virus evolves to spread efficiently from person to person. And the recent news of a person critically ill in Louisiana with the bird flu shows that the virus can be dangerous.
Just a few mutations could allow the bird flu to spread between people. Because viruses mutate within human and animal bodies, each infection is like a pull of a slot machine lever.
“Even if there’s only a 5% chance of a bird flu pandemic happening, we’re talking about a pandemic that probably looks like 2020 or worse,” said Tom Peacock, a bird flu researcher at the Pirbright Institute in the United Kingdom, referring to covid. “The U.S. knows the risk but hasn’t done anything to slow this down,” he added.
Beyond the bird flu, the federal government’s handling of the outbreak reveals cracks in the U.S. health security system that would allow other risky new pathogens to take root. “This virus may not be the one that takes off,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, director of the emerging diseases group at the World Health Organization. “But this is a real fire exercise right now, and it demonstrates what needs to be improved.”
A Slow Start It may have been a grackle, a goose, or some other wild bird that infected a cow in northern Texas. In February, the state’s dairy farmers took note when cows stopped making milk. They worked
alongside veterinarians to figure out why. In less than two months, veterinary researchers identified the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus as the culprit.
Long listed among pathogens with pandemic potential, the bird flu’s unprecedented spread among cows marked a worrying shift. It had evolved to thrive in animals that are more like people biologically than birds.
After the USDA announced the dairy outbreak on March 25, control shifted from farmers, veterinarians, and local officials to state and federal agencies.
Collaboration disintegrated almost immediately.
Farmers worried the government might block their milk sales or even demand sick cows be killed, as poultry are, said Kay Russo, a livestock veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Instead, Russo and other veterinarians said, they were dismayed by inaction. The USDA didn’t respond to their urgent requests to support studies on dairy farms — and for money and confidentiality policies to protect farmers from financial loss if they agreed to test animals.
The USDA announced that it would conduct studies itself.
But researchers grew anxious as weeks passed without results. “Probably the biggest mistake from the USDA was not involving the boots-onthe-ground veterinarians,” Russo said.
Will Clement, a USDA senior adviser for communications, said in an email: “Since first learning of H5N1 in dairy cattle in late March 2024, USDA has worked swiftly and diligently to assess the prevalence of the virus in U.S. dairy herds.”
The agency provided research funds to state and national animal health labs beginning in April, he added.
The USDA didn’t require lactating cows to be tested before interstate travel until April 29. By then, the outbreak had spread to eight other states. Farmers often move cattle across great distances, for calving in one place, raising in warm, dry climates, and milking in cooler ones.
Analyses of the virus’s genes implied that it spread between cows rather than repeatedly jumping from birds into herds.
Milking equipment was a likely source of infection, and there were hints of other possibilities, such as through the air as cows coughed or in droplets on objects, like work boots. But not enough data had been collected to know how exactly it was happening.
Many farmers declined to test their herds, despite an announcement of funds to compensate them for lost milk production in May.
“There is a fear within the dairy farmer community that if they become officially listed as an affected farm, they may lose their milk market,” said Jamie Jonker, chief science officer at the National Milk Producers Federation, an organization that represents dairy farmers. To his knowledge, he added, this hasn’t happened.
Speculation filled knowledge gaps. Zach Riley, head of the Colorado Livestock Association, said he suspected that wild birds may be spreading the virus to herds across the country, despite scientific data suggesting otherwise. Riley said farmers were considering whether to install “floppy inflatable men you see outside of car
THE American education system is poised to be a battleground for funding, diversity and immigration issues under President Trump. Pexels.com photo by Pixabay
Fake PWD IDs ‘trivialize’ plight of people with disabilities – CHR
by John eric MendozA Inquirer.net
MANILA
— The spread of counterfeit persons with disabilities (PWD) IDs “trivializes” the struggle of legitimate holders, according to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).
The CHR said the use of phony PWD IDs “is a serious violation of the law and an affront to the dignity and rights of persons with disabilities.”
“Fraudulent practices of this nature undermine the integrity of these privileges and trivialize the legitimate struggles and daily challenges faced by persons with
disabilities. These benefits are essential to improving their quality of life and fostering inclusivity in society,” it also said in a statement Monday, December 23. CHR’s remarks followed Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian’s revelation during a Senate committee on ways and means hearing that government and private businesses lose P110 billion “in terms of tax leakage” because of fake PWD IDs.
Gatchalian disclosed that 8.5 million counterfeit PWD IDs are in circulation nationwide.
The Department of Health, however, said only 1.8 million PWDs are registered in the country
and entitled to a 20 percent discount on value-added taxes for certain goods and services.
To combat the proliferation of bogus PWD IDs, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) revealed its development of a unified ID system. The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), for its part, said it is conducting a crackdown against fake PWD IDs.
The CHR lauded the two initiatives as “they are crucial in safeguarding the benefits and privileges accorded to persons with disabilities while ensuring that resources are allocated to those who genuinely need them.” n
Groups buck bill on 99-year land lease to foreigners
by Jane Bautista Inquirer.net
MANILA — Agricultural
workers and a legal advocacy group have raised concerns over a “fast-tracked” bill seeking to extend land lease terms for foreign investors to nearly a century, warning of its potential negative impact on farmers, plantation workers, and indigenous cultural communities.
The House of Representatives approved last week on the third and final reading House Bill No. 10755, which amends Republic Act No. 7652, or the Investors’ Lease Act of 1993, extending the lease period for private land to foreign investors from 50 to 99 years.
The measure, authored by Speaker Martin Romualdez, was identified as a priority bill by the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council for its potential to attract more foreign investments.
Romualdez, in a statement early this month, defended the proposed 99-year lease, saying this addresses the concern of foreign investors regarding the shorter rental period of 50 years and its renewal by another 25 years.
“We hope this would attract new foreign investments and encourage existing investors to expand their businesses,
thereby creating more job and income opportunities for our people and sustaining our economic growth,” the speaker said, adding, “We want to be competitive regionally and globally in terms of enticing foreign investments.”
The Senate has also approved its version of the measure, Senate Bill No. 2898, authored by Senate President Francis Escudero.
Corporate control
Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) said in a statement on Saturday, Dec. 21 that the proposed legislation would “surrender” at least 20 percent of the country’s total agricultural lands to corporate control through agribusiness venture arrangements expanding the plantation system.
Plantation workers, UMA pointed out, suffer from some of the lowest wages in the labor force, earning an estimated daily salary of P250, or well below the legal minimum wage in most regions and barely 21 percent of the family living wage.
In plantations where the pakyawan system is implemented, wages are often even lower, it noted.
“By selling agricultural lands off to agri-corporations interested only in high-
value crops like oil palm, pineapple and the diseaseriddled Cavendish banana, the government [leaves] Filipino farmers with nothing to cultivate food staples on, thereby justifying imports and the exorbitant prices they came with,” the group pointed out.
‘Filed only four months ago’
The Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) also warned on Friday, Dec. 20 that such policy changes would further disadvantage smallholders and indigenous cultural communities, many of whom have waited years to receive their certificates of ancestral domain title despite completing all required documentation.
“Their land will be targeted and used for foreign investment projects,” LRC said.
While the bill has garnered support from foreign and local business groups for its potential to attract investment, LRC senior legal fellow Ryan Roset cautioned that it would accelerate the transformation of land into large-scale agribusinesses controlled by wealthy transnational corporations while pushing smallholders into landlessness or informal wage work.
“The appalling liberalization of the policy on lease of lands
Marcos, VP Duterte ratings down as poll reflects inflation woes
MANILA — The approval and trust ratings of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Vice President Sara Duterte, and the two highest congressional leaders declined as more Filipinos expressed dissatisfaction with the way the government had been handling high consumer prices, poverty, unemployment, and corruption, according to the results of Pulse Asia’s Ulat ng Bayan nationwide survey released on Saturday, December 21.
The survey, conducted from Nov. 26 to Dec. 3, showed that the government scored majority approval ratings in only two out of the 14 national issues where its performance was assessed.
These were on its efforts to protect the welfare of overseas Filipino workers, which got an approval rating of 60 percent; and its response to the needs of calamity-stricken areas, which got 57 percent.
The issue where it had the lowest approval rating was on controlling inflation, which garnered only 2 percent.
Inflation picked up to 2.5
percent in November from 2.3 percent the previous month after the onslaught of powerful storms hit the food supply, while a weak peso bloated import costs of key items such as oil, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. The other issues with low approval ratings were poverty reduction (13 percent), fighting graft and corruption (16 percent), increasing workers’ pay (19 percent), addressing involuntary hunger (20 percent), and job creation (23 percent).
Nationwide decline
Marcos’ approval rating dropped by 2 percentage points to 48 percent in November, from 50 percent in September.
His trust rating went down by 3 percentage points to 47 percent from 50 percent.
Across the country’s three major geographical groupings, the president’s approval rating fell except in Luzon, where it improved from 61 percent to 65 percent.
The most significant decline was in Mindanao, where it dropped to 14 percent from
26 percent. In the Visayas, it went down from 52 to 48.
In the National Capital Region, the drop was only by 1 percentage point, to 51.
Among the socioeconomic classes, his approval rating declined the most among Class E respondents to 35 percent from 47 percent.
However, it improved by 4 percentage points in Class ABC, rising to 39 percent from 35 percent.
Marcos’ trust rating also saw the biggest decline in Mindanao, falling to 14 percent from 21 percent, while his trust rating fell the most in Class E to 33 percent from 47 percent.
Bigger slide Vice President Duterte experienced significant slides in both her approval and trust scores.
Her approval score fell by 10 percentage points from 60 percent to 50 percent, while her trust rating declined by 12 percentage points from 61 percent to 49 percent.
The vice president’s approval rating declined in
HOLIDAY RUSH. Passengers and their belongings undergo tight screening at Davao City Overland Transport Terminal on Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Officials expect between 50,000 and 70,000 travelers during the holiday season. PNA photo by Robinson Niñal Jr.
End the export of Filipinos
IN this season of giving, it says a lot about the magnitude of the corruption problem in this country that Bureau of Immigration personnel at the country’s airports need guidance on whether or not they can give holiday greetings to passengers. The guidance had to be sought because of reports in previous years of BI personnel expecting gifts after greeting passengers a merry Christmas at the immigration counters.
On Sunday, December 22, the BI commissioner said immigration personnel may greet passengers but cannot receive gifts. The guidance should go without saying, since under Republic Act 6713, the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, there are detailed provisions on prohibited acts involving the acceptance of gifts by all government personnel. Such provisions should be taken to heart especially by any state worker dealing directly with the public.
Editorial
The Code of Conduct defines a “gift” that public officials and employees cannot accept from a non-relative, whether directly or indirectly, as something whose value “is neither nominal nor insignificant, or the gift is given in anticipation of, or in exchange for, a favor.”
Relatives refer to persons within the fourth civil degree of consanguinity or affinity, including inlaws of the government official or employee.
THE demand for overseas Filipino workers continues to grow, with foreign employers preferring Filipinos because of their admirable work ethic. This positive outlook has greatly contributed to their reputation for being reliable, dependable and hardworking. Added to that is their ability to communicate in English and their eagerness to learn the language of their host country.
According to Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) Secretary Hans Cacdac, job opportunities are expanding rapidly in many countries across Europe such as the Czech Republic that is doubling its annual quota for Filipino workers, while Austria will need over 200,000 workers in the coming years and Croatia is opening up jobs in the health care and hotel sectors.
In the United States, the demand for nurses and other professionals in the health care
IN utter dismay over how badly distorted the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) came out, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (PBBM) wants to redo it. Separately ratified by both chambers of the 19th Congress, the president minced no words in asserting the P6.352-trillion budget for next year – as submitted by the Executive branch – has been mangled by “insertions” and realignments.
It was after the bicameral conference committee (bicam) practically rewrote the 2025 GAA after it was respectively approved at the Senate and at the House of Representatives. Dubbed as the “third Congress,” the bicam is constituted to reconcile the differing versions of two same legislative bills approved separately in both chambers. The bicam is composed of an equal number of senators and those from the House of Representatives as panel members.
The designated chairperson for each panel for the 2025 GAA
There are exceptions, particularly regarding gifts or grants from foreign governments including fellowships, scholarships or medical treatment.
But RA 6713 states: “Public officials and employees shall not solicit or accept, directly or indirectly, any gift, gratuity, favor, entertainment, loan or anything of monetary value from any person in the course of their official duties or in connection with any operation being regulated by, or any transaction which may be affected by the functions of their office.”
If the law would be strictly enforced, it could decimate the ranks of government at all levels.
Tragically for the country, ignoring the Code of Conduct has become the norm rather than the exception. This may still be corrected, with increased awareness of the prohibitions against soliciting and accepting gifts. Civic-minded people can report violations of RA 6713, if not
through official channels, then to the world through the digital information network. BI personnel have received their guidance and warning. In this season of gift-giving, the warning bears dissemination throughout the government. (Philstar.com)
Department of Migrant Workers plays a crucial role
sector as well as in education, manufacturing and information technology continues to be high. During my interactions with Republican and Democrat members of the U.S. Congress, they only have high praise for Filipino workers, describing them as hardworking and dedicated.
Dubbed as “bagong bayani” or “new heroes,” OFWs have been a major contributor to the economy of the Philippines through their remittances that amounted to over $37.2 billion in 2023 which, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, represented 8.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product or GDP. Topping the country of origin for remittances was the United States followed by Singapore and Saudi Arabia. This year, OFW remittances are estimated at $38 billion and it’s likely this amount does not include money sent through informal channels.
As I pointed out on several occasions, OFWs are among our best assets and play a major role in promoting good relations with other nations – their loyalty and dedication earning praise and
bill was Senator Grace Poe, as the chairperson of the Senate finance committee, and her counterpart Ako Bicol party list Rep. Elizaldy Co, who chairs the House committee on appropriations. The 12-man Senate panel was composed of Senate pro tempore Jinggoy Estrada; Senate majority leader Francis Tolentino; Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel III; Senate assistant minority leader Risa Hontiveros; Senators JV Ejercito, Sherwin Gatchalian, Imee Marcos, Ronald Bato dela Rosa, Joel Villanueva, Cynthia Villar, Mark Villar and Miguel Zubiri.
On the part of the House, the bicam members were Pampanga 3rd District Rep. (Deputy Speaker) Aurelio Dong Gonzales; Quezon 2nd District Rep. and Deputy Speaker David Jayjay Suarez; Zamboanga City 2nd District Rep. and Majority Leader Manuel Manix Dalipe; Tingog party-list Rep. and Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre; Eastern Samar 4th District Rep. and Minority floor leader Marcelino Libanan; Marikina 2nd District Rep. Stella Quimbo; Mandaluyong City Rep. Neptali Gonzales; Agusan del Norte 1st District Rep Jose Joboy Aquino; Ako Bicol
accolade as seen during the Oct. 7 attack of Hamas against Israel when a Filipina nurse refused to leave her elderly patient – with both of them brutally murdered. But while we hail their heroism and value their contribution to the economy, these also come at great personal sacrifice, enduring the pain of separation from their families and loved ones. Worse, they are also the most frequent victims of labor and human rights abuses, especially women who make up most of the workforce. Cruel employers maltreat them, force them to work excessively long hours under terrible conditions and with little pay. We hear a lot of stories about OFWs being starved and physically abused for minor mistakes, humiliated and subjected to emotional and mental torture.
President Marcos has seen this personally during the years he spent in exile, and he certainly empathizes with the plight of OFWs. He has given clear instructions to Secretary Cacdac to ensure their welfare and protection, and provide assistance especially in times of need or distress. Just recently,
the president inaugurated a one-stop center in Makati for OFWs that provides fast and streamlined services which include document processing of returnees, renewal, OWWA membership, legal assistance and other services. The facility also houses services from other government agencies essential to OFWs such as the Social Security System, Home Development Mutual Fund, Social Welfare and Development, among others. There is no doubt the DMW plays a crucial role in protecting the rights of OFWs and promoting the welfare of their families as well. To this end, they have issued “whitelisting” guidelines that recruitment agencies must adhere to in order to monitor the safety of deployed workers. Efforts are also being doubled to go after illegal recruiters and close down their operations, intensifying awareness campaigns to educate Filipinos about the dangers posed by illegal recruiters.
OFW Mary Jane Veloso is a clear example of one who was victimized by illegal recruiters. She was supposed to work in Malaysia but was told that no
work was available, and thus was sent to Indonesia where she was arrested for drug trafficking when authorities found heroin in her luggage, which Veloso claims was provided by her recruiter. Mary Jane is lucky to be repatriated to Manila following an agreement between Indonesia and the Philippines.
Others were not so lucky, like Flor Contemplacion and a male worker in Saudi Arabia who was executed last October.
Many of us get emotional about the plight of overseas Filipino workers and the kind of heartbreak they go through providing for their families.
In fact, not too long ago I got furious when one of the columnists in our publication wrote nasty comments about OFWs when they happened to be on the same flight with her to Manila. She mocked, belittled and insulted them in her column – so I fired her.
At a Christmas gathering in Malacañang to honor OFWs and their families, the president said his administration is strengthening cooperation with host countries to protect the rights of OFWs, hailing their
It’s an election budget
party-list Rep. Raul Anglo Jil Bongalon; Antipolo 2nd District Rep. Romeo Acop; Romblon Rep. Eleandro Madrona and Rizal
1st District Rep. Michael Duavit.
Last Nov. 28, the “third Congress” began meeting behind closed doors as usual.
For almost two weeks, the bicam closeted themselves, along with their respective legislative staff, in a suite at the Manila Hotel.
Senate President Francis Escudero and Speaker Martin Romualdez later joined them at the signing of the consolidated version of the 2025 GAA held last Dec. 11 at the same venue. It was immediately sent back to the Senate and the House for one final look at their respective plenary sessions. And on the same day, both chambers of the 19th Congress ratified the 2025 budget in marathon sessions. The lawmakers were only too happy to meet the self-imposed deadline for the submission of next year’s budget before they adjourned for their Christmas break last week. But at the end of the process, it was discovered the bicam obviously went overboard and unilaterally reshaped the president’s budget priorities for next year.
Alas, the final 2025 GAA bill as churned out by the bicam included last-minute changes in
the budget program.
Drastic changes in allocations were found in the voluminous copy of the 2025 GAA as transmitted to Malacañang for review and eventual signing by the president before it becomes law. From the initial looks of it, the bicam nearly got away with all the usual horse trading.
Former senator and now Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Sonny Angara bewailed publicly the slashing of P12 billion from his agency’s outlay. The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) got zero subsidy for next year. Thus, the actuarial life of the chief implementing agency of the Universal Health Act is at risk.
Being the agency in charge of state-funded infrastructure activities, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) got more projects that were not even in the list of the president’s National Expenditure Program (NEP) for next year. The bonanza of realignments resulted to a P1.113-trillion DPWH budget.
Self-proclaimed “super Ate,” Senator Marcos assailed PBBM allies in Congress, whom she accused of impeachmentbaiting her younger brother to commit an unconstitutional act. The 1987 Constitution states
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that education should receive the highest budget allocation among government offices. With overall P925-billion budgets for basic, higher and technicalvocation education put together, the DPWH budget for next year still exceeded it. She also denounced DPWH’s “various infrastructure projects” that she claimed were reserved for “VIPs,” or very important politicians, glaringly in aid of May 2025 election. Herself up for re-election, she claimed “confusion” and “ignorance” as to how these changes got into the 2025 GAA. Although she was part of the bicam, she swore to high heavens: “We were not consulted on these drastic changes.” PBBM though is not a stranger to this kind of culture in Congress. After all, he served as congressman in his home province at the second district of Ilocos Norte. His first term was from 1992 to 1995 and returned as congressman from 2007 to 2010. He got elected as senator in 2010 for a six-year term.
The 67-year-old chief executive is now taking a strong stand now in the mid-term of his tenure at Malacañang. He would no longer tolerate such wanton disregard, if not disrespect, for the president’s budget.
contribution to the economy and assuring them that along with the DMW, our consulates and embassies all over the world are working to ensure their welfare.
Our embassy will do everything to protect and help OFWs in the United States, especially those who have a sword hanging over their head because of their uncertain legal status. This is also the reason why we are hoping to open more consulates in other parts of the U.S. like Seattle and even in Alaska. We are also intensifying engagements with relevant U.S. officials to advocate for Filipinos’ rights and welfare, and will continue to provide consular assistance to all Filipino nationals regardless of their immigration status. But when all is said and done – the only way to have legal status in the United States is to follow U.S. laws. (Philstar.com)
* * * The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
* * * Email: babeseyeview@gmail.com
“Now, it’s up to us on how we regain control of the spending program, and I cannot give you the details yet... That is what we are doing. We’re going through item by item, line by line to see what is priority and what is not. That’s what we will come up with,” PBBM vowed.
He sat down at Malacañang with his economic managers to scrutinize with a fine-tooth comb the printed copy of the 2025 GAA. Assisted by his economic team led by Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, the president has nothing to worry about.
While Congress has the “powers of the purse,” the chief executive enjoys line-item veto powers over the budget bill. Our Constitution also provided for “automatic re-enactment” that allows the national government to operate its dayto-day mandate even without a new approved GAA. Since the 2025 GAA is an election budget anyways, it’s better that we have re-enacted 2024 GAA. (Philstar. com)
* * * The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
BaBe Romualdez Babe’s Eye View
ManilaTimes.net photo
How America lost control of the bird flu... Groups buck bill on 99-year land lease...
dealerships” to ward off the birds.
Advisories from agriculture departments to farmers were somewhat speculative, too. Officials recommended biosecurity measures such as disinfecting equipment and limiting visitors. As the virus kept spreading throughout the summer, USDA senior official Eric Deeble said at a press briefing, “The response is adequate.”
The USDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration presented a united front at these briefings, calling it a “One Health” approach. In reality, agriculture agencies took the lead.
This was explicit in an email from a local health department in Colorado to the county’s commissioners. “The State is treating this primarily as an agriculture issue (rightly so) and the public health part is secondary,” wrote Jason Chessher, public health director in Weld County, Colorado. The state’s leading agriculture county, Weld’s livestock and poultry industry produces about $1.9 billion in sales each year.
Patchy surveillance
In July, the bird flu spread from dairies in Colorado to poultry farms. To contain it, two poultry operations employed about 650 temporary workers — Spanish-speaking immigrants as young as 15 — to cull flocks. Inside hot barns, they caught infected birds, gassed them with carbon dioxide, and disposed of the carcasses. Many did the hazardous job without goggles, face masks, and gloves.
By the time Colorado’s health department asked if workers felt sick, five women and four men had been infected. They all had red, swollen eyes — conjunctivitis — and several had such symptoms as fevers, body aches, and nausea.
State health departments posted online notices offering farms protective gear, but dairy workers in several states told KFF Health News that they had none. They also hadn’t heard about the bird flu, never mind tests for it.
Studies in Colorado, Michigan, and Texas would later show that bird flu cases had gone under the radar.
In one analysis, eight dairy workers who hadn’t been tested — 7% of those studied — had antibodies against the virus, a sign that they had been infected.
Missed cases made it impossible to determine how the virus jumped into people and whether it was growing more infectious or dangerous. “I have been distressed and depressed by the lack of epidemiologic data and the lack of surveillance,” said Nicole Lurie, an executive director at the international organization the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response in the Obama administration.
Citing “insufficient data,” the British government raised its assessment of the risk posed by the U.S. dairy outbreak in July from three to four on a six-tier scale.
Virologists around the world said they were flabbergasted by how poorly the United States was tracking the situation. “You are surrounded by highly pathogenic viruses in the wild and in farm animals,”
said Marion Koopmans, head of virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If three months from now we are at the start of the pandemic, it is nobody’s surprise.”
Although the bird flu is not yet spreading swiftly between people, a shift in that direction could cause immense suffering. The CDC has repeatedly described the cases among farmworkers this year as mild — they weren’t hospitalized. But that doesn’t mean symptoms are a breeze, or that the virus can’t cause worse.
“It does not look pleasant,” wrote Sean Roberts, an emergency services specialist at the Tulare County, California, health department in an email to colleagues in May. He described photographs of an infected dairy worker in another state: “Apparently, the conjunctivitis that this is causing is not a mild one, but rather ruptured blood vessels and bleeding conjunctiva.”
Over the past 30 years, half of around 900 people diagnosed with bird flu around the world have died. Even if the case fatality rate is much lower for this strain of the bird flu, covid showed how devastating a 1% death rate can be when a virus spreads easily.
Like other cases around the world, the person now hospitalized with the bird flu in Louisiana appears to have gotten the virus directly from birds. After the case was announced, the CDC released a statement saying, “A sporadic case of severe H5N1 bird flu illness in a person is not unexpected.”
‘The cows are more valuable than us’ Local health officials were trying hard to track infections, according to hundreds of emails from county health departments in five states. But their efforts were stymied. Even if farmers reported infected herds to the USDA and agriculture agencies told health departments where the infected cows were, health officials had to rely on farm owners for access.
“The agriculture community has dictated the rules of engagement from the start,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “That was a big mistake.”
Some farmers told health officials not to visit and declined to monitor their employees for signs of sickness. Sending workers to clinics for testing could leave them shorthanded when cattle needed care. “Producer refuses to send workers to Sunrise [clinic] to get tested since they’re too busy. He has pinkeye, too,” said an email from the Weld, Colorado, health department.
“We know of 386 persons exposed — but we know this is far from the total,” said an email from a public health specialist to officials at Tulare’s health department recounting a call with state health officials. “Employers do not want to run this through worker’s compensation. Workers are hesitant to get tested due to cost,” she wrote.
Jennifer Morse, medical director of the Mid-Michigan District Health Department, said local health officials have been hesitant to apply pressure after the backlash many faced at the peak of covid. Describing the 19 rural counties she serves as
“very minimal-governmentminded,” she said, “if you try to work against them, it will not go well.”
Rural health departments are also stretched thin.
Organizations that specialize in outreach to farmworkers offered to assist health officials early in the outbreak, but months passed without contracts or funding. During the first years of covid, lagging government funds for outreach to farmworkers and other historically marginalized groups led to a disproportionate toll of the disease among people of color.
Kevin Griffis, director of communications at the CDC, said the agency worked with the National Center for Farmworker Health throughout the summer “to reach every farmworker impacted by H5N1.” But Bethany Boggess Alcauter, the center’s director of public health programs, said it didn’t receive a CDC grant for bird flu outreach until October, to the tune of $4 million. Before then, she said, the group had very limited funds for the task.
“We are certainly not reaching ‘every farmworker,’” she added.
Farmworker advocates also pressed the CDC for money to offset workers’ financial concerns about testing, including paying for medical care, sick leave, and the risk of being fired. This amounted to an offer of $75 each. “Outreach is clearly not a huge priority,” Boggess said. “I hear over and over from workers, ‘The cows are more valuable than us.’”
The USDA has so far put more than $2.1 billion into reimbursing poultry and dairy farmers for losses due to the bird flu and other measures to control the spread on farms. Federal agencies have also put $292 million into developing and stockpiling bird flu vaccines for animals and people. In a controversial decision, the CDC has advised against offering the ones on hand to farmworkers.
“If you want to keep this from becoming a human pandemic, you focus on protecting farmworkers, since that’s the most likely way that this will enter the human population,” said Peg Seminario, an occupational health researcher in Bethesda, Maryland. “The fact that this isn’t happening drives me crazy.”
Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the CDC, said the agency aims to keep workers safe. “Widespread awareness does take time,” he said. “And that’s the work we’re committed to doing.”
As President-elect Donald Trump comes into office in January, farmworkers may be even less protected. Trump’s pledge of mass deportations will have repercussions whether they happen or not, said Tania Pacheco-Werner, director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute in California.
Many dairy and poultry workers are living in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas linked to their employers. Such precarity made people less willing to see doctors about covid symptoms or complain about unsafe working conditions in 2020. Pacheco-Werner said, “Mass deportation is an astronomical challenge for public health.”
Not ‘Immaculate Conception’
A switch flipped in September among experts who study pandemics as
by foreign investors turns on its head our longtime efforts for greater economic independence and sovereignty.
The proposed legislation, which was only filed four months ago and fast-tracked for approval[,] seemingly done under the radar, … loosens Philippine land lease policies by extending the lease period to 99 years,” Roset said.
Constitutional restriction Roset argued that the bill circumvents the constitutional prohibition on the transfer of land to foreign entities under the 1987 Constitution, which aims to preserve national patrimony and ensure that agricultural resources remain in Filipino hands.
“In this regard, the appalling 99-year lease period practically transfers the rights of dominion over the national patrimony to foreign entities since it would practically handcuff Filipinos to the terms of the long-term leases,” Roset said.
Indigenous communities
“No private corporation or association may hold alienable land of the public domain except by lease, for a period not exceeding fifty years, renewable for not more than another fifty years, and under such terms and conditions as Congress may prescribe,” it added.
According to LRC’s recently published report on the state of indigenous peoples, only one in every four claims of ancestral domain has been fully approved, while 78 percent are still pending, which Roset described as a “worrisome” situation given the passage of the Investors’ Lease Act by both chambers of Congress.
“Rather than elevating the plight of the poor and marginalized, this policy direction would only reinforce and amplify existing inequalities, especially among
Article XII, Section 3 of the Constitution prohibits the transfer of ownership of land to foreign nationals, specifically stating that “lands of the public domain, waters, minerals, coal, petroleum, and other natural resources are owned by the State.”
indigenous communities, who continue to seek proper recognition of their ancestral domains despite the submission of requirements,” Roset noted. For UMA national chair Ariel Casilao, the perceived “railroading” of the bill circumvented the Constitution’s prohibition on foreign land ownership, claiming that lawmakers were facilitating “land grabs by imperialist forces.” Casilao described the measure as a Charter change “by other means,” noting that the 99-year land lease legislation effectively opens the door to what the 1987 Philippine Constitution explicitly forbids—foreign ownership of land, which would otherwise require a constitutional amendment. This was the same argument made by Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas, who voted against the House bill, saying that extending the lease period practically circumvents constitutional restrictions on foreign land ownership. n
LEGAL SERVICES LEGAL SERVICES
INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner Ramiro Daniel Rodriguez, AKA Danny Rodriguez, AKA Ramiro Rodriguez filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: a. Ramiro Daniel Rodriguez, AKA Danny Rodriguez, AKA Ramiro Rodriguez to Aleph Daniel Castillo Rodriguez. THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing. NOTICE OF HEARING Date: 02/04/2025 Time: 8:30 AM Dept. C-61 Superior Court of California, County of San Diego 330 WEST BROADWAY DEPT. 61 San Diego, CA 92101 A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the following newspaper of general circulation printed in this county. Asian Journal: DEC 16, 2024 NO HEARING WILL OCCUR ON ABOVE DATE: SEE ATTACHMENT Maureen F. Hallahan Judge of the Superior Court AJ 1586 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. ATTACHMENT TO ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME (JC Form #NC-120) NO HEARING WILL OCCUR ON THE DATE SPECIFIED IN THE ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE. The Court will review the documents filed as of the date specified on the Order to Show Cause for Change of Name (JC Form #NC-120). If all requirements for a name change have been met as of the date specified, and no timely written objection has been received (required at least two court days before the date specified), the Petition for Change of Name (JC Form #NC-100) will be granted without a hearing. One certified copy of the Order Granting Petition will be mailed to the petitioner. To change a name on a legal document, including a birth certificate, social security card, drivers license, passport, and other identification, a certificate copy of Decree Changing Name (JC Form #NC-130) or Decree Changing Name and Order Recognizing Change of Gender and for Issuance of New Birth Certificate (JC Form #NC-230) may be required. Contact the agency(ies) who issues the legal document that need to be changed to determine if a certificate copy is required. A certified copy of Decree Changing Name (JC Form #NC-130) or Decree Changing Name and Order Recognizing Change of Gender and for Issuance of New Birth Certificate (JC Form #NC230) may be obtained form the Civil Business Office for a fee. Petitioners who are seeking a change of name under the Safe at Home program may contact the assigned department for information on obtaining certified copies. If all the requirements have not been met as of the date specified, the Court will mail the petitioner a written order with further directions. If timely objection is filed, the Court will set a hearing date and contact the parties by mail with further directions. A RESPONDENT OBJECTING TO THE NAME CHANGE, MUST FILE A WRITTEN OBJECTION AT LEAST TWO COURT DAYS (excluding weekends and holidays) BEFORE THE DATE SPECIFIED. Do not come to court on the specified date. The court will notify the parties by mail of a future hearing date. Any Petition for the name change of a minor, that is signed by only one parent, must have this Attachment served along with the Petition and Order to Show Cause, on the other, non-signing parent, and proof of service must be filed with the Court. AJSD 1586
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023631
Manifest Eats And Catering located at 6231 Madeline Street 182, San Diego, CA 92115. Registrant: Manifest Success LLC, 6231 Madeline Street 182, San Diego, CA 92115. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 11/26/2024. Signature: Charles Washington. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/27/2024. AJ 1577 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1577
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024948 Postal Connections San Diego located at 4231 Balboa Ave, San Diego, CA 92117. Registrant: Papouz Global LLC, 10461 Guindo Place, San Diego, 92124. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 03/19/2024. Signature: John Georges. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/19/2024. AJ 1589 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10/2025, and 01/17/2025. AJSD 1589
CASE NUMBER: 24CU029256C TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS: Petitioner Frank Baecker and Maria Luz Pericon Castro on behalf of a minor Benjamin Mateo Baecker-Pericon filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: a. Benjamin Mateo Baecker-Pericon to Benjamin Mateo Baecker. THE COURT ORDERS that all persons interested in this matter appear before this court at the hearing indicated below to show cause, if any, why the petition for change of name should not be granted. Any person objecting to the name changes described above must file a written objection that includes the reasons for the objection at least two court days before the matter is scheduled to be heard and must appear at the hearing to show cause why the petition should not be granted. If no written objection is timely filed, the court may grant the petition without a hearing.
NOTICE OF HEARING Date: 02/05/2025 Time: 8:30 AM Dept. 61 Superior Court of California, County of San Diego 330 WEST BROADWAY DEPT. 61 San Diego, CA 92101
A copy of this Order to Show Cause shall be published at least once each week for four successive weeks prior to the date set for hearing on the petition in the following newspaper of general circulation printed in this county. Asian Journal: DEC 19, 2024 NO HEARING WILL OCCUR ON ABOVE DATE: SEE ATTACHMENT
Maureen F. Hallahan Judge of the Superior Court AJ 1588 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10, and 01/17/2025. ATTACHMENT TO ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE FOR CHANGE OF NAME (JC Form #NC-120) NO HEARING WILL OCCUR ON THE DATE SPECIFIED IN THE ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE. The Court will review the documents filed as of the date specified on the Order to Show Cause for Change of Name (JC Form #NC-120). If all requirements for a name change have been met as of the date specified, and no timely written objection has been received (required at least two court days before the date specified), the Petition for Change of Name (JC Form #NC-100) will be granted without a hearing. One certified copy of the Order Granting Petition will be mailed to the petitioner. To change a name on a legal document, including a birth certificate, social security card, drivers license, passport, and other identification, a certificate copy of Decree Changing Name (JC Form #NC-130) or Decree Changing Name and Order Recognizing Change of Gender and for Issuance of New Birth Certificate (JC Form #NC-230) may be required. Contact the agency(ies) who issues the legal document that need to be changed to determine if a certificate copy is required. A certified copy of Decree Changing Name (JC Form #NC-130) or Decree Changing Name and Order Recognizing Change of Gender and for Issuance of New Birth Certificate (JC Form #NC230) may be obtained form the Civil Business Office for a fee. Petitioners who are seeking a change of name under the Safe at Home program may contact the assigned department for information on obtaining certified copies. If all the requirements have not been met as of the date specified, the Court will mail the petitioner a written order with further directions.
If timely objection is filed, the Court will set a hearing date and contact the parties by mail with further directions. A RESPONDENT OBJECTING TO THE NAME CHANGE, MUST FILE A WRITTEN OBJECTION AT LEAST TWO COURT DAYS (excluding weekends and holidays) BEFORE THE DATE SPECIFIED. Do not come to court on the specified date. The court will notify the parties by mail of a future hearing date. Any Petition for the name change of a minor, that is signed by only one parent, must have this Attachment served along with the Petition and Order to Show Cause, on the other, non-signing parent, and proof of service must be filed with the Court. AJSD 1588
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024479
Happy Little Feet Childcare located at 852 49th St, San Diego, CA 92102.
Registrant: Rubicelia Leander, 852 49th St, San Diego, CA 92102. This business is conducted by An Individual.
REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 05/21/2024.
Signature: Rubicelia Leander. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/12/2024. AJ 1578 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. AJSD 1578
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024883
a. Custom Glass Specialties INC located at 821 E 2nd St, National City, CA 91950. b. Commercial Glass & Hardware located at 821 E 2nd St, National City, CA 91950. Registrant: Custom Glass Specialties INC, 821 E 2nd St, National City, CA 91950. This business is conducted by A Corporation. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 05/01/2024. Signature: Leticia Arias. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/19/2024. AJ 1590 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10/2025, and 01/17/2025. AJSD 1590
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023589
San Diego Community Health Center located at 2630 First Ave, San Diego, CA 92103.
Registrant: San Diego American Indian Health Center, 2630 First Ave, San Diego, CA 92103. This business is conducted by A Corporation.
REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 11/27/2024.
Signature: Kevin M. Lachapelle. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/27/2024. AJ 1567 12/06, 12/13, 12/20, and 12/27/2024. AJSD 1567
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023898
A CAB located at 16229 Stonebridge PKY #412, San Diego, CA 92131. Registrant: Ali Emami Taleghani, 16229 Stonebridge PKY #412, San Diego, CA 92131. This business is conducted by An Individual.
REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 12/04/2024. Signature: Ali Emami Taleghani. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/04/2024. AJ 1570 12/06, 12/13, 12/20, and 12/27/2024. AJSD 1570
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024089
TJ BAJA LOCKSMITH located at 1211 4th Ave, Chula Vista, CA 91911.
Registrant: Joel Mariscal Morales, 1211 4th Ave, Chula Vista, CA 91911. This business is conducted by An Individual.
REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE.
Signature: Joel Mariscal Morales. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/06/2024.
AJ 1574 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1574
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9022621
Centennial Realty Financial Services located at 9026 Penticton Way, San Diego, CA 92126.
Registrant: Ed M. Bermudez, 9026 Penticton Way, San Diego, CA 92126. This business is conducted by An Individual. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 01/09/2020.
Signature: Ed M. Bermudez. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/13/2024. AJ 1579 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. AJSD 1579
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024966
Abide Home Health located at 9474 Kearny Villa Road, Ste. 101, San Diego, CA 92126. Registrant: Abide Home Health Care INC, 9474 Kearny Villa Road, Ste. 101, San Diego, CA 92126. This business is conducted by A Corporation. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 08/09/2024. Signature: Camilo Gallego. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/19/2024. AJ 1591 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10/2025, and 01/17/2025. AJSD 1591
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9022863
Garza’s Janitorial And Floor Care Services located at 1205 Calla Ave, Imperial Beach, CA 91932-1708.
Registrant: Robert Garza, 1205 Calla Ave, Imperial Beach, CA 91932-1708. This business is conducted by An Individual. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 11/17/2024. Signature: Robert Garza. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/18/2024. AJ 1568 12/06, 12/13, 12/20, and 12/27/2024. AJSD 1568
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023979
SALIE’S PLACE located at 3403 E Plaza Blvd Ste A1, National City, CA 91950. Registrant: Rosalie Navales, 3403 E Plaza Blvd Ste A1, National City, CA 91950. This business is conducted by An Individual.
REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 11/01/2024. Signature: Rosalie Navales. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/05/2024. AJ 1572 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1572
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9022909
a. Black Rose Tattoo located at 277 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd, San Marcos, CA 92078.
b. Black Rose Tattoo SM located at 277 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd, San Marcos, CA 92078.
Registrant: Duffield Art Collective LLC, 277 S Rancho Santa Fe Rd, San Marcos, CA 92078
This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company.
REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE.
Signature: Matthew Duffield. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/18/2024. AJ 1575 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1575
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023925
Ava Massage & Beauty Spa located at 2856 Main St, San Diego, CA 92113. Registrant: Ava Luxurious Beauty LLC, 4815 Ebony Ridge RD, San Diego, CA 92102. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 12/04/2024.
Signature: Christina Xueman Xu. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/04/2024. AJ 1580 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. AJSD 1580
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024443
Castor Bernadeau Mylvia Family Child Care LLC located at 3121 Sweetwater Springs Blvd 76, Spring Valley, CA 91978. Registrant:Castor Bernadeau Mylvia Family Child Care LLC, 3121 Sweetwater Springs Blvd 76, Spring Valley, CA 91978. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 09/16/2024. Signature: Mylvia Castor Bernadeau. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/12/2024. AJ 1592 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10/2025, and 01/17/2025. AJSD 1592
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023653
Matias Gonzalez Landscape LLC located at 1113 North Fig Street, Escondido, CA 92026. Registrant: Matias Gonzalez Landscape LLC, 1113 North Fig Street, Escondido, CA 92026. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE. Signature: Matias Gonzalez. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/27/2024. AJ 1569 12/06, 12/13, 12/20, and 12/27/2024. AJSD 1569
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023977
SD Custom Transfers located at 7798 Gaston Dr, San Diego, CA 92126. Registrant: Mark Anthony Gustilo, 7798 Gaston Dr, San Diego, CA 92126. This business is conducted by An Individual. REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE.
Signature: Mark Anthony Gustilo. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/05/2024. AJ 1573 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1573
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024308
American Smoke Shop #5 located at 2502 S. Santa Fe Ave, Suite A2, Vista, CA 92084.
Registrant: The High Country Pro Glass INC, 2502 S. Santa Fe Ave, Suite A2, Vista, CA 92084. This business is conducted by A Corporation.
REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE. Signature: Raged Saco. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/10/2024. AJ 1576 12/13, 12/20, 12/27/2024, and 01/03/2025. AJSD 1576
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023385
Health Quest Community Care located at 8090 Parkway Drive Ste 100, La Mesa, CA 91942. Registrant: H Squared Health INC, 8090 Parkway Drive Ste 100, La Mesa, CA 919421070 56th St, San Diego, CA 92114. This business is conducted by A Corporation.
REGISTRANT HAS NOT BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) ABOVE.
Signature: Huy Thanh Ho. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 11/25/2024. AJ 1585 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. AJSD 1585
FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9023675
Loraine Lashes LLC located at 2720 E. Plaza Blvd Suite L, National City, CA 91950. Registrant: Loraine Lashes LLC, 3633 Peach Blossom St, National City, CA 91950. This business is conducted by A Limited Liability Company. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 10/02/2020. Signature: Loraine G. Reduque. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/02/2024. AJ 1593 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, 01/10/2025, and 01/17/2025. AJSD 1593
NAME STATEMENT NO. 2024-9024292
Perez Landscaping located at 1537 Q Ave Apt 6, National City, CA 91950. Registrant: Francisco Perez Badillo, 1537 Q Ave Apt 6, National City, CA 91950. This business is conducted by An Individual. REGISTRANT FIRST BEGUN TO TRANSACT BUSINESS UNDER THE NAME(S) AS OF 06/13/2012.
Signature: Francisco Perez Badillo. Statement filed with Recorder/County Clerk of San Diego County on 12/10/2024. AJ 1587 12/20/2024, 12/27/2024, 01/03/2025, and 01/10/2025. AJSD 1587
SAN DIEGO
‘It’s Showtime’ to continue airing on GMA-7
by Jan MilO SeverO Philstar.com
GMA-7 announced that the ABS-CBN noontime show "It's Showtime" will continue to air on its channel in 2025.
“'It’s Showtime' will continue to air in GMA in 2025!
Maligayang Pasko, madlang Kapuso at Kapamilya ,” the official statement read.
ABS-CBN, meanwhile, thanked GMA for the continued trust and support to the noontime show.
Masaya ang ABS-CBN na ibalita na magpapatuloy ang It's Showtime' sa pag-ere tuwing tanghali sa GMA mula Lunes hanggang Sabado.
"Taos-pusong
nagpapasalamat ang ABSCBN at ang pamilya ng 'It's Showtime' sa GMA para kanilang patuloy na tiwala at suporta.
"Patuloy kaming maghahatid ng inspirasyon at saya sa aming mga manonood. "Maraming salamat, mga Kapuso, mga Kapamilya at Madlang People."
The announcement came after rumors of the show
parting ways with GMA trended on social media earlier this week.
“It’s Showtime” was first seen on GMA-7’s sister channel, GTV, in July 2023. It began airing on GMA-7’s main channel in April this year.
Alfy Yan follows footsteps of late uncle Rico
ALFONSO “Alfy” Yan-Tueres
became a viral sensation back in 2020 after netizens noticed that he was the spitting image of his uncle, the late matinee idol Rico Yan. The resemblance with Rico was so close that netizens were quick to spread Alfy’s photos on social media sites, leading many to believe that he would enter show business right away.
But Alfy, who is the son of Rico’s eldest sister, chose to focus on his studies as a management student at the Ateneo de Manila University.
To add to that, he was also quite busy with his love of baseball, being a member of the Ateneo Baseball Varsity team.
Four years later, Alfy, now 19 years old, made the decision to follow in the footsteps of
his talented uncle Rico, as part of the Viva Artists Agency family. Viva has a long history of grooming matinee idols into talented actors, such as Aga Muhlach, Robin Padilla, James Reid, and now, in the current
generation, young actors like Andres Muhlach.
After the announcement that Alfy would be joining Viva, he was showered with support from fans and family, including actress Claudine Barretto, his uncle Rico’s former onscreen and offscreen partner.
“I am so proud to announce that another Yan will be part of this industry,” Claudine wrote on Instagram. “Like his uncle Rico, Alfy will be changing and touching lives and will continue the Yan legacy. We are so proud of you Alfy!”
Now that he is under one of the renowned talent agencies in the country, there is a lot to expect from Alfy as he hones his craft as an athlete, and now as an artist. Definitely something to look forward to for 2025 and beyond. (ManilaTimes.net)
AS the Lunar New Year holidays approach, Pechanga Resort Casino welcomes everyone to join in on their celebration of the New Year by giving away in a total of $250,000 in cash and EasyPlay prizes.
Pechanga Club members can earn entries to win the cash windfall by playing their favorite slots or table games each day starting January 1st for a chance to win big! Guests’ number of entries can be multiplied according to their Club tier level.
Multiple winners will be drawn on Friday, January 31 and February 14 to receive EasyPlay. One lucky winner will be drawn at random for the ultimate cash prize of $100,000 on each drawing day. Discover the thrill of possibility in winning multiple times.
For more information on Pechanga events and promotions, please call (877) 711-2946 or visit our website Pechanga.com. Must be at least 21 years of age to participate in promotions.
Pechanga Resort Casino offers one of the largest and most expansive resort/ casino experiences anywhere in the United States. Voted best casino/resort in the United States by readers of Condé Nast Traveler, the best casino outside of Las Vegas by Newsweek and rated a Four Diamond property by AAA since 2002, Pechanga Resort Casino provides an unparalleled getaway, whether for the day or for an extended luxury stay. Offering 5,500 of hottest slots, 152
Alfy Yan Photo courtesy of Viva
NEEYONG Nabus, 13, son of Bicolano journalist and radio/ TV host Ambet Rivera Nabus (awardee of 2nd Southeast Asian Premier Business and Achiever Award), is showing great potential in the world of performing arts. His rap single, “Agos ng Tugtog,” talks about ignoring the negativity in life and letting music to take away one’s worries. He is the young artist of ABS-CBN record label StarPop.
He is a Grade 7 student at FEU Roosevelt in Cainta, Rizal. He loves to play guitar, writes rap songs, and plays basketball and billiards.
He also likes cooking and playing with his pet dogs. He enjoys Christmas gathering with family and friends and sees Christmas as the best time to be with loved ones. He delights in opening gifts and giving them away to others. He dreams of becoming a soldier, a chef and a basketball star. His favorite artists include Michael Pangilinan, rapper and singersongwriter Flow G and Esmer.
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The 3rd National Parol-Making Competition at Kalayaan Grounds, Malacañang Palace was a huge success. A star-studded panel of judges brought their expertise and artistry to the event, composed of comedian and TV host Vice Ganda, philanthropist Lizzie Zobel de Ayala, renowned bag designer Neil Felipp San Pedro, celebrated fashion designer Michael Leyva, and chairman and CEO of the Film Development Council of the Philippines Jose Javier Reyes.
The competition showcased the creativity and craftsmanship of participants nationwide. After much deliberation, the top three winners were selected and joined recently the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the grounds in front of
Neeyong Nabus, ABS-CBN’s new star pop artist
Malacañang’s Kalayaan Hall where I worked as presidential message writer for almost nine months years ago.
* * * Congrats to fellow recipients of the World Summit Excellence Awards’ The Grand Ambassador’s Ball, organized by Lheng Divinagracia Gonzales, at the Metro Club of Makati on December 14, 2024. Some of the winners included Shiela Delgado, Yeoj Marquez, Nunungan Mayor Marcos Mamay, singers Imelda Papin, Beverly Salviejo, Richard Reynoso and Ice Seguerra, actor Jeric Raval, actress-singer Ara Mina, NET25 Radyo Aguila hosts Belle Surara and Wej Cudiamat, DJ Nicole Hyala of 90.7 Love Radio, Dr. Alexis Divinagracia, Ma. Candelaria Unidad Co, James Arthur Jimenez of the COMELEC, Kap. PA Velasco, Paranaque Cong. Edwin Olivarez, Cong, Virgilio Lacson, Benjo Bernabe, Cong. Carlo Aldeon of Ang Tinig ng Senior Citizen Partylist, impersonatorsinger Ruben Noble Dominguez Jr., Atty. Warren Mendoza, Samira Ali Gutoc, Emily Lego with her husband Fraternal Order of Eagles Governor Jessie Lebron, Dr. Maria Elena Namuag, SJO2 Jude Pagdato Gumawa, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Ramil Palisoc, PBGen. Wilson C. Asueta, Alma Mirano, Vivian Ancheta Gabriel, PhD, PAGCOR, PCSO, Mary Liza Dino-Seguerra, and Aficionado’s Joel S. Cruz who brought his kids to the awards night. Lheng also appeared in the films “Imelda Papin: The Untold Story” and “Unlock” (with Rafael Rossell, Julio Daz, Beverly Salviejo, Pinky Amador, Sheila Delgado and Tanya Garcia). She is the chair of the Paranaque Chapter of “Basta Tayo Sama-sama,” president of Southern Metro District Lady Eagles Club, and secretary of the Ambassador Club of the Philippines.
My students at the University of Makati had been fortunate to have as guest Emmy award-winning Filipino American animator Jess Espanola, who I featured at the Philippine Star.
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My Australian relatives visited us at the house of my cousin, foremost Filipino glass sculptor Ramon Gahol Orlina with his Malaysian wife Lay-Ann Lee Orlina, a London-schooled lawyer.
* * * Congratulations to the winners of the 2nd Southeast Asian Premier Business and Achiever Awards last December 8, 2024 at Winford Resort and Casino Manila. I brought my aunts, retired teacher Pilar de Mesa of Legarda Elementary School and PAREB (Philippine Association of Real Estate Boards) member Anita Garcia, who took care of me since childhood.
During the well-organized event, I saw Asia’s Queen of Fire Lae Manego (I joined her in an outreach activity at CHILDHaus Manila), Richard Merk, my very good friend Dr. Patrick Saburit who remains humble despite his success (more of him in the future issue of this column), amiable Ambet Nabus, Jamin Constantino Lim, Marc Logan, my dear friend Andrew de Real, Miles Ocampo, Belle Surara, Wej Cudiamat, DJ Mama Colleen, D. Edgard Cabangon with his wife Sharon Tan, Usec. Robert Torres Rivera with his lovely wife Nerlisa Elyza Francisco Rivera, Braggy Litonjua Braganza, Guia Cruz Buenaventura of Media house Express, PTV staff who represented Audrey Gorriceta and Rise and Shine Pilipinas (we were on Table 13), Charlomagne Arceta, Hagibis, Gretchen Fullido, and Carmela Betonio. I was surprised actor Philip Salvador (his sister
County warns against raw milk products amid Bird Flu risk
COUNTY public health
officials are warning San Diegans not to eat or drink raw milk products or give them to their pets because of the heightened risk for H5N1, or bird flu. Because raw milk and raw milk products are not pasteurized, they can contain harmful pathogens including H5N1 or bacteria like salmonella, toxin producing E. coli. and listeria. All of these can cause severe illness, hospitalization and even death, especially in people who are immunocompromised, the very young and pregnant women.
The health warning extends to pet products containing raw milk. Dogs and cats can get sick if these products contain harmful bacteria or viruses.
People also should also be mindful of keeping their pets away from sick or dead birds outside. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has confirmed two cases of H5 bird flu in cats that consumed recalled raw milk from Raw Farm, LLC.
Pasteurization is a heat treatment process. Pasteurized milk and other pasteurized dairy products are safe to consume because the heat treatment kills bacteria and other pathogens like the bird flu but otherwise does not change the product. Even before the emergence of bird flu in California, San Diego County public health epidemiologists have linked other illnesses to raw milk, including in 2023 when a series of salmonella cases were reported after consuming raw milk from a producer in Fresno. About Bird Flu Recently, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a State of Emergency to strengthen the state’s response and preparedness for bird flu. The California Department of Public Health reports 34 confirmed cases statewide in humans and says the current risk remains low to for the public. Bird flu or H5N1 is a highly contagious virus that can sicken or kill birds and other animals. While rare, it can be spread to people when the virus gets in
someone’s eyes, nose or mouth, or when it is inhaled.
County Public Health Services is monitoring the emergence of H5N1 flu types in coordination with health partners at the federal and state level. The county also is in communication with local veterinarians and healthcare providers. No cases in humans have been reported in San Diego County. The county continues to monitor influenza strains through its robust influenza surveillance system.
Those most at risk for bird flu are farm or wildlife workers who may be around infected animals.
The county has made personal protective equipment available to eligible farms, wildlife groups and animal control officers. While the seasonal influenza vaccine does not protect against bird flu, everyone is encouraged to get vaccinated to reduce the risk of serious illness.
(Fernanda Lopez Halvorson/ County of San Diego Communications Office)
actress Deborah Sun is my good friend) was there to represent Sen. Bong Go. Thanks a lot to La Visual Corp. (especially to Ms. Lalaine) and Nirro Marcelo, awards committee chairman.
* * *
Before I proceeded to Baguio Mansion in the City of Pines for a coverage, I really enjoyed watching Andrew E’s first major concert with his special guests Martin Nievera, Regine Velasquez, Heaven Peralejo, Anygma, Sabalkuta and Sheree. Luckily, I
was in the VIP seat so I could see the concert visibly and enjoy the music. I sat beside Prince Angelo Juane, a high school schoolmate of Andrew Fordy Espiritu (Andrew E’s son) in Southville International School and Colleges in Las Pinas City. Maricel Edios Perez, Andrew E’s producer in his 2025 concert tour in Toronto (for May) and Montreal (for June) was seated in the same row with me. Many thanks to Mylene Yap Espiritu and Jhobina Garcia.
* * * Many thanks to Elisa Escobar,
group general manager of Azalea Hotels and Residences, for accommodating
by
of
* * * rogeliocmedina@yahoo.com
California secures critical funding to address Tijuana River sewage crisis in Imperial Beach and surrounding communities
SACRAMENTO – Governor Gavin Newsom recently announced that President Biden has signed a federal funding bill allocating $250 million to fully repair and expand the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant near the U.S.Mexico border in San Diego.
This vital investment, secured in partnership with California’s congressional delegation and the Biden-Harris Administration, will reduce untreated sewage flows into California’s coastal waters and improve public health and environmental conditions in the region. The sewage crisis is not only impacting public health, the local economy, and ecosystems and species in coastal communities but has also led to local beach closures for 1,000 consecutive days. It has significantly impacted the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, border agents and U.S. Navy Seal special operation forces who train in those waters.
In February, October, and November of this year, the governor met with White House officials to push for action to address this crisis. Earlier this fall, Governor Newsom visited wastewater treatment facilities on both sides of the border to assess rehabilitation efforts and the ongoing sewage crisis, a long-standing environmental and public health issue.
“For far too long, communities in the Tijuana River Valley have borne the brunt of this cross-border pollution crisis. Today’s funding marks a longterm turning point — we are delivering the resources needed to protect public health, restore our beaches, and give residents the clean air and water they deserve,” Gov. Newsom said in a statement released by his office.
Addressing this decades-long crisis
Working alongside federal, state, and local partners over years, Governor Newsom has helped secure critical funding and support to address crossborder pollution from the Tijuana River while holding authorities accountable to expedited timelines.
Securing federal funding: In partnership with California’s congressional delegation and the Biden-Harris Administration, Governor Newsom has now helped secure $703 million in federal funding — $353 million this year and $350 million last year— for critical upgrades to the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. The upgrades will significantly reduce the flow of untreated sewage into California’s coastal waters. State investments to clean up the area, provide air filters to communities: In October, the County announced plans to purchase and distribute $2.7 million worth of air purifiers for local residents, which will be reimbursed by the state. Since 2019, California has allocated $35 million in state funding to address pollution in the Tijuana River Valley and support cleanup efforts:
• $1 million to fund Tijuana River Valley Recovery Team projects in the Tijuana River Valley
$9 million to operate and maintain Goat Canyon
and trash basins • $4.7 million to Rural Community Assistance Corporation’s Tijuana River Trash Boom pilot Project
$14.25 million for the Smuggler’s
Governor Newsom meets with Senior Advisor to the President John Podesta and other top White House officials to advocate for funding to address the Tijuana River sewage crisis. Photo courtesy of Governor’s Press Office
Photo courtesy of CDC
Neeyong with his dad Ambet Nabus (left photo), and with Joshua Garcia and Julia Barretto (right photo). Photos courtesy of Rogelio C. Medina
Clockwise, from bottom left: Prof. Rogelio Medina (right) with Marc Logan; Oggie with Dr. Patrick Saburit, Pilar de Mesa and Anita Garcia; Rogelio with Anita Garcia, Pilar de Mesa and singer Richard Merck; the author with Dr. Edgar Cabangon and wife Sharon Tan.
Jess Espanola and Prof. Oggie Medina with University of Makati students.
Social Secretary Biana Cristina C. Zobel (left photo); and Vivian Recio, 3rd from right (right photo).
SAPBA awardees Rogelio Medina and Asia’s Queen of Fire Lae Manego. Elisa Escobar (left) and Yayot Garcia at Azalea Hotels and Residences Baguio.
Oggie Medina attends Andrew E’s first major concert in Quezon City’s New Frontier Theater.
Glass sculptor Ramon Orlina (extreme right) with his relatives at Ilaw ng Nayon St., Balic-Balic in Sampaloc, Manila.in Sampaloc, Manila.`
Aficionado’s Joel S. Cruz (4th from left) with his 6 children, Lheng Divinagracia Gonzales (extreme right). In background is WSE Awards chair John Glenn Gonzales, Lheng’s hubby.
us in the City of Pines. It was a nice multi-use, service-apartment complete with living, dining, and kitchen facilities in all its suites. It is located at Leonard Wood Loop, Baguio City.
Jingle bells, jingle bells, recycling time is here
GIFTS, boxes, wrapping paper, cards — even trees! Yes, the holidays, and one of the biggest recycling opportunities of the year, are upon us.
The holiday season always means there’s a lot of stuff to recycle — to “re-gift” to our earth and its future — rather than tossing it into the trash and landfills.
With that holiday spirit of giving back in mind, the county Department of Public Works would like to give you some tips on what to recycle and how to do it right!
Christmas trees
We all love our beautiful Christmas trees. But if you’re using a real tree, there eventually comes a time to say goodbye. The county is here to let you know how to recycle it the right way.
Properly recycled trees and wreaths can be turned into mulch that will improve soil health and help soil retain moisture at our parks, farms, home gardens and landscapes. Recycling them also keeps them from going into the trash where they can unnecessarily fill up landfills and generate unwanted climate-changing greenhouse gases as they decompose.
So, check with your waste hauler to find out if they offer curbside pickup. Many of them do. Or go to the county’s recycling and hazardous waste database, WastefreeSD.org, to find Christmas tree drop-off sites near you. It’s easy.
Type “Christmas tree” in the “find an item” box, add your ZIP code, community and how you heard about the site, and you’ll see all the drop-off locations near you.
Finally, remember, never leave your old dry tree or wreaths lying in the backyard where they can
become dangerous fire hazards. Know what packaging can — and can NOT — be recycled Online shopping and giftgiving typically means lots of packaging, and a lot of stuff to recycle. But not all packaging can be recycled. For example, cardboard boxes and kraft paper can be recycled (just break them down and put them in your blue recycling bin). But other items can’t — manila envelopes, padded plastic mailers, bubble-wrap and traditional gift-wrapping materials including metallic wrapping paper, wrapping paper with glitter, ribbons, bows, twine, tissue paper and cellophane. So please DO NOT put them in your blue recycling bins; consider re-using them instead. Here’s a link to learn more about how to Recycle Right (https://www. sandiegocounty.gov/content/ sdc/dpw/recycling/RecycleRight. html), during the holidays and every day.
Christmas and holiday card recycling
Like packaging materials, not all holiday cards should be
added to your recycling. Simple paper cards and envelopes can be added to your blue bins. But cards that have glitter, foil, metallic inks (inks made with tiny metal flakes) or other adornments can’t. If there’s a glitzy front and plain paper backing, tear the cards in two. Recycle the backs and put the glitzy fronts into the trash.
Holiday light recycling
Please — don’t put old holiday lights in your recycling bins. They can tangle up recycling equipment and they also pose a danger to workers in those recycling centers. For recycling options, please visit WasteFreeSD.org, or contact a scrap metal or e-waste recycler.
So, there you have it. Remember, if you have other questions about what can and can’t be recycled, go to DPW Recycling’s webpage (https:// www.sandiegocounty.gov/ content/sdc/dpw/recycling.html) or to DPW Recycling’s Facebook page.
(Gig Conaughton/County of San Diego Communications Office)
Marcos, VP Duterte ratings down as poll...
all areas, most significantly in Visayas where it fell 20 percentage points to 51 percent from 71.
Among socioeconomic classes, her approval rating weakened the most among Class D respondents, from 59 percent to 49 percent.
Similar to her approval rating, Duterte’s trust rating also fell in all areas, with the biggest drop in the Visayas from 74 percent to 47 percent.
Among socioeconomic classes, her trust rating fell the most among Class D, from 59 percent to 47 percent.
The Pulse survey was conducted shortly after the already soured relations between the president and the vice president deteriorated even further.
In an online press conference on Nov. 22, four days before the survey began,
a fuming Duterte spoke of having instructed a person to assassinate Marcos, his wife Liza, and his cousin Speaker Martin Romualdez should an alleged plot to kill her succeed.
Congress leaders In the same Pulse survey, Senate President Francis Escudero got an approval rating of 53 percent, down by 7 percentage points from 60 percent in September. Escudero’s trust rating also dropped by 5 percentage points from 56 percent to 51 percent.
Still, the Senate leader was the only top public official in the survey to maintain majority approval and trust ratings.
Speaker Romualdez experienced a drop in both his approval and trust ratings. His approval rating fell to 25 percent from 32 percent, while his trust rating saw a significant decrease to 21
percent from 31 percent.
Other concerns
Meanwhile, other national issues where the Marcos administration’s performance was weighed were as follows:
• Defending the integrity of Philippine territory (50 percent approval rating)
• Promoting peace (42 percent)
• Stopping the destruction and abuse of the environment (40 percent)
• Providing assistance to farmers (40 percent)
• Enforcing the law on all (35 percent)
• Fighting criminality (37 percent).
The survey used face-to-face interviews with 2,400 adult respondents and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2 percentage points for national estimates, and plus-or-minus 4 percentage points for each geographic area. (Inquirer.net)
How America lost control of the bird flu...
PAGE 7
national security threats. A patient in Missouri had the bird flu, and no one knew why.
“Evidence points to this being a one-off case,” Shah said at a briefing with journalists. About a month later, the agency revealed it was not.
Antibody tests found that a person who lived with the patient had been infected, too. The CDC didn’t know how the two had gotten the virus, and the possibility of human transmission couldn’t be ruled out. Nonetheless, at an October briefing, Shah said the public risk remained low and the USDA’s Deeble said he was optimistic that the dairy outbreak could be eliminated. Experts were perturbed by such confident statements in the face of uncertainty, especially as California’s outbreak spiked and a child was mysteriously infected by the same strain of virus found on dairy farms.
“This wasn’t just immaculate conception,” said Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It came from somewhere and we don’t know where, but that hasn’t triggered any kind of reset in approach — just the same kind of complacency and low energy.”
Sam Scarpino, a disease surveillance specialist in the Boston area, wondered how many other mysterious infections had gone undetected. Surveillance outside of farms was even patchier than on them, and bird flu tests have been hard to get. Although pandemic experts had identified the CDC’s singular hold on testing for new
viruses as a key explanation for why America was hit so hard by covid in 2020, the system remained the same. Bird flu tests could be run only by the CDC and public health labs until this month, even though commercial and academic diagnostic laboratories had inquired about running tests since April. The CDC and FDA should have tried to help them along months ago, said Ali Khan, a former top CDC official who now leads the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health.
As winter sets in, the bird flu becomes harder to spot because patient symptoms may be mistaken for the seasonal flu. Flu season also raises a risk that the two flu viruses could swap genes if they infect a person simultaneously. That could form a hybrid bird flu that spreads swiftly through coughs and sneezes.
A sluggish response to emerging outbreaks may simply be a new, unfortunate norm for America, said Bollyky, at the Council on Foreign Relations. If so, the nation has gotten lucky that the bird flu still can’t spread easily between people. Controlling the virus will be much harder and costlier than it would have been when the outbreak was small. But it’s possible.
Agriculture officials could start testing every silo of bulk milk, in every state, monthly, said Poulsen, the livestock veterinarian. “Not one and done,” he added. If they detect the virus, they’d need to determine the affected farm in time to stop sick cows from spreading infections to the rest of the herd — or at least to other farms. Cows can spread the bird flu before they’re sick, he said, so speed is crucial.
City of San Diego invites community members to help honor Parks and Recreation staff
Heart of Service award spotlights employees who go above and beyond with exceptional service
SAN DIEGO – Whether it’s teaching adults and children to swim, cleaning up parks or providing activities in recreation centers across San Diego, a new recognition program is highlighting the impact of the services provided by Parks and Recreation employees.
The City of San Diego Heart of Service award honors employees who have made a meaningful impact in the community and are going above and beyond to deliver exceptional service. San Diegans are encouraged to submit nominations to acknowledge and express recognition to exceptional employees within the department.
“I am pleased that this program is now in place for members of the public to nominate employees who have gone above and beyond in the course of their work,” said Andy Field, director of the Parks and Recreation Department. “The Heart of Service Award will shine a light on our hard-working employees who provide exceptional service and let them know how much park patrons and visitors appreciate our teams.”
The Heart of Service Award program provides an opportunity for any member of the public to nominate a Parks and Recreation employee to acknowledge and express recognition for the following reasons:
• Exceptional productivity and work performance
• Exceptional lifesaving, safety or loss prevention
the community. The state helped get the CDC to deploy resources on the ground and assess public health conditions. The state has also supported the local air district on air monitoring, planning, and mitigation strategies to protect public health.
Water quality and timeline accountability: State authorities have been using enforcement tools to compel infrastructure improvements to the federal wastewater treatment plant, with the San Diego Water Board holding the federal facility to timelines for several repair and maintenance actions, including replacing and installing additional pumps, cleaning out sedimentation tanks, replacing a junction box and temporary influent pipe, and rehabilitating all mechanical parts for sedimentation tanks.
Continued federal and Mexico partnerships: The governor has urged federal and Mexican partners to address this crisis. When Governor Newsom traveled to Mexico for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration, he discussed with Mexican authorities this crisis and
Curtailing the virus on farms is the best way to prevent human infections, said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, but human surveillance must be stepped up, too. Every clinic serving communities where farmworkers live should have easy access to bird flu tests — and be encouraged to use them. Funds for farmworker outreach must be boosted. And, she added, the CDC should change its position and offer farmworkers bird flu vaccines to protect them and ward off the chance of a hybrid bird flu that spreads quickly.
The rising number of cases not linked to farms signals a need for more testing in general. When patients are positive on a general flu test — a common diagnostic that indicates human, swine, or bird flu — clinics should probe more deeply, Nuzzo said.
The alternative is a waitand-see approach in which the nation responds only after enormous damage to lives or businesses. This tack tends to rely on mass vaccination. But an effort analogous to Trump’s Operation Warp Speed is not assured, and neither is rollout like that for the first covid shots, given a rise in vaccine skepticism among Republican lawmakers.
Change may instead need to start from the bottom up — on dairy farms, still the most common source of human infections, said Poulsen. He noticed a shift in attitudes among farmers at the Dairy Expo: “They’re starting to say, ‘How do I save my dairy for the next generation?’ They recognize how severe this is, and that it’s not just going away.”
• Exceptional customer service, professionalism and dedication to public service. The Parks and Recreation Department is one of the city’s largest departments, with over 1,100 employees working in a variety of roles across 60 recreation centers, 15 swimming pools, three golf courses, and over 42,000 acres of developed and undeveloped park land, joint-use and open space. Hundreds of recreational programs are available to the public, serving tens of thousands of San Diegans each year. The Heart of Service program is accordance with City of San Diego Administrative Regulation 95.91, which establishes a standardized criteria, guidelines and procedures for the City’s Rewards and Recognition (R&R) Program. To be eligible for the award, an employee must have been with the Parks and Recreation Department for at least three months, received no discipline in the last 12 months, and must meet performance standards at the time of the award. Full criteria can be found on the nomination website at https://www.sandiego.gov/parks-and-recreation/ heart-service-award. To submit a nomination, members of the public can visit the Heart of Service nomination page. Nominations must include a brief narrative to qualify for an award.
(City of San Diego Release)
repairing wastewater treatment facilities to prevent excess flows from reaching the U.S. During Saturday’s (December 21) visit, the governor also met with Baja Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila
Olmeda. In February, October, and November of this year, the governor met with White House officials to push for action to address this crisis.
