Category: Philippines Daily Inquirer

Police in Carrascal, Surigao del Sur, have launched a deeper investigation into the death of a vocal pro-Duterte vlogger on Sunday morning.

The victim, Philip Morales Engbino, 48, a married native of Minglanilla, Cebu, was also the manager of EZMMI GenCon, a major contractor for Strong Group Mining Corp. (SGMC).

Engbino was driving a company-owned white Dongfeng pickup vehicle when unidentified assailants ambushed and shot him at around 6 a.m.

Maj. Elmar Claret, Carrascal police chief, said the shooting occurred in Barangay Saca, correcting initial online reports that the incident happened along the national highway in Barangay Bacolod,

Company records showed that the pickup truck driven by Engbino left Gate 2 of the SGMC mining facility at 4:35 p.m. on Saturday, October 3, roughly 13 hours before the ambush.

Claret described the incident as an ‘isolated case’ and assured residents that Carrascal remains secure.

‘Our team, along with provincial forensic experts, is working round-the-clock to resolve this case and bring those responsible to justice,’ Claret stated, adding that police visibility, patrols, and checkpoints have been augmented across key areas.

Authorities have urged residents to stay vigilant and avoid traveling alone in remote areas late at night.

Engbino was well known on social media for his staunch political commentary supporting former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Just a day before the shooting, Engbino posted a Cebuano-language vlog slamming former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV over the latter’s exposés against the Duterte family.

The video was widely circulated among Duterte supporters and fellow commentators shortly before his death.

Col. Jeffrey Lawrence Mauricio, Surigao del Sur Police Provincial Office director, appealed for calm and cautioned against drawing any conclusions on the killing of the victim while forensic and criminal investigators are still investigating the case.

Mauricio appealed to the public to refrain from formulating, disseminating, or offering baseless speculations while law enforcement authorities are still establishing the true motive behind the crime.

Fruitas Holdings Inc. has secured a P750-million credit facility from Philippine National Bank (PNB) to open more stores, develop its brand portfolio and explore overseas opportunities.

The homegrown food and beverage chain signed the agreement last Oct. 2 at the PNB Financial Center in Pasay City.

Fruitas director Calvin Chua said domestic expansion remained the priority, although the company was also considering bringing foreign brands into the Philippines and taking its own brands abroad.

‘Of course, what we are focusing on is national expansion, but we have also looked at both inbound and outbound,’ Chua said.

Acquired brands

The company is also exploring new products and retail formats for acquired brands, including Sugarhouse.

Chua cited noodle house Ling Nam, which Fruitas had expanded from restaurants into kiosks, as an example of this approach.

For overseas growth, Chua pointed to markets with large Filipino communities, citing the company’s previous experience in the Middle East.

Fruitas president and CEO Lester Yu said the company had already exported small volumes of Fruitas-branded products to Canada and the United States using the same packaging.

The group now has 15 commissaries nationwide, Yu added.

Asked why Fruitas was pursuing expansion despite rising interest rates and uncertainty facing businesses, Yu pointed to growing revenue and sales volume.

He cited revenue growth of more than 20 percent. He also said volume last week rose 47.7 percent compared with the corresponding week in 2025, based on the company’s weekly monitoring.

The credit facility will support new store openings nationwide, strengthen existing brands and provide flexibility to pursue opportunities outside the Philippines, according to the company.

PNB president and CEO Edwin Bautista said the financing reflected the bank’s confidence in Fruitas’ growth prospects and financial management.

PNB vice chair Lucio Tan III likewise said the bank aimed to help local businesses expand and compete in larger markets.

‘Our role is to give companies like Fruitas the financial runway to grow, helping strong local businesses compete on a bigger stage,’ Tan said.

San Antonio Spurs forward Tobias Harris will miss the preseason and is questionable for the start of the NBA regular season after suffering a strained left calf during training camp.

Harris, who signed as a free agent on July 6, did not participate in the team’s annual intrasquad Silver and Black scrimmage on Sunday.

The 6-foot-8 power forward will be reevaluated following the team’s five-game preseason schedule.

Team officials said Harris is questionable for the regular-season opener against Oklahoma City on Oct. 20 in a rematch of last season’s Western Conference Finals.

Harris signed a two-year contract with San Antonio after spending the past two seasons with Detroit.

He averaged 13.3 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.5 assists in 27.7 minutes last season to help the Pistons finish atop the Eastern Conference standings.

Former world number one Iga Swiatek staged a comeback to advance to the last 16 at the China Open on Monday, while home hope Zheng Qinwen survived another three-set test in Beijing.

Swiatek overcame frustration to cling on as her opponent served for the set, dominating a must-win tie-break to beat Croatia’s Donna Vekic 4-6, 7-6 (7/0), 6-2.

‘I was just angry, wanted to change something, because clearly it wasn’t working,’ the 25-year-old from Poland said on court.

‘Sometimes if you care a bit less because you’re… probably going to lose, it also helps you a bit,’ she later told reporters.

She will face American teenager Iva Jovic for a spot in the quarter-finals.

China’s Zheng was tested by Marie Bouzkova, enduring her third three-setter of the tournament to beat the Czech player 7-6 (7/3), 4-6, 7-5.

Zheng voiced frustration in each set at movement outside the court, including as she tried to salvage the second set on Bouzkova’s serve.

But she pulled out some of her most accurate tennis to clinch the last two games and win the match when 27th-ranked Bouzkova fired long.

‘I gave everything,’ said Zheng, who had already spent more than five hours on court in the first two rounds.

‘Truthfully speaking, I felt a lot of pressure today,’ the 23-year-old told her home crowd, thanking fans for their support but commenting on distractions during play.

‘Sometimes I’m a bit screaming in Chinese, because I really see you guys are moving, but next match I hope I will be better on this,’ she said.

Zheng, the current world number 54, next plays 118th-ranked Alina Charaeva, who sent out top seed Elena Rybakina in the second round.

Coco Gauff, the highest-ranked player left in the women’s draw, was due to play Chinese 16-year-old Sun Xinran later on Monday.

Alex de Minaur was scheduled to play Hubert Hurkacz for the first spot in the men’s final before a blockbuster clash between former world number ones Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev.

Djokovic, 39, beat top seed Alexander Zverev in a three-set thriller on Sunday, extending his unbeaten streak in Beijing to 32 matches.

The national government has resumed distributing educational financial aid to decommissioned Moro rebels and their dependents as part of the implementation of the peace agreement between the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

MILF decommissioned combatants (DCs) and their next of kin enrolled in the government’s Educational Assistance Program (EAP) have been receiving their allowances since Oct. 1, according to the GPH-MILF Task Force for Decommissioned Combatants and their Communities (TFDCC).

Of the 1,028 approved grantees in the program’s first batch, 303 have already received their full P50,000 grant, which covers tuition, books, allowances and other academic expenses for one academic year, or two semesters.

The EAP for former MILF combatants and their dependents was temporarily delayed – not stopped permanently – because of administrative and banking problems in releasing the funds.

In a statement Sunday, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU) said the remaining 725 grantees will receive their full P50,000 grant in two equal tranches of P25,000.

The TFDCC explained that initial transfers were reverted to Mindanao State University-Marawi for reprocessing after beneficiaries’ LANDBANK PISO accounts exceeded the allowable monthly credit limit of P50,000.

MSU-Marawi is reprocessing the first P25,000 tranche for crediting to the beneficiaries’ accounts. The second tranche of P25,000 will follow once the first tranche has been cleared.

Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento, presidential peace adviser and concurrent chairperson of the GPH Peace Implementing Panel, said his office and the TFDCC are reviewing beneficiary account mechanisms to prevent similar banking bottlenecks in future distribution cycles.

Launched in 2024, the EAP has provided financial aid to support the formal education of decommissioned MILF combatants and their dependents as part of the socioeconomic component of the Normalization Track of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

Under the Normalization Track, former MILF combatants and their families are being provided with various socioeconomic assistance programs to help them transition to peaceful and productive civilian life.

Sarmiento assured the remaining grantees that they will receive the assistance owed to them.

Traffic flow along six roads in Barangay Rosario, Pasig City, will be affected starting 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 7, as the city holds its Araw ng Barangay Rosario procession, according to a traffic advisory from the Pasig City Public Information Office.

The affected roads are Dr. Sixto Antonio Avenue, Bernal Street, Doña Juana Subdivision, C. Raymundo Avenue, Westbank Road, and Ortigas Avenue.

In its advisory posted online Monday, the city government said the traffic adjustments would begin at 5 p.m. and continue ‘onwards’ on Oct. 7.

Motorists were advised to take alternate routes, particularly C. Raymundo Avenue and the Ortigas Avenue Extension, during the activity.

Granting President Marcos emergency powers could be a quick way to solve the electric power crisis currently hounding Visayas, Deputy Speaker and Bacolod Rep. Albee Benitez said.

Benitez said this during the hearing of the House of Representatives’ committee on energy, committee on Visayas development, and the committee on legislative franchises, as Energy Secretary Sharon Garin said that emergency powers can speed up the construction of generation facilities and transmission lines.

The three House panels held a hearing last Saturday in Bacolod, in response to the frequent yellow and red alerts for the Visayas grid, and the frequent brownouts plaguing the region.

‘Taking off from the response of the DOE (Department of Energy) secretary… favoring emergency powers to do certain actions that would alleviate the present situation, maybe subject to the presentation of the actual draft of emergency powers that Secretary Garin is asking, I would endorse probably from this joint committee to push the passage of this emergency power especially at this time where we needed it most, to Congress and eventually the President,’ Benitez said.

According to Benitez, the outages showed how vulnerable the Visayas grid is, as it depends on electricity from Luzon and Mindanao when several generating units go offline simultaneously.

It could be remembered that the DOE was scolded by the committee on energy and the committee on Visayas development during a past hearing last September after the agency failed to provide a concrete solution to the power woes affecting the region.

Then on Saturday’s hearing, data showed that Visayas had an available supply of about 2,575 megawatts (MW) on that day, while afternoon demand was at 2,624 MW. The gap only worsens at night as the region has to rely more on supply coming from Luzon and Mindanao.

‘In practice, much of this investment and generation capacity has become concentrated in Luzon and Mindanao while the Visayas has faced limitations in local supply and generation capacity. Today, Visayas is a net importer of power,’ Benitez said.

‘We’re seeing the consequences. The issue before us today is not simply whether [or not] we have enough electricity. The bigger question is, does Visayas have the energy foundation to sustain the growth and economic potential of our region?’ he asked.

Among the things needed to solve Visayas’ power problems are permanent baseload solutions, but these are not expected to be available before 2028-leading the government to look at battery energy storage systems, power barges, faster repair and restoration of damaged generating units, and additional renewable energy capacity.

DOE also mentioned that transmission upgrades may be conducted to ensure that surplus electricity in an area can be moved more efficiently to other portions that may need it more.

These mitigating measures and the speeding up of projects may be possible with an emergency power, according to Benitez.

‘Under the emergency powers, pwedeng gawin ng secretary ‘yan (the secretary can do that),’ Benitez said.

Prior to the September hearing, the Visayas and Mindanao grids have been plagued with power alerts, threatening possible brownouts for consumers. Last September 1, NGCP declared a red alert for seven hours over the Visayas grid as supply was unable to address the demands of consumers.

NGCP previously said several generating facilities had been unavailable for varying periods. These included 11 plants on forced outage since September, three since August, two since June, and six since May.

Other plants have been on forced outage longer, including three since 2025, two since 2024, two since 2023, and one since 2021.

DOE also said that the simultaneous outages of major power plants in Mindanao have also limited the amount of power that can be allocated and transferred to Visayas.

Moreover, DOE said that a key factor is the absence of ‘conventional and baseload generation’ in Visayas.

Last Sept.16, local business players in Iloilo sounded the alarm over recurring power outages, warning that the unstable power supply threatens local economic growth, jobs, and enterprise survival.

In a press statement issued Tuesday, the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Iloilo, Inc. (FCCCI) voiced deep concern over repeated yellow and red alerts that triggered Manual Load Dropping (MLD) and rotational blackouts throughout Iloilo City and nearby areas.

Who to play Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most important decisions made in creating The Social Reckoning. With this, writer-director Aaron Sorkin chose to collaborate once more with Jeremy Strong. They’ve worked together on Molly’s Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Jeremy Strong has since then received accolades such as Golden Globe and Emmy wins for his role as Kendall Roy in Succession, and an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice.

Strong is now taking on another real-life character in The Social Reckoning, which explores the insidious power algorithms in social media, and how whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), and reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) exposed Facebook’s knowledge of its harm on the public.

For Sorkin, Strong played the role of Zuckerberg flawlessly. ‘Jeremy is a truly brilliant actor who gave us a breathtaking performance. On set, he was never anything but Mark Zuckerberg. He talked with Mark’s voice, moved with Mark’s posture, and defended Mark’s point-of-view in every scene,’ he says.

Strong felt the importance of stepping into the shoes of a real, living person, and did his due diligence in preparing for the role. ‘I feel a deep sense of responsibility when portraying real people and do exhaustive research and preparation,’ he explains. ‘I amassed what amounted to a longitudinal record of Zuckerberg’s evolution from every scrap of available source material for the decade spanning from 2010 to 2020.’

There was an abundance of material to go through, as Strong’s character has been exhaustively covered in various forms of media. ‘The primary source materials were every magazine profile, every interview, talk, personal post, panel, summit, and written text. I would say those that most informed me were the New Yorker profiles of 2006, 2010, and 2017; Kara Swisher’s interviews, the Ezra Klein interview, the F8 Conferences and Facebook Town Halls, the 2019 Technology and Society conversation series, the Silicon Slopes tech summit, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the 2019 Georgetown speech, and most importantly, all 8 Congressional hearings. I also read several books about Zuckerberg and the tech sector in general. The goal for me is always to gain domain expertise and a sense of authority in order to create something with accuracy and veracity.’

The actor also gave importance to the exact timeframe the audience is meeting Zuckerberg, as this was a very tumultuous time for Facebook and its chairman. ‘He is having to make incredibly complex frontline decisions with unprecedently large consequences for civilization. I would say he is between a Gibraltar and a hard place,’ Strong says. ‘He has connected the world and given people a voice and is now having to contend with both the intended and unintended consequences of his vision at scale. My job was to the best of my ability to understand his mission, understand the principles guiding him, and weigh the dilemmas facing the leader of one of the most influential and consequential companies in the history of the world.’

Strong admits that he was also very keen on working with Sorkin again, as he feels that he collaborates really well with the filmmaker. ‘This is my third film with Aaron, and I feel a tremendous sense of kinship and creative alliance with him. We work within a force field of implicit trust,’ says Strong. ‘Aaron is one of the greatest dramatists of our time and one of the best writers in film history. He is in a very small pantheon, and it has been one of the highest privileges of my life to have this ongoing collaboration with him. He inspires in you a desire to be worthy of his masterful writing. It is very easy to be precise with Aaron’s writing because it is as close to perfect as one might ever get; it’s like being first chair violin for Mozart himself.’

The Social Reckoning arrives in Philippine cinemas on October 7.

The Philippines slipped two places to 52nd in the 2026 Global Innovation Index (GII), as the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) called for increased government and private-sector investment in research and development (RandD) to strengthen the country’s innovation capacity.

The country ranked 69th in innovation inputs, down from last year, while it placed 40th in innovation outputs. The Philippines ranked 50th overall in 2025 and 53rd in 2024.

Despite the decline, the Philippines placed third among 36 lower-middle-income economies and scored above the group’s average across all innovation pillars. It remained below the regional average across the same pillars.

DOST said the Philippines has remained within a statistically consistent range of 50th to 53rd place from 2020 to 2026.

The decline in its innovation-input ranking reflects areas such as gross RandD spending, the number of science and engineering graduates, and the number of researchers.

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DOST calls for stronger RandD capacity

DOST Secretary Renato U. Solidum Jr. said the country needs to expand its RandD capacity, particularly by encouraging greater private-sector investment in locally developed technologies.

‘Filipinos do much with what they have,’ Solidum said in a press release. ‘But being innovative despite constraints is not the same as having the scale of RandD capability needed to compete globally.’

DOST said it will strengthen programs supporting local industries, encourage private-sector firms to invest in RandD, and help turn scientific research into ventures that can scale.

Solidum said sectors including artificial intelligence, biotechnology, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and climate technologies require closer coordination among government agencies, universities, industry and investors.

‘What we need is not simply more initiatives, but greater coherence among them,’ Solidum said.

He said the country’s research infrastructure should ultimately be measured by whether ideas can move from discovery to validation, industrial adoption and eventually the global market, rather than by the number of laboratories built or projects funded.

Solidum also urged government, academia and industry to adopt shared definitions of ‘technology transfer’ and ‘commercialization.’

He said differences in how institutions use the terms can make it harder to establish targets, maintain consistent reporting and communicate with international partners and investors.

Connectivity and technology adoption show gains

Despite the weaker innovation-input ranking, the GII’s Global Innovation Tracker showed that the Philippines improved in nine indicators over the short term, covering science and innovation investment, technology adoption and socioeconomic impact.

The improvements included scientific publications and RandD spending, as well as the adoption of connectivity, robots and electric vehicles. Labor productivity and life expectancy also improved.

Electric vehicle adoption recorded the largest increase, rising 629.2% from 2024 to 2025, with long-term annual growth of 161.5% between 2017 and 2025.

Venture capital, however, declined, highlighting a remaining gap in the country’s innovation ecosystem.

Solidum said stronger RandD investment could improve the competitiveness of local industries, encourage private-sector investment and create opportunities for locally developed technologies.

The GII is published annually by the World Intellectual Property Organization and ranks economies based on their innovation capacity and performance.

At a TikTok Table Talk with the social media app’s local executives, I got the perfect chance to ask about brainrot content on the platform, and whether it’s getting in the way of children’s creativity in their most formative years. I described in detail how repetitive it was, like a looped version of children’s shows but with more sardonic humor and none of the lessons.

It was a family talk, and the first thing they asked was how old. I said six.

‘See, that’s the point. They’re not even allowed to be there at six. How are their parents allowing them?’

TikTok’s own rules say you have to be at least 13 to have an account, and the platform bans any account it finds belongs to someone younger.

And it’s on an iPad, mind you.

The talk of family security on social media platforms has been debatable for a while. Short-form video gets blamed for a culture of short attention spans, and the security around it is as open as a GTA V map that kids are left to roam.

Congress is having the same argument right now. In September, a House panel proposed and ratified a full social media ban for children below 13, with scrolling short videos and joining chat groups off-limits for teens 13 to 17. The Senate’s version, Senate Bill No. 2424, sets the minimum age at 16.

But TikTok isn’t the problem, and it’s been doing more on safety than people tend to give it credit for.

And they came to the table with receipts.

AI on your feed

Most of the briefing was about AI, which makes sense if you’ve seen what passes for brainrot lately. If your kid knows who Tung Tung Tung Sahur is, they’ve already watched plenty of AI.

There’s now an AI Literacy Hub inside the app, in Filipino, that teaches you how to spot AI-generated content. It’s worth showing to the people who’d get the most out of it, like the kids at home or the relatives forwarding fake videos in the family group chat. All it takes is typing ‘AI’ into the search bar.

There’s also the spam problem where AI makes it cheap to churn out videos that bury actual creators. TikTok says it removed more than 86 million fake accounts globally in the first three months of 2026, and it’s testing better ways to catch accounts that exist only to post AI spam, especially around politics and current events, financial advice, and medical content.

Eighty-six million in three months is a huge number, and it means a lot of the cleanup happens before most of us ever see anything. The watch list makes sense too, since politics and health are where fake content does the most damage. Given that my question was about kids, I’d love to see content made for them on that list someday.

How to filter AI in TikTok’s settings

More than 3 billion videos on the platform now carry an AI-generated label. Those labels come from Content Credentials, invisible watermarks, and creators tagging their own posts.

The one I think parents will like most is a new AI-Generated Content setting under Manage Topics. It lets you turn down how much AI content shows up in your feed. The videos stay on the app. You just see fewer of them. You’ll find it under Settings and privacy ? Content Preferences ? Manage Topics ? AI-Generated Content.

This is the one I’d tell other parents about, since it’s a few taps deep and easy to miss. It also gets better as more videos get labeled, which is where those 3 billion labels come in.

The numbers

From January to March 2026, TikTok took down more than 3.5 million videos in the Philippines for breaking its Community Guidelines. That’s roughly 39,000 a day. It says 99.5% were removed proactively and 94% within 24 hours.

The 99.5% is the number that stuck with me, because it means almost none of this depended on someone reporting it first. It also cleared something up about my own question. Brainrot doesn’t break any rules, so it was never going to show up in a removal report. That part comes down to what we let kids watch, which is where TikTok’s family tools come in.

Requests from the government are a much smaller pile. From July to December 2025, Philippine authorities sent 111 removal requests covering 11,635 pieces of content. TikTok acted on 6,723 for breaking its guidelines and 263 for breaking local law, a 60% removal rate, and left the other 4,649 up. Of the 25 accounts flagged, it took action on five, all under local law.

Not every request ends in a takedown, and that’s by design. TikTok checks each one against its Community Guidelines, its Terms of Service and local law, which is the kind of review you’d want before anything gets pulled. Lawmakers want platforms on firmer local footing too. Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo, who led the group that drafted the House version, wants every platform to register a Philippine presence. If that passes, the next transparency report should be an interesting read.

Law enforcement asked for user information 15 times in the same period. TikTok disclosed nothing on the three legal requests. It shared some data on 45.5% of the 11 emergency requests, which it only grants when it believes there’s an imminent risk of death or serious injury.

For families

The family part of the briefing was the #ThinkTwice Family Guide, which TikTok launched in the Philippines in August 2026 with Child Rights Coalition-Asia, Child Rights Network and Plan International Pilipinas. It has conversation starters and safety tips, plus a rundown of TikTok’s own tools. The printed copy we got opens by telling you to grab a pen and your family to get started. Search ‘Think Twice’ in the app to reach the #ThinkTwice Digital Check-In Hub, where you can download the whole thing.

The guide is meant to work alongside the 50 safety and privacy features TikTok presets for teen accounts, and Family Pairing, which links a parent’s account to their teen’s.

The 50 presets are on by default and a teen doesn’t have to go looking for them. For everything else, it helps to know where to look: search ‘Think Twice’ for the guide, search ‘AI’ for the hub, and set up Family Pairing from the parent’s side.

Every one of those tools is built for a teenager with an account of their own, which is exactly why the age limit matters. A six-year-old on a parent’s iPad is watching on an adult account, with none of those protections switched on.

In schools

TikTok also recently wrapped up the Mindanao leg of TikTok Galing in Cagayan de Oro, run with the Department of Education and the UP College of Journalism. Media and digital literacy experts and advocates Dr. Rachel Khan, Professor Yvonne Chua, Kara David, and Janvic Mateo took part. So far, more than 300 DepEd teachers across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao have gone through the training, and TikTok plans to bring in more partners in 2027.

Three hundred teachers is a solid start, especially since each one goes back to a full classroom. With more partners coming in 2027, I’m hoping it reaches a lot more schools.

It has also held youth consultations with Plan International and Child Rights Coalition Asia, asking teens how they use these platforms, what they get out of them, what risks they run into and, what they think online safety should look like. Creators like Teacher Lyka have joined some of those conversations.