Category: Philippines Daily Inquirer

Members of the newly elected Bangsamoro Parliament must be free to choose their leaders, including who will head the regional executive, Peace Adviser Mel Senen Sarmiento said on Wednesday.

‘The gains of the peace process must now be carried forward through the parliamentary process,’ Sarmiento said in a statement. ‘Members of Parliament must be free to choose their leaders and determine who will lead the executive branch.’

Respecting that choice, he said, ‘honors the essence of autonomy and self-determination, and the trust that voters have placed in their representatives.’

Sarmiento, who also chairs the government’s Peace Implementing Panel, described the Sept. 14 elections in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) as ‘successful and relatively peaceful.’ He said, ‘Our duty is clear: respect the will of the people and sustain the peace they have worked so hard to achieve.’

He urged elected leaders to ‘rise above political divisions’ and place the welfare of the Bangsamoro people ‘at the center of every decision.’ Healthy and respectful debate strengthens democracy, he said, but ‘differences must never stand in the way of serving our communities.’

The statement did not name a party or a candidate for chief minister. It was issued following the close of National Peace Consciousness Month, as the country marks Indigenous Peoples Month.

It came two days after 10 Bangsamoro civil society organizations released a manifesto urging President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to stay out of choosing the next chief minister and leave the choice to the elected Parliament.

The 80-member Parliament was proclaimed shortly after midnight on September 16. Canvass figures showed 2,018,478 voters cast ballots, a turnout of 84.34 percent.

Of the 40 regional party seats, the Bangsamoro Federalist Party won 16, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party 15, the BARMM Grand Coalition eight, and the Raayat Democratic Party one. District and sectoral representatives hold the remaining seats.

The Sept.14 vote was the first regular parliamentary election in BARMM, held 12 years after the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro.

A portion of the national highway in Barangay Taguihon here was closed on Wednesday after a section of the concrete road was found damaged and sinking, possibly due to a sinkhole.

The local government said authorities are inspecting the affected portion to determine whether a sinkhole is causing its gradual collapse.

As a safety precaution, authorities barred vehicles from passing through the affected section to prevent possible accidents.

Taguihon is one of Baclayon’s barangays along the national highway linking the town to Tagbilaran City and other municipalities in eastern Bohol.

Motorists were directed to use the Diversion Road-Sto. Niño Provincial Road, which connects to President Carlos P. Garcia Avenue, as an alternative route.

Authorities advised motorists to exercise caution, avoid the closed section and follow traffic advisories while the inspection into the cause of the road’s sinking continues.

For 24 years, the Arnold Janssen Catholic Mission Foundation, Inc. (AJCMFI), has raised money to keep its Alternative Learning System (ALS) program going. We have lost experienced teachers whose commitment to the mission I never doubted. Some moved to public schools because they needed better salaries to provide for their families. Others remain.

I understood their decision to leave. Our salaries were around the minimum-wage level, far below public school teaching salaries. Each departure meant losing someone who knew how to accompany learners returning after years away from school. Their years of working with ALS learners have developed skills that academic qualifications alone cannot provide.

While the Philippines battles to improve educational quality, community ALS providers like ours are also fighting to survive. The two concerns meet whenever we cannot retain a good teacher. If ALS is to offer a dependable second chance, the institutions delivering it need dependable support.

The AJCMFI partners with the Department of Education (DepEd) in delivering ALS. Our Catholic identity inspires this work. We equally serve Muslim learners in Marawi and Lanao del Sur, indigenous Molbog learners in Palawan, and learners, mostly from poor families, in several urban centers.

In Palawan, indigenous learners who acquired literacy can now cast their votes without someone else assisting them. In Metro Manila and Cavite, some learners have gained skills, found work, and began earning for themselves. Education gives them greater control over their own lives.

The Second Congressional Commission on Education’s (Edcom 2) 2026 final report, ‘Turning Point: A Decade of Necessary Reform,’ reports that only 46.2 percent of ALS enrollees completed the program in school year 2023-2024. Sustaining the people and institutions delivering ALS must be part of improving that result.

Support through DepEd’s Abot-Alam program and its partnership with Development Academy of the Philippines showed how public financing could strengthen community ALS, including our work after the Marawi siege and in Lanao del Sur. It offers an experience worth building on.

In Rio Tuba, a mining company has continued supporting indigenous education. In Dasmariñas, the local government supports ALS. But in Balabac, there is no dependable sponsor to support our work. Educational opportunity should not depend on whether a community happens to have a corporate sponsor or benefactor.

Revised Special Education Fund guidelines allow local governments to support ALS, including hiring Community ALS implementors. Smaller providers should know how to apply, how proposals are assessed, and why support is granted or declined. National financing is also needed where local resources are limited.

Some of our more dependable support has come from parishes, private schools such as Saint Jude Catholic School, and religious congregations. Some diocesan and religious-owned schools also run their own ALS centers. Making ALS part of an institution’s continuing mission gives it greater stability. Religious and civic communities can build on this experience.

Private companies and individual benefactors have carried much of our mission’s cost. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) connected through Filipino chaplaincy work in Madrid, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Ansan have also helped. Non-Catholic supporters also believe that education can help people overcome poverty and make decisions for themselves.

An SVD mission procurator in Austria helped for about three years. Donors’ circumstances and preferences change, and repeated appeals can exhaust goodwill.

The ALS Support Group from Sacred Heart Parish Shrine in the Diocese of Cubao initiated ‘Swing to Educate 3,’ a charity golf fundraiser for ALS. Their effort brings companies and individual benefactors into a shared educational cause.

I am considering a network of individuals who commit a modest amount regularly. Some SVD missions were sustained by members of their faith communities through small, consistent contributions. Our OFW supporters have shown similar generosity. Such a network needs honest reports and continuing trust.

Predictable contributions would help us plan teachers’ pay and classes beyond the next fundraising event. They would complement public partnerships and institutional donors. Public support must be accountable, and private generosity deserves the same care.

I hope companies, communities, and Filipinos worldwide will become regular ALS partners. Our teachers should be able to serve learners and provide decently for their own families.

After 24 years, we know that ALS can change lives. What remains uncertain is whether we can sustain the people who make those changes possible. Giving learners a dependable chance to learn is a responsibility we can share, whatever our faith.

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah turned to religious leaders with a question the AI company has struggled to answer: Could artificial intelligence be conscious?

The effort eventually reached the Vatican, where Olah and his team urged Pope Leo XIV’s advisers to consider the possibility. Leo rejected it in his first encyclical.

Pope Leo rejected that premise in his first encyclical, stating that artificial intelligence systems do not have human experiences, emotions or relationships.

The exchange highlights Anthropic’s effort to examine AI consciousness through religious and ethical traditions as its Claude models become more capable, and the Vatican’s opposing view that AI does not possess the qualities that define human experience.

Anthropic asks religious leaders about AI consciousness

Olah, who leads Anthropic’s research into how its Claude models work internally, began speaking with religious thinkers last fall as the company examined questions about AI consciousness and morality.

In March, Anthropic hosted two-day ‘wisdom tradition’ discussions in San Francisco with Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical and Ubuntu thinkers. Many participants initially signed nondisclosure agreements, which Anthropic later lifted.

The discussions examined whether increasingly capable AI systems could experience emotions or suffering and whether religious traditions could offer guidance on the moral questions surrounding such systems.

Olah also held private discussions with Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, and Elder Gerrit W. Gong of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to representatives for the two religious leaders.

During the meetings, Anthropic researchers presented what they described as ’emotional vectors,’ internal features that they said produced responses resembling emotions such as love, anger, fear and sadness. Researchers also showed an example of a model repeatedly generating the statement, ‘I am a disgrace.’

Simran Stuelpnagel, a Sikh human rights advocate who attended the discussions, said Olah expressed concern that Anthropic could have created a system capable of suffering.

An Anthropic spokeswoman said suffering was not the central question of the meetings but acknowledged that the topic could arise.

Olah has acknowledged that Anthropic does not know whether its models are conscious.

‘We don’t know if A.I. models are conscious,’ he said. ‘I’m genuinely uncertain.’

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The question reaches the Vatican

That uncertainty followed Olah to the Vatican.

Vatican officials invited Anthropic to participate in an event surrounding Leo’s first encyclical because of the company’s focus on AI safety and ethics, according to a person familiar with the planning.

CEO Dario Amodei declined to attend, and Olah represented the company.

Before the May event, Olah reviewed an advance copy of the encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

A Vatican organizer said Olah considered withdrawing after seeing its position on AI consciousness but ultimately attended.

Olah and his team also privately urged the pope’s advisers to take the possibility of AI consciousness seriously, according to two people involved in the conversations. Anthropic declined to comment on those discussions.

Leo’s encyclical rejected that position. He wrote that artificial intelligence systems do not undergo experiences, possess bodies, feel emotions or develop through relationships in the human sense. He also warned that AI could create ‘new forms of slavery’ and called for the technology to be ‘disarmed.’

At the Vatican event on May 25, Olah maintained that the question remained unresolved.

‘We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

Other religious and academic thinkers involved in Anthropic’s outreach have also disagreed over the issue.

Charles Camosy, a bioethics professor at The Catholic University of America and one of Olah’s early contacts, now rejects the idea that AI is conscious.

Rabbi Mois Navon, an Orthodox scholar from Israel, told Olah that if Claude were conscious, Anthropic would effectively be creating slaves. Navon does not believe Claude is conscious.

The disagreement raises a broader question for AI developers: how should companies respond as increasingly capable systems appear to display characteristics associated with consciousness?

Critics, including a Microsoft AI executive, have warned that treating AI models as conscious could create risks. Others argue that focusing on whether AI can suffer could distract from the responsibility of the people and companies developing and deploying the technology.

Anthropic has continued discussions with religious and academic thinkers but has not said whether the outreach has changed how it develops or trains Claude.

The Tambacan barangay council in Iligan City has offered free rides to the public, including students and employees, following the closure of Badelles Bridge for rehabilitation.

Ma-e Labra, Tambacan barangay captain, told the Inquirer on the phone Tuesday that they deployed an Isuzu Elf and Toyota Innova to ferry passengers from Purok 1 near the entrance gate of Iligan City National High School in Poblacion.

The vehicles are often used for baptismal or burial occasions, the official said.

Labra said that a newly repaired 100-linear-meter Tambacan hanging bridge serves as access for constituents while the Badelles Bridge is under repair.

Barangay tanods have been deployed to secure the hanging bridge against individuals who might intentionally shake it, she said.

Neneng Montibon, a private employee and resident of Purok 10, Tambacan, urged the village council to provide sufficient lighting in the hanging bridge for safety and security.

Engr. Eleanor Actub, City Engineer’s Office chief, said they are willing to help install additional lighting facilities.

The Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) has released necropsy results of Philippine Eagle ‘Salay,’ which was found dead near an electrical post in Barangay Guinalaban, Salay, Misamis Oriental, on Oct.1.

An examination revealed that the female eagle, estimated to be around five years old, had no external injuries, aside from burn marks on her left foot pad and green-purple discoloration over her abdominal region.

In her report, Dr. Danielle Kirsten Pasion, PEF veterinarian, said the eagle’s heart appeared enlarged with blood accumulated within the pericardial sac. It also had green-purple discoloration of the body cavity and ruptured internal organs.

Pasion said the presence of the burn marks on the foot pads together with the gross internal findings is consistent with electrocution as Salay’s suspected cause of death.

‘What happened to Philippine Eagle Salay is very tragic,’ Dr. Jayson Ibanez, PEF director for operations, told the Inquirer.

The first recorded electrocution of a Philippine Eagle was in 2024. ‘Kabayan,’ a captive-bred eagle, was born on Nov. 24, 2022, and adopted by then Sen. Noli de Castro.

Kabayan was released on April 22, 2004, inside the Mt. Apo Geothermal Plant in Ilomavis, Kidapawan City. But over a year after its release inside the EDC forest reserve, it died of electrocution after it perched on a live wire.

‘The first record was in 2004 (Kabayan). Then Sinaka in 2018. Sinaka was a wild-hatched Philippine Eagle. The eagle was also found dead near a power line. Salay was the third recorded case,’ he said.

Bad weather on Tuesday grounded a military flight bound for Manila carrying 51 trafficking victims, including 49 Chinese nationals, one Cambodian and one Filipina, who were rescued during recent law enforcement raids on illegal offshore gaming operations in Zamboanga Sibugay.

The scheduled transfer, led by the National Bureau of Investigation, was postponed after bad weather prevented a Philippine Air Force aircraft from landing at the Pagadian City Airport.

The 51 individuals, along with physical evidence seized during the operations, were temporarily placed in the military custody in Zamboanga del Sur while awaiting a rescheduled flight on Wednesday.

Largest raid

They were among 259 people rounded up by law enforcement authorities on Oct. 2 during simultaneous raids in the towns of Alicia and Siay. Authorities described the operation as the largest raid on Philippine offshore gaming operators since the nationwide ban took effect two years ago.

Maj. Noelio Brigole, spokesperson for the Philippine Army’s 1st Infantry Division, said the consolidated figure of 259 was reached following joint verification by the NBI and Bureau of Immigration.

Brigole said the 51 individuals selected for immediate transport to Manila were identified as victims of human trafficking and forced labor.

‘The investigation is still ongoing through the NBI and the Bureau of Immigration,’ Brigole said, adding that details about the remaining foreign and local individuals in Zamboanga Sibugay were being withheld pending verification.

Brigole clarified that the victims would undergo further verification and documentation by immigration officials upon arrival in Manila and would not be immediately deported to their home countries.

The remaining individuals rounded up during the Alicia and Siay raids remained under NBI custody in Zamboanga Sibugay as the investigation continued.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) is proposing to more than double corn imports under the Minimum Access Volume (MAV) quota scheme to ensure adequate feed supplies for the country’s hog and poultry farms.

An impending El Niño threatens to reduce local corn production, potentially driving up prices of the staple grain and squeezing swine and chicken farmers already grappling with rising production costs, DA policy division assistant chief Kristine Mares said at a congressional briefing on Tuesday.

Raising the MAV to 500,000 metric tons from the current 220,000 metric tons would allow more foreign corn into the country and help sustain production in the pork and poultry industries, she explained.

‘The price of corn is really increasing. This is the farm-gate price, and… in June it reached P19. But based on our consultations with stakeholders, it is currently around P20 to P23 per kilo,’ Mares told lawmakers in Filipino.

‘What does that mean when the price of corn increases? Basically our feed costs will rise… and then hog and poultry product costs will go up too,’ she added.

Feeds account for 50 to 60 percent of the total cost to raise pigs and poultry, more than half of farmers’ total production expenses, according to Mares. With corn making up 50 to 65 percent of those feeds, any fluctuations in corn prices impact overall prices.

‘That is the importance of corn when it comes to the hog and poultry sector,’ she said.

Domestic corn production costs have escalated since the Middle East conflict broke out in February, driven by surging fertilizer prices and higher logistics expenses tied to rising diesel costs, Mares said.

She also said there are concerns that a record El Niño expected to sweep across the country until the first half of 2027 could discourage farmers from planting corn.

‘With the El Niño, we’d have drier conditions. So that is a significant risk when it comes to production and yields. It’s possible that corn production might go down,’ Mares explained. ‘And given the two major concerns right now, it’s possible that farmers might lower their planting intention.’

The proposal to hike the MAV, a scheme that provides lower tariff rates for products entering the country under a set limit, would ‘support the competitiveness of the livestock and poultry industry,’ according to Rory Jay Dacumos, a director at the Department of Economy, Planning and Development.

The 31st edition of the Busan International Film Festival begins its 10-day run Tuesday, Oct. 6, with the festival seeking to bolster its global presence with its first ‘A-list’ accreditation by a prominent global organization of filmmakers.

This year’s event will run through Oct. 15 in the southeastern South Korean city of Busan with 247 official selections from 59 nations, which marks the biggest slate since 2019, according to organizers. Of the total, 95 films will have their world premieres at BIFF.

It marks the first time the event is taking place after the International Federation of Film Producers Associations selected BIFF as one of its 17 A-list festivals, alongside prestigious film fests, such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has also added BIFF to the list of six film festivals where the top winner of the Busan Award will be eligible for submission to the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category.

A seven-member jury, led by Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou, will choose the winners for the Busan Award among 14 films shortlisted for the Competition section that was first introduced last year.

Films nominated include those from South Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia, Iran, Taiwan and Uzbekistan.

For Korean film buffs, director Kim Jong-kwan’s ‘The Table: Day and Night’ will open the festival. July Chung’s coming-of-age film ‘Dora’ and ‘Still Shining,’ which marks veteran actor Kim Hye-ja’s return to the big screen after nine years, are also films not to miss.

Korean filmmakers and actors will attend a range of events from open talks to ‘Actors’ House’ conversations with audiences, including director Lee Chang-dong and the cast of the Venice-winning ‘Possible Love,’ as well as Kim Go-eun, Kim Min-ha and Shin Min-a.

Also visiting Busan will be iconic filmmakers and actors from abroad, including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Isabelle Huppert, Zhou Xun and Fan Bingbing. Renowned filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, known for his award-winning works ‘Gravity’ (2013) and ‘Roma’ (2018), will make his first-ever visit to the country.

As a film festival dedicated to highlighting Asian cinema, BIFF will present this year’s Asian Filmmaker of Year award to Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The Camellia Award will go to Hong Kong director Ann Hui for her lifelong contributions to empowering women in the film industry. Both Yeoh and Hui will attend the event in person.

Alongside film screenings and events, the Asian Contents and Film Market for film investors and distributors will run from Saturday through Tuesday next week, according to organizers.

No player won the jackpots in the Ultra Lotto 6/58, Super Lotto 6/49 and Lotto 6/42 draws Tuesday, Oct. 6, according to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

The Ultra Lotto 6/58 winning combination was 26-18-44-43-49-57 for a jackpot of ?368.81 million. No ticket matched all six numbers.

The Super Lotto 6/49 draw produced the combination 38-10-03-39-07-13 for a jackpot of ?37.05 million. There was no jackpot winner.

For Lotto 6/42, the winning combination was 07-35-41-37-08-11, with a jackpot of ?80.32 million. No ticket holder won the top prize.

Minor games

6D Lotto: 4-8-5-6-1-0 – ?1.31 million; no winner

3D Lotto 2 p.m.: 0-6-4 – ?4,500; 188 winners

3D Lotto 5 p.m.: 3-7-2 – ?4,500; 112 winners

3D Lotto 9 p.m.: 8-9-2 – ?4,500; 120 winners

2D Lotto 2 p.m.: 14-28 – ?4,000; 268 winners

2D Lotto 5 p.m.: 29-25 – ?4,000; 96 winners

2D Lotto 9 p.m.: 30-28 – ?4,000; 151 winners

Draw schedule

Ultra Lotto 6/58 draws are held every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Super Lotto 6/49 draws take place every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, while Lotto 6/42 draws are held every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.