Dataset Viewer
text
stringlengths 11
95.8k
|
|---|
Increasing tobacco tax will fund the universal health care program (UHC) and lower the number of smokers in the country, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said on Wednesday. |
In a press conference in Pasay City, Duque said UHC is a priority of President Rodrigo Duterte's administration so the department is committed to working with the House of the Representatives and the Senate for the final ratification of the UHC bill. |
"The bill also pushes for the equity in provision of health care especially for those in geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas. It also strengthens the government to regulate health facilities and health care providers and health insurance policies and ensure that heallth care is within the reach of everyone," he added. |
Citing that UHC program implementation requires substantial funds, Duque said increasing taxes on tobacco is one of the best ways to generate additional revenues for it. |
"Currently, there are two bills tackling the increase of excise tax on tobacco which is Senate Bill 1599 by Senator Emmanuel Pacquiao and Senate Bill 1605 by Senator JV Ejercito, increasing the unitary excise tax of cigarettes to PHP60 and PHP90, respectively. Not only will it provide funding to UHC but also the reduction of smoking prevalence in the country," he said. |
Meanwhile, Senator Risa Hontiveros, who also attended the press briefing, said related studies show that tobacco taxes really work in terms of reducing smoking prevalence. |
"From 29.7 percent in 2009 to 23.8 percent in 2015, the biggest drop in the smoking prevalence is biggest among the youth which is good because we don’t want them to take on this habit," she said. |
Hontiveros noted that around 10 percent annual increase on tobacco tax will result in one million less smokers by 2022. |
"Since this is a tax measure, the bonus will be on the funds it could generate para lalo pa natin mapaganda ang ating health system at masiguro ang UHC para sa lahat (so we can improve our health system and ensure UHC for all), she added. |
Ejercito, who was also at the briefing, said Duterte certified the UHC bill as urgent so Congress is targeting to pass it by October. He added critics of the bill say it is an ambitious and expensive program so that is why they want to ensure that it has proper funding before it is passed. |
A picturesque Doncaster cul-de-sac has been named as one of the most dangerous and polluted roads in Britain. |
According to new figures released by Friends of the Earth, quiet Fir Tree Close in Hickleton is the fifth most polluted street in Britain – and is the second most dangerous street outside London for air quality. |
Fir Tree Close in Hickleton. |
The study found that a total of 1,845 places across the UK have toxic air pollution that breaks official safety limits for the polluting gas nitrogen dioxide. |
Fir Tree Close is off the busy A635 Doncaster to Barnsley road which passes through Hickleton and which is used by hundreds of vehicles each day. |
Nitrogen dioxide – which is the gas produced by cars, buses and lorries - particularly diesels - can trigger asthma attacks and cause breathing problems. |
Now the analysis of pollution monitoring sites across the country reveals busy roads across Britain are up to three times higher than the official limit. |
Britain’s worst pollution hotspot was outside Earls Court tube station in London where the annual average of 129.5 micrograms per cubic metre of air was triple that of the World Health Organization's 40 mcg limit. |
Friends of the Earth, which analysed the research said the country needs more clean air zones to restrict pollution - such as older models of polluting cars and vans - and to encourage non-polluting transportation such as walking and cycling. |
Simon Bowens, clean air campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: ‘It’s unforgivable that across the UK there are nearly two thousand locations over air quality limits, leaving millions of us breathing dangerously polluted air. |
‘Air pollution is often an issue thought of as affecting only the biggest cities. |
'The reality is that unacceptably toxic air can be found across much of the UK, even in smaller towns. |
'It is harming the health of people across the country and is especially bad for young children whose lungs are still developing. |
Facebook has fallen 37 places in the 2018 FutureBrand Index of the world’s most powerful brands, following a series of scandals which have plagued the social media giant. |
The most recent edition of the biennial FutureBrand Index claims Facebook fell in several key areas including trust, admiration, passion, innovation and thought leadership. |
The index takes PwC’s Global Top 100 Companies by Market Cap and reorders it by perception strength rather than financial strength. The companies are measured on 18 indicators across purpose and experience, including factors such as individuality, innovation, respect and trust. |
The report gave Facebook a low ‘Future Proof Factor’, something the social media giant now shares with Walmart, Volkswagen and HSBC. According to FutureBrand, Facebook is also perceived as one of the brands that will fall behind the most in three years’ time. |
Other tech companies didn’t fare much better, with IBM falling 17 places and Google’s Alphabet and Microsoft falling 10 places apiece. |
Apple, which was number one in the previous 2016 survey, fell three places to fourth place. |
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, as The Walt Disney company rose to the top spot after climbing three places from the previous survey. The position puts it 50 places higher than its PwC ranking, which considers its financial strength rather than perception strength. |
Netflix appeared as a new entry to the index this year, achieving 15th spot, putting it 48 places higher than its position in the PwC report. |
Facebook’s drop in trust can largely be attributed to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed UK data science company Cambridge Analytica had misused Facebook users’ data during recent UK and US election campaigns. Facebook was forced to restrict developers’ access to user data in the wake of the scandal, which was followed by a widely publicised US congressional hearing in which founder Mark Zuckerberg was questioned, among other things, on the company’s advertiser-funded model. |
Locally, Australian MPs from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security have threatened to summon Zuckerberg to Australia, after the New York Times revealed Facebook had agreed to incorporate data-sharing features with smartphone manufacturers in return for them building the social media service’s feature into their software in the late 2000s. |
“In this year’s FutureBrand Index, there’s a growing sense that while technology may well bring new and exciting experiences, the point of these can sometimes get lost and consequently lack meaning,” said Richard Curtis, the CEO of FutureBrand APAC. |
Curtis explained how trust issues in the tech sector seem to have exacerbated this trend, adding: “You only have to look to the healthcare sector to find good examples of brands applying technology with meaning – and in ways that are now taking those brands from the labs into people’s lives. |
This week the film that may be the final Studio Ghibli feature opens in limited US release. When Marnie Was There is from director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and tells the story of Anna, voiced here by Hailee Steinfeld, who is sent off to spend the summer with relatives of her foster mother. |
In this When Marnie Was There clip we see Anna arriving in the seaside town that will be her summer home, and we meet Setsu and Kiyomasa Oiwa, voiced here by Grey Griffin and John C. Reilly. |
For more footage, check out the latest trailer, which also features Kiernan Shipka (best known as Sally Draper on Mad Men) as the voice of Marnie for the US dub release. |
The film also features the voices of Kathy Bates, Ellen Burstyn, Geena Davis, Catherine O’Hara, Raini Rodriguez and Vanessa Williams. |
Clip via GKids. When Marnie Was There will hit screens in New York and Los Angeles on May 22 and should expand to other cities in the coming weeks. Info on theaters is here: http://www.marniefilm.com/. |
Describe your business: Phone Medics plus is a family-owned and operated phone repair center on Merritt Island. At Phone Medics Plus We strive to keep the overhead low so that we can pass those saving onto our customers. |
Phone medics plus delivers the fastest, most professional and affordable Phone, Tablet, and Handheld device repairs and We back every repair with our unbeatable warranties. |
Like any successful business we put our customers needs first and unlike the large national brands we don’t pay any franchise fees, royalties, or markups on our inventory. So we never have to funnel those cost down to our customers. We simply offers the best product at the best possible prices and we never cut corners or sacrifice quality. |
We demonstrate transparency in every facet of our business from the way we price our work all the way to the actual repair process itself. Our facility is designed with an open floor layout to allow our clients an up close and personal look at our operation so we never take your phone behind closed doors. Our customers appreciate our craft and we love it when they watch us work and become engaged in the process. |
What’s your professional background: I have no formal business training so experience has been my teacher. |
Your business philosophy: Live and do business in such a way that if someone was to speak badly of you, no one would believe it. |
Biggest challenge: Every day I create a number of new ideas to help improve and grow Phone Medics Plus the challenge is selecting nine out of 10 ideas to put on hold so that I can focus on that one perfect idea and roll it out with surgical precision. Making the decision on what ideas not to pursue right away is the hardest part. |
Proudest moment as a businessperson: My proudest moment was the day I decided to stop working for others and instead work for myself. That was the day that Phone Medics Plus was born. |
Business advice: “Be human.” It’s easy to focus on transactions, especially when you’re struggling to start a company. But this is when it’s most important to remember that your customers are people, too. “Take a second to recognize that there is a person on the other side of you. |
I read this in an article about business advice and it really stuck with me. The quote comes from Reece Pacheco. |
What’s next? What are your future plans for your business: Our mission is to expand Phone Medics Plus as a company with strong roots based on delivering quality products, professional integrity, and unbeatable value while still maintaining that special something that makes each and every one of our customers feel like family. |
Have a suggestion for the Business Spotlight feature? Contact Wayne T. Price at 321-242-3658 or [email protected]. |
Without doubt, this is the best Voice Agency in the UK! We are looking for an enthusiastic, reliable, organised agent to help with the day to day running of the business. Based in Manchester, you will be given the opportunity to work with brilliant people in a wonderful brand that is constantly evolving and has an amazing sense of opportunities for growth. |
The Voiceover Gallery is a well established agency with over 14 years experience representing voiceovers for UK and foreign markets as well as providing localisation services for a multitude of clients. The Voiceover Gallery is based in both London and Manchester and has recently relocated to Shepherds Bush. The teams have backgrounds in TV production, translation, radio and talent management. |
We value 'fabulousness' and encourage our team to enjoy themselves at work whilst working hard. We ask everyone to pull together as a team, come up with fresh, great ideas and adapt to change in order to grow with the business for the future. |
You will be a real 'people person', developing relationships with our voiceover artists and clients alike. |
You will have a passion for the industry and be able to express this through maintaining a strong social media presence. |
Experience within the film, TV, advertising or media industry would be an advantage, but not essential as training will be given to the right person. |
Salary negotiable dependant on experience. |
Please familiarise yourself with our website and Facebook page so that you understand our company values. |
Interviews will take place in May with a start date soon after. Successful applicants will be contacted directly by the team. Please do not call the office regarding this job vacancy. If you have not had a reply from us within two weeks of submitting your CV then unfortunately you have not been successful in your application. Applications close on: 25th May 2018. |
The rise in consumer usage of ad blockers is leading to a few creative alternatives to try to achieve a ‘better relationship’ between ad tech and web browsers. To wit Russia’s Yandex, which has just announced it’s adding a complaint button to its Android browser to lets users report ads they find annoying. |
Filing an ad complaint will send a report to Yandex which will initiate custom ad filtering for that user, using machine learning technology to hone the individual model over time. |
It will also be feeding intel back to advertisers so they can “create more targeted and effective campaigns that are relevant to users, reducing the need to install ad blocking software”. So in theory users making use of the ad complaint button should see ads more pleasing/relevant to them over time, as well as eyeballing fewer ads they find annoying. |
Yandex is framing this as a more nuanced alternative to ad blockers, given that users can specify the ads they like or don’t — rather than just nixing all ads. Although it’s worth noting that some ad blockers operate whitelists of so-called ‘acceptable ads’, or let users choose which blocklists to apply — as well as also letting them manually whitelisting websites themselves — so it’s a rather more nuanced picture there too. |
Yandex is initially adding the button to the alpha version of its Android browser but tells TechCrunch it’s planning to expand it to its browser on other platforms — although it has no timeline for that as yet. It claims a daily user-base of around five million across its mobile browsers. |
The company has its own ad network, so would clearly prefer its browser users see and like adverts than blanket block them. Although its browser does still support adding third party ad blockers, should users choose. |
Earlier this year the Opera browser added a built-in ad blocker, including on mobile. Although the company is also working with the ad industry on an initiative aimed at boosting ad standards via an opt-in code of practice (called the LEAN initiative). |
Long accused of being a set of anti-homeless measures, Boise's anti-camping ordinances took a big hit on Sept. 4<, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that in enforcing them, the City had violated the plaintiffs' Eighth Amendment rights. In her opinion, Ninth Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon cast the ordinances in bitter irony, quoting Anatole France's The Red Lily: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." |
"We consider whether the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to," Berzon wrote, departing from the text. "We conclude that it does." |
In filings and courtroom debates, the case revolved around the question of whether there were enough beds in Boise homeless shelters for all of the people experiencing homelessness—in other words, whether those people slept under the stars instead of a roof by choice or necessity. |
Advocates for the homeless weren't alone in watching from the sidelines; they shared the peanut gallery with cities and counties around the country that have similar ordinances, concerned that the ruling could set an inconvenient precedent. With them in mind, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs let loose in his announcement of the court's Sept. 4 decision. |
"The outcome of the court's decision will ripple across the country," wrote Howard Belodoff, an attorney with Idaho Legal Aid Services who represented the plaintiffs along with The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, and Latham & Watkins LLP. |
If final, the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court's determination would have far-ranging effects. South Jordan, Utah, announced in May it would implement an anti-camping ordinance that, among other things, would prohibit using public property for temporary or permanent dwellings, from shanties and tents to laying down bedding to sleep, according to Deseret News. In April, a judge threatened to bar Orange County in California from enforcing its own anti-camping laws. |
According to Voice of OC, the Santa Ana, California, Mayor Miguel Pulido said in August that the city should use law enforcement to "harass" and "get tougher" with homeless people there so that they would "move out of town and go harass another town." A tent city or homeless encampment, he added, could provide the City of Santa Ana cover to resume enforcing its anti-camping and loitering laws. |
"They want to push the problem out of public view without touching on the underlying causes of the problem," said Eric Tars, senior attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, which was party to the lawsuit against the City of Boise. |
Boise's own laws, which go by the name "Camping and Disorderly Conduct Ordinances," proscribe obstructing streets, camping in public, unlicensed selling on streets, "loafing" or loitering, and a variety of other activities. One attorney involved in the lawsuit said the ordinances ran the risk of butting against the Eighth Amendment from the get-go. |
"The basic premise is that since the 1970s, there's a line of court cases that say you can't punish somebody for their status. Every human needs to sleep," Tars said. "If a person has no private place to do it, it's still a biological need." |
A group of civil rights-oriented groups and attorneys filed suit in 2009 on behalf of a number of homeless people who had run afoul of those ordinances, and the city has been embroiled in legal battles over the issue ever since. In a 2015 flashpoint, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Bush dismissed their case, Bell v. City of Boise, on the grounds that the plaintiffs had insufficient standing. In his opinion, Bush wrote that there was "no known citation of a homeless individual under the Ordinances for camping or sleeping on public property on any night or morning when he or she was unable to secure shelter due to a lack of shelter capacity," though he added that in dismissing the case, he left the door open to future challenges of the ordinances on Eighth Amendment grounds. |
The plaintiffs rejiggered their case under a new name, Martin v. City of Boise, to reflect their reinforced standing, ultimately leading to the Ninth Circuit's Sept. 4 decision. |
Despite the courtroom defeat, the City of Boise may not be ready to give up the fight just yet. |
"Our attorneys are taking a closer look at this complicated ruling to determine our best path forward. Options could include asking for a reconsideration by the entire 9th Circuit panel or an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court," wrote Mike Journee, a spokesman for Mayor Dave Bieter, in a statement. "That said, key portions of the ruling seem to support how we've approached this issue to date. Specifically, our officers do not cite people for camping when our local shelters have no space." |
Tars said he hopes the Ninth Circuit's decision will spur other cities to adopt housing-first and supportive housing initiatives that, though they have steep up-front costs, have proven effective in reducing homelessness and its financial burdens for cities in the long run. He did concede that nationally, some cities may not learn what he said are the lessons of the Sept. 4 decision. |
"Cities are, unfortunately, endlessly creative when it comes to finding ways around these court rulings," Tars said. "I have no doubt that somebody is out there trying to thread this constitutional needle. Those efforts could be much better applied." |
It's rush hour in Philadelphia for thousands of baby toads as they hop across a busy residential street on a rainy summer night. |
Why do toadlets cross the road? To get to the woods on the other side - where they will live, eat mosquitoes and grow up to be full-sized American toads (bufo Americanus). After a couple of years, they'll make the reverse trek as adults - unless they get squashed by a car. |
That's where the Toad Detour comes in. |
The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education sets up a roadblock each year in the Roxborough neighborhood, rerouting cars so the amphibians can cross the two-lane street without fear of, um, croaking. |
Baby toads in Philadelphia''s Roxborough neighborhood earn protected passage across a busy thoroughfare. |
The cycle starts in early spring when adult toads, which can fit in the palm of your hand, emerge from the woods to breed. They cross Port Royal Avenue, scale a 10-foot-high embankment and then travel down a densely vegetated hill to mate in the abandoned Upper Roxborough Reservoir. Their offspring - each about the size of a raisin - make the journey in reverse about six weeks later. |
So many baby toads were on the move Monday evening it looked like the road's muddy shoulder was alive. Volunteers scooped them up in plastic cups and deposited them on the habitat side of the street. |
"I didn't expect at all that there were going to be so many of them in one area," said 17-year-old Kaitlyn Hunt as she held a cup with more than a dozen toadlets. "And they're so tiny. They look like bugs." |
The Schuylkill Center for Environment Educaiton sets up a roadblock each year to divert traffic. |
The detour program began in 2009 when a local resident noticed the toad-filled road. City officials later granted permission to close the street for a couple of hours every evening during both two-week migration periods. |
Organizers estimate they helped 2,400 adult toads cross the road this spring, said volunteer coordinator Claire Morgan. And because female toads can lay thousands of eggs, many more toads are migrating the other way and need protection. |
Though some will inevitably be squished when the roadblock is not up, the toad population is not endangered, Morgan said. But protecting wildlife is important, she said, and local residents seem to support the project - especially after they volunteer to help. |
"We get some people that question it," said Morgan. "But after they do it, they're hooked." |
Double standards have always been a part of U.S. foreign policy. It's time to figure out how many should no longer be tolerated. |
The official position of the United States is that Europe should allow Turkey to join the European Union. Turkey’s entry would give its citizens the right to travel freely to any other EU member state. This prodding to Europeans to embrace Turkey comes from the same country that is building a 700-mile-long wall along its border with Mexico. |
When the South Korean government bailed out Hyundai Electronics Industries in 2001, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution urging the Bush administration "to assure that the unlawful bailout by the Republic of Korea is stopped." This July, the U.S. Congress approved a far larger bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants. The U.S. government has often pressured poor African countries ravaged by HIV/AIDS into not buying the cheaper generic drugs offered by manufacturers in Brazil or India. Yet, when the United States faced a potential health crisis during the anthrax attacks in 2001, Tommy Thompson, then the secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that the United States was ready to buy generic versions of Cipro, an anti-anthrax drug owned by Bayer, from manufacturers in India if the German drug company refused to drop its price. |
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 8