The Philippines featured on a BBC Documentary

The Philippines was featured on a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) travel documentary entitled, "Philippines Beautiful people, Beautiful Country."

Rajan Datar travels to the Philippines to try and discover the Filipino factor.

A video by LACONSOLACIONCOLLEGE TANAUAN on YouTube

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The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcasting statutory corporation. Its main responsibility is to provide impartial public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man.

The Philippines featured on a BBC Documentary

PHL to upgrade navy base nearest to Spratlys

Credit: www.aurorametropolis.wordpress.com

The Philippines is to upgrade a navy base facing disputed South China Sea waters to serve the extra ships being acquired to protect its territory, the military said Thursday.

Navy spokesman Lt. Commander Gregory Fabic said the military will build a P500-million ($11.2 million) port at Ulugan Bay, the Philippine military base nearest to the Spratly Islands.

"It is being programmed for capability upgrade... we need to develop it to house the big vessels of the navy," he told reporters.

President Benigno Aquino is set to visit the base on May 20 to launch the upgrading, Fabic added.

The base on the west coast of Palawan island is the headquarters of naval forces guarding the waters on the west of the archipelago.

In recent years, the Philippines has been locked in an increasingly tense standoff with China involving disputed reefs and islands in the Spratlys and other areas of the South China Sea.

Under a program designed to improve the capability of one of Asia's weakest military forces, the Philippines has been acquiring naval vessels to create what the government described as a "credible deterrent" to protect its territorial integrity.

The navy has acquired two refurbished American coast guard frigates in the past two years, and they now lead patrols in the South China Sea.

The navy wants to acquire up to six more to guard the country's long coastline effectively, armed forces chief of staff General Emmanuel Bautista announced in January.

In 2012 the Gregorio del Pilar, one of the two refurbished frigates, confronted Chinese ships on Scarborough Shoal, a small outcrop just off the coast of the country's main island of Luzon.

The Chinese eventually gained control of the outcrop after Manila backed down. However, the Manila government sought UN arbitration to settle the dispute, a move rejected by China.

Last month the Philippines lodged a protest after the Chinese coast guard allegedly attacked Filipino fishermen off the shoal with water cannon on January 27. Beijing rejected the protest.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters near the coasts of its neighbours. — Agence France-Presse

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A Filipino stars in episode of action-horror series in Korea

The Ghost-Seeing Detective Cheo Yong (Trailer)

Nash Ang stars as Ikbal

SOUTH KOREA—From directing to acting, a Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) graduate who migrated here has snagged himself a starring role in a popular TV show.

In his latest project, Nash Ang stars as Ikbal, one of the two Filipinos who witnessed a crime in the action-crime-horror Korean drama "Ghost-Seeing Detective Cheo Yong."

In the series, Yoon Cheo Yong (played by Jiho Oh) is a detective who has supernatural abilities to see and hear ghosts since birth. Together with female detective Ha Sun Woo (Ji Eun Oh) and a ghost high school student Han Na Young (Hyoseong Jun, from a popular South Korean girl group Secret), they solve paranormal cases and arrest criminals.

Episode 5 tackles about a case that involves foreign workers in a factory. It shows their lives, how they learn Korean language and how they sacrifice for the sake of their families at home. It also deals with human rights issues.

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By DENNIS ESPINELI SALCEDO
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"Aswang" to be featured on Grimm TV show

Aswang

Things in Oregon are about to take a turn for the downright horrifying.

The US television series "Grimm," which revolves around cases involving mystical terrors, is about to add a new name to its list of fearsome creatures – the aswang, a staple of Filipino folklore. The shape-shifting terror will plague the upcoming episode "Mother Dearest," which is scheduled to air on March 7.

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By MIKAEL ANGELO FRANCISCO
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PHL has poorest, slowest LTE broadband in the world — int'l survey

Internet Speeds and Costs Around the World

After the controversy over data caps imposed by Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, another issue is hounding giant telcos in the Philippines, this time with Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard in the mobile network technology, also known as 4G.

A survey by OpenSignal, a company that created impartial coverage maps of mobile networks, showed that the Philippines has the poorest and slowest LTE broadband internet access and coverage in the world.

'Worst performing network'

Six million users from around the world were asked to comment on download speed and proportion of time spent with LTE access during the second half of 2013. These two matrices were then combined to “build a picture of true network performance.”

Both Smart and Globe were classified under “Poor coverage and slow” in the quadrant graph entitled The Breadth of LTE Performance.

“Globe Philippines is the worst performing network,” the OpenSignal article said.

The graph showed that while Globe was said to be faster than Smart, it was used less often compared to the latter.

The Philippines is also last place when it comes to both speed and time spent on LTE.

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