BOC inks pact with Russia, Netherlands
By Jerry E. Esplanada
The Russian Federation and the Netherlands have joined the growing list of countries that have forged customs cooperation agreements with the Philippines.
The Russian Federation and the Netherlands have joined the growing list of countries that have forged customs cooperation agreements with the Philippines.
The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is sending a team of experts to Tubbataha Reef to assess the damage wrought by the grounding of the USS Guardian, a US Navy minesweeper, in January.
The Philippines reiterated, on Thursday, its commitment to the peaceful settlement of its claims in the West Philippine Sea or the South China Sea area through arbitration proceedings under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS.
Vice President Jejomar Binay had no choice but skip several United Nationalist Alliance campaign sorties this week for representing President Benigno Aquino III in the April 8 opening of the “Philippines: Archipel des Exchanges (or Archipelago of Exchanges),” the country’s first-ever grand culture exhibit in Paris, the world’s cultural capital.
The Chinese fishing boat Min Long Yu is still grounded on the north atoll of the Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea but its 12 crew members have been transferred by a Philippine Coast Guard ship to Puerto Princesa in Palawan, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.
The Philippine Coast Guard will help refloat the Chinese vessel Min Long Yu which ran aground on Monday night at the Tubbataha National Marine Park in the Sulu Sea, according to the PCG commandant.
The government should not only file a formal protest but also “demand accountability and compensation” from China for the grounding of a Chinese vessel at Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea, the militant umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) said Tuesday.
The US Navy has turned over digital navigation maps and other important documents to Philippine investigators who are looking into the grounding of the minesweeper USS Guardian on Tubbataha Reef on Jan. 17.
As it awaits the assessment dives that would determine the extent of the damage to Tubbataha Reef, the Philippine government is sending a Coast Guard team to Japan to resume its investigation into the grounding of the USS Guardian on the atoll, government officials said yesterday.
Tubbataha Reef Management Office divers, not their counterparts from the Philippine Coast Guard, will make the “final assessment” of the damage left by the USS Guardian on the Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea, the PCG spokesman told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The salvage team dismantling the USS Guardian has completed the cutting and lifting of the bow, or forward section, of the US Navy minesweeper and its transfer to a barge, according to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG).
A United States Navy-contracted salvage team has completed the cutting and lifting of the bow, or the forward section of the USS Guardian and its subsequent transfer to a barge, the spokesperson of the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), said on Wednesday.
