Aid agency Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) has granted state-run Land Bank of the Philippines (Landbank) a 4.9-billion yen (over P2.1 billion) loan to support the agriculture sector in the war-torn areas of Mindanao.
In a statement, Jica said the official development assistance (ODA) under its yen loan scheme was launched this week through a project dubbed “Harnessing Agribusiness Opportunities through Robust and Vibrant Entrepreneurship Supportive of Peaceful Transformation” or “Harvest.”
The project would be assisting agriculture enterprises as well as farmers’ cooperatives, among other related organizations, in Mindanao, Jica said.
It would also provide human resource training and technical assistance to Landbank, agriculture cooperatives, and other relevant institutions, Jica added.
“‘Harvest’ presents opportunities to help ordinary Filipino farmers in Mindanao and related institutions grow the agriculture sector. Through the project’s financial inclusion of farmers’ cooperatives, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and related organizations, more investments and jobs will be created in Mindanao’s conflict-affected areas,” Jica chief representative Susumu Ito said.
Government data showed that in 2013, agriculture, fishing and forestry accounted for over three-fifths of Mindanao’s regional economy, employing 68.4 of its population.
Poverty incidence, however, remained at over half of the population due to the decades of conflict in several parts of the island, Jica noted.
The Japanese aid agency and the Bangsamoro Development Agency had worked on the proposed Bangsamoro Development Plan (BDP) 2, the medium- to long-term plan that will guide development in Mindanao.
Jica had been wanting to help roll out under the BDP 2 a total of 26 anchor projects spanning a wide array of socioeconomic sectors in order to lift Bangsamoro people out of poverty by 2028.
If fully implemented, the BDP 2 would create about 550,000 additional jobs by 2022, while the region’s economy could grow as fast as 7.4 percent annually, according to Jica.
The anchor projects earlier identified by Jica and BDA under the BDP 2 were as follows: support for agricultural cooperatives; road rehabilitation and upgrading; ports and airport improvement; Greater Cotabato City urban infrastructure; communal irrigation; economic corridor development; economic zones; as well as abaca, coco coir and sugar industrial cluster development.
Also among the BDP 2 initiatives were agri-based projects (such as goat farming and mixed field crop production); seed production center; halal industry promotion; open market; cold chain facilities; community-based forest and coastal management; mini hydropower development; and Mindanao river basin integrated watershed as well as flood management projects.
A 2005 study of the Human Development Network noted that the underdevelopment of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is linked to the long history of armed conflict in the area. According to the said report, the war in Mindanao costs around P5 to 7.5 billion annually, which could have been used instead to fund development projects.
The poverty incidence in ARMM was at 55.8 percent in 2012—much higher than the national average of 25.2 percent and 39.1 percent for the whole of Mindanao, government data showed.
Since 2002, Jica has been extending assistance to about 30 programs and projects in Mindanao under the Japan-Bangsamoro Initiatives for Reconstruction and Development or J-Bird.
A total of 20 billion yen in development aid has been provided by Jica as well as Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2015, it added.

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© Source: https://business.inquirer.net/222903/japan-agency-lends-p2-1b-boost-mindanao-agri
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Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
Daniel Hannan, as I’ve noted in the past, has an awkward habit of deleting his tweets. Often, by a strange coincidence, it’s the more embarrassing proclamations that vanish into the ether – no explanation, no, “Apologies, friends, I buggered that up didn’t I?” The tweet simply vanishes as if it had never been tweeted.
I’ve taken, then, to screenshot-ing some of the best morsels, just in case they’re not there the next time I look. Here’s one now:
Funny thing about that tweet is that Danny Boy has not, at time of writing, deleted it. Despite the fact he was tricked into embarrassing himself by a mean-spirited Remoaner, it’s still sitting there on the internet looking for all the world like its author is not crippled with embarrassment at the fact he could have been such a dunderhead as to write it. Two things are wrong with it, one relatively small, the other so huge as to be all encompassing.
The small one lies in the choice of monarchs. Not all of them are unreasonable: Henry VIII famously broke with the Catholic Church in his search for a divorce, an heir, and a quick bonk with Anne Boleyn. Since that meant an end to the period in which the English crown was answerable to a higher authority in the form of the Pope, we’ve already been treated to umpteen “Britain’s first Brexit” articles, and they’re not soon likely to stop – all this, despite the fact the big man liked to go around telling people he was also the King of France.
Similarly England spent much of the reign of his daughter trying to avoid being swallowed by the Spanish Empire, so it’s probably fair to suggest that Elizabeth I wasn’t a big fan of European integration either. George V, though, was closely related to – indeed, shared a face with – half the other head of states in Europe during his time on the planet, so what he’s doing there is anybody’s guess.
The truly vexing inclusion, though, is Edward V. Is Daniel Hannan really saying that a boy king who reigned for 79 days and was murdered by a wicked uncle at the age of 12 had serious concerns about the European project? Was it the damage that the Combined Agricultural Policy wrought on developing world farmers that Edward was brooding about in his tower? The money wasted on repeatedly moving the European Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg? What?
@JonnElledge To be fair, if you’d ask the Princes in the Tower if they wanted to leave or remain, I’d bet they’d vote leave.
— Chris Cook (@xtophercook) December 29, 2016
Okay let’s be charitable and assume it’s a typo, presumably for another of Henry’s kids Edward VI. (It certainly wasn’t Edward III who spent much of his reign trying to get into Europe, by kicking off an endless war with France.) But the bigger problem here lies not in the specifics of Daniel’s answer, but in the fact he bothered to answer at all. The entire exercise is entirely ludicrous. It’s like asking for Theresa May’s position on the dissolution of the monasteries, or Jeremy Hunt’s proposals for tackling the Black Death.
The question is an ahistorical nonsense – not just because the European Union was invented in the late 20th century to deal with problems specific to a particular time, but because it misunderstands how England’s role in Europe has evolved over the centuries.
For the first five hundred years or so after the Conquest, the nations of the British Isles were a key part of a western European political system that included France and the Low countries. Until it lost Calais in 1558, indeed, the English Crown generally held territory in France.
The idea that the United Kingdom, as the state became, was with Europe but not of it – that its destiny lay on the high seas, not the continent – is a notion that’s core to Eurosceptic mythology, but one which didn’t emerge until the imperial era. Exactly when I’m not sure (unlike certain Conservative MEPs I’m not afraid to admit my ignorance, which is what makes us better than the animals and egg avatars). However you count it, though, the period between then and 1973 must make up a minority of England’s history as a nation. For most of its history, the idea that the England was somehow not properly “European” would have seemed crazy.
Actually, there was one major European project which a king of both England and Scotland kept us out of, a policy decision confirmed by his successors. That project was a key plank of French foreign policy, grew to encompass more far flung countries like Sweden, and was launched largely to prevent the Germans from getting above themselves. It was the Thirty Years War.
But is James I & VI on Hannan’s list? Is he b*llocks.
At the Conservative party conference, the Home secretary, Amber Rudd, made a controversial speech , in which she said employers should be subjected to tougher tests before recruiting workers from abroad. During conference, she also suggested companies should have to disclose what proportion of their workforce was non-British.
There was an immediate backlash. But one Oxford University professor went further than most – he complained to the police.
The West Midlands Police have now confirmed that they treated his complaint seriously and assessed Rudd’s speech as a « hate incident » – although the force concluded no crime had been committed.
The Home Office said it was not a hate crime, and added: « She’s made countering hate one of her key priorities.  »
The complainant himself admitted he hadn’t actually listened to Rudd’s speech.
But was there ever any question of Rudd’s speech falling into the hate crime category? And if you did hear a politician spreading hate, can you report it?
What counts as hate?
The UK does have laws designed to prevent hate speech, but there is a fairly narrow definition of what hate crime is.
Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits us from acting in a way that is likely to cause another person harassment, alarm or distress. The act has been amended several times to include stirring up hatred against someone based on their religion, gender or race.
But the definition has deliberately been kept narrow, to prevent an attack on freedom of speech. Whether or not someone is prosecuted depends not only on the abusive nature of their words, but whether they intended to stir up hatred against another.
It is hard to see the grounds on which Rudd could be accused of a hate crime, however much you dislike her policy ideas. She did not mention a specific race or religion. She also said she believed « immigration has brought many benefits to the nation ».
And consider this – if Rudd couldn’t talk about monitoring companies recruiting foreign workers, lefty Londoners couldn’t complain about monitoring non-British buy-to-let landlords. Which Labour mayor Sadiq Khan is doing right now. And perhaps former Labour leader Ed Miliband would have thought twice about floating his own idea about listing companies with a high proportion of foreign workers.
Will politicians even be charged?
There is no doubt, however, that hate crime exists and should be taken seriously. In the wake of Brexit, there were reports of a surge in hate crime, with specific groups such as Poles and Muslims being targeted. But is it ever worth reporting politicians for hate?
While it was shocking to hear such a negative portrayal of immigration from a government minister, Rudd is small fry in the inflammatory rhetoric stakes. In September, the Crown Prosecution Service said it was examining claims that Ukip’s Nigel Farage incited racial and religious hatred during the EU referendum campaign. Farage, you may remember, unveiled a poster showing refugees with the caption « Breaking Point ».
The politically-charged atmosphere of the referendum had consequences. That same day, a far-right nationalist murdered the MP Jo Cox , while shouting « Make Britain independent ».
But when it comes to politicians, courts have tended to side with the right to free speech. Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party (remember him) was secretly filmed saying it was important to stand up to Muslims or « will do for someone in your family ». He was charged with inciting racial hatred – and acquitted. In 2016, police confiscated the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson’s passport, after he photographed himself with a « F*ck Isis » flag. He won the court case, and got his passport back.
In other words, if your game plan for defeating far-right politicians is to land them all in jail, you’ll be waiting a long time. Unlike many everyday haters, extremist politicians know the law. They are generally careful about what they say in public. Reporting politicians can also be counterproductive – the Rudd incident has provided ammunition for those who oppose the idea of criminalising hate speech altogether.
This isn’t to say that nobody is found guilty of hate crime – they are, and thousands plead guilty every year. If you do come across hate crime, you can report it here.

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© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/01/adventure-daniel-hannan-and-princes-tower
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Nintendo has said it will release its long-awaited new console, the Nintendo Switch, on 3 March.
It will cost $299.99 in the US, £279.99 in the UK and 29,980 yen ($260) in Japan, more than some analysts and gamers had been expecting.
The stakes are high for the Japanese firm after its most recent console, the Wii U, failed to replicate the success of the original Wii.
Nintendo shares dipped as details of the launch trickled out.
Nintendo revealed in October last year that the games machine would be a handheld device that doubles as a home console.
Previously code-named NX, the Switch looks like a tablet computer with Joy-Con controllers that attach to its sides.
The screen is touch-sensitive and the controllers can detect movement, like the Wii Remote.
When used at home, the tablet component slots into a dock that connects to a TV set.
Games will be delivered on small cartridges, a nod to older Nintendo consoles.
The firm said that about 80 games were in development, including a new Mario game called Super Mario Odyssey, out late in 2017.
One of the new titles unveiled was Arms, a motion-controlled boxing game, due to be released this spring.
Initially, there was some negative reaction online to the pricing of the console’s accessories.
A Pro Controller, in the style of a traditional console controller, costs $69.99 (£57.50), additional Joy-Con controllers are $79.99 and a spare dock to use the Switch with another TV or monitor is $89.99.
« These are bad, bad price points, » wrote video game writer Pat Contri on Twitter.
The pricing was described as a « bad, bad joke » by video game news site Polygon.
But some reactions were more positive.
« Fair play Nintendo, this looks wonderful, » wrote one fan on Twitter.
Other details announced on Friday included:
Nintendo consoles: A history in pictures
Some analysts believe the device could be Nintendo’s « last shot » at selling a home console, after the Wii U proved a flop.
It was rapidly outsold by Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, although Nintendo has enjoyed success with its handheld 3DS device.
« This is another watershed moment for the company because the Switch kind of epitomises the new strategy that the company is trying to put into practice, » said Piers Harding-Rolls, gaming analyst at IHS Technology.
He added that the price of the main console was « as predicted ».
« This is not an impulse purchase or as cheap as other recent Nintendo consoles and at this price point Nintendo will be competing with existing consoles and tablets.
« As a result, communicating the unique aspects of the Switch – particularly the capabilities of the Joy-Con controllers – and its exclusive content through marketing spend will be key.  »
Mr Harding-Rolls added that he thought the decision to launch a paid online service « makes complete strategic sense » and brings it into line with rivals Microsoft and Sony.
By releasing something that allowed gamers to play Nintendo titles both at home and on the move, the firm could find a « very lucrative middle ground », said Ovum analyst Paul Jackson.
« Pure console gamers are likely to be disappointed here as it will probably be a powerful mobile device (battery allowing) but a comparatively weedy dedicated home one. « 

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Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
People out there in the big wide world are often helpful enough to point me towards Daniel Hannan’s latest brainfarts. He’s pretty prolific, but some of his work seems so boneheaded that I’ll get the same link sent to me by two, three, or, on one occasion, five different people.
This week it was this particular tweet – a retweet from last September; it’s all repeats on the internet these days – that everyone seemed keen to point me towards.
It’s like Ayn Rand has been reincarnated in the form of 15 year old hoping to study PPE at Oxford, isn’t it? That tweet suggests a world view so comfortingly simple that nobody actually needs money, and if you try to tax anyone anything they might decide to stop earning any in a fit of pique. (At time of writing, incidentally, Daniel Hannan has yet to resign his job as a Member of the European Parliament.)
If I get too far into this one, though, there’s a danger I’ll find myself attempting to disprove the assumptions of classical economics through the medium of sarcasm, and while I’m not shy about my own abilities to bullshit, I think that may be a bit beyond me. So instead I’m just going to leave it there for everyone to marvel at while we talk about flags.
Daniel Hannan’s header has been annoying me for months now, because it clearly takes place in a parallel universe in which the Anglosphere is a real thing rather than just the masturbatory fantasies of a certain type of free market ideologue. It combines the flags of the UK, US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, into a single red, white and blue monstrosity: the fact that one of Britain’s best known Eurosceptics uses this as his banner pic implies, at least to me, that he thinks this is what we should have instead of the EU.
At first glance, the assumption here seems to be that Britain’s natural allies are all the other countries who speak English. Except it clearly isn’t that, because a lot of other countries also speak English – Ireland, India, South Africa, to name but three – yet are mysteriously missing from the flag. A better definition might be that it’s the bits of the British Empire where our forefathers planted their own colonies and attempted to wipe out the natives, rather than simply lording it over them through a combination of divide-and-rule and Maxim guns.
The notion of the Anglosphere is not entirely without foundation: these five countries constitute the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which implies a certain degree of closeness, and there’s a fair amount of military co-operation too. In the event of a nuclear holocaust, indeed, one of the instructions British prime ministers can leave for their nuclear subs is, basically, “You are now Australian.  »
But nonetheless oh my god, mate, are you actually high? The Anglosphere is not a political unit – outside the world of George Smiley and GI JOE, it might as well not exist – and the idea of a US that is increasingly a) diverse but b) protectionist going anywhere near that kind of thing is just delusional. Dan is basically just saying he’d be happier if Britain only had to play with countries which we founded, which speak English, and which contain depressingly high concentrations of people who agree with him.
I was going to end with a crack about how the Anglosphere flag was such a work of science fiction that Dan might as well employ the flag of Star Trek ’s United Federation of Planets or, if that was too lefty, the Terran Federation from Blake’s 7 (at least everyone there speaks English). But I’ve had a better idea. There is another rainy, sea-faring kingdom in a popular work of fantasy that recently took advantage of continent-wide chaos to break away from a larger political unit. In what may or may not a foretaste of things to come, it later used it as an excuse to attack its former allies.
I am talking, of course, about the Iron Islands from Game of Thrones .
What is dead may never die.
The resignation of Tristram Hunt as MP for Stoke-on-Central has triggered a by-election in the safe Labour seat, which has Westminster speculating about the possibility of a victory for Ukip in the seat, with Paul Nuttall, the Ukip leader, being urged to throw his hat in the ring.
Are they right?
Ukip finished second in 2015, a little over 5,000 votes behind Labour, but just 33 votes ahead of the Conservatives in third place. It’s always more instructive to talk about percentages than raw vote totals, particularly in by-elections. Labour starts with a 16 per cent lead, with the parties of the right effectively tied.
There are reasons for Labour to be more nervous than they’d like. Stoke was one of the seats where a significant Labour-to-Ukip swing was masked by a Liberal Democrat to Labour swing. It’s now pretty clear that the Liberal Democrats are enjoying a revival in England though we still don’t know the extent to which that varies region-by-region.
They also have the problem that as the seat is due to be abolished in the next boundary review, they may find it hard to attract a strong candidate field. One of the unremarked features of the Corbyn era so far is that even though the selected parliamentary candidates have all, thus far, been Corbynsceptics of varying degrees, the talent pool has been exceptionally strong and drawn from outside the usual suspects: Jim McMahon, widely seen locally and nationally as an exemplary council leader, Tracy Brabin a former actress, Rosena Allin-Khan who could almost have been grown in a lab to win Tooting for Labour, while Rachel Holliday, the leadership’s preferred candidate in Copeland, was named as Cumbria’s Woman of the Year in 2015.
The good news, however, is although there is a great deal of anger on Twitter about Hunt « walking away » from his constituents, I can find no evidence in parliamentary by-elections triggered in similar circumstances where the holding party has been punished for the sitting MP quitting. There is a surprisingly large dataset for this: as well as the string of by-elections triggered by people taking jobs at the European Union or the United Nations, there are the resignations of David Miliband, David Cameron, Tony Blair, Louise Mensch in the last decade, all of which resulted in by-elections where the result was as you’d expect. (Though Labour did gain Corby on a big swing, that came at the high watermark of Ed Miliband’s popularity and preceded a wave of gains across the country in the locasl elections.)
But just as clear as the Liberal Democrat revival is Ukip’s collapse, which has been pretty consistent in every by-election – both at a council and a parliamentary level – since the referendum. The bad news is that the collapse seems to be asymmetric: Labour hasn’t regained “Labour 2010, Ukip 2015” voters, but the Tories have regained “Conservative 2010, Ukip 2015” voters. Although a lot is being written about how Nuttall will transform his party’s standing, there has been no sign of that so far.
As I’ve written before, Labour has a terrible headache over immigration in particular and Brexit in general. At the moment, the party is splitting the difference which means it risks alienating everybody, losing votes on both sides.
Then there’s the question of how the referendum fits into everything. At the risk of becoming a bore on this, one thing that is being widely missed amid the talk of places as “Brexitland” “Remainia” is that there is no part of the United Kingdom where the defeated side – be that Remain in the case of Stoke-on-Trent or Leave in the case of London – is not sufficiently large to be electorally decisive.
One of the maddening things about British elections is that we don’t report results by polling district, which means there is a broader level of guesswork than I’d like. It may be that the 2015 Labour vote was already quite Remain-heavy anyhow, reducing the Brexit dividend available. We know that around a third of the constituency voted to remain in the European Union – but remember that Labour only got just over a third – 38 per cent – in 2015 anyway , and you see how the party’s referendum position may not be as perilous as you’d think.
But you can just about see a perfect storm for the Conservatives where they have a big increase from Ukip’s collapse, Labour’s vote falls off to a more Remain-focused party in the shape of the Liberal Democrats and suffers some direct losses to Ukip and the Tories, letting the Conservatives win with a relatively small net increase in their voteshare.
That would be a surprise but it wouldn’t be a shock. Still, it’s unlikely enough that even if Labour ends up less than happy with their candidate, you’d back them to hold the seat, albeit less comfortably than in 2015.

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MANILA—During a state visit to the Philippines on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe aimed to do the best thing he could in the face of the shifting balance of power in Southeast Asia: be a better friend than China.
In his second meeting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in less than three months, Mr. Abe offered more than $8.7 billion in Japanese investment to the Philippines, a grant of more than $5 million for high-speed boats to boost the Philippines’ maritime security, and a host of other…

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