By DANNY O. SAGUN
PIA Dagupan Infocenter
LINGAYEN – Pangasinan may suffer a 50-percent decrease in rice harvest this year as a result of the long dry spell, the office of the provincial agriculturist predicted.
Nestor Batalla, coordinator of the province’s Grains Marketing Assistance Program (GMAP) said the projected 50-percent production loss of some 500,000 metric tons of palay could only be averted if rains come in August.
The province ranks third in rice production with some one million metric tons (20 million cavans) of palay produced annually from the total 178, 616.91 hectares of rice lands. Read the rest of this entry »
By Philippine Information Agency
(with report from Bless Mallari, news contributor)
ALAMINOS CITY –Two sisters died as they slept in their house in barangay Tococ here July 26 after a Philippine cobra, some five feet long, bit them. The young girls’ parents and other housemates — and even doctors at the hospital – were fully unaware of the snake attack until later.
Maritess E. Ison, 13 and Mary Ann E. Ison, 10 were apparent victims of the snake’s attack while they slept.
The girls’ mother, Zenaida, a meat vendor, said she awakened at around 3 am. July 26 to a groaning sound coming from her daughters’ room.Thinking that one of them may be having a Read the rest of this entry »
AGRICULTURE national honcho Arthur Yap prefers to call it “prolonged dry spell” and skirts reference to a drought now plaguing the countryside. After all, even with the usually brimming dams now thirsting for water to fill their huge reservoirs and despite farmlands going barren, the earth cracking like dried cakes in at least 10 agricultural towns, there are still irrigation canals with water like Urdaneta’s Tanggal Amerikano and Tayug’s mountainside rivers to assure some harvest in those rice-producing parts.
The real heavy rains, Yap crosses his fingers, should be coming in two weeks, within which time the San Roque Dam has reluctantly agreed — only as a stop-gap measure –to release irrigation water downstream to nourish the parched farms and fields of farmers and allow the tillers to transplant their seedlings, most of which are just awaiting the rains that Nature has so far been withholding. Read the rest of this entry »
By BEHN FER. HORTALEZA, JR
SO, how does it feel playing little gods, Gen. Pol Bataoil and Secretary Art Yap?
Bringing on the rains, once and since time immemorial the power and prerogative of The One Above the Clouds, has just been assumed by the police general and the agriculture secretary, thru their orders for cloud-seeding operations especially over the now parched northern Luzon. They have had some success, their offices’ reports say. Well and good.
They are,of course, only trying to save humankind, that is, poor farmers who could not plant their palay seedlings and rice-eaters Read the rest of this entry »
By Venus May H. Sarmiento
ROSALES, Pangasinan – President Gloria Macapagal- Arroyo here unveiled the marker signalling the operation of the Carmen-Rosales Central Transport Terminal (CRCTT), a project that will earn for the town a 30% net profit on a sharing scheme with the developer.
The CRCTT is a P30 million peso project constructed by the Hausland Development Corporation led by its president Wilfredo Tan with no counterpart fund from the local government.
Dressed in a marine blue pantsuit, President Arroyo met with the farmers, transport group, terminal users and business sector after the unveiling ceremonies. She expressed the determination of government to provide livelihood projects for them. Read the rest of this entry »
By DANNY O. SAGUNPIA Dagupan Infocenter
FISHPENS have begun to sprout in the city’s river systems after it somehow appeared that no floods were forthcoming, the city agriculturist noted Tuesday.
Fishpens are usually being emptied during this time of the year when typhoons usually come in succession but the prolonged dry spell has prompted fishpen operators to take advantage of the situation, city agriculturist Emma Molina told the Pantongtongan Tayo radio program of the Philippine Information Agency over Radyo ng Bayan-DZMQ. Read the rest of this entry »
LINGAYEN – The police now considers solved the slaying of Vice Mayor Bonie Apilado of San Manuel town on June 20 this year with the filing of a complaint for murder and one frustrated murder against three persons, all tagged as hired killers—even as none of them has been caught yet.
The killing of Apilado, considered as one of three major incidents relative to the May 14 election in Region 1, happened along the busy Maharlika Highway in Urdaneta City at past noon of June 20.
Police Provincial Director Senior Supt. Isagani Nerez identified the three during a news conference on Thursday as a certain Jun Fabro, alias “Jun Kalingan”, of Sta. Cruz, Ilocos Sur, Efren Macaraeg of Binalonan town; and Sonny Vergara of Urdaneta City. Read the rest of this entry »
Written by 