00:00State auditors flag a substandard road and unimpassable bridge in Ilocos Norte, both Duterte-era projects by the diskaya firm St. Gerard.
00:10Authorities say a policewoman and her 8-year-old son were brutally killed over a car scam.
00:16The flood control corruption scandal leads to 550,000 construction jobs lost in 2025, leading to a standstill unemployment rate.
00:24The United Nations raises the alarm over the expiration of the treaty that curbed nuclear proliferation.
00:30And Rappler flags a false post that claims the aphelian phenomenon would cause colder-than-usual weather in the Philippines until August.
00:45State auditors raise concerns about two Duterte-era road and bridge projects in Ilocos Norte, valued at over 300 million pesos combined,
00:53traced to the controversial diskaya-couple-owned St. Gerard construction.
00:57The first project is a 220.86 million peso concrete road in Adams, Ilocos Norte.
01:03The Commission on Audit says the project showed concrete scaling and surface deterioration.
01:08It was reported as completed on April 30, 2019, but during an inspection on July 11, 2024, auditors found it had not been turned over.
01:17The second project is a 101.27 million peso bridge and road project in Dumalneg.
01:23It was described in the COA report as currently unpassable by most vehicles except motorcycles.
01:29It was also listed as completed on April 30, 2019, but was found unusable during a COA inspection on July 18, 2024.
01:37Auditors also flagged inconsistencies in documentation.
01:41While St. Gerard was listed on the contracts as part of a joint venture with Viking Construction and Supplies,
01:47the diskaya firm did not appear in the DPWH Ilocos Norte 1st District Engineering Office project and contract management application.
01:54Policewoman Diane Marie Molianido and her 8-year-old son John Ismael were killed in Novaliches, Quezon City over what police believed was a car scam.
02:05Car agent Pia Katrina Panganiban and her husband Christian Panganiban, a dismissed police officer, are tagged as primary suspects.
02:13Diane Marie was allegedly shot in the head by Christian while John Ismael was allegedly suffocated to death by the couple with a plastic bag over his head.
02:21Four suspects were arrested, the couple, their helper Gil D. Jr., and Christian's sister Maribel Panganiban.
02:28Interior Secretary John Vicremulia describes the Panganiban couple as having psychopathic tendencies or having executed the crime with their three children in another room of the house.
02:37He adds the couple even brought the kids along in their Toyota Fortuner when the suspects disposed of the victims' bodies.
02:44NCRPO spokesperson Police Major Hazel Asilo also says the case is already considered solved as the police have gathered sufficient evidence to charge the four suspects.
02:53National statistician Dennis Mapa says the flood control corruption scandal led to historic lows in construction activity, leading to 550,000 construction jobs lost year on year.
03:14Mapa adds around 258,000 were also lost in the transport and storage industry.
03:20The Philippines Statistics Authority notes job losses in the construction sector offset the service sector's gains from the holiday season.
03:27This led to the Philippines' unemployment rate standing still at 4.4% in December 2025, equivalent to 2.26 million Filipinos.
03:36Meantime, the higher cost of utilities and rent push inflation to an 11-month high of 2% in January 2026.
03:43This is higher than the 1.8% recorded in December 2025.
03:48Mapa says adjustments in yearly rentals usually begin in January, thus the increase.
03:53He also notes the increase in prices of meals in restaurants or eateries as factors.
03:58The Banco Central of the Philippines meantime acknowledges the weakening outlook on domestic economic activity and declining business sentiment due to the infrastructure corruption scandal.
04:09United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls the expiration of the New START Treaty a grave moment for international peace and security.
04:17New START, which ran out at midnight on Wednesday, February 4, capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy.
04:25It also caps the deployment of land and submarine-based missiles and bombers.
04:30Gutierrez says Wednesday,
04:32For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the Russian Federation and the United States of America,
04:41the two states that possess the overwhelming majority of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons.
04:46He also urges Russia and the United States to negotiate a new nuclear arms control framework without delay to, quote,
04:52prevent a return to a world of unchecked nuclear proliferation.
04:55A social media post claiming the aphelion phenomenon, which will cause colder than usual weather in the Philippines until August, is false.
05:05The post warns the public of prolonged cold weather supposedly caused by the increased distance between the Earth and the Sun.
05:12But State Weather Bureau Pagasa says aphelion, or the point at which Earth is farthest from the Sun, does not affect the Earth's weather.
05:18Seasonal changes on Earth are primarily influenced by the planet's axial tilt, not its orbital distance.
05:24Agasa also explains the cool weather experienced in parts of the Philippines this January is caused by the Northeast Monsoon, locally known as Amihan.
05:34Aphelion is projected to occur on July 7, 2026, not January 2026, as the post claims.
05:41Johns Hopkins Medicine and The Conversation say colds and flu are caused by viruses, not cold weather.
05:47And that's today's wrap. I'm JC Gotinga. Thank you for watching. Click the link below for the full story.
05:54For more updates, download the Rappler app.
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