00:01The Philippines' poverty rate drops to 9.7% in 2025, with 6.5 million Filipinos rising above the poverty
00:09line.
00:10PLDT and Smart Communications will block more than 100 websites for streaming videos of school shootings and other forms of
00:16extreme violence.
00:18Hong Kong's High Court convicts of inciting subversion to organizers of yearly Tiananmen Square commemoration vigils.
00:24U.S. Treasury Chief Scott Besant says the U.S. will impose, quote, the toughest sanctions in history on Iran.
00:31And a federal judge cancels part of the conviction of a former Google software engineer who had been found guilty
00:38of stealing AI trade secrets.
00:47The Philippine Statistics Authority says the country's poverty rate dropped to 9.7% in 2025, with 6.5 million
00:54Filipinos rising above the poverty line.
00:57Compare this with 15.5% or 17.5 million Filipinos in 2023.
01:03However, many Filipinos remain vulnerable to economic shocks.
01:07Chief Economist Arsenio Balisakan says this is the first time that fewer than 1 in 10 Filipinos is living below
01:13the poverty line.
01:15He adds,
01:16Reaching this milestone ahead of schedule demonstrates that expanding economic opportunities complemented by effective social protection can make a meaningful
01:23difference in people's lives.
01:25The PSA defines the poverty threshold as the minimum income or expenditure needed to meet basic food and non-food
01:32needs.
01:33These include housing, utilities, health, education, clothing, and transport.
01:37The World Bank estimates that around 28% of Filipinos live just above the poverty line, which leaves many vulnerable
01:44to price spikes, job losses, disasters, and other shocks.
01:50PLDT and Smart Communications announced they will block more than 100 websites found to be streaming videos of school shootings
01:56and other forms of extreme violence.
01:58PLDT Chief Operating Officer Butch Jimenez says the company does not tolerate such content and has decided to ban these
02:05sites preemptively.
02:07Jimenez says their networks will not be used as a channel for content that glorifies violence and puts our communities,
02:13especially our children, at risk.
02:15The blocking will occur at the network level, meaning such sites will be inaccessible to all PLDT and Smart subscribers.
02:22The list of blocked sites is expected to grow as other sites are identified through information provided by government agencies
02:28alongside PLDT's own monitoring.
02:32Hong Kong's High Court convicts two former leaders of a disbanded group that organized yearly vigils marking Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen
02:39Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
02:41Li Chok Yan and Chao Hangteng were charged with inciting subversion of state power that carries punishment of up to
02:4810 years in jail under China's new national security law.
02:52They were respectively the former chair and former vice chair of the now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in support of
02:58patriotic democratic movements of China.
03:00The judgment says it was the defendant's repeated use of the phrase end one-party dictatorship that violated the NSL
03:07rather than other political actions or beliefs.
03:10The NSL was implemented in 2020. It significantly expanded the powers of both the Chinese and Hong Kong governments within
03:16Hong Kong.
03:17The former Hong Kong Alliance had led yearly commemorations of the 1989 crackdown for decades in Hong Kong until the
03:23enactment of the NSL.
03:26U.S. Treasury Chief Scott Besant says the U.S. will impose, quote, the toughest sanctions in history on Iran.
03:32He suggests this move will lessen the need for new major military operations.
03:37This comes after U.S. President Donald Trump's threat of economic warfare and warning of economic consequences against any country
03:44that provided any type of lifeline to Iran.
03:46But Besant says details will come by next week.
03:49Oil prices rose to more than a three-week high on Thursday, August 20, following these threats of financial penalties
03:55aimed at ending the nearly six-month-old war that has stranded millions of barrels of Middle Eastern oil.
04:00Besant tells CNBC, if you're doing the maximum economic pressure, then that means that likely there will not be a
04:06large-scale kinetic restart.
04:08He was referring to military force.
04:10The war has pulled in other Gulf nations and shocked markets as Iran strangled the Strait of Hormuz where a
04:16fifth of global oil trade passes.
04:18The U.S. and Iran have twice announced ceasefire deals in April and June, but both quickly fell through.
04:25A federal judge reverses part of the conviction of former Google software engineer Lin Wei Ding, who was found guilty
04:31earlier this year of stealing AI trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies.
04:36U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chabria in San Francisco rules there isn't enough evidence Ding intended or knew his
04:42conduct would benefit the government of China.
04:45Chabria says evidence supported the guilty verdict on the theft of trade secrets.
04:50A Chinese national, Ding was found guilty in January after an 11-day trial of seven counts of economic espionage
04:56and seven counts of theft of trade secrets.
04:58He was accused of stealing thousands of pages of confidential information from Google.
05:03Three weeks after the trial, Ding's lawyers filed appeals for his acquittal, arguing the Justice Department failed to prove the
05:09charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
05:11Ding is scheduled to be sentenced on September 1, according to the court docket.
05:17And that's today's wrap. I'm JC Gutinga. Thank you for watching. Click the link below for the full story. For
05:22more updates, download the Rappler app.
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