00:00Nightly greetings one and all. Denise Osorio here, homegrown and happy to bring you PTV News Now.
00:14Headline or overall inflation continued on its downslide from last month, hitting 1.3% or shedding a tenth of a percent from April's 1.4%.
00:27May inflation mark is the lowest since November 2019, as the cost of housing, utilities, fuel and gas retreated last month.
00:38Just about every inflation metric slid with the sharpest price drops incurred by housing, water, power and gas.
00:45Transport costs also took a tumble from 2.4% to 2.1%.
00:51Restaurant and accommodation services costs also slowed down from 2.3% in April to 2% last month.
01:00The general slowdown of inflation last month can be attributed in part to falling staple grain prices,
01:06especially with the ramped up distribution of the Benteng Bigas Merona program, which offer rock-bottom P20 pesos per kilo of regular milled rice.
01:17The country's chief statistician and civil registrar, General Claire Dennis Mapa, said as a result of the ramped up distribution of the P20 pesos per kilo of regular rice,
01:28inflation eased 5.1% from 12.8% in the beginning of the year to 7.7% last month.
01:36Mapa, however, earned inflation in the services sector, could surge should the proposed 200 minimum wage for private sector workers bill passed into law.
01:49U.S. President Donald Trump just escalated his way, or his war, against Harvard University by way of his latest directive to cancel all student visas of foreigners beginning their college studies in Harvard this school year.
02:04His latest orders signaling out Harvard specially for the threat it poses on national security because of its 2024 campus protests against Israel's war on Gaza,
02:15which the Trump administration branded as purely anti-Semitic and violent.
02:21In his directive, Trump cites the Ivy League school as defiant or not cooperating to cede control of its recruitment,
02:29curricula, and criteria for its research choices to the Trump administration.
02:35Likewise, Trump's order points out the allegedly excessive foreign enrollment that has prejudiced or discriminated American citizens in the U.S.
02:44in availing of Harvard's premium quality education.
02:47The order suggests the school opens up its enrollment to more Americans by bringing down its standards for admission as well as its typically exorbitant tuition fees.
02:58The school's doors have been opened to the best and the brightest minds on the planet and a leading research center for global health, scientific and technological advancement, the humanities, and the arts.
03:12Foreign students, to include Filipinos, comprise close to 30% of the student population.
03:17At this juncture, let's lend our eyes and ears to my colleague in PTV's Pine City Studios for what's brewing of late in the Cordilleras.
03:29Audrey?
03:29Thank you very much.
06:05Many thanks, Audrey, and that's all she wrote for tonight's show.
06:09Pick us up again tomorrow evening for a recap of major events here and away from home of the past week in the Global Roundup.
06:16And make us your daily habit for stories you can count on and news you can trust.
06:21I'm Denise Osorio and thank you for watching PTV News Now.
