News Briefs

Napoles children seek permits for US travel

Two children of suspected pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles have asked the Sandiganbayan for permission to travel to the United States in November, supposedly to attend to cases filed against them there. In a motion filed on Wednesday, siblings Jo Christine and James Christopher Napoles, who are accused of plunder in the antigraft court along with their mother, asked for the lifting of a hold departure order against them. The Napoleses are facing five counts of plunder over the alleged misuse of P10 billion of lawmakers’ Priority Development Funds. In addition to their cases in the country, the two Napoles children, along with their mother, another sibling, Jeane Catherine, and their uncle, Reynald Luy Lim, and his wife Ana Marie, were indicted by the US justice department for “quietly liquidating the assets in the United States.” —MELVIN GASCON

‘Work-from-home bill’ a step closer to becoming law

The proposed “work-from-home” bill is now one step closer to becoming a law following the ratification of a bicameral report by both chambers of Congress, Sen. Joel Villanueva said. In a statement, the chair of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development said the Telecommuting Act of 2017 awaited President Duterte’s signature. “We are now one step closer to our goal to produce a cohesive and strong policy that affords our workers meaningful work-life balance and an option to work under a flexible work arrangement,” said Villanueva, the bill’s author and sponsor in the Senate. The bill encourages employers to allow telecommuting, or the partial or total substitution of computers or telecommunication technologies for the commute to work by employees. —JULIE M. AURELIO

Senate majority opposed to TRAIN 2, says Escudero

SORSOGON CITY—Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero said the majority bloc in the Senate would not support and endorse the passage of the second package of the controversial Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Act. “We don’t want to support a law that is full of mistakes and inaccuracies just like the TRAIN 1 law,” he said. “The economic managers should explain the complicated provision of the proposed TRAIN 2 that would set guarantees on the established assumptions and projections,” he added. Escudero said the economic team that proposed TRAIN 1 committed wrong assumptions that fueled the country’s high inflation rate and spikes in prices of fuel and basic goods. —MAR S. ARGUELLES