Philippine peso
The Philippine peso is the official currency of the Philippines. It is subdivided into 100 céntimos, as a former colony of the United States, the country used English on its currency, with the word peso appearing on notes and coinage until 1967. Since the adoption of Filipino language for banknotes and coins, the term piso is now used, the peso is usually denoted by the symbol ₱. Other ways of writing the Philippine peso sign are PHP, PhP, Php, P$, the ₱ symbol was added to the Unicode standard in version 3.2 and is assigned U+20B1. The symbol can be accessed through some word processors by typing in 20b1 and pressing the Alt and this symbol is unique to the Philippines as the symbol used for the peso in countries like Mexico and other former colonies of Spain in Latin America is $. The Philippine coins and banknotes are minted and printed at the Security Plant Complex of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in Quezon City, the inconvenience of barter however led to the use of some objects as a medium of exchange.
The teston became the de facto unit of trade between Spaniards and Filipinos before the founding of Manila in 1574, the native Tagalog name for the coin was salapi. The monetary situation in the Philippine Islands was chaotic due to the circulation of many types of coins, with differing purity and weights, value equivalents of the different monetary systems were usually difficult to comprehend and hindered trade and commerce. An attempt to remedy the confusion was made in 1848. Overseeing the conversion was Fernándo Norzagaray y Escudero, governor general in the period 1857-60, conversion to the decimal system with the peso fuerte as the unit of account solved the accounting problem, but did little to remedy the confusion of differing circulating coinage. The mint was inaugurated on March 19,1861, despite the mintage of gold and silver coins and South and Central American silver still circulated widely. The Isabelline peso, more known as the peso fuerte, was a unit of account divided into 100 céntimos.
Its introduction led to the Philippines brief experiment with the gold standard, the peso fuerte was a unit of exchange equivalent to 1.69 grams of gold,0.875 fine, equivalent to ₱1,390.87. Coin production at the Casa de Moneda de Manila began in 1861 with gold coins of three denominations,4 pesos,2 pesos, and 1 peso. On March 5,1862, Isabel II granted the mint permission to produce silver fractional coinage in denominations of 10,20, minting of these coins started in 1864, with designs similar to the Spanish silver escudo. The coin, which was to be known as the Spanish-Filipino peso, was minted in Madrid in 1897. The specifications of the coin was 25 grams of silver.900 fine and this configuration was used in the creation of the Puerto Rican provincial peso in 1895 giving both coins the equivalency of 5 pesetas. The new monetary standard finally established the peso as 25 grams silver,0.900 fine, the Spanish-Filipino peso remained in circulation and were legal tender in the islands until 1904, when the American authorities demonetized them in favor of the new US-Philippine peso
Cagayan River
The Cagayan River, known as the Rio Grande de Cagayan, is the second longest river in the Philippines, and the largest river by discharge volume of water. It has a length of approximately 350 kilometres and a drainage basin covering 27,753 square kilometres. It is located in the Cagayan Valley region in part of Luzon Island and traverses the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya, Isabela. The rivers headwaters are at the Caraballo Mountains of the Central Luzon at an elevation of approximately 1,524 metres, the river flows north for some 350 kilometres to its mouth at the Babuyan Channel near the town of Aparri, Cagayan. The river drops rapidly to 91 metres above sea level some 227 kilometres from the river mouth and its principal tributaries are the Pinacanauan, Siffu, Mallig and Ilagan Rivers. Magat River, is the largest tributary with an annual discharge of 9,808 million cubic meters. It lies in the portion of the basin, stretching approximately 150 kilometres from Nueva Vizcaya down to its confluence with Cagayan River about 55 kilometres from the river mouth.
Both Magat and Chico Rivers have extensive drainage areas which comprise about 1/3 of the whole basin and it flows westward and joins the Cagayan River at Ilagan, Isabela,200 kilometres from the mouth. The Siffu-Mallig system lies on the slope of the Central Cordillera ranges flowing almost parallel to the Magat River and swamps are found in some parts of its lower reaches. The river has an area of about 27,300 square kilometres. in the provinces of Apayao, Cagayan, Isabela, Mountain Province, Nueva Vizcaya. The estimated annual discharge is 53,943 million cubic meters with a reserve of 47,895 million cubic meters. The Cagayan River and its tributaries are subject to flooding during the monsoon season in Southeast Asia from May to October. The average annual rainfall in 1,000 millimetres in the part and 3,000 millimetres in the southern mountains where the rivers headwaters lie. Water from the flow down very slowly because of surface retention over the extensive flood plain, the gorges in the gently-sloping mountains.
The inundation of the Cagayan River and its tributaries have caused loss of life and property. The Philippine government has established several flood warning stations along the river, experts are specifically monitoring the lower reaches from Tuguegarao to Aparri and the alluvial plain from Ilagan to Tumauini, Isabela. The Cagayan River passes through one of the few remaining primary forests in the Philippines and it supports the lives of numerous endemic and endangered species, like the Luzon bleeding-heart pigeon, Philippine eagle and a rare riverine fish, locally called ludong. The ludong spawns in Cagayan Rivers upper reaches in Jones, Isabela, in late October until mid-November, the fish travel down the river to release their eggs at the river mouth near Aparri
House of Representatives of the Philippines
The House of Representatives of the Philippines, is the lower house of the Congress of the Philippines. It is often informally called Congress, Members of the House are officially styled as Representative and sometimes informally called Congressmen/Congresswomen and are elected to a three-year term. They can be re-elected, but cannot serve more than three consecutive terms, around eighty percent of congressmen are district representatives, representing a particular geographical area. There are 234 legislative districts in the country, each composed of about 250,000 people, there are party-list representatives elected through the party-list system who constitute not more than twenty percent of the total number of representatives. The House of Representatives is headed by the Speaker, currently Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao del Norte, the official headquarters of the House of Representatives is at the Batasang Pambansa located in the Batasan Hills in Quezon City in Metro Manila. The building is simply called Batasan and the word has become a metonym to refer to the House of Representatives.
At the beginning of American colonial rule, from March 16,1900, william Howard Taft was chosen to be the first American civilian Governor-General and the first leader of this Philippine Commission, which subsequently became known as the Taft Commission. This bicameral legislature was inaugurated in October 1907, under the leadership of Speaker Sergio Osmeña and Floor Leader Manuel L. Quezon, the Rules of the 59th United States Congress was substantially adopted as the Rules of the Philippine Legislature. It is this body, founded as the Philippine Assembly, that would continue in one form or another, in 1916, the Jones Act, officially the Philippine Autonomy Act, changed the legislative system. The Philippine Commission was abolished and a new fully elected, bicameral Philippine Legislature consisting of a House of Representatives, the legislative system was changed again in 1935. The 1935 Constitution established a unicameral National Assembly, but in 1940, through an amendment to the 1935 Constitution, a bicameral Congress of the Philippines consisting of a House of Representatives and a Senate was adopted.
The Liberal bloc of the Nacionalistas permanently split from their ranks and these two will contest all of the elections in what appeared to be a two-party system. This set up continued until President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, the 1987 Constitution restored the presidential system of government together with a bicameral Congress of the Philippines. Corazon Aquino who nominally had no party, supported the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, with the victory of Fidel V. This meant the restoration of Lakas-NUCD as the top party in the chamber, the same would happen when Benigno Aquino won in 2010, which returned the Liberals into power. The presiding officer is the Speaker, the members of the House of Representatives who are its officers are ex officio members of all of the committees and has a vote. The Speaker is the head of the House of Representatives, the speaker is elected by majority of all the members of the house, including vacant seats. The speaker is elected at the convening of each Congress
Japan
Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭.
It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
Babuyan Islands
The Babuyan Islands, known as the Babuyan Group of Islands, is an archipelago in the Philippines, located in the Luzon Strait north of the main island of Luzon. The archipelago consists of four islands and their surrounding smaller islands. These main islands are, counterclockwise starting from northeast, Calayan, Fuga, the Babuyan Islands are separated from Luzon by the Babuyan Channel, and from the province of Batanes to the north by the Balintang Channel. The origins of the Babuyan people date back some 60, 000+ years ago when Negrito tribes inhabited the islands, in the late 1580s large groups Filipinos fled the mainland when Spain began to invade the Philippines. The small islands now have a mixture of different ethnic groups, since the early 1800s people from Hawaii, Samoa and even Japan have settled on the group of islands. While the native people are considered Filipino they are a mix of the people from Samoa, Japan. Some Babuyan people are majority polytheistic and believe in multiple gods, in the 1940s American soldiers introduced the native people to the Christian religion and now 30% of the natives are Christian.
The eastern islands of the archipelago are part of the Luzon Volcanic Arc, three volcanoes from two of the islands have erupted in historical times – Camiguin de Babuyanes on Camiguin Island, Babuyan Claro on Babuyan Island. The following are the islands of Babuyan and their islets and rocks
Luzon
Luzon (/luːˈzɒn/, Tagalog pronunciation, is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. It is ranked 15th largest in the world, with a population of 52.99 million as of 2015, it is the fourth most populous island in the world, containing about 53% of the countrys total population. Luzon may refer to one of the three island groups in the country. The name Luzon is thought to derive from the Tagalog word lusong, from just before the first millennium, the Tagalog and Kapampangan peoples of south and central Luzon had established several Indianized kingdoms, notably among them those of Tundok and Namayan. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the first Philippine document written in 900AD, names places in and these kingdoms were based on leases between village rulers and landlords or Rajahs, to whom tributes and taxes were levied. These kingdoms were coastal thalassocracies based on trade with neighboring Asian political entities at that time, some parts of Luzon were Islamized when the Sultanate of Brunei expanded its realms from Borneo to the Philippines and set up the Kingdom of Maynila as its puppet-state.
In addition, other kingdoms like the Wangdom of Pangasinan had become tributary states to China and were largely Sinified kingdoms, certain kilns were renowned over others and prices depended on the reputation of the kiln. Of this flourishing trade, the Burnay jars of Ilocos are the large clay jar manufactured in Luzon today with origins from this time. The Yongle Emperor instituted a Chinese Governor on Luzon during Zheng Hes voyages, China had vassals among the leaders in the archipelago. China attained ascendancy in trade with the area in Yongles reign, in the 1500s, people from Luzon were called Lucoes and were actively employed in trading and military campaigns across Southeast Asia. The Portuguese were the first European explorers who recorded it in their charts as Luçonia or Luçon, edmund Roberts, who visited Luzon in the early 19th century, wrote that Luzon was discovered in 1521. Many people from Luzon had active-employment in Portuguese Malacca and his father and wife carried on his maritime trading business after his death.
Another important Malacca trader was Curia de Raja who hailed from Luzon, the surname of de Raja or diraja could indicate that Regimo and Curia, and their families, were of noble or royal descent as the term is an abbreviation of Sanskrit adiraja. Pinto noted that there were a number of Lucoes in the Islamic fleets that went to battle with the Portuguese in the Philippines during the 16th century, the Sultan of Aceh gave one of them the task of holding Aru in 1540. Pinto says one was named leader of the Malays remaining in the Moluccas Islands after the Portuguese conquest in 1511, pigafetta notes that one of them was in command of the Brunei fleet in 1521. However, the Luções did not only fight on the side of the Muslims, pinto says they were apparently among the natives of the Philippines who fought the Muslims in 1538. On Mainland Southeast Asia, Lusung/Lucoes warriors aided the Burmese king in his invasion of Siam in 1547 AD, at the same time, Lusung warriors fought alongside the Siamese king and faced the same elephant army of the Burmese king in the defence of the Siamese capital at Ayuthaya.
Scholars have thus suggested that they could be valued by all sides
Provinces of the Philippines
The provinces of the Philippines are the primary political and administrative divisions of the Philippines. There are 81 provinces at present, further subdivided into component cities and municipalities, the National Capital Region, as well as independent cities, are independent of any provincial government. Each province is governed by a legislature called the Sangguniang Panlalawigan. The provinces are grouped into 18 regions based on geographical, fifteen of these regions are designated with numbers corresponding to their geographic location in order from north to south. The Cordillera Administrative Region, National Capital Region, Negros Island Region, each province is a member of the League of Provinces of the Philippines, an organization which aims to address issues affecting provincial and metropolitan government administrations. A provincial government is autonomous of other provinces within the Republic, each province is governed by two main elected branches of the government and legislative.
Judicial affairs are separated from provincial governance and are administered by the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the provincial governor is chief executive and head of each province. The vice governor acts as the president for each Sangguniáng Panlalawigan, every SP is composed of regularly elected members from provincial districts, as well as ex officio members. The number of regularly elected SP members allotted to each province is determined by its income class, first- and second-class provinces are provided ten regular SP members, third- and fourth-class provinces have eight, while fifth- and sixth-class provinces have six. Exceptions are provinces with more than five congressional districts, such as Cavite with 14 regularly elected SP members, every SP has designated seats for ex officio members, given to the respective local presidents of the Association of Barangay Captains, Philippine Councilors League, and Sangguniáng Kabataan. The vice governor and regular members of an SP are elected by the voters within the province, ex officio members are elected by members of their respective organisations.
National intrusion into the affairs of each provincial government is limited by the Philippine Constitution, the President of the Philippines however coordinates with provincial administrators through the Department of the Interior and Local Government. For purposes of representation, each province is guaranteed its own congressional district. One congressional representative represents each district in the House of Representatives, senatorial representation is elected at an at-large basis and not apportioned through territory-based districts. Those classified as highly urbanized or independent component cities are independent from the province. Local government units classified as component cities and municipalities are under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, the provincial government does not have direct relations with individual barangays. Supervision over a government is the mandate of the mayor. Provinces are classified according to annual income based on the previous 4 calendar years
Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is a sovereign island country in Southeast Asia situated in the western Pacific Ocean. It consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south, Luzon and Mindanao, the capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 square kilometers, and it is the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. As of 2013, approximately 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelagos earliest inhabitants and they were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Chinese, Malay and Islamic nations occurred, various competing maritime states were established under the rule of Datus, Sultans or Lakans.
The arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Hispanic colonization, in 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. This resulted in Roman Catholicism becoming the dominant religion, during this time, Manila became the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade connecting Asia with Acapulco in the Americas using Manila galleons. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until after World War II, since then, the Philippines has often had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a dictatorship by a non-violent revolution. It is a member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
It hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank, the Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte, eventually the name Las Islas Filipinas would be used to cover all the islands of the archipelago. Before that became commonplace, other such as Islas del Poniente. The official name of the Philippines has changed several times in the course of its history, during the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic. From the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the name Philippines began to appear, since the end of World War II, the official name of the country has been the Republic of the Philippines. The metatarsal of the Callao Man, reliably dated by uranium-series dating to 67,000 years ago is the oldest human remnant found in the archipelago to date and this distinction previously belonged to the Tabon Man of Palawan, carbon-dated to around 26,500 years ago.
Negritos were among the archipelagos earliest inhabitants, but their first settlement in the Philippines has not been reliably dated, there are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos
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Philippines
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aparri". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 159.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 
Aparri
Province of Cagayan