1.
Bohol
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Bohol is a 1st provincial income class island province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, consisting of the island itself and 75 minor surrounding islands. With a land area of 4,821 km2 and a coastline 261 km long, to the west of Bohol is Cebu, to the northeast is the island of Leyte and to the south, across the Bohol Sea, is Mindanao. The province of Bohol is a first-class province divided into 3 congressional districts, the province is a popular tourist destination with its beaches and resorts. The Chocolate Hills, numerous mounds of limestone formations, are the most popular attraction, the formations can be seen by land or by air via ultralight air tours. Panglao Island, located just southwest of Tagbilaran, is famous for its diving locations and is listed as one of the top ten diving locations in the world. Numerous tourist resorts and dive centers dot the southern beaches, the Philippine tarsier, amongst the worlds smallest primates, is indigenous to the island. A narrow strait separates the island of Cebu and Bohol, Bohols climate is generally dry, with maximum rainfall between the months of June and October. The interior is cooler than the coast and it was the home province of Carlos P. Garcia, the eighth president of the Republic of the Philippines who was born in Talibon, Bohol. On 15 October 2013, Bohol was devastated by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake whose epicenter was 6 km south of Sagbayan town, the earthquake, which also hit southern Cebu, claimed 156 lives altogether and injured 374 people. It also destroyed or damaged a number of Bohols heritage churches, Bohol was first settled by Australoid people, like the rest of the Philippines. They still inhabit the island today and are known as the Eskaya tribe and their population also was absorbed into the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian peoples who later settled the islands and form the majority of the population. The Austronesian people living on Bohol traded with other islands in the Philippines and as far as China, the people of Bohol are said to be the descendants of a group of inhabitants who settled in the Philippines called pintados or tattooed ones. Boholanos already had a culture of their own as evidenced by artifacts unearthed at Mansasa, Tagbilaran, Bohols first indigenous people settled in the Anda peninsula. These people came from northeast Mindanao and these people were responsible for the Anda petrographs which are one of the most important indigenous rock writing in the country. Around the 12th century, a group of people from Northern Mindanao settled in the strait between mainland Bohol and the island of Panglao and those people came from a nation in northern Mindanao called Lutao. They occupied both shores and the island of Panglao. The kedatuan was first built with hardwood on the soft seabed and it engaged it trade with nearby areas and some Chinese merchants. Alcina tales about a nation he called the Venice of the Visayas
2.
House of Representatives of the Philippines
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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 also 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 also 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 also 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 also its officers are also 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
3.
Balilihan, Bohol
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Balilihan is a 4th municipal income class municipality in the province of Bohol, Philippines. Balilihan is located 22 kilometres northeast of Tagbilaran through Cortes, or 20 kilometres northeast through Corella and it has the fourth largest land area of the province, with 150 square kilometres of land. According to the 2015 census, it has a population of 17,903, in the 2016 electoral roll, it had 11,556 registered voters. The place is a panorama of verdant hills, rugged mountains and it is said to have been so named because of the grass balili which grew in abundance. Before the beginning of the 19th century, Balilihan was a barrio of Baclayon, when the Dagohoy revolt was suppressed by the Spaniards, the authorities established a garrison in Datag to discourage and stamp out further uprisings on the part of the natives. Later, due to the scarcity of water, the seat of government was transferred to its present site which is supplied with water from various springs. The elevated land made a good viewing point to keep watch over all nearby towns. Thus the construction of a Spanish belfry similar to the towers of the shores atop the hill. This tower is made of stones gathered from the rock deposits of Baclayon. It was erected in the year 1835 and it was inaugurated in 1846 gobernadorcillo. In 1888, Friar Benito Grayoa, who at that time exercised control over local governments, ordered the transfer of the municipio to Cabad, fearing reprisals from the clergy, some of the people migrated to Surigao, Leyte and Misamis. Not long afterwards, Friar Grayoa was transferred to Siquijor, with the guidance of the local appointed leaders under the control of the Spanish friar, the town slowly progressed peacefully until the outbreak of the revolution in 1898. On 12 November 1900, American soldiers were known to be coming from Antequera, the supplications of spokesman Segundo Racho not to burn the town was of no avail and the sounds of the welcoming brass band turned into volleys of gunshots. The officials were ordered to move towards Sevilla while the civilians ran for safety to the outskirts of the town, the town was razed to the ground. The Americans burned the church, the convent, the municipal building, the only structure that was spared was the belfry on the top of the hill. In 1904, there was a move to fuse Balilihan with Antequera in order to meet the requirements of a municipality under the American regime, the people objected to the plan, so the following year the Philippine Commission finally ruled in its Act. No.350 abolishing the municipality of Catigbi‑an and instead annexing it to Balilihan as one of its barrios, during World War II, the town residents went into hiding in their mountain hideouts for fear of the Japanese. Balilihan was a haven of refugees from other places who lived a life of privation in the mountains, many innocent civilians were either tortured or put into death by the enemies on mere suspicions of guerilla activities
4.
Malate, Manila
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Malate is a district of Manila, Philippines. Together with the district of Ermita, it serves as Manilas center for commerce, the word Malate is believed to have stemmed from the corruption of the Tagalog word maalat. Tradition notes that the tidewaters from Manila Bay flowed far inland, Malate during the Spanish colonial period was an open space with a small fishing village. During the Spanish period, the center of activity was the Malate Church, devotion to the image was especially popular among pregnant women having a difficult pregnancy. American expatriates and some of the old Spanish mestizo families populated the district in high rise apartments. Despite extensive damage after the Second World War, many homes, the displaced wealthy families who evacuated their homes during the war returned and re-built their private villas and kept the whole district exclusively residential until the 1970s. During the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos, visual and performing artists found a haven in Malate during the 1980s and it became a bohemian enclave and safe haven. Malate is continuously transforming itself as the center of recreation and entertainment for Manila with more restaurants, boutiques, bars, discos and novelty stores opening for business. The block bounded by the streets, Maria Orosa, Julio Nakpil, Adriatico and Remedios have become synonymous to street parties, al fresco dining, street dancing and concerts. The western side of Malate across Taft Avenue remains a quiet area with several apartment rows converted into dormitories for students enrolled at nearby schools. The district can be accessed by the main roads like the Roxas Boulevard, Quirino Avenue. The Light Rail Transit follows Taft Avenue and stops at three stations located in Malate, Vito Cruz Station, Quirino Station and Pedro Gil Station, the Bureau of Plant Industry is also headquartered in the area. In the 1990s, Malate and the district of Ermita had been cleaned-up and big businesses. Harrison Plaza, Manilas first enclosed mall, is located in the Malate district. There is one hospital, the Ospital ng Maynila Medical Center, located at the corner of Roxas Boulevard, the district is also home to the Philippines first sports stadium, the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex and the countrys premiere zoological park, the Manila Zoological and Botanical Garden. Promenades and parks by the Manila Bay have been more convenient and safe with the opening of the Manila Baywalk area. A portion of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Complex also lies within the district, education in Malate is mostly provided by private schools. Paul University Manila and St. Scholasticas College Manila, prominent secondary schools in Malate are the Jesus Reigns Christian Academy, Jose Abad Santos Memorial School and the Malate Catholic School
5.
Filipinos
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Filipinos are the people who are identified with the country of the Philippines, either through descent or citizenship. Filipinos come from different ethnolinguistic nations, currently, there are more than 175 ethnolinguistic nations, each with its own language, identity, culture and history. The modern Filipino identity, with its Austronesian roots, was developed in conjunction with Spanish, Chinese, the Philippines was a Spanish colony for 333 years, setting a foundation for contemporary Filipino culture. Under Spanish rule, most of the Filipino populace embraced Roman Catholicism, almost all Filipinos adopted Spanish surnames from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos published in 1849 by the Spanish colonial government. As neither past governments nor the modern Philippine Statistics Authority account for the background of an individual. The lack of the letter F in the pre-1987 Philippine alphabet, upon official adoption of the modern, 28-letter Filipino alphabet in 1987, the name Filipino was preferred over Pilipino. However the ABAKADA is only the Alphabet of the Tagalogs as other Ethnic Nations also have their own alphabet and/or writing script, use of the term Filipino in the Philippines started during the Spanish colonial period. The original meaning was a person of Spanish descent born in the Philippines and this original usage is now archaic and obsolete. Historian Ambeth Ocampo has suggested that the first documented use of the word to refer to Indios was the Spanish language poem A la juventud filipina, published in 1879 by José Rizal. A number of Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as Pinoy, which is a word formed by taking the last four letters of Filipino. The term, although in popular usage, is considered by some Filipinos as a racial slur. Other collective endonyms for the Filipino people include, Patria Adorada as popularized by Jose Rizal through his poem Mi último adiós, in 2010, a metatarsal from Callao Man, discovered in 2007, was dated through uranium-series dating as being 67,000 years old. Prior to that, the earliest human remains found in the Philippines were thought to be the fragments of a skull and jawbone. Fox, an anthropologist from the National Museum, anthropologists who examined these remains agreed that they belonged to modern human beings. These include the Homo sapiens, as distinguished from the mid-Pleistocene Homo erectus species, the Tabon Man fossils are considered to have come from a third group of inhabitants, who worked the cave between 22,000 and 20,000 BCE. An earlier cave level lies so far below the level containing cooking fire assemblages that it must represent Upper Pleistocene dates like 45 or 50 thousand years ago, researchers say this indicates that the human remains were pre-Mongoloid, from about 40,000 years ago. Fluctuations in ancient shorelines between 150,000 BP and 17,000 BP connected the Malay Archipelago region with Maritime Southeast Asia and this may have enabled ancient migrations into the Philippines from Maritime Southeast Asia approximately 50,000 BP to 13,000 BP. A January 2009 study of language phylogenies by R. D and this was a two-pronged expansion, which moved north through the Philippines and into Taiwan, while a second expansion prong spread east along the New Guinea coast and into Oceania and Polynesia
6.
Philippines
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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, Visayas, 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, Indian, and Islamic nations occurred, then, various competing maritime states were established under the rule of Datus, Rajahs, 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 also 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 also 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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