Monthly Archives: September 2009

Last Monday I wrote about how utterly unprepared we all were in dealing with major disasters and catastrophes. Our years of experience with other disasters—and we have had our ample share of them from super typhoons to earthquakes and other acts of god— have not made us any wiser.

STATE-RUN pension funds yesterday said they would make billions of pesos available as emergency loans to the victims of storm Ondoy.

The economy may grow slightly slower than forecast this year after storm Ondoy caused flooding and damaged homes and crops, Economic Planning Secretary Augusto Santos said yesterday.

MANILA – The damage brought by tropical storm Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) ruined the lives and homes of thousands of Filipinos in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces.

The Philippine economic growth target may be cut this year because of the impact of tropical storm Ondoy and may dampen the Christmas season, experts said Tuesday. Augusto Santos said the economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), may be reduced between 0.7 percent and 1.7 percent this year. He is the acting Socioeconomic…

The 61-page decision dated September 30, 2009 from the Administrative Law Judge on Pacific Beach ruled in favor of workers and the union, including:

State pension fund Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has allocated P5 billion as emergency loan fund for members affected by Typhoon “Ondoy.”

CEBU, Philippines – Bonjour to French classes in public schools. Focused on preparing Filipino students for their role as global citizens, the Department of Education is set to offer French classes in selected public high schools in the country starting next schoolyear.

MANILA, Philippines – The Ayala-controlled Bank of Philippine Islands (BPI) is projecting a double-digit growth in its remittances this year, better than industry expectations, its top executive said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – International Finance Corp. (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group, said it will double its portfolio investment for renewable energy projects in the Philippines to $3 billion for 2009 to 2011 from $1.3 billion in 2008.

MANILA, PHilippines – The country’s economic growth may slow down to a range of 0.7 percent to 1.7 percent this year, lower than the official forecast range of 0.8 percent to 1.8 percent, because of the impact of typhoon Ondoy, Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director general Augusto Santos…

LEGAZPI CITY , Philippines  – Albay Gov. Joey Salceda yesterday proposed an P86-billion economic perk-up package to ward off the social and economic damage brought by tropical storm “Ondoy” to the National Capital Region (NCR) and 27 provinces in the country.

More than four million people from poor and middle-income countries received HIV/AIDS treatment in 2008, marking a tenfold increase in access to medication over five years, a UN report said Wednesday.

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Asia-Pacific countries face food and energy shortages, worsening poverty and declining crop yields if they ignore climate change, according to studies released on Wednesday.

THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY wants renewable energy sources to contribute at least half of the country’s primary energy mix, which would need about $8 billion in fresh investments, according to a government official.

$7B to ease temperature rise impact on poor MANILA, Philippines — Climate change will cause the malnourishment of 25 million more children in 2050, according to a Wednesday report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and e-mailed to media outfits worldwide.

MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE) Exiled Filipino communist leader Jose Maria Sison has been taken out of the terror list of the European Union, INQUIRER.net learned Wednesday.

In whatever emergency, the first mission of any government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. But regardless of how prepared government is to provide assistance in an emergency, there will always be inadequacies. With what we saw in the aftermath of Ondoy, it is obvious that the local governments, down to…

Do your co-workers hate you and you don’t know why? Or maybe they don’t hate you, but they talk about something that you do—something that is so regular for you that they somehow find repulsive. Maybe you’re guilty of doing one of these things:

It was a case of too much rain too soon. In just 15 hours, some 411 millimeters of rain fell, exceeding the September average of 391 millimeters, and beating the weather bureau’s one-day record of 331 millimeters set in 1967 (Manila Standard Today, Sept. 28).

THE government has imposed a price freeze on basic commodities in Metro Manila and 24 other areas under a state of calamity in the wake of storm Ondoy.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said the Philippines was still suffering from lack of infrastructure that held back growth, even as the lender reported that the global crisis could keep millions of Asians poor. In the study “Infrastructure for a Seamless Asia,” the ADB reported that during the 1997 crisis infrastructure programs were among the…

Dear PAO, I had remaining five days of vacation leave. I applied for a two-day vacation leave. However, I extended my leave for another two days, and informed our Human Resource Officer about through text but I did not receive any reply. My employer deducted from my salary my extended leave of two days. Does…

State-run pension funds and a government financial institution announced on Monday that they were planning to extend calamity loans to their members who were affected by tropical storm Ondoy.

CEBU, Philippines – Senator Pia Cayetano yesterday said that 10 or 11 Filipino mothers die daily in the country because of childbirth complications primarily due to lack of information and services by the government.

Did you know that September is National Cholesterol Education Month? And instead of harping on those big fat claims that “high levels of cholesterol significantly increase the risk of heart disease,” the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education organization, enjoins everyone to celebrate the month by learning about the vital roles of cholesterol…

Long-term medical conditions compound the sexual issues that men and women face during the natural aging process. Heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are just some of the illnesses that can have a serious lasting impact on your sexuality. What’s more, the emotional aspects of an illness often weigh as heavily as the physical ones. One…

MANILA, Philippines – Quasi-banks and their trust departments may now engage in derivatives activities without the need for prior approval by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), according to the latest amendments approved by the policy-making Monetary Board (MB).

MANILA, Philippines – The chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology  has urged the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, mostly contact centers, to avail themselves of gainful tax benefits by donating computers under the Adopt-a-School Program.

MANILA, PHilippines – Worldwide shipments of personal computers fell 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2009, while shipment value was down 19.1 percent over the same period, according to the International Data Corp. (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.