Monthly Archives: October 2009

MANILA, Philippines – Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap sees a bright future for coffee farming in the Philippines — despite the setbacks of the past two decades — and has set his sights on reviving the coffee industry.

MANILA, Philippines -The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), the state-run overseer of power assets, has lined up six huge power plants for privatization next year.

The American, Australian-New Zealand, British, Canadian, and European Chambers of Commerce are set to hold the latest installment of their highly successful employment expo aimed at providing local employment opportunities to the public. Dubbed “Foreign Chambers Local Employment Expo 2009,” the two-day expo will open on Oct. 22 at the Market! Market! Activity Center in…

Most Metro Manila households and commercial and industrial establishments affected by Ondoy’s wrath may slowly be getting back to shape, but not so for the insurance industry which is working overtime to process the deluge of claims.

MANILA, Philippines – Trade Secretary Peter B. Favila is pushing for constitutional amendments to encourage more foreign firms to invest in the country.

MANILA, Philippines – Workers nationwide can look forward to safer and better workplaces during the holiday season.

A canal in Amsterdam: We should consult the best engineers and international consultants, like the Dutch, who are flood experts.

UXBRIDGE, Canada—The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

THREE cities in Metro Manila that were recently inundated were considered dropouts from the list of top 50 emerging global outsourcing cities by research firm Tholons Inc.

With Typhoon Pepeng and tropical storm Ondoy inundating much of Central Luzon in floodwaters—and the current threat of Typhoon Ramil (international codename Lupit)—the prospect of another rice crisis looms if the government fails to take proactive steps. The damage caused by Pepeng in Central Luzon can be likened to the “Great Flood of 1972” when…

Article 3 of Presidential Decree 603 or the Child and Youth Welfare Code, signed in December 1874 by then-President Ferdinand Marcos, defines the rights of children having no distinction as to the legitimacy or illegitimacy, sex, social status, religion, political antecedents and other factors.

AFTER railing against the evils of pork barrel, leftwing lawmakers yesterday demanded to know why they failed to receive their P70 million yearly allocation.

MANILA, Philippines – May we refer to the column of Mr. Babe Romualdez in the 10 September 2009 issue of The Philippine STAR, particularly to his reference to the MRT as “a messy deal when it was closed in the 1990s under a built-operate-transfer scheme during the time of FVR, with the deal so lopsided…

Training suffers in lean times, but it remains a critical element of IT success. When IT departments must make budget cuts, employee training and education is one area that often takes a direct hit. While training cutbacks may be intended to control costs, they can undermine an IT organization’s ability to remain on top of…

MANILA, Philippines–Each and every one of us has experienced some form of blood clotting at some point in our lives. We usually observe this whenever we cut or bruise ourselves—the streaming blood would eventually “harden,” forming clumps that in time, stops the bleeding (although it depends on how big or how deep the wound is).

Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino visited Cebu yesterday to rally support behind his presidential bid but he also risked courting another misunderstanding with Catholic Church leaders.

The number of accredited party-list groups has been trimmed down to 35 after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) lopped off 26 of them for failing to achieve a prime requirement to retain accreditation.

A European Union (EU) court decision to remove communist leader Jose Ma. Sison from the regional bloc’s terror list is not yet final, an EU diplomat said yesterday.

The National Wages and Productivity Commission, an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment, announced that 23 micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are vying to become the next “Productivity Champions.” The 23 MSMEs finalist were selected by from 48 contenders nationwide. The finalist will compete in nine categories representing the three major…

The state-run Social Security System (SSS) said in a statement Friday that it has extended its office hours through the weekend to allow members affected by tropical storm Ondoy and Typhoon Pepeng to claim their salary loan checks at the SSS main office in Quezon City. Joel Palacios, spokesman for SSS, said that the main…

MANILA, Philippines – The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) subpoenaed 10 placement agencies to shed light on the distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and some of their family members who lived under the Kandara Bridge in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

MANILA, Philippines – Government employees affected by storm “Ondoy” have already been granted P2 billion worth of emergency loans by the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has gained a tariff concession from its Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) neighbors, allowing the country to maintain its tariff on sugar instead of reducing it to five percent next year, said Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines—An ex-technical staff member of an outfit producing a popular noontime show has filed a complaint against its officials for violation of the Social Security Act and other laws.

(This is part 2 and the conclusion. In part 1 I covered the subjects of [1] Issues and concerns on managing change and [2] Mass higher education.)

THE incidence of hunger in the Philippines is “serious,” according to an international global hunger survey.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Asia may be leading the world’s recovery from recession, but its growth prospects are still clouded by the fragile global economic situation, said the top economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The bank has projected “very optimistic” regional growth rates in 2010, but they could be dampened by a weak global recovery,…

Despite the global financial crisis that drove countries to hire more locals over foreign workers, hospitals in Jordan were still keen on hiring Filipino nurses, a hospital executive based there said. Amani Abdullah, nursing manager of Al-Essra Hospital in Jordan’s capital Amman, told The Manila Times that Filipino nurses were in demand in his country…

In a dramatic reversal of longstanding US policy, Barack Obama stood before the UN General Assembly last month and declared that the US would return to active cooperation and support of the world organization and would do everything it could to bring about the attainment of the goals embodied in the Millennium Declaration. That was…

To strengthen the government’s anti-poverty programs, the House of Representatives passed another landmark bill in an attempt to finally break “transgenerational” poverty and substantially reduce the number of extremely poor Filipinos.