Monthly Archives: February 2011

The sponsors and advocates of the RH bill particularly women who openly professed they are Catholics (C4RH) insist that the bill is pro-life. It is pro-life because it promotes the reproductive health of women especially those who cannot afford to be pregnant and have babies. These women are telling us that they own their bodies…

MANILA, Philippines –  Malacañang yesterday reiterated that the Responsible Parenthood bill, the administration’s version of the Reproductive Health bill, will not favor one kind of family planning method over the other.

THE Makati city government has ordered all construction work stopped at 35 high and medium-rise buildings in the city that were found to have violated the National Building Code and the Philippine Mechanical Code.

A FEW more pushes and a significant feature will be added to the Philippines’ history as a democratic nation. A few more steps and the Philippines will stand side by side with great democratic nations that have ratified the Rome Statute and joined the International Criminal Court (ICC).

WASHINGTON (AP) – Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger, two studies suggest, with scientists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming on downpours that often cause deadly flooding.

Some 60,000 jobs will be up for grabs for this year’s graduates through the government’s Internet-based Phil-Jobnet program, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said.

MANILA, Philippines – The rise in food prices to “dangerous levels” could increase the ranks of the poor in lower-income and middle-income countries, such as the Philippines, the World Bank (WB) warned on Wednesday.

Secretary Joel Villanueva, Director General of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) forges partnership with Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) and Informatics through the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) during his visit to Cebu on September 29, 2010. This is in line with Pres. Benigno S. Aquino III’s pronouncement on Private-Public Partnership…

CEBU, Philippines – Returning overseas Filipino workers are advised to update their PhilHealth premium payments to ensure continuous availment of benefits.

MANILA, Philippines – The Social Security System (SSS) is planning to invest in the Aquino administration’s much touted public-private partnership (PPP) for infrastructure.

MANILA, Philippines – British banking giant HSBC sees the peso strengthening to 37.50 against the dollar this year and further to 35.50 to $1 next year as the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is likely allow the local currency to appreciate further to cushion the impact of imported inflation brought about by rising global oil and…

AFTER much bluster, fiscal authorities have bowed to market pressure to lower the public float requirement that qualifies a real estate investment trust (REIT) to tax perks.

MANILA, Philippines – Educators bewailed the continued failure of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to close down so-called low-performing colleges and universities, especially those whose graduates miserably fail to pass licensure examinations of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) every year.

MANILA, Philippines – For the third time, the Supreme Court (SC) has reversed itself on the constitutionality of laws passed by the 11th Congress that paved the way for the conversion into cities of 16 municipalities.

This was the lesson learned by Dawnmarie Souza, an American, who was dismissed from her employment in 2009 for posting negative comments about her supervisor on her Facebook account.

MANILA, Philippines – Resource specialists and economists are agreed that the most serious shortage the global economy will face in the next ten to twenty years will no longer be energy. The rising food prices at the beginning of 2011 which have precipitated riots in many parts of the world are symptomatic of the shortages…

17 February 2011: Manila, Philippines – The Building and Woodworkers International (BWI) affiliates would engage their construction safety officer-members in the campaign to ban asbestos in the Philippines. In a meeting Friday, February 11, 2011, the National Union of Building and Construction Workers (NUBCW) and the Association of Construction and Informal Workers (ACIW) volunteered their…

Well-to-do students tend to enjoy a chunk of government subsidies for college education that government must spend less on tertiary education and more on primary and secondary schools, a World Bank (WB) review has recommended for the Philippines to pursue.

CEBU CITY, Philippines—A local daily in Cebu on Wednesday filed an administrative complaint of misconduct against a police official before the Police Regional Office (PRO 7) for allegedly making sexual advances on a female correspondent of the paper.

Aggressively being pushed in Congress today are several bills that are considered “political” in nature. The “political” label attached to these bills is not only superfluous; it is also ironic. When we come to think about it, all bills filed in both houses of Congress are political in nature and are subjected to political processes.

MANILA, Philippines – The House of Representatives Wednesday morning approved the use of more than P700 million to fund the consolidated bills on Reproductive Health (RH) a week after the House Committee on Population and Family Relations endorsed the controversial measure for plenary approval.

MANILA, Philippines – More and more Filipino science and technology workers are leaving the country for employment offers abroad, according to a study by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

THERE was a reported decrease in Church-annulled marriages according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) news.

MANILA, Philippines –  The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is against proposals in the House of Representatives to put a cap on interest rates that credit card companies charge their customers.

FILIPINOS working inside the United States military bases in Afghanistan are allowed to continue their contracts after the High Level Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs decided to adopt the Iraq solution for some 6,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the high-risk country.

MANILA, Philippines –  Investment banks Bank of America — Merrill Lynch and Barclays Capital Ltd. see the peso strengthening to as high as P40 to $1 this year amid the strong remittances from Filipinos abroad.

MANILA, Philippines –  Only identification cards (IDs) issued by the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs (OSCA) and not membership cards issued by senior citizens associations will entitle seniors to the 20 percent discount privilege and other benefits under the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, officials said yesterday.

HEALTH Secretary Enrique Ona on Monday recommended increasing the employees’ contribution to Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to 3.5 percent of their salaries from 2.5 percent now to expand the company’s insurance coverage.

A group of recruitment agencies is asking the government to set up a one-stop authentication center to speed up the processing of documents of Taiwan-bound overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) amid the apparent rift between Taiwan and the Philippines.