Monthly Archives: April 2011

MANILA, Philippines—With most of their crops already contaminated with radiation, Japan has opted to import more fruit and vegetables from abroad such as bananas from the Philippines.

NATIVIDAD, Pangasinan , Philippines  – It’s summer, and expect some parts of the country’s vanishing forests to go up in smoke because of fires.

MANILA, Philippines—Washington is “watching very closely” the HIV-AIDS problem in the Philippines, one of its closest allies in Asia, according to the country head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

European Union (EU) officials yesterday announced they would provide an initial fund of 35 million euro to help poor Filipinos gain free access to contraceptives and strongly backed the controversial Reproductive Health bill, which has been vehemently opposed by the dominant Roman Catholic Church.

House Assistant Majority Leader and Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles yesterday bewailed attempts to link the worsening hunger in the country with the absence of a law that supports the use of contraceptives through the so-called Reproductive Health law, as he pointed out that the government’s failure to properly manage and harness its rich…

A direct challenge has been flung by a minority leader at President Aquino, which may well be the warm-up from the political opposition in the House of Representatives that had earlier announced a full-scale offensive against the Aquino administration.

With the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showing a drop of 11 percent of Filipinos still dreaming of better lives under the Aquino administration, a member of the House minority bloc yesterday was prompted to declare that more and more Filipinos are becoming disillusioned with the government of President Aquino, disappointed with his campaign…

AN assessment of the economic impact caused by the oil price increases in Central Visayas will be included in the review for wage hike petitions presented by labor groups, the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board in Central Visayas (RTWPB-7) said yesterday.

European Union officials announced on Friday they would provide an initial fund of 35 million Euros to help poor Filipinos gain free access to contraceptives and strongly backed the controversial Reproductive Health bill.

This week we read about a confidential administration report, prepared by the National Intelligence Coordination Agency, that warned of a “looming rice crisis” as part of a broader economic debacle caused by rising global food prices. This food price inflation—as my fellow columnist Ric Saludo warns in another broadsheet—is likely to be the real culprit…

With hundreds of thousands of our overseas Filipino workers displaced by the contagion of unrest in the Middle East, North Africa and the triple whammy that hit Japan, the government is hard put at not only repatriating them but also looking for alternative destinations for their re-deployment.

Motorists using the Skyway and Manila-Cavite Toll Expressway will pay higher toll starting on April 25, according to the Toll Regulatory Board.

A GLOOMY scenario in politics but good vibes for popular television host Willie Revillame is what a famous psychic sees in the future.

ZAMBOANGA CITY: Unidentified gunmen shot dead a militant leader who heads a group of small scale miners in the southern Philippines, local human rights groups said Friday.

SLEEPING next to your partner eight hours straight daily for one year gives you a greater amount of radioactivity

MORE Filipinos have started to lose their optimism about the future, the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed on Thursday.

MANILA, Philippines – Remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) grew by only 6.2 percent in February, the slowest in nine months, but the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) remains confident on the resilience of remittances nothwithstanding the tensions in Middle East and North African (MENA) states as well as the disaster in Japan.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has been allocated by the US government an additional sugar export quota of 60,000 metric tons raw value (MTRV).

MANILA, Philippines—Last month, Brenda received chilling news from her employer. After being recruited and spending two years as a teacher in the United States, she was told that her temporary working visa was not going to be extended after September 2011. She would have to leave the United States to avoid falling out of status.…

Local car makers will try to purchase their parts temporarily from other sources due to a supply disruption in Japan, the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. said Thursday.

THE Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) called on organized labor to go slow on its clamor for a new round of wage increases amid pronouncements of a “supervening condition.”

Dear PAO, I have a 14-year-old daughter but she was not recognized by her father. When the father learned that I was pregnant, he left me. My daughter never met her father.

Manila, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday that the net inflow of foreign portfolio investments or “hot money” surged 153 percent in the first quarter of the year despite a sharp decline in inflows in March due to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Ten years ago Jacky Rowena Tiu was kidnapped for ransom at gunpoint in La Union. Most Chinese-Filipino victims would quietly restart normal lives after such trauma. But not Jacky. Then in her 20s, she bore the emotional drain of trial and threats to family security to prosecute her tormentors. To this day, however, justice has…

An environmental watchdog has urged Christian Filipinos to quietly mark the upcoming Earth Day on April 22 with a commitment to “put to death” destructive practices not only on Good Friday but all throughout the year.

President Aquino, who is lately besieged by falling survey ratings and threats of massive protest actions from a disgruntled labor sector, ordered the National Wages and Productivity Commission (NWPC) to implement a P25 wage increase for private employees in Metro Manila, a business sector source said.

China has expressed “strong interest” in reinforcing its investments in the Philippines through the Aquino adminis-tration’s public-private partnership (PPP) initiative, signaling the improving economic ties between the two countries after a bungled telecommunications project and mishandling of a hostage-taking incident that killed eight Hong Kong tourists.

UNFAZED by the dismissal of a P124 wage increase petition of a labor group on Wednesday, another labor group is set to file a petition for a P75 increase in the minimum wage for Cebu workers next week.

MANILA, Philippines—The regional wage board in Western Visayas Thursday joined that of Metro Manila’s in declaring that a “supervening condition” existed in the area which merited increases in wages or nonwage benefits of workers, a ranking labor official said Thursday.