MANILA, Philippines – Moody’s Investors Service raised yesterday the Philippines’ sovereign credit rating to one notch below investment grade, citing the country’s strong economic prospects and stable financial system.

There could be a context for the obsessive verbal attacks mounted against the usual suspects by the President while he was abroad last week. That context could very well be a slew of adverse international reviews of our economic performance so far.

The Labor Department reported on Monday that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region had agreed to increase the monthly minimum allowable wages of foreign household service workers, including Filipino domestic helpers.

THE International Labor Organization (ILO) said domestic workers in rich European capitals still suffer from abuses and discrimination despite existing labor laws that respect their rights because many of them are undocumented.

MANILA, Philippines – Tagalog is now the fastest-growing language in Canada, according to Statistics Canada. Based on StatCan’s 2011 Census of Population: Linguistic Characteristics of Canadians, Tagalog is now the fifth most common non-official language spoken in Canadian households.

MANILA, Philippines – Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda blamed anew the Arroyo administration for the Philippine’s woeful performance in fulfiling the Millennium Development Goals pegged by the United Nations.

The Philippines will have an advantage when the single market is established among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by 2015, says an official of the Delegation of the European Union.

International migrants send home over US$ 400 billion a year, yet they and their families often lack basic social protection. That is where microinsurance can step in. GENEVA (ILO News) – Migrants often serve as the equivalent of an informal insurance policy when adversity strikes their families back home but they themselves tend to be…

International migrants send home over US$ 400 billion a year, yet they and their families often lack basic social protection. That is where microinsurance can step in. GENEVA (ILO News) – Migrants often serve as the equivalent of an informal insurance policy when adversity strikes their families back home but they themselves tend to be…

TUCP to Turkey Pres.

The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said the government must support its own initiative to stop many local miners from using children as their employees in many parts of Bicol province.

JAKARTA – The Philippines’ performance in meeting its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has remained dismal with barely three years into the deadline to achieve the objectives set by United Nations member-states, according to a UN report.

MANILA, Philippines – Health Secretary Enrique Ona has underscored the vital role played by the private sector in helping the government provide reproductive health (RH) services, saying that six million Filipino women have unmet needs for modern family planning (FP) services, either for spacing or limiting their children.

A recent article published by Emirates 24/7 indicates that a substantial number of Filipino domestic workers in the UAE currently receive less than minimum wage. Minimum wage for Filipino domestic workers is set at $400 per month but many recruitment agencies advertise positions for DH900 (approximately $250.00). The brief report features interviews with several domestic…

SINGAPORE – Southeast Asia is becoming one bright spot in a world of gloomy corporate earnings, with strong profit growth powered by a population of 600 million people increasingly willing, and able, to spend in their fast growing economies.

It’s a 2012 campaign mantra: On Day One, the new president will reboot the economy by spurring businesses to grow and thrive. Both mainstream candidates have vowed to achieve this, in part by eliminating onerous regulations to “unleash” the long-suppressed power of American industry.

A coroner in Great Britain is voicing concern about the number of construction workers at a nuclear power plant who have died of mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a form of respiratory cancer linked to exposure to asbestos.

A Roman Catholic Church leader attacked on Wednesday as “morally unacceptable” a United Nation’s proposal to legalize prostitution in the Philippines to stop the spread of the deadly AIDS disease and said the government should create decent jobs for Filipino women instead.

MANILA, Philippines – Three medical advances are now raising the hope that there will be a cure in the future for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) which has infected 34.2 million people across the globe, an official of the Department of Health (DOH) said.

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LEGAZPI CITY – In the near future, poor families in Masbate’s fishing communities would no longer be living in scarcity while relying mainly on fishing for their daily subsistence but would be heading towards a more meaningful life through a highly profitable venture in seaweed farming.

The government of Indonesia is hosting the fifth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) in Yogyakarta, which comes on the heels of the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on Oct. 13. Both events show global concern about disasters.

A proposed new version of the Reproductive Health bill was introduced at the House of Representatives last week in an effort to fast track the passage of the measure. Below is a copy of this proposed version, with additional words bold-faced and deleted portions placed inside braces.

ASIAN RISK REDUCTION CONFERENCE YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia—The Philippines is one of four disaster-prone countries in the Asia-Pacific region that have reduced their vulnerability to disasters despite their poverty, according to two United Nations (UN) agencies.

GENEVA, Switzerland – Women are closing the gender gap with men in health and education but struggle to get top jobs and salaries, data from a study of 135 countries showed on Wednesday, October 24.

A recent discovery in South Africa could herald a new approach to combating HIV and AIDS and creating an AIDS vaccine. A “unique change” in the outer covering of the human immunodeficiency virus found in two HIV-positive women enabled them to generate antibodies that can kill up to 88 percent of HIV types from around…

MANILA, Oct 24, (AFP): The Philippines announced on Wednesday it had lifted a five-year-old ban on its nationals working in Jordan that was imposed amid concerns over poor labour conditions.

MANILA, Philippines — The collapse of US apparel manufacturing has been good to Fely Curameng, a Filipina peasant-turned-factory boss. Through windows in her air-conditioned office, she looks out upon of an army of bent backs. A hive of workers on the factory floor hunch over automatic sewing machines. The staccato of needles firing thread into…

No Filipino household workers have been deployed to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia despite the lifting of the ban imposed by KSA last year on Filipino and Indonesian household workers, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) said.