Malacañang yesterday appealed to the country’s elderly to be patient and wait for the Expanded Senior Citizens bill to reach the desk of President Arroyo. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Malacañang has not yet received the bill. How can you act on something that’s not even in our possession yet, Ermita said.

Poverty reduction The government’s Kapit Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (KALAHI) programs, aimed at reducing poverty in the country, has reached 12,826 KALAHI barangays and in turn, helped reduce insurgent recruitment. These programs, which improved the quality of lives of the people and developed public confidence in government, include construction of water systems, farm-to-market roads, day…

MANILA, Philippines – The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the business information arm of The Economist Group, has declared the Philippines as the best in the world in terms of its microfinance environment.

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan , Philippines  – Provincial board members voted 7-1-2 during their plenary session Monday afternoon to adopt a resolution on the construction of nuclear power plants from South Korea along the province’s coastline.

The Philippines’ bioethanol supply deficit will widen further as the government moves towards full implementation of the Biofuels Act next year, according to the agency tasked with monitoring the sector.

MANILA, Philippines – President Arroyo has signed into law Republic Act 9994 or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act, ending weeks of speculation on whether or not she would act on this measure. Deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar, quoting Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, said that the President received the enrolled copy of the bill last Monday…

Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) announced that TMP and Lexus Manila Inc. (LMI) models sold in the Philippines are not affected by the US accelerator-pedal recall.

For the country to catch up with its rich neighbors and for the level of poverty to be reduced, the economy would have to consistently achieve growth of from seven to eight percent a year, World Bank (WB) Philippines country director Bert Hofman said yesterday.

The reported rift between top-ranking leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) has turned for the worse due to their conflicting priorities in the utilization of organizational funds, a ranking official of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said yesterday.

The top World Bank official in the country said yesterday the investment climate under the Arroyo administration remained weak due to poor governance, pervasive corruption, and lack of policy reforms.

Elite conspiracy in Erap ouster confirmed Close to 10 years after the ouster of then sitting President Joseph Estrada through a coup d’etat, which was preceded by the collapse of the Senate impeachment trial deliberately done to trigger street protests, as the then political opposition and the elite civil society walked out of the Senate…

Last year, Professor Solita “Winnie” Monsod came out with a three-part assessment in another broadsheet of how the President did on her original BEAT THE ODDS agenda. Monsod gave the President a dismal grade of 47 out of 100.

MANILA, Philippines – Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) hit a new monthly record high of $1.567 billion in December, enabling the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to register a stronger-than-expected growth in remittances for the whole of 2009.

NAMFREL chairman Jose Cuisia Jr. has been on TV lately bemoaning the refusal of the Commission on Elections to continue the accreditation of what started out as a US-funded National Movement for Free Elections as an election watchdog.

In my column last week I discussed property relations between spouses. I was flooded with e-mails relating to the subject. For the benefit of all others who may be similarly situated, I shall  answer two of the more complicated questions here but will also discuss a Supreme Court decision clarifying how the properties between spouses…

OFFICIAL statistics indicate that nearly half (more than 430,000) of the new jobs created in our economy last year were in trade and private household employment. The numbers suggest that a great number of Filipinos turned to informal buying/selling or vending activities and domestic household jobs to cope with the overall economic slowdown.

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—People behind the world’s top universities in Europe will apply a uniform training and grading standard for higher education this year, which is expected to contribute to an improved global economy.

MANILA, Philippines – The powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines on Monday urged the Department of Health to call for a national summit of various stakeholders to discuss the rising number of HIV-AIDS cases in the country.

The true unemployment gap in the Philippines is about 15 million able-bodied Filipinos that include the totally jobless, those who are holding part-time jobs during some periods of the year and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) whose work contract have expired, Dr. Fernando Aldaba, former dean of the Ateneo School of Economics, said.

Workers blocking the takeover of the Manila North Harbor failed to convince the Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 25 to stop the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) from turning over cargo handling operations to the new operator.

Hundreds of Filipino student nurses taking short-term courses in the United Kingdom will be affected by the UK’s more stringent policy of cutting down the work load and training hours of foreign students.

A US Congress bill that would benefit the Philippine garments industry gained supporters in the US Senate, raising chances a counterpart measure would be filed before the Upper Chamber soon, a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) official said. Trade Assistant Secretary Fe Agoncillo Reyes told reporters that the Save Our Industries Act has gained…

Developing countries, including those in East Asia and the Pacific, are expected to bear 75 to 80 percent of the costs of damage caused by changing climate YOU many not have heard the term before but being “climate smart” is the way forward for the Philippines and other countries in the Asean and Pacific Region,…

Many Filipinos lack adequate knowledge about the transmission and acquisition of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, Ferchito Avelino, the executive director of the Philippine National AIDS Council (PNAC), said on Sunday. “Filipinos have many misconceptions about the disease [AIDS], some even think that it can be acquired through mosquito bites, which is completely untrue,”…

AMADEO, Cavite: After watching its neighbors become global coffee heavyweights, the Philippines is taking tentative steps toward regaining its status as a formidable grower of the bean. That era, however, is a long way back for the Philippines, among the top five coffee exporters in the world in the 1880s after Spanish friars brought beans…

In a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

MANILA, Feb. 13 (PNA) – The Social Security System (SSS) has announced a six-month condonation program that would allow companies to settle the unpaid contributions of workers without paying penalties.

So far I have buried two friends, and from the looks of it, I will soon be burying friend number 3. I don’t especially enjoy funerals, but what makes them worse is watching someone die a slow death. It’s that kind of death that resembles watching once famous buildings slowly decay, crumble and finally fall…

Congress once more did not enact the RH bill into law but its advocates are still bent on pushing for its passage sometime in the future. Apparently the foreign groups out to impose its agenda of controlling the world population have not yet given up on this idea despite so many years of frustrations. In…

Please allow me to indulge on the tragedy that struck our family last week. My nephew Miguel D. Ramos, a medical intern at St. Luke’s Medical College survived the blazing fire that hit the Cabiao Community Center in Nueva Ecija last Tuesday. Unfortunately, his three female group mates did not make it. They were all…