MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Agriculture (DA) said the full implementation of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA)- Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme this year will benefit the agriculture sector.

Dinner by candle-light on Valentine’s Day? Ah, wouldn’t that be so romantic? Yes, but only if you’re dining at some fine restaurant and not eating at home, where the power has suddenly been cut off because you can’t pay your electric bill. And the light of your life has blown her fuse and is now…

We pay tribute to love on St. Valen-tine’s Day, but is the hoopla really warranted from a health standpoint? After all, love and its libidinous soul mate, passion, have led to countless calamities — some of them spectacularly tragic but most anonymously sad: the unrequited romance, the bad marriage, the ill-fated affair. As a mental…

MANILA, Philippines – Donors of print and broadcast campaign materials must make themselves known to the public, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said yesterday.

In the recent months, I have somewhat been besieged by clients on the verge of bitter separations. And believe it or not, the bitterness, the angst and the spite mostly centered on issues of property rather than what went wrong in their relationship that the caused their break-up.

The number of Filipinos who sought to enter America’s nursing profession plunged by 26 percent in 2009, according to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines.

The National Electric Administration has the authority to designate its officials and employees to electric co-operatives provided that they do not collect allowances or monetary benefits from these private enterprises.

PRESIDENT Gloria Arroyo has ordered state-run National Development Co. to acquire the shares of two state banks in Metro Rail Transit Corp. worth $750 million to speed up the government’s takeover of the 17-kilometer MRT-3 line.

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Call center workers in New York overcame a brutal yet predictable anti-union campaign, but are stuck as managers stall first-contract talks. Workers aren’t waiting for the labor board to respond, and took their fight directly to management Friday.

THE recent double full-page “Ganito tayo noon, Ganito tayo ngayon” ads trumpeting the supposed achievements of President Macapagal-Arroyo bring to mind the quote attributed to 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

MANILA, Philippines—A prime destinations of Filipino workers, Singapore is implementing a comprehensive reduction of its reliance on, and accommodation of, foreign labor force.

MANILA, Philippines—Relatives and colleagues of 43 people, including two doctors, a nurse and a midwife, are set to file petitions for writs of amparo and of habeas corpus before the Supreme Court on Monday for what they called illegal arrests of the health workers by a joint team of the military and police in Morong,…

For the past few years, a young man by the name of Kev Alonzo has been referring to himself as “a shape-shifter.”

Food exporters suspect hoarding of sugar as the main reason for the rocketing price of the commodity and called on government to immediately step in to help avert the collapse of the food export industry due to possible supply manipulation.

A BILLIONAIRE and four other millionaires lead the pack of those who want to serve as the 15th president of the Philippines, all invariably swearing by an anti-poverty platform, and with some purposely harking on their poverty roots to spin and curry favor with majority of voters who are poor.

CEBU, Philippines – The government had spent more than four million pesos for family planning seminars in Central Visayas in 2007 and 2008, but it was found out that the project was “not effective” because there were only 3,123 out of the 32,000 couples targeted who had attended the classes.

MANILA, Philippines – More young people are suffering from cardiovascular diseases due to unhealthy lifestyle habits in the workplace, the Philippine Heart Association (PHA) said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – With less than four months to go before the May 10 presidential elections, Nacionalista Party standard-bearer Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. has overtaken his main rival Sen. Benigno Aquino III by one percentage point in a “one-on-one’ rider survey dished out by Pulse Asia taken from Jan. 22 to 26.

MANILA, Philippines – Total savings in the Philippines retreated by more than three percent during the height of the global financial and economic downturn as well as soaring commodity prices in 2008.

MANILA, Philippines—As the United States still had to allow the massive influx of foreign nurses to its shores due to a severe lack of nurses, the number of Filipinos that sought to enter America’s nursing profession plunged by 26 percent in 2009, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) said in a statement Sunday.

The Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Working Group (WG) on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of over 30 organizations working on climate change-related issues, calls on President Gloria Arroyo to take a long and careful look at the Copenhagen Accord and firmly resist being rushed into committing the Philippines to the highly controversial and widely-criticized…

WASHINGTON (AP) – The outlook for jobs became a bit less bleak with January’s unexpected decline in the US unemployment rate, which fell to 9.7 percent from 10 percent.

BRUSSELS (AP) – Fears of another crisis spiral for the world economy deepened Friday after the Portuguese parliament defeated a government austerity plan, triggering renewed concern that the financial crisis in that country and in Greece could spread through the eurozone and spill across its borders.

MANILA, Philippines – Manufacturing firms and other workplaces in the country are now a lot safer for workers, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported.

MANILA, Philippines – The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) yesterday urged the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to take action on colleges and universities not implementing its Memorandum 02 for 2010.

A group advocating education in information technology (IT) in Cebu yesterday urged call centers to respond positively to the results of a 2009 survey that showed that call center agents lived lifestyles that gave them higher chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and other health risks.

Students’ groups on Friday asked the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to immediately act on the complaints of parents and students regarding the non-compliance of schools to its Memorandum Order No. 02, which called on higher education institutions to allow students with arrears to take examinations. Students groups, led by the National Union of Students…

MANILA, Philippines – The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) sees the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector in the country growing to a $100-billion a year industry in 10 years if the right investments are made by the next administration.