BENCHMARK interest rates moved sideways across all tenors as the market remained uncertian on the government’s fiscal position, the Bureau of Treasury said on Monday. The 91-day Treasury bill (T-bill) fetched 3.849 percent, or 4.8 basis points lower than the 3.897 percent the debt paper fetched on October 12.

Executives warn of ramifications, supply shortage The government warned that it would not hesitate to file charges against oil companies if they failed to comply with Executive Order 839 that rolls back pump prices in calamity areas to October 15 levels. In a radio interview on Monday, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said that the Department…

MANILA, Philippines – Employees of the largest savings and loan agency for military and police personnel have threatened to stage a strike due to a deadlock in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), an official said.

Even if a strike is valid because its purpose is lawful, it may still be declared invalid where the means employed are illegal. This is the ruling applied in this case of an employees union (EASA) and 17 members including its president who are employed in an aviation company (ASA) engaged in providing transportation to…

TRANSCO OWNERS: Transparency dictates that the public be told the identity of the influential persons involved in the conglomerate that is taking over the state-owned National Transmission Corp. or Transco.

“Anxiety is not fear, exactly, because fear is focused on something right in front of you, a real and objective danger,” writes Robin Marantz Henig in her “New York Times Magazine” article, “Understanding the Anxious Mind.”

Warren Buffett, known to many as the Oracle of Omaha, is considered one of the world’s greatest investors.

Asian leaders meeting in Thailand are discussing plans to “lead the world” by forming an EU-style community by 2015.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines has won the 2009 Offshoring Destination of the Year category at the 4th National Outsourcing Association (NOA) Awards held last Oct. 15 at Park Plaza Riverbank in London.

The valiant efforts of the champion of the Reproductive Health bill, Rep. Edsel Lagman, seems to have fallen on barren ground at the House of Representatives. With two weeks prior to recess, the bill seems to have been de-prioritized and shelved — virtually a cold bill.

MANILA, Philippines—Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are laying the groundwork for a permanent emergency rice reserve mechanism in anticipation of more calamities hitting the region, Malacañang said Sunday.

HUA HIN, THAILAND—ASIAN leaders barely mentioned Burma’s (Myanmar’s) democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at a weekend summit, making a mockery of the region’s grand claims for its new rights body, analysts said.

TACLOBAN CITY — A seaman who returned to the country last October 17 has revealed that 10 Filipino seafarers are still awaiting repatriation back to the Philippines after their ship was stopped by the Nigerian government from sailing back to their port of origin due to a violation of a local law.

SAYS RECRUIT CONSULTANT MANILA, Philippines—The closure of 177 nursing schools that have failed to pass a single graduate in the nursing licensure exams will address the glut of some half a million board passers in the country, recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani said in a statement Monday.

HUA HIN — Asian leaders barely mentioned Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at a weekend summit, making a mockery of the region’s grand claims for its new rights body, analysts said.

MIAMI — Driven by fluctuations in oil prices, and seduced by the prospect of easing climate change, experts are ramping up efforts to squeeze fuel out of a promising new organism: Pond scum.

Amid the lingering problem of corruption in government, the Philippines is poised to secure an additional $5.5 million grant from a US government aid agency to allow the government to conduct studies on investments and cost estimates of projects that will best benefit the marginalized, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has said.

HUA HIN, Thailand: Asian leaders heard competing plans from Australia and Japan for a massive European Union-style bloc covering half the world’s population as they wrapped up their annual summit on Sunday. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd presented his counterparts at the meeting in Thailand with his vision for an Asia-Pacific Community, possibly by 2020,…

The Supreme Court has awarded an ailing seaman $60,000, or some P3 million in disability benefits for work-related illness that he contracted while serving as crane operator for a cement-carrying international vessel. The High Court Second Division, in a ruling written by Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales, affirmed an earlier ruling by the Court of Appeals…

For domestic industries to fully recover from damages caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) said that the government must invoke an article of the Asean Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) that would temporarily exempt the country from the zero-tariff regime beginning next year under the Asean Free Trade Area-Common…

People nowadays expect the state to guarantee a measure of social equity—to help the needy and to prevent undue discrepancies of wealth. Social progress has come to be measured by the spread of distributive justice. And this a society achieves when no individual in it lacks the critical minimum of material means that the society…

MANILA, Philippines – Deep Ocean Power Philippines Inc. (DOPPI), a joint venture between Filipino and American investors, is expected to build the first ocean power facility in the country in 2012.

MANILA, Philippines – Subsidies disbursed by the government to government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) and state-owned agencies rose to P12.56 billion from January to September this year, P1.81 billion higher than last year’s P10.75 billion.

MANILA, Philippines – The country’s largest labor group yesterday sought public disclosure of a list of more than 160,000 delinquent employers who failed to remit government-mandated monthly contributions to the Social Security System (SSS).

MANILA, Philippines – Women’s rights advocates from Asia Pacific have pledged to initiate the fund raising is $1 billion to speed up the creation of an agency under the United Nations that is focused on the protection of women’s rights.

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have launched a P3.2-million joint anti-hunger effort to help women in two of the poorest provinces in the country and in slum relocation sites in Metro Manila find affordable ways to augment the diet and livelihood opportunities available to their families.

Hua Hin—Thailand has accepted the country’s proposal for a slower tariff reduction on rice, but in return asked Manila to import more rice from Bangkok, Trade Secretary Peter Favila said.

When I left for Kyrgyzstan last month, a friend of mine, Dan Pinto, gave me a copy of 60zens: Tips on Senior Citizenship. I told Dan he needed the book more than I did, since he’s already at that age where he deserves discounts on the basic necessities of his former wildly (mis)spent life. Nevertheless,…

Victims of forcible abductions and torture speak out xistentialist Friedrich Nietzsche famously observed, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” To Axel Pinpin, an activist once allegedly abducted and tortured, knows all too well that this philosophy holds true. And he learned it the hard way. Nowadays, three years since his abduction, Pinpin…

The faces of wars have changed. According to estimates, almost 90 percent of the casualties of the modern wars are civilians, the majority of whom are women and children, compared to a century ago when 90 percent of those who lost their lives were military personnel.