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.

MANILA, Philippines – Danish shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk is poised to replace about 100 of their Danish captains with Filipinos as the firm expressed its deep satisfaction with the proficiency, skill and discipline of Filipino seafarers, an embassy report said.

MANILA, Philippines – The biggest organization of businessmen has urged President Arroyo to issue an executive order putting together a private-public Energy Program Commission (EPC) tasked to come out with an action program to solve two big problems in the energy sector – high electricity rates and a looming electric power shortage.

Saying despite the implementation of free education among the youth, a lot of deserving students have not been able to gain access to quality education due to the lack of complimentary financial support, a party-list lawmaker is pushing for the creation of a municipal committee on education in every town all over the country.

MANILA, Philippines – From his sickbed, Father James B. Reuter of the Society of Jesus (SJ) expressed his praise and gratitude to the people he has chosen to serve for seven decades.

NASSER Lubay, a 26-year old self-taught painter from Quezon bagged second place honors in the painting category of the prestigious Celeste Prize 2009 in Berlin, Germany.

Vegetarianism as means of saving the planet Want to save the Earth? Think twice about what you put on your plate. The recent devastation brought by Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) has pushed the climate change issue once more to the forefront—this time, with added gravity to Filipinos than before. With effects of humanity’s ecological…

MANILA, Philippines—“Women and children are 14 times more likely to be victims of natural disasters than men in societies where gender inequalities exist,” United Nations Undersecretary General Noeleen Heyzer said at ongoing three-day Asia Pacific NGO Forum on Beijing+15.

NEW YORK – People who keep doing some work in their field after they retire may enjoy better physical and mental health than those who stop work completely or switch to another area of work, according to a U.S. study.

Is it possible to have work life balance in the 21st century? Why don’t you take a few seconds and really think about this? And before you give me an answer, maybe you would like to stop banging on your keyboards for a few seconds, take off your fingers from your iphone or Crackberry –…