MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Justice has created a task force of 41 prosecutors that would look into complaints of typhoon victims whose insurance claims on damaged homes and motor vehicles are being held off by their respective insurers.

MANILA, Philippines—A moderate labor organization on Sunday joined calls for the scrapping of the documentary stamp tax (DST) charged on remittances of overseas Filipino workers using the banking system.

PARIS – A standard treatment for keeping inflammatory bowel disease in check increases the risk of infection-related cancers, but not enough to preclude its use, according to a study published Monday.

Beginning March next year, the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) said it will strictly conform to provisions of the law that defines the eligibility for survivorship pension – a benefit extended to qualified dependents of deceased GSIS pensioners or members.

Officials of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) received flak for ignoring the invitation of civil society organizations for them to attend the opening plenary of the 2nd Asean Peoples’ Forum (APF)/5th Asean Civil Society Conference (ACSC) in Cha-am, Thailand on Sunday.

THE Philippines will also appeal for the exemption of chicken products from the zero-tariff regime under the Asean Free Trade Area-Common Effective Preferential Tariff (AFTA-CEPT) scheme. The AFTA-CEPT schedule to bring down tariffs to between 0 percent and 5 percent on most products will take effect next year.

BANGKOK: Closer economic ties and ways of coping better with devastating natural disasters in the region will be on the agenda as Asian leaders gather in Thailand this week, analysts and diplomats said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meets Friday in the resort town of Hua Hin for its annual summit, followed by…

Some 48,000 locals will be hired by the Smartmatic and Total Information Management (TIM) for a couple of weeks to assist in the country’s first automated elections in 2010, a company executive said. Smartmatic-TIM would hire 42,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) technicians, 4,000 supervisors, 2,000 canvassing and consolidation technicians and 600 call center agents,…

MANILA – Business taxpayers whose enterprises have been damaged by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng may file for income tax deduction for the losses they incurred, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) said during the weekend.

MANILA, Philippines – The government was urged yesterday to stop collecting taxes on remittances from overseas Filipino workers.

Over the weekend, one of our friends, Pastor Manny Carlos shared a statement that his hair stylist made about flood victims.

MANILA, Philippines – The government needs over P30 billion and at least 10 more years to completely relocate over half a million families of informal settlers near and around waterways in Metro Manila.

MANILA, Philippines – For a few weeks recently, Facebook and Twitter momentarily ceased to be just social networking sites. As Ondoy and later Pepeng rendered streets impassable, downed telephone lines and cut off electricity, people turned to mobile Internet to reach out to family and friends.

MANILA, Philippines – Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap sees a bright future for coffee farming in the Philippines — despite the setbacks of the past two decades — and has set his sights on reviving the coffee industry.

MANILA, Philippines -The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), the state-run overseer of power assets, has lined up six huge power plants for privatization next year.

The American, Australian-New Zealand, British, Canadian, and European Chambers of Commerce are set to hold the latest installment of their highly successful employment expo aimed at providing local employment opportunities to the public. Dubbed “Foreign Chambers Local Employment Expo 2009,” the two-day expo will open on Oct. 22 at the Market! Market! Activity Center in…

Most Metro Manila households and commercial and industrial establishments affected by Ondoy’s wrath may slowly be getting back to shape, but not so for the insurance industry which is working overtime to process the deluge of claims.

MANILA, Philippines – Trade Secretary Peter B. Favila is pushing for constitutional amendments to encourage more foreign firms to invest in the country.

MANILA, Philippines – Workers nationwide can look forward to safer and better workplaces during the holiday season.

A canal in Amsterdam: We should consult the best engineers and international consultants, like the Dutch, who are flood experts.

UXBRIDGE, Canada—The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

THREE cities in Metro Manila that were recently inundated were considered dropouts from the list of top 50 emerging global outsourcing cities by research firm Tholons Inc.

With Typhoon Pepeng and tropical storm Ondoy inundating much of Central Luzon in floodwaters—and the current threat of Typhoon Ramil (international codename Lupit)—the prospect of another rice crisis looms if the government fails to take proactive steps. The damage caused by Pepeng in Central Luzon can be likened to the “Great Flood of 1972” when…

Article 3 of Presidential Decree 603 or the Child and Youth Welfare Code, signed in December 1874 by then-President Ferdinand Marcos, defines the rights of children having no distinction as to the legitimacy or illegitimacy, sex, social status, religion, political antecedents and other factors.

AFTER railing against the evils of pork barrel, leftwing lawmakers yesterday demanded to know why they failed to receive their P70 million yearly allocation.

MANILA, Philippines – May we refer to the column of Mr. Babe Romualdez in the 10 September 2009 issue of The Philippine STAR, particularly to his reference to the MRT as “a messy deal when it was closed in the 1990s under a built-operate-transfer scheme during the time of FVR, with the deal so lopsided…

Training suffers in lean times, but it remains a critical element of IT success. When IT departments must make budget cuts, employee training and education is one area that often takes a direct hit. While training cutbacks may be intended to control costs, they can undermine an IT organization’s ability to remain on top of…

MANILA, Philippines–Each and every one of us has experienced some form of blood clotting at some point in our lives. We usually observe this whenever we cut or bruise ourselves—the streaming blood would eventually “harden,” forming clumps that in time, stops the bleeding (although it depends on how big or how deep the wound is).

Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino visited Cebu yesterday to rally support behind his presidential bid but he also risked courting another misunderstanding with Catholic Church leaders.

The number of accredited party-list groups has been trimmed down to 35 after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) lopped off 26 of them for failing to achieve a prime requirement to retain accreditation.