THE GOVERNMENT IS DOUBLING ITS subsidy for the National Food Authority in 2010 to P8 billion in an apparent move to avert a repeat of the rice crisis in 2008 as it continues its stimulus spending next year.

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Energy has finally formed the National Renewable Energy Board, a move seen to speed up the setting of mechanisms and incentives critical to the implementation of the renewable energy law.

MANILA, Philippines—While insisting on their religious and academic freedoms when it comes to implementing provisions of the new Magna Carta of Women, private Catholic schools are asking for more and bigger subsidies from the government.

LOS BAÑOS, LAGUNA—Noting earlier recommendations from the International Labor Organization that remain unheeded by companies, workers from Southern Tagalog called on the world body to spend more time interviewing them during its fact-finding mission.

The National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) is moving heaven and earth to ensure compliance with environmental laws by creating a new squad that will run after, arrest and prosecute environmental violators.

The National Police Commission (Napolcom) has formally launched its manual for members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to guide them on how to deal with children in conflict with the law (CICL) as spelled out in the the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act.

LOS BAÑOS, Laguna, Philippines – The country’s wooden pallet industry is booming. A pallet is a platform device that holds one or more cargo packages in a group. It allows a load to be transferred and stored as a unit.

MANILA, Philippines – For their invaluable contribution to the Philippine economy, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) get little in return in times when they need it the most. Too often news of OFWs getting killed, wrongly imprisoned, being maltreated and other horrifying experiences they have to endure away from their loved ones. As in most…

MANILA, Philippines – Petron Corp. chairman Ramon Ang said the government should strengthen efforts to curb oil smuggling, claiming oil smugglers are now controlling 30 to 35 percent of the petroleum industry.

Generous incentives – fiscal and non-fiscal – await companies that would want to invest in renewable energy development under the Renewable Energy Law passed last year. This is so in consideration of the high investment requirement needed in putting up a renewable energy project.

MANILA, Philippines – The Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) is planning to increase its membership contribution rate to further improve the agency’s financial capability and meet the demands of members for more loans and benefits.

MANILA, Philippines – A national teachers’ organization has opposed the Department of Education’s move to shorten class hours in public elementary schools in a bid to add more class shifts.

MANILA, Philippines – The booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country is expected to employ at least one million Filipinos by 2010, Malacañang said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines — The leadership of the House of Representatives will finalize the rules and procedures for the debates on the reproductive health bill so that voting could take place before the end of the 14th Congress, according to Majority Leader and Iloilo Representative Arthur Defensor.

Pundits are sounding the alarm of a likely rise in the ranks of the informal sector amid the economic crisis, as the slowdown leads to job cuts. The informal sector is a catch-all term for people who contribute to a country’s economic output, but whose contribution are not captured by official data.

A wholesale, blanket rejection of any reproductive health bill sends a message of bigotry and insensitivity. It is not a thoughtful response. It is not a Christian response. The fact is that many population and poverty issues must be addressed, and House Bill 5043—and some of its predecessors—is meant to address these issues. There is…

THE Oil Deregulation Law was responsible for “opening the floodgates” of oil smuggling in the country,” Petron Corp. said.

GOLDMAN Sachs said the Philippine economy would grow faster than its previous forecast because of stable remittances, substantial monetary stimulus and a manageable fiscal deficit. In a research note, the US investment bank said monetary policy would remain stable until the second half of next year, during which it expects the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas…

Trade: President Obama has fired the opening salvo in a trade war with China by slapping 35% tariffs on its tires. But besides giving China a kick, this protectionism will harm Americans across the economy. Sec. 421 of the 1974 Trade Act, intended to control surges in imports.

CHEATING: It is best that the possibility of automated cheating and of failure of elections in May 2010 is discussed this early, so the weaknesses of the computerized system are exposed and corrected.

MANILA, Philippines – The government has provided shelter aid to 120,000 low-income households annually since 2001, Vice President and Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) Chairman Noli de Castro said.

MANILA, Philippines – With just eight months before the presidential elections, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is now readying its legacy for the new administration.

MANILA, Philippines – Private hospitals will increase their administrative fees to recoup the losses incurred from the medicine price cuts.

MANILA, Philippines – An Ifugao woodcarver won over a dozen international artists who joined the third Delphic Games in Jeju, Korea.

MANILA, Philippines – The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) urged the government to exert more effort to attract investors, saying that the global financial crisis has slowed down foreign direct investments coming into the country.

MANILA, Philippines – I turned 40 last month. I am officially, incontrovertibly, cannot be denied, in midlife. In our former lives as human beings, we simply lived life chronologically. (For example, my 76-year-old mother doesn’t even remember undergoing menopause.) Sometime in the past few years, a series of symptoms have been assigned a new term:…

THE Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) expressed support on Sunday for the high-level mission sent by the International Labor Organization (ILO) to Manila to investigate widespread complaints of violations of the rights of Filipino workers to freely organize themselves.

The United States has called for a boycott of a dozen Philippine exports because of the widespread use of child labor in agriculture, tobacco, pig raising, fireworks and the making of child pornography.

ADVOCATES of the reproductive health bill yesterday urged Catholic bishops to stop blackmailing presidential aspirants and lawmakers into withdrawing their support for family planning.

MANILA, Philippines—In a move to consolidate the gains in the country’s labor relations and industrial peace, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) has embarked on a plan to speed up the disposition of pending labor cases.