PLARIDEL, Bulacan, Philippines–President Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday signed into law a bill extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program for another five years beginning July 2009.

MANILA, Philippines—The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom has condemned the latest murder of a journalist in the Philippines and called for the perpetrators of the crime to be brought to justice.

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The global climate treaty slated for completion by year’s end will be crippled without “strong commitments” from rich nations on slashing CO2 emissions by 2020, the UN’s top climate official said Thursday.

A big-time syndicate could be behind the rampant sale of “abortion pills,” known as cytotec, in the Quiapo area, according to a high ranking priest who urged authorities yesterday to bust the group.

Commission on Higher Education Chairman Emmanuel “Manny” Angeles said yesterday that courses like engineering, architecture, accountancy, pharmacy and physical therapy will undergo major curriculum reforms to be at par with current world standards.

Secretary Emmanuel Angeles, chair-man of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), enunciated his plans for the higher education sector in several fora. One of these fora was the 2009 Philippine Association of State Universities and Colleges (PASUC) General Assembly held in Cebu on June 24. I have devoted my last two columns to the first…

CEBU, Philippines – On the celebration of the province’s 440th founding anniversary yesterday, Governor Gwendolyn Garcia was in a giving mood.

MANILA, Philippines – A coalition yesterday expressed its “strongest opposition” to the looming approval of a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that would facilitate the construction of a 200-megawatt, coal-fired power plant in Cebu.

MANILA, Philippines – Local corn farmers are blaming the government for “bad policy governance” that has caused domestic and international prices of Philippine-grown corn to drop.

MANILA, Philippines – Employment opportunities in the United States for Filipino nurses aspiring to work there appear to be drying up.

MANILA, Philippines – A top economist has forecast Philippine economic growth to expand by as much as four percent this year and a further six percent in 2010, powered by higher remittances, consumer spending and infrastructure projects ahead of the national elections next year.

Banks have the flexibility to reduce their lending rates further to get closer to, if not match, the aggressive policy rate reduction by Bangko Sentral.

PARIS: Advanced economies experienced deflation of 0.1 percent in the year to June as a result of oil prices being more than halved since their summer 2008 peak, data from the OECD released Tuesday showed.

Picking his way past the ranks of riot police and the barricaded factory gates, it was Ssangyong’s chief financial officer who came out to break the news to the waiting journalists.

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Health (DOH) will beef up its campaign for breastfeeding amid the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) that only 50 percent of Filipino mothers are exclusively breastfeeding their newborns.

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Health (DoH) will beef up its breastfeeding campaign after a study revealed that only one in two mothers exclusively breastfed for two months or less.

A group batting for child-friendly roads wants its advocacy for minors to take a major role in preventing accidents.

THE drive and passion displayed by Tourism Secretary Joseph “Ace” Durano and his go-getting team at the Department of Tourism is beginning to reap rich dividends for the Philippines. Tourist arrivals in the top 16 tourism destinations went up by 16.5 percent reaching close to 4 million in the first semester of 2009.

Corazon Aquino was laid to rest yesterday. Through a massive outpouring of people in the streets, the Filipino people ousted the regime of the dictator Marcos in February 1986. The event, popularly known as the People Power Revolution, was the culmination of years of mobilizations, protests, strikes and welgang bayan (people’s strike) that preceeded the…

LIMAY, Bataan: A chief mate died while two seamen were injured when the pressurized liquid hose they were handling preparatory to loading Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) from the Petron Bataan Refinery pier to their cargo carrier tanker snapped, swung and hit them, police reported Monday.

TOKYO/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Leading global automakers reported forecast-beating quarterly results on Tuesday, but continued to give cautious outlooks for the industry, which remains hard hit by weak demand and a lack of consumer credit.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US consumer spending rose in June, while household incomes fell sharply as a result of the end of certain stimulus payments, official data showed Tuesday.

PARIS (AFP) – Advanced economies experienced deflation of 0.1 per cent in the year to June as a result of oil prices being more than halved since their summer 2008 peak, data from the OECD released on Tuesday showed.

MANILA, Philippines – More Filipinos are now in need of jobs, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – The number of Filipino overseas voters has reached 159,100 after six months of registration, the Department of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.

THE local government of Mankayan will pursue the filing of criminal charges against personnel of the mining firm, which dumped asbestos-containing materials at Barangay Sapid.

NEW DELHI (AFP) – A swift conclusion to a new world trade pact could serve as a powerful stimulus for recovery from the global financial crisis, WTO chief Pascal Lamy said in an interview published Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US companies are increasingly turning to offshoring their functions to achieve cost savings, and few plan to bring those jobs back to the United States, the Conference Board said Monday.

MANILA, Philippines – The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects this year’s average inflation to settle around the middle of its 2.5 percent and 4.5 percent target range and the lower end of the 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent target range for 2010.