For Filipinos who have been outside of the Philippines for years, Christmas is both a time for rejoicing and a time for remembering. Even as the Filipino in America begins to feel the holiday mood immediately after Thanksgiving when people start shopping for gifts and Christmas decors, he feels at the same time a longing for home. For… Read More »
While in Manila on a 10-day vacation recently, I had the opportunity to attend a media forum on barangays presided by former Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. at the Club Filipino in Greenhills. No one could have explained to media members the barangay system in the Philippines better than the three-term senator who authored the Local Government Code in… Read More »
A day after President Benigno S. Aquino III offered guarantees to foreign investors who would participate in his administration’s public-private partnership (PPP) program, an official of a Belgian firm contracted to dredge the Laguna de Bay for P18 billion complained that Malacanang unilaterally cancelled the contract without first informing them. Dimitri Ditielleux, North Asia manager of Baggerwerken Decloedt… Read More »
While I commend President Noynoy Aquino for standing up for the country in protesting the travel advisories issued by seven nations against the Philippines, I must also agree with the advice of Senators Loren Legarda and Tito Sotto to take seriously the warnings against terror threats. These seven countries, six of which aired serious concerns about the threat… Read More »
“The trouble with hello is goodbye,” thus says the song of the same title popularized by Shirley Bassey and Sergio Mendez in the mid-70s. I remembered this beautiful song as I pondered on the eve of the mid-term election in the US, thinking how a campaign for change that raised the hopes of millions of Americans has turned… Read More »
It’s becoming obvious that Manny Pacquiao’s mind is no longer focused on the ring. His trainer, Freddie Roach, who sees the Filipino boxing icon up close and who has become like a father to him since he took him and turned him into the world’s greatest boxer, has been saying this since the start of Pacquiao’s training for… Read More »
In the past few weeks, the Philippine peso has been climbing to record highs, with investment bank Goldman Sachs seeing the peso climbing to 43 per dollar in the next three months, 42 in six months and 41 in 12 months. Barclays Capital was even more optimistic, expecting the peso to rise to 40 against the dollar over… Read More »
Except for his closest friends and relatives, no one will ever know for sure why Marlon Cueva, a 36-year-old power plant technician returning after a three-month deployment in Dubai, hanged himself in the lavatory of Gulf Air Flight GF 154 last week, just an hour away from being reunited with his wife and children. Neither shall we know… Read More »
Above the din of emotional outbursts and threats of excommunication is an article written by a Catholic priest in the Manila Standard Today last week. In his article, “Excommunication and other non-issues,” Fr. Ranhillo Callangan Aquino called for sobriety and rationality, and demanded that the Roman Catholic Church should be ready to convince the people – Catholics and… Read More »
Lately, we have been reading disturbing reports of Filipino workers being recruited in the Philippines purportedly for good-paying jobs in the United States and Canada, only to find themselves exploited and abused by unscrupulous recruiters on a distant shore where they feel hopeless and helpless. And I thought slavery was abolished after a bloody civil war in 1865… Read More »