Opinion-Editorial NEWS

It is now established that keeping one’s distance from another person – social distancing, avoiding physical contact such as shaking hands, avoiding touching surfaces such as doorknobs and arm rests, are among a person’s frontline defenses against the coronavirus.

The decision to set aside the move to import 300,000 metric tons of rice from Vietnam under a government-to-government scheme will save some P8.5 billion that can now be used for more urgent needs of the nation.

At  5:30 a.m. today,  following  a midnight mass at the  Quirino  Grandstand at the  Luneta  in Manila, the procession of the Black Nazarene  back to its permanent shrine  at  the  Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene – Quiapo  Church – begins.

President Duterte is due to sign the 2020 General Appropriations Bill today, January 6. It is already six days in the year, but the President chose to delay his signing of the bill so he would have a little more time to look at certain budget provisions more closely.

Three  major  China-Philippines  projects  took off in the closing months  of 2019 – the start of the Reed Bank  joint  gas and oil development west of Palawan,  President  Duterte’s directive to proceed  with the P12.2-billion  Kaliwa Dam project  in Rizal and Quezon, and the roll-off of the P175-billion 650-kilometer South Rail Long Haul project  in Bicol.

President Duterte has decided to proceed with the construction of the Kaliwa Dam in Rizal and Quezon provinces, a project that has been held back for years because of several issues raised against it.

We are used to typhoons and other storms all year round in the Philip­pines but typhoon Ursula was spe­cially sad and painful to us as it came on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

We begin the new year in the Philip­pines with great hope shared by 96 percent of our people in the fourth-quarter opinion survey held by So­cial Weather Stations in December 13-16.

A week before the opening  of classes last Monday,  June 3, the Department  of Education (DepEd) announced that it needs 33,000 teachers  to fill vacant positions in public schools all over the country.

In the nine months since the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), composed of all members of the Supreme Court, began its recount of ballots cast for vice president in 2016, the ballots cast in the three provinces of Iloilo, Negros Oriental, and Camarines Sur have been recounted by the tribunal.

On the eve  of  the   World Economic Forum (WEF) which meets every January  in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss the world’s most pressing issues affecting world economic growth, the international activist organization Oxfam issued last Monday a report on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in  the world today.

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III asked government officials last Saturday to avoid posting comments on social media on official matters involving their positions in government, in the wake of the imbroglio over the issuance of passports by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

It took six months to clean up Boracay’s waters. It will take seven years to clean up Manila Bay until it becomes as clean as in Boracay today, Secretary of Agriculture Emmanuel Pinol said in a radio interview this week.

Why should passport holders seeking to renew their old passports be required to present their birth certificates when this was never done before?

The world saw a peaceful transition to 2019 last Tuesday, with fireworks lighting up the night skies in many cities as midnight ended the old year. The Line Islands south of Hawaii
along with the eastern tip of Russia’s Siberia were the first to greet 2019, lying just west of the International Date Line.

For years, fatalities in our storms and typhoons were mostly drowning victims, people crushed to death by falling trees, and fishermen and boat passengers carried out to sea. In 2013, super-typhoon Yolanda brought a new threat to life in storm-hit areas – the storm surge, a wall of seawater six to eight feet high surging inland destroying everything in its path, then sweeping
back to sea with the bodies of thousands of drowning victims.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for a “world policeman” to keep things in order. Nations would concentrate on developing themselves, stay within their borders, and respect the rights of other nations.

This first week of the year, people are wondering what to expect in the matter of fuel prices. Will the pump prices in gasoline stations start rising now as the government starts collecting a new tax increase of P2.24 per liter? Or will the companies defer charging the higher rates until about 15 to 30 days from now, when their old stocks run out?