HOTSPOT Whether you view the events of 53 years ago positively or negatively, this weekend remains historic. The Sept. 21 in Luneta and EDSA are set to add more meaning to the date, perhaps becoming the biggest expressions of public anger over corruption in recent memory. Fears among political...
HOTSPOT The proposal to regulate or ban social media use by minors is supposedly aimed to protect the youth, but I guess students and youth organizations, as well as concerned parents, would be putting up a big fight against it. If a ban is imposed, who will teach the boomers and seniors, and who...
HOTSPOT It was a pleasant surprise to read in this paper about Luis Jalandoni as a “towering figure in the Philippine communist movement.” He passed away on June 7 in The Netherlands at the age of 90. Born to a family of powerful landlords and sugar barons, Jalandoni gave up a comfortable life...
HOTSPOT When the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had died, people were again fascinated that it took major wire agencies, international print and broadcast media “only minutes” to release long-form obit stories and video packages about him. That’s part of their jobs. In the case of the...
HOTSPOT Pope Francis leaves in the same manner he first came out as the new pope in 2013, when he appeared at the central loggia of St. Peter’s wearing only the white papal cassock and greeting “good evening” in Italian. He immediately charmed Rome and the world by asking first for the...
HOTSPOT For those of us who grew up in the 1980s, Holy Week meant a near-total halt to everything. On Good Friday and Black Saturday, there’s no television, no radio, no newspapers, no school for the students, no work for the adults. Stores and the public markets are closed, as well. There’s no...
HOTSPOT This week, the most vocal supporters of an independent senatorial candidate accused lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders of “being selfish,” and belittled their struggles as “not important,” after a prominent LGBT thought-leader withdrew support over the candidate’s...
HOTSPOT Conflict is a tough, dangerous and complex field to cover. Julie S. Alipala did it for some three decades. Julie passed away in the morning of April 3 due to complications from endometrial cancer. She was 58. Those who follow the issues, and the journalists who cover them, would have...
HOTSPOT I could still remember it clearly. We were terrified by the pandemic, and forcibly held inside our homes by the world’s toughest and longest-running lockdowns. People we know were dying, even doctors and nurses. Both information and disinformation were running rampant online and offline....
HOTSPOT Since March 11, there has been some sort of “unfriending” campaign among political combatants in social media channels. Families and friendships have not been spared by the heated exchanges, and by calls for unfriending relatives and friends for the sake of perceived...
HOTSPOT “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” A friend shared this fitting quotation from a revolutionary philosopher on Tuesday morning as we began to witness a series of unbelievable events unfolding before our eyes. On March 11, 2025,...
HOTSPOT Which senatorial slate is fielding the most number of women for the upper house? Quite unsurprisingly, former President Duterte’s picks for PDP-Laban candidates are all men (including one accused of sex trafficking of women and children both here in the Philippines and in the...
