Philippine Airlines (PAL), the country’s flag carrier and Asia’s oldest airline, turns 80 this month amid a continuing pandemic-induced financial difficulty that fell upon the aviation industry globally. PAL had seen the worst and the best of times, but this pandemic is one that could kill a...
Who would have thought that an issue that led to war and nearly divided the great United States continues to be an issue today. President Abraham Lincoln fought the American civil war to save the United States of America from fragmenting back into old alliances, but he also fought to end slavery in...
There seems to be a slowdown in the worldwide vaccination campaign against COVID-19 after the initial rush in the United States and certain other countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) organized COVAX to provide initial vaccine doses to countries with little or no hope of getting them from...
If the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic is not yet bad enough, there is also now a Senate proposal to put the entire country under a state of emergency due to an African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak, which has already cost about P50 billion in losses to the swine industry and pushed pork market prices...
With roughly four million of Filipinos out of work, compounded by the incessantly rising prices of basic commodities, Filipino consumers are indeed in a dizzying ride for survival through the economic mare’s nest stirred up by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s still one item in the monthly...
Cruise ships, just like airlines, are down these days because of the pandemic. People around the world are not travelling because of the strict requirements at airports about visitors possibly carrying the coronavirus. We remember only too well that our first two COVID cases in the Philippines were...
More than 50 people have now been killed and 1,000 arrested in a brutal crackdown by the police and the military on the people of Myanmar, who have been demonstrating in the country’s streets since February 1. The military mounted a military coup that ousted the government of civilian leader Aung...
The Department of Health reported Monday an increase in the number of COVID cases not because of the new variants but increased cases of non-compliance with the basic protocols of face masks, distancing, and frequent washing of hands, Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergerie said. The DOH has recorded...
After Secretary Roy Cimatu of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources cleaned up Boracay after five months in 2018, President Duterte told him to clean up Manila Bay next. The secretary looked at the problem posed by Manila Bay, so many times bigger than Boracay, and told the President...
Those of us who remember the fast rising prices of 2018, when the inflation rate hit a high of 6.8 percent in September, are now looking with some concern over the report this weekend that inflation just hit a two-year high of 4.7 percent. The Consumer Price Index went up to 2 percent last January....
The Philippine COVID-19 vaccination program is finally underway. For weeks, we could only read about some countries like the United States innoculating hundreds of millions of their people. The Philippines has now joined their ranks as it began its own mass-vaccination program last Monday,...
It was in 1521 that Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Philippines at the head of a Spanish expedition to reach the East by sailing West. He planted a cross and led in the celebration of the first mass in the Philippines on Easter Sunday in what church...
