That story about some cabinet men and members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) having themselves inoculated against COVID-19, using vaccines donated by China, has refused to die down, as various officials have come up with unexpected details about the case. We have noted that...
The opinion survey organization Social Weather Stations (SWS) has been polling the nation’s views on a variety of subjects for decades. The findings are of particular interest to politicians during election periods. But they are important at anytime of the year as they reveal what the...
It helps people to remember simple basic rules when they are expressed in simple, direct statements like “Mask. Hugas. Iwas.” When the government began the gradual process of reviving the economy early in October, it was joined by the private sector with an “Ingat Angat Tayong Lahat...
Any killing of a human being is to be deplored, even those we used to have under state auspices. When the killing is done by a police officer in a blatant display of superior power and the victims are a helpless mother and son embracing each other in their hopelessness, it challenges human belief...
In these last few days of the year, our officials will be closely watching the figures of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the country, to see the effects of the general easing of restrictions for the holiday season, particularly the gathering of people for the Simbang Gabi. The officials know the...
There were tense moments in recent years in the relations between the Philippines and China, putting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a quandary, but now, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, a regime of peace and cooperation has developed, ensuring long-term...
Another Filipina nurse was in international news reports Thursday. The first was May Parsons, one of the nearly 20,000 Filipino nurses on the staff of the Britain’s National Health Service, who injected the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine shot into Margaret Keenan, 90, last Tuesday. It was the...
The number of Filipinos going hungry has reached a record high during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the polling organization Social Weather Stations (SWS) found in its latest quarterly survey for September. The number has been going up since May, two months after Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon...
Secretary John Castriciones of the Department of Agrarian Reform announced this weekend a program that, he hopes, will encourage more young Filipinos to engage in farming and, in the process, help attain the goal of food security for the country. Fresh graduates of agricultural courses, he said,...
The United Nations Children‘s Fund (UNICEF) came out Wednesday with a report that may have relevance to our educational system in the Philippines. About 1.3 billion school-age children worldwide whose schools have closed down due to the COVID-19 have no access to Internet at...
The COVID-19 pandemic is still with us and in the rest of the world and it is surging in a new wave of infections and deaths in the United States and Europe. We are fortunate the virus has not been as virulent in our country as it has been in the US, India, Brazil, France, Russia, and Spain which...
The Senate has been going through the proposed P4.5-trillion General Appropriation Bill for 2021 approved last month by the House of Representatives. The Senate  will approve its own National Appropriation Bill which will then be consolidated by a Bicameral  Conference...
