Philippine marine scientists are warning that the country faces a potentially serious environmental disaster from the Oriental Mindoro oil spill once masses of the black sludge make their way to the Verde Island Passage (VIP) and damage this biodiversity hotspot. Local governments and agencies such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and...
Category: News
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‘People power’ in protected lands in Sibuyan and Brooke’s Point
As though enjoying newfound freedom, some mining companies have aggressively expanded operations in the past several months, cutting down trees and carving roads deep into the Philippine forests, sometimes without permits from the authorities. Riled by the reckless disregard of the law, some local folk living in protected lands have resorted to “people power” to...
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Has Southeast Asia reached a post-pandemic stage?
By mid-2022, governments worldwide had begun easing up on the severe Covid-19 restrictions and regulations imposed on their peoples and opening their countries to visitors. These moves were intended to ease the debilitating impact of Covid-related policies on the economies and social fabric of virtually all countries. Most economies suffered recession, companies went bankrupt, supply...
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Protesters vs Kaliwa Dam disheartened but unbowed
The members of the Dumagat-Remontado tribe protesting the construction of Kaliwa Dam are back home in the provinces of Quezon and Rizal, disheartened that their nine-day, 148-kilometer march to Malacañang ended without a dialogue with President Marcos Jr., but unbowed. “We won’t stop until he (Mr. Marcos) responds to our letter,” tribe leader Conchita Calzado...
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Edsa 1: Democracy and disappointment
Feb. 22-25, 1986, were “four days that shook the world”—the words used by the late journalist and press secretary Teodoro C. Benigno to describe the history of the Edsa People Power Revolution that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The peaceful revolt was the culmination of a pent-up desire to get rid of Marcos short of...
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Once more into the breach: Indigenous folk march against Kaliwa Dam
Some 240 tribespeople and advocates are trekking to Malacañang to press President Marcos Jr. to stop the construction of Kaliwa Dam in their ancestral land in the Sierra Madre mountains in Quezon province, and the memory of a similar protest march in 2009 against Laiban Dam upstream in Rizal province is still fresh on their...
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Our lost racial pride
Time and again I say we Filipinos are a miseducated people. Our education works for the interest, glory and honor of foreigners, most especially the Americans. (Lost racial pride) Because of colonialism ours has been an educational system imported from America, in which we are shaped into the mold of miseducated Filipinos. We imbibe a foreign...
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Teachers’ lament: Gov’t’s ‘low appraisal’ is evident in their pay
The purchase by the Department of Education (DepEd) of pricey cameras has triggered a backlash from teachers grown hoarse from demanding a pay upgrade and increase. “If they have a budget for overpriced cameras and laptops, how come they don’t have a budget for our pay increase?” said Erlinda Alfonso, a teacher at the San...
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Save the dogs (and other creatures)
CAPAS, Tarlac—In the news lately is the order of Mayor Carmelo Lazatin of Angeles City, Pampanga, to file criminal charges against three men said to have killed and cooked a dog last week to serve as bar chow for their drinking session. It only goes to show that the law, in this case Republic Act...
A PhilinCon forest patroller inspects a fallen agarwood tree on the mountain trail. —PHILINCON PHOTO
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The stink of agarwood trafficking in Panay
Tree trunks and limbs left in the wild, gutted, severed, or sliced, like a disgusting scene in a nightmare film minus the flesh and blood. No signs of shame or scruple from the band of marauders who left their victims in such an abhorrent state of rot. The mass slaughter of rare trees would have...