A good newspaper is never nearly good enough. But a lousy newspaper is a joy forever, an old wisecrack goes.” It resonated in the Philippine Press Institute’s conference: “Watching the Watchdog: Re-examining Ourselves.”
Wasting food is like “stealing from tables of the poor,” Pope Francis told a United Nations World Environment Day audience. “A culture of waste… is despicable when many suffer from hunger.”
Did the hunting of fruit-eating birds lead to the shriveling of tree seeds? The journal Science asks in its latest issue. This can damage beyond previous estimates, already-stressed tropical rainforests.
“The future starts today, not tomorrow,” Pope John Paul II once cautioned. That reality underpins the new Asian Development Bank study that sketches “a daunting unfinished agenda when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) expire in 2015.”
Do not look at the heavens through a bamboo reed.” Can this Japanese proverb help us sift through the May 13 elections’ mixed bag? Nobody loses an election here. Those trashed insist they were cheated.
“Ah, the chill of consciousness returns,” the poetic drunk Uncle Seamus would groan after a bender the night before. Morning after the May 13 elections, what do we wake up to?
“Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts floating between the lines.” Norweigian poet Henrik Ibsen’s remark came to mind on reading reports that former police Senior Supt. Cezar Mancao scrammed from his National Bureau og Investigation cell. How? By “using his own key.”
Contrast is a compelling tutor. Compare the track records of talks for peace by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Both were intractable insurgencies. In Sultan Kudarat, MILF, World Bank and UN signed Fasttrac or Facility for Advisory Support for Transition Capacities. Based in Cotabato City, this three year [...]
As the May 13 elections campaign careens into the home stretch, many candidates get strident. There are 18,053 posts up for grabs—almost quadruple the number of office seekers.
Suddenly, it is twilight. A stoop matches our gray hair and bifocals. They say we’re the elderly folk we used to zip past unheeding. Where did those years go? No more bolting out of bed mornings, writes Conchita Razon in “The Fear of Aging.” ( Inquirer/April 14 ) The process is now protracted: from [...]
“Follow the smell of money.” Investigative reporter Amitabha Chowdhury worked by that rule in his “Ananda Bazar Patrika” exposes of murky contracts in India. Chowdhury won the 1961 Magsaysay Award for Journalism.
You can seal truth in a grave. But it will always break free.” Easter hammered that truth over the last 2000 years. Before Easter 2013, did the entombed truth about journalist Jonas Burgos’ abduction start to emerge in a Court of Appeals decision?
The Kris Aqunio/James Yap and Chiz Escudero/Heart brawls triggered a blogging frenzy. “There are more pressing concerns,” former senator Richard Gordon protested. These range from Filipinos squeezed in the Sabah controversy to a severely strained school system. “Let’s keep our focus on issues that matter.”
