An unlooked-for gift -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial www.malaya.net.ph July 29, 2009 ‘Thanks to Gloria, Mar no longer needs to define himself.’ Gloria Arroyo might have unwittingly paid the highest compliment to Mar Roxas when she singled him out among her administration’s critics in her state of the nation address. There are lingering suspicions that some opposition figures, including presidential aspirants, are prepared to strike a deal with Gloria, assuming they have not already done so, in pursuit of their personal ambition. In her spite, Gloria may just have established Roxas’ credentials as the genuine oppositionist in what is emerging to be a wide-open 2010 electoral race. Gloria’s attack on Roxas stemmed from the latter’s allegation that she had sought to undermine the Cheaper Medicines Act by refusing to sign an executive order cutting the prices of 22 essential medicines by half. Gloria’s position was that there was n...

Obama’s message to GMA Monday, 27 July 2009 www.newsbreak.com.ph If President Arroyo has read Barack Obama’s books and if she has been following his speeches, she’ll know what to expect during their meeting in Washington D.C. this week. And she may find discomfort in Obama's rhetoric and ideas. It's because GMA's visit to the US comes at a time of public doubt about her true plans past her term in 2010. Dangling in the air are two options, both aimed at extending her stay in office: amending the Constitution through a constituent assembly, and setting up a "transition council" which she will lead and which will preside over the changing of the Constitution. Clearly, in these two scenarios being peddled by her allies, she's bypassing institutions and violating the Constitution. Obama, who taught Constitutional law for 10 years, is a believer in institutions. He sees the building of institutions as the key to success of any country. What Obama told Africa...

3 Pinoys getting HIV every day - UNDP Written by Kristine Servando www.abs-cbnnews.com www.newsbreak.com.ph Tuesday, 28 July 2009 The Philippines has seen an "alarming" increase in HIV cases in the past year, especially among overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and men who have sex with men (MSM), according to data from the Dept. of Health, as cited by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). "Last May, the country had 85 reported cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the highest ever in the country. That's like 3 people a day, more cases than the A (H1N1) virus," said Danton Remoto, UNDP Communications officer, at the country's 1st National Conference on MSM, Transgender, and HIV last July 22. There have been 3,911 HIV cases since 1984, according to Department of Health (DOH) data as of May 2009. All HIV cases were transmitted through sexual contact, with 36% of cases transmitted through homosexual contact and 89% of cases caused by un...

So who will be my presidential candidate? And under which big political party will I run? As I have said in my 60 minutes interview published in the Manila Bulletin, I will not run as an independent, and I will not run with a small political party. Tapos na ang independent days ko. But it does not mean that my independent mind-set has also vanished. So which party? Who is the prez? As of press time, I still do not know. I am still talking to several emissaries of the different political parties, if not the presidential candidates themselves. They always tell me I am up, up, up there, in the senatorial surveys and mock polls that they have seen, such that several senatorial candidates already curse beneath their breath with the mention of my name. Ay, pikunan na agad ito? Wait until the campaign begins, and you hear me speak and make fun of them all, skewering them with my words. But those surveys and mock polls, why, I have not seen them, because I did not pay PhP 50,000 to be there. M...

by Maria Althea Teves, abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak | 07/25/2009 3:46 AM MANILA - It is no secret that US President Barack Obama won partly for using new media in his 2008 campaign. New media is defined by Obama New Media Operations Manager Mary Joyce as a media message created, produced and read by the people. This means media found on the internet, and text messages via mobile phones. Social networking sites have linked internet users to Obama’s webpage in order to know his policies and actively participate in discussions. But there is one key aspect the Obama campaign team is most proud of: getting online donations for the campaign that amounted to $500 million. So what if they paid a dollar to the Obama campaign? Joyce told abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak that the psyche behind donating money is that they feel they belong to the campaign. Joyce is also co-founder of digiactive.org, a volunteer organization helping activists around the world to use Internet and mobile phones to increase the ...

REMOTE CONTROL | DANTON REMOTO | 07/21/2009 3:20 AM Views and analysis www.abs-cbnnews.com 1. Listen to the teacher. When the teacher repeats a point two times, red flag it and take notes. That means what she is saying is super important, that is why it is repeated twice, not that she already has Alzheimer’s (she will, 20 years down the road, after teaching young people like you). 2. Read everything thrice. The first is to scan the text, like an eagle surveying the field, before it swoops down for the kill. The second is to read slowly, marking important points on the margins, or underlining key words in the text. The third is to summarize the points in your head, in your notebook, or on the last page of the text. I tell my students: unless you have summarized the text in three sentences, in your own words, then you haven’t gotten it right. 3. Master the four skills. Being a teacher of the old school, I tell my students the four skills of language learning are still important. T...

By Celeste Ann Castillo Llaneta University of the Philippines The Forum - May-June 2009 - (Vol 10 Issue 3) All the world’s a stage, and at no time is this more evident than during national elections. November 30 is the red letter day for those intending to run in 2010, since they have until then to file their candidacies. Their fate as candidates, however, is not in their hands. It is up to the Commission on Elections (Comelec), which weeds out the fly-by-nights, would-be messiahs, and other such nuisance candidates. However, in the course of declaring nuisance candidates some well-meaning and qualified aspirants—aspirants who might well have made a positive difference had they been elected—get scratched out of the list. One of these is Ateneo de Manila University English Professor Danton Remoto, who ran as representative of the party-list group Ang Ladlad in the May 2007 elections. When the Comelec dismissed Ang Ladlad as eligible to be part of the party list, Remoto aimed for a Sena...