Doris Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines— The new poverty line for Asia-Pacific is $1.35 a day and about 23 million Filipinos, or 27 percent of the Philippine population, are living below it.
Using the regional poverty threshold of the Asian Development Bank, the Philippines is is next to Pakistan and worse than Vietnam when it comes to [...]

by Lawrence Casiraya
from INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Local government units (LGUs) will need to step up in order to accommodate the rapidly expanding IT services industry, according to industry analyst XMG.
Based on its midyear report, XMG said the industry employs between 340,000 and 360,000 people at present, more than 70 percent of which are located in [...]

Job Tabada
Cebu Daily News
When the military uses its might, it does so to take the challenge of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) leaders who virtually declared war following the muddled Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), which got discarded by the Filipinos.
A renegotiation has been ruled out by the Arroyo administration, which initially pinned [...]

Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines–The open-source and software-as-service markets may provide the country’s best chances to keep up with outsourcing leaders India and China, according to industry analyst Ovum.
David Mitchell, UK-based Ovum’s senior vice president for IT research, said the Philippines needs to focus on niche areas where it can compete better in terms of higher-value services.
Smaller [...]

Marian Z. Codilla
Cebu Daily News
GOVERNMENT agencies have been asked to look into reports that workers of Gaisano Capital South in downtown Cebu City were using children as shields during a strike protesting the department store’s allegedly unfair labor practices.
Councilor Gerardo Carillo said he saw at least three children bearing placards among the picketers when he [...]

Dennis Jay Santos
Inquirer.net
DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Majority of the recently repatriated 37 overseas Filipino workers (OFW) from Jordan said they were forced to admit crimes because Philippine Embassy officials told them it was the only way they could go home.
“Umamin na lang daw kami, para makauwi na (They told us to just admit it so we could [...]

Doris Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines—Money sent home by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) through banks hit an all-time high of $1.5 billion in June, up 30 percent from a year earlier, reflecting a strong season for remittances for school year opening.
The January-June total reached $8.2 billion, up 17.2 percent from the same period last year, said [...]

by Mike Hall
from AFL-CIO Blog
Yesterday, we told you about the new national high-skills education and training initiative the AFL-CIO Executive Council called for in a policy statement approved at the council’s summer meeting in Chicago. Here’s a closer look.
The AFT and the Machinists (IAM) spearheaded the development of the education and training blueprint that brings [...]

Abigail Kwok
INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Calling government’s non-wage benefit project a “patently deceitful scheme,” a leftist labor group said government officials were clueless of the true economic situation of the country’s workers.
In a statement on Monday, Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May First Movement) spokesperson Prestoline Suyat called the government misinformed when it said workers still had [...]

Ruby de Vera
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Last updated 04:33pm (Mla time) 08/04/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Did you know:
13.4 percent of young adults have thought of committing suicide
25 percent have attempted to commit suicide
The average age of first suicide attempt is 16
9.6 percent felt really hopeless about the future and 9.9 percent felt depressed about life in general.
*From the 2002 Young [...]