OIL CRISIS   Amid the uproar over the Malacañang-imposed oil price ceiling, Executive Order (EO) 389 is apparently a mere government public relations gimmick, according to Ibon Foundation.

HUMAN RIGHTS   By Ronalyn Olea   Edelina Jolloso-Jerus, 37, was shot dead yesterday in front of her two children aged ten and eight inside their house in San Juan, Sorsogon City.

Evangeline Hernandez, spokesperson of Hustisya!, denounces the killing of Edelina Jolloso-Jerus during a picket in front of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency this morning. (Photo by Ayi Muallam)

POLITICS   Progressive groups will launch a new wave of protest actions against Charter Change in April, calling on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to address the country’s economic crisis instead of prioritizing amendments to the Constitution.

POLITICS   By the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)  |  Comelec’s technology creates the danger of placing the fate of the elections in the hands of a profit-oriented multinational company – the winning bidder – and on the Comelec which remains ill-prepared to run an election technology let alone in checking fraud.

PRESS FREEDOM   Aside from killings and physical attacks, the Philippine press also faced legal suits and other harassment from government officials and powerful personalities.

LABOR & EMPLOYMENT   Unemployment data from the January 2009 Labor Force Survey confirms the country’s descent into greater joblessness due to the global crisis and accumulated domestic economic weaknesses.

CRIME   By Inday Espina-Varona  |  So she crumbled. So she groveled before might and the power of the American dream. So what? A close reading of the affidavit shows she doesn’t say the rape NEVER happened. She just spouts what the defense wants her to say.

Cpl. Daniel Smith

CRIME   “I expect many sectors to question my motives in executing this statement more than three years after the incident. However, as I practically grew up interacting with American servicemen in Zamboanga City who treated me and my family very well, and thinking over and over again how I may have conducted myself at the Neptune Club, I can’t help but entertain doubts on whether the sequence of events in Subic last November of 2005 really occurred the way the court found them to have happened.”