“Defending democracy” and “upholding the rule of law” have long been in the United States of America’s ideological arsenal of justification for its intervention in the affairs of other nations.

THE World Economic Forum (WEF), arranger of the annual Davos shindig, has just published its 17th annual Global Risks Report. It makes for thoroughly depressing reading — for its context as much as its content.

Joe Rogan’s December 2021 interview of Dr. Robert Malone is touted as “the most important in our time.” And it might well be that. Exposing the inutility of masks and the evil of mandatory vaccination, Malone (a virologist and immunologist) also talked about, and thus introduced to many, the idea of “mass formation psychosis.”

NOVAK DJOKOVIC may yet defend his Australian Open tennis title, but he’s not the freedom fighter many of his supporters believe.

Over the weekend in Melbourne, Australia, the world’s most dominant tennis player, Serbian player Novak Djokovic, won his appeal to overturn the Australian government’s cancellation of his visa.

On the morning of Jan. 1, 2022, as the country greeted the new year, it also lost one of its notable luminaries in international law — Merlin M. Magallona. He was 87 years old. Most people knew him as lawyer, a law professor, and Dean of the UP College of Law. He was also a diplomat and public servant, having served not only at UP but also at the Department of Foreign Affairs with Vice-President Teofisto Guingona, Jr.

IT’S A NEW YEAR and time to anticipate new challenges, strategies, and possible outcomes. Different plot lines can involve varying sets of players and settings. In movies, shifting approaches are tried out.

Despite the long-term view that a strategic planning exercise normally assumes (at least three to five years and even as long as a decade), as an exception I will begin with the short-term outlook for the Philippine economy (the next 12 to 18 months) and identify the immediate measures that have to be taken by the next Administration to sustain all the beneficial ongoing programs of the Duterte Administration and add new ones that will be directed to reducing the poverty rate by 2023 to the 16.2% already attained in 2019.

Time and again, nature teaches humanity the inextricable symbiosis between the environment and human existence, most recently in the aftermath of typhoon Odette (international name: Rai), one of the worst superstorms to hit the Philippines. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council tallied over 400 reported casualties of which 77 have been validated. More than 83,000 families are being sheltered in evacuation centers, and over 45,000 more in other facilities.

The use of renewable energy systems, such as solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, and hydrogen fuel cells, will minimize greenhouse gas emissions and reduce global warming. But use of these systems has to increase — and they require a lot of metal.