FACEBOOK SAYS that it is banning “deepfakes,” those high-tech doctored videos and audios that are essentially indistinguishable from the real thing.

“A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.” -- Ecclesiastes 7:1

If some of our people have little regard for their own safety, can we still expect them to have any regard for the safety of the rest of us? Self-preservation is a natural instinct. And yet, with the way some of us conduct ourselves, this does not seem evident. And with this being the case, then maybe little to nothing can be expected from us with respect to the preservation of others.

Regional and global inflation has been generally rising over the last two months of 2019. The Philippines reached its lowest inflation since around 2016 of only 0.8% last October, then a quick uptick to 2.5% by December (see Table 1).

THE INTERNET was built on open standards and interoperability, but networks tend to balkanize.

MY MAIN PREDICTION for 2020, if it can be called a prediction, is trend exhaustion: For the first time in a long while, several important trends have come to an end.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is the administration’s reluctant partner in its appeasement policy on China. The Philippine military has been very wary of closer Philippine-China economic relations in particular, and on the so-called “pivot to China” in general. The wariness stems from the fact that it has a long and close relationship with United States Armed Forces.

The term “TNT” refers to Pinoys in the US who are hiding (tago nang tago) from immigration officials because of their illegal status. This year, TNT may also mean US citizens hiding from Philippine immigration officials because they are in the country illegally.

THERE WAS a time, not more than two decades ago, when memos were addressed to other people and typed by secretaries in the form of paper correspondences, with multiple copies too if individuals other than the addressee needed to be in the loop. “Memo” is short for “memorandum” from the Latin, to bring to remembrance.

AUSTRALIA isn’t what the world thought it was.

IRANIAN GENERAL Qassem Soleimani, killed last week by a US drone in Baghdad, has been credited with persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene militarily in Syria in 2015, a claim the Kremlin denies. Regardless of the truth of that particular story, though, the inevitable escalation following Soleimani’s death has the potential to change Putin’s calculus in the region.

What is strategic agility?