President Donald Trump has been all praise for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and has yet to say anything negative about Russia’s Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, Trump was the classic contrarian in the recently concluded G7 Summit in Canada and he has engaged in a war of words with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

IN RECENT MONTHS, a number of big, bold proposals have been advanced to relieve economic pressure on the poor, including a federal job guarantee, a universal basic income and single-payer health care. But a lot of more modest but still important ideas are being overlooked. One of these is the idea of stable work scheduling.

The World Bank has come out with a Philippine poverty assessment report titled Making Growth Work for the Poor (2018).

Philippine fishery production declined between 2010 and 2017. As a result, since 2010, the contribution of fishery to agriculture growth has been negative.

Ten years ago, my family took our first ever cruise to celebrate three milestones: my 38^th wedding anniversary, 60^th birthday and my youngest daughter’s 28^th birthday. We chose Alaska via Vancouver (first time for all of us) and, on our return spent a week in Whistler, a skier’s destination, before returning home. Not sure now if we flew PAL or Cathay Pacific, but our cruise line was Royal Caribbean.

ACROSS the world, tens of millions of deaths go unrecorded each year. This lack of information is a killer in its own right: Without an accurate measure of deaths and their causes, fighting disease in low- and middle-income countries is much harder. Investing in the means to keep track of lives and deaths would be money well spent.

What is ours, is ours. This includes the trove of resources in the West Philippine Sea.

Last June 6, I attended the “Seminar on Protecting your Trademarks and Inventions Overseas” jointly organized by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), held at the PCCI building in McKinley Hill, Taguig City.

“Where can I place my P100,000 funds?” What are the investment options for a risk-averse widow, in this time of rising inflation? “Since you do not trust equities or corporate bonds, and not even the managed pooled funds, perhaps the only easily withdrawable and guaranteed (insured) placement would be a time deposit in our bank,” the account officer sheepishly offered. “And how much interest will the bank pay me?” The account officer was definitely embarrassed to say, “0.88%, Ma’am, or P704 net of 20% final withholding tax, for 360 days.”

BEYOND just helping me out a bit with math, science, or English grammar during my youth, Dad rarely ever sat me down and said, “Today, we will spend time learning values,” or “Son, let me tell you all about how businesses work.”

With no sense of irony, it seems, did the United States “grant” Philippine independence on the same date as its own independence day, nearly half a century after Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed independence in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898, and the First Republic was established in Malolos, Bulacan on Jan. 23, 1899.

“Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same-sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause. And they lose this just when the winds of change were freshening at their backs.”