EVEN WHEN we’re locked down at home, we can’t help trying to keep busy, if only watching the news and tracking the latest contagion rates and recoveries, and checking our bank balances online. Filling up the day with the busyness of routine, or, for those working from home, actually pitching for new business in a virtual presentation can be a challenge. Additional work time is added with the elimination of commuting.

Remember the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement? It was ready to go, participated by 12 big Pacific Rim countries and led by the United States. In January 2017, President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of this trade treaty, which it had nurtured from idea to a fully signed trade agreement, among his first official acts as the US President.

One of my first jobs right after college was teaching in a Franciscan missionary school in Baybay, Leyte. All of my schooling was done in private schools run by foreign missionaries; and since English was also a prime lingua franca within my family, it seems to me that I not only spoke in English, I thought in English.

The last 18 months was a “trial-by-fire” for the local restaurant industry. With government imposing the world’s longest, most stringent lockdown, restaurant operators found themselves with a mountain of obligations without the sales to back them up. Those with sufficient cash reserves were able to survive the onslaught but the thousands without ample cash runways had no option but to close permanently. Along with business closures came hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.

Most power generation companies (gencos) — those that own big power plants and ensure we have 24/7 electricity except when there are major technical problems or natural calamities — also suffered major declines in revenues and net income in 2020’s lockdown and pandemic.

OVER-THE-COUNTER banking will be among the casualties of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the Philippines. A decline of up to 50% in branch-based operations can be expected in the wake of this pandemic.

MANY of the corporate governance (CG) reforms pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through its CG Codes seek to usher a system of professional directorship into the publicly held companies (PHCs) and publicly listed companies (PLCs). This includes a system of professional directorship, such as granting more supervisory power to the Boards over its composition, and integrity (i.e., qualifications and disqualifications), as well as the competence and diversity of talents and skills of their members, effecting a system of discipline over their members, and providing for competitive levels of remuneration.

“This shows the danger of having tariffs that are under the unilateral control of one man,” declared Brad Setser, a former US trade official...

Although already all-powerful by 1972, Ferdinand Marcos still delivered his public statements with care. Only rarely did he allow his temper to break through his carefully contrived image as articulate, civilized and reasonable.

Finally, after 19 months, the Supreme Court has lifted its temporary restraining order (TRO) on the release of about 700,000 motor vehicle license plates...

There seems to be an inexplicable enthrallment with royalty, a curiosity about the images and lives of the rich and famous, the haughty and unattainable. Perhaps, it is the vicarious thrill of imagining -- to be in the shoes of a star. It’s a wish to escape to one’s mundane daily routine.

The first recent outbreak in the country of the highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus, commonly called bird flu, was reported in February 2022....