A decision by the country’s highest court opens up nearshore waters to export-minded commercial trawlers, waters that had been reserved for the small-scale fishers who feed the nation.
country: Philippines
Stay updated with comprehensive news on the Philippines from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Filipino politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Manila, Filipino history, and cultural events.
Cyber slavery rings are growing across the region, trapping young jobseekers in brutal scam compounds — and fueling a global criminal enterprise.
With photographs from Gaza City, Madrid, Guwahati and Paris, among other places.
The new U.S. tariffs on China have triggered a sharp response from Beijing. Both countries are convinced that a war between them is inevitable someday — and they’re preparing for it. While Europeans keep their eyes on Russia, Americans remain fixated on China’s rise.
The Sierra Madre, a World War II cargo ship grounded 300 kilometers off The Philippine coast, was involved in an incident between the Philippine and Chinese navies on Monday. It’s the focus of a tug-of-war between Beijing and Manila, against the backdrop of the U.S.-China Cold War.
China released a new map where it borrows strips of lands from its neighbors. Although this is far from being the first time the country is involved in territorial disputes, Beijing’s growing military shows it has the power (and will?) to try to make it a reality.
The Rappler CEO and Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke with The Wire‘s Arfa Khanum Sherwani about how journalists everywhere need to prepare themselves for the worst-case scenario of government-ordered closure and what they should do to face up to such a challenge.
For strongman leaders like Putin and Bolsonaro, the health crisis looked like a natural opening for greater top-down control — at least on paper.
Unicef France marks World Immunization Week with this OneShot from the Philippines
BPOs (business process outsourcing) companies are booming in the Philippines, and providing safe workplaces for transgender women to present themselves in their authentic gender identity.
The southern city of Marawi was liberated last week after months of fighting which left some 1,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
-OpEd- SAO PAULO — Barbarism has actually become popular in the Philippines. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 78% of Filipinos support the “license to kill” President Rodrigo Duterte has given the police against those accused, or even just suspected, of dealing or consuming drugs. The government proudly announced the death […]
-Analysis- PARIS — The Islamic State (ISIS) is like the Hydra, the multi-headed monster of mythology that Hercules alone was able to slay. Whenever he managed to cut off one its heads, two new ones grew back instantly. Likewise, the jihadists — having recently lost Mosul, in Iraq — are already making headlines again, this […]
The controversial new Filippino president, who arrives in China today, has mostly garnered attention for his brutal crackdown on drug dealers. But his ambitions go far beyond.
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated two months ago, some 2,000 people have been killed across the country in the past two months in what experts say are extra-judicial vigilante murders. Fear and silence make it all possible.
MANILA — Heavy clouds in the sky over Manila, soon it will start to rain. Jennilyn Olayres must hurry up if she wants to whisper a few more words to her fiancé. How she’s feeling, what she has been up to all day long. And that she’s really mad at him. What a bastard for […]
Geraldine Roman, a 49-year-old former journalist, survived a brutal campaign to win a seat in the national legislature — and a place in Filipino history.
While most Western prisons operate under strict surveillance, the Filipino penitentiary system functions through an unusual combination of prisoner self-management and gang oversight.
PALAWAN — It’s the middle of a grueling practice for young women competing in a local beauty pageant. They sashay back and forth in high heels to perfect their walk without tripping. Their trainer, Thom Avila, explains the rigors of his beauty boot camp. “When the girls wake up, we start the day with jogging,” he says. “After jogging, we have breakfast, followed by walking exercises. After that, we teach them how to put on makeup and that is followed by question and answer exercises.” Most of his students come from impoverished backgrounds. One of them is Janicel Lubina, 20, […]
A tough-talking mayor leads the polls in the Philippines, which will elect a new president in May. Rodrigo Duterte’s message is simple: stop crime and corruption. But some question his methods.
MAMBURAO — In partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), those who fish the waters here in the town of Mamburao are using traditional handlines rather than large trawler nets in the deep waters off Mindoro Strait, in a bid to position the area as a Philippine hub of sustainable tuna fishing. With traditional handlines, or kawil, they catch only the mature and high-quality tuna. “We go out there into the Mindoro Strait, about 300 fishermen in several boats,” says the Tuna Fisheries Association’s Roberto Cueto. “When we’re not catching much, we stay there for days.” But Cueto, who started […]
Locals used to cook their food in bubbling pools of steaming groundwater. Now a project is underway to turn it into electricity.
Why do so many Filipinos own and carry weapons? One theory points to the influence of former American colonial rulers.
SALAWAG — In the multi-player online battle video game Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, the aim is to conquer the opposing team on the other side of the map. The graphics are impressive, and the play is challenging. But for some, the game is not just about friendly competition, after it’s been blamed as a contributing factor in the Dec. 15 murder of a 19-year-old, who was allegedly stabbed by his friend outside a computer gaming shop after the two were playing the game. The boy responsible is now in government custody, and the incident pushed local officials to […]
Second only to India in terms of scale, the Philippines’ customer service outsourcing industry in is growing, offering well-educated English speakers willing to work the night shift.
The Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Puerto Princesa is known as the “prison without walls,” because even violent convicts here can work and live on this vast land with relative autonomy.
It’s been 20 years since the U.S. had troops in the Philippines. With new plans in the works for a Filippino-U.S. base-sharing, much has changed – both locally and geopolitically.
MANILA — Sometimes to get around Manila, you need to take a trike, otherwise known as a motorcycle with a sidecar. The drivers weave around the traffic and up onto sidewalks. Trikes are noisy and emit a lot of exhaust too. But not the one Alfredo Forelo drives. A few months ago, the 38-year-old traded in his old one for a new, battery-powered e-trike. It holds up to eight passengers and is so quiet that it can hardly be heard. On the old tricycles, he used to get sick a lot, he says — colds, flu, asthma. But not anymore. […]
PALAWAN — Chito Villarin starts up the engine of his small fishing boat. The 36-year old makes his living by sailing into the waters of the South China Sea, off Palawan’s west coast, in the hopes of bringing back a good catch. “I catch different types of fish and octopus,” he says, adding that he travels about 20 kilometers into the water. But Filipino fishermen like Villarin aren’t the only ones casting off into these waters. Foreign poachers are frequently found off the coast of Palawan, and the authorities here are trying to stop them. “Narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism, […]
PALAWAN — For 25 years, Filipino lawyer Gerthie Mayo-Anda has tirelessly campaigned for better legal protection of the environment. Often called a forest hero, in the 1990s she established the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) to halt environmental destruction through court. “I thought it was important to establish a public interest environmental law group where my knowledge and skills as a lawyer can be utilized to help the poor and marginalized communities,” she says. Her group has filed dozens of cases against illegal logging, fishing and mining. “For now, the most difficult field is mining and coal because the parties […]
Monday, January 5, 2015 AIRASIA BLACK BOXES MAY NEVER BE FOUNDThe AirAsia flight QZ8501 recovery mission has resumed today with improved weather conditions. The Indonesian navy found what could be the jet’s tail section, but officials have warned that the aircraft’s black boxes may never be recovered. Meanwhile, leaked documents published in The Jakarta Post […]
December 19, 2014 KURDS BEAT ISIS ON MOUNT SINJARKurdish forces have broken a months-long ISIS siege on Mount Sinjar after a two-day offensive backed by U.S. airstrikes. The BBC describes it as the Kurds’ “biggest victory yet” against the terrorist group. Thousands of displaced people had been trapped on the mountain in northwestern Iraq since […]
Monday, December 8, 2014 ISRAEL ACCUSED OF BOMBING SYRIA Syria has officially asked the United Nations to impose sanctions on Israel after accusing the Israeli military of bombing the international airport in Damascus and another target in the countryside near the Syrian capital. “This direct aggression by Israel was carried out to help the terrorists” […]
Tuesday, December 2, 2014 UKRAINE AND REBELS AGREE ON CEASEFIRE Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian rebels have “agreed in principle” on a “total ceasefire” in the eastern region of Luhansk, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe announced. According to the OSCE, heavy weapons will start being withdrawn from the region on Dec. 6. Such […]
After Typhoon Haiyan, the scale of misery in the Philippines is hard to measure. For one mother and father in the hardest hit city, it is infinite.
Does the classification of tropical storms need changing? With sustained winds of 195 miles per hour, and gusts close to 235 mph, the super typhoon Haiyan, which left a trail of destruction in the Philippines and beyond, was the most powerful cyclone to make landfall in recent history. So much so in fact that some […]
Tuesday, October 28, 2014 ISIS SAYS KOBANI BATTLE “NEARLY OVER” In a new video showing captive British journalist John Cantlie, and which The Washington Post calls “bizarre,” ISIS claims that the battle for the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani is “is coming to an end. The Mujahideen are just mopping up now.” The video, made […]
Squalid conditions in the overcrowded slums of the island country force people to look for new shelters.
Domestic workers from the Philippines have faced sexual abuse by their employers in places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan. Now they also accuse Manila’s own embassy employees.