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Criminal liability means adult responsibility

A caveat: I’m no lawyer. As a writer, I work mainly along the neighborhood of logic. And logic tells me that the bill lowering the age of criminal liability can have unintended consequences. Legal and societal perception as to what a child is according...

Twin blasts at Jolo Cathedral leave 21 dead, dozens wounded

Twenty-one people dead. Ninety-seven injured. That was the toll when two bombs exploded at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo on July 27. The twin explosions occurred about a few minutes apart, survivors said. The first explosion took place inside...

Roel’s Bookshop and the Sealed Letter

One by one, she unpacked the books from the box. It was not more than an hour ago that I arrived at the bookshop. Though it took around two hours of travel from Las Piñas, it is always worth the price I pay—for the...

Lack of psychologists in gov’t hospitals hampers healing of abused children

(First of two parts) Ella (not her real name) was brought to the child protection unit of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) after a jeepney driver raped her when she was five years old. She was abused inside the jeepney where she and her...

A Tarot of Philippine history (Part 2)

The Tarot de Marseilles, the oldest deck in 15th century Italy, slipped into the Philippines in the 18th century, most likely in gamblers’ hands. It didn’t take long to use it for divination. True to its ancient babaylan culture, divination in the Philippines is...

Henry Sy Sr. led the professionalization of SM group

Before the death of Henry Sy Sr., the country’s acknowledged retail king, he made sure that the professionalization of the company he built from the ground up will come into fruition. From the simple beginnings of “Shoe Mart,” Sy populated the country with his...

Random Pickings

Red Is the River that Runs

Blood has a peculiar, coppery taste in the mouth. Carmen smells it first, a familiar metallic tang from rusted iron reminiscent of white sartin...

The bloodhounds and the Rizal Day battle for Combat Outpost No. 8

President Rodrigo Duterte’s three-day visit to South Korea called to mind the sacrifice of Filipino soldiers who fought in the Korean War almost seven...

Science and the supernatural: Filipino folklore through a scientific lens

Even with the rise of science and technology, Filipino folklore is still passed on from generation to generation – including stories of creatures and...

Americana, on his back

My grandfather was shipped out of the Philippines in the 1920s, and landed in Stockton, California—less as a starry-eyed immigrant, and more as imperial...