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New Year’s resolutions
MAKING New Year’s resolutions is a fairly widespread custom, presumably due to the needs of the human psyche. Humans are self-conscious beings. People reflect on events, look back at the past, and evaluate themselves. Invariably people decide to make changes for the better.
EO 474 spreads the red carpet for foreign investors
OPEN-minded experts in power-generation and energy-resource, both in government and private sectors, see it as the most sensible and compelling development towards reinvigorating the apparently lackluster energy program of government.
The year of the dog
REFORMS, transformation, truth, peace, and prosperity were the messages of the notables in the Year of the Dog. They were the same messages that hogged the headlines in the other years: Monkey, pig, rat, name it.
Dividing Luisita
SHORTLY after former President Corazon Aquino, whose family owns the Hacienda Luisita, broke off from the administration, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council decided to revoke the hacienda’s corporate structure, thereby forcing it to divide the land among the worker-stockholders.
1 second added to world’s time
WASHINGTON — Clocks may measure time, but this year, astronomy won out.
81st Birth Anniversary of Iglesia Ni Cristo’s Executive Minister Eraño G. Manalo
FROM 12 pioneering believers in 1914, the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC) flock grew to 270,104 members, according to the 1960 Census. Then after Executive Minister Eraño "Ka Erdy" G. Manalo took over the helm of INC, the membership increased to 475,407, according to the 1970 Census. Today, the Iglesia Ni Cristo is well-established in 75 countries and territories worldwide, including Rome. This phenomenal growth of the INC, notwithstanding all possible hostilities, persecutions, and obstacles, was achieved through the leadership of Ka Erdy and the dedication of ministers and laymen zealous in spreading INC’s teachings.
South Asia’s free trade pact
NEW DELHI — The landmark South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) agreement, which holds the promise of boosting commerce and trade in one of the world’s poorest regions, came into effect Sunday.
Calls for peace amid New Year fireworks
NEW YORK —
Revelers around the world rang in the New Year with the usual fireworks and fanfare accompanied by calls for peace from the US and Iraqi presidents.
In New York’s Times Square, hundreds of thousands crowded amid tight security and special tributes to those who brought relief to the hurricane-devastated city of New Orleans.
Braving freezing temperatures and sleet, close to one million people crammed into the “crossroads of the world” for the traditional centerpiece of New Year celebrations across the United States.
The square erupted in song, cheers and a cloud of confetti after the crowd counted down the last seconds of the year watching the traditional crystal ball make its midnight descent to illuminate the giant numerals 2006.
In New Orleans itself, crowds gathered in the historic French Quarter to bid farewell to a tragic year in which more than 1,000 people were killed in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The once-flooded city, known before the hurricane assault as a party town, marked the end of the year with traditional jazz funeral processions to remember the victims.
But people were also celebrating, drinking in the streets of the devastated city. Residents and, police said, a surprising number of tourists flocked to the French Quarter for a concert and fireworks over the Mississippi River.
Storms in California forced the cancellation of a street party in Los Angeles at which pop stars the Black Eyed Peas were to perform. In the San Francisco area, thousands of people were evacuated to shelters due to mudslides and floods.
Security was tight for festivities in major cities worldwide, with 25,000 police and paramilitary gendarmes on duty in France amid fears of a repeat of the urban violence seen in towns and cities nationwide last month.
However, despite the torching of some 320 cars nationwide, and 266 arrests. police reported no serious outbreaks of unrest, and 500,000 revelers welcomed the arrival of 2006 in Paris’s most famous avenue, the Champs-Elysees, according to police.
Street parties and glittering displays marked the festivities from Sydney to London, with crowds packing the banks of the River Thames to see the 10-minute blaze of fireworks focused on the London Eye, the city’s landmark ferris wheel, lit up in the colors of the five Olympic rings to celebrate London being awarded the 2012 Games.
The festivities also gave Londoners a chance to put the deadly July 7 terror attacks on the capital’s transport network in the past.
“We will not let our resolve slip to tackle the dangers we face, both at home, as so tragically illustrated on July 7, and abroad,” Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his New Year message.
Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated in subzero temperatures around Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, while thousands braved the cold and the numerous police controls to see in the New Year in Moscow’s Red Square.
US President George W. Bush announced his resolutions for the year ahead of the celebrations there: to work for peace and prosperity and, in the short term, to watch a bit of American college football.
In Baghdad, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said he hoped a new government of national unity would help improve public services and defeat the insurgency in 2006.
“Problems of lack of security, electricity and water persist and I hope they will be areas of priority for the new government, which we hope will be one of national unity,” Talabani said on Iraqi television.
In Israel, young people were determined to celebrate the New Year despite the disapproval of religious authorities who regard it as a Christian festival and a nationwide alert after a truce by Palestinian militant groups expired.
Israeli television and public radio reported 50 security alerts, about 10 of them concrete, about attacks being plotted by Palestinian armed groups to mark the holidays.
Two Palestinians were killed in the evening by Israeli fire in the northern Gaza Strip.
Flamboyant celebrating was not on the agenda in Lebanon, still living in the shadow of the latest assassination of an anti-Syrian political figure, the newspaper director Gibran Tueni.
Earlier in Sydney, 1,700 police patrolled the streets and beaches to prevent a possible repeat of suburban race riots there earlier this month.
Sydney’s landmark Opera House was illuminated at midnight by the most spectacular pyrotechnical display ever seen in Australia’s largest city.
Australia has 900 troops in Iraq and the government has warned repeatedly of militant attacks on home soil, but about one million people turned out in one of the first cities to leave 2005 and its violence behind.
In Beijing, bells and drums were sounded 108 times at midnight (1600 GMT) to mark an auspicious start to the year, signifying the elimination of worldly troubles in accordance with Buddhist tradition.
Authorities in Indonesia — already on high alert for possible attacks by Islamic extremists during the New Year period — fanned out in restive Central Sulawesi province after a bombing in a crowded market Saturday left eight dead.
The festive mood across much of the region contrasted with last year, when prayer vigils and fundraising events replaced jubilant blow-out bashes in the wake of the devastating December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. (AFP)
2006 another year to hope
DURING the holidays we have a certain way of living that gets to be excessive and we are buried to the neck in "shoulds.’’ We should be nice to everyone and show them our love. We should not be eating too much and we should be spending more time exercising to shake off the excess calories. In fact, New Year’s resolutions are really the "shoulds’’ in our lives that we hope to carry out in the new year.
A shared mission on child diversion
I AM glad to see all of you here today, the second day of your three-day seminar-workshop. I was not able to join you yesterday because I had a meeting with some PAO officials at the Central Office.
John the Baptist’s testimony to himself
THIS is the testimony of John. When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites [to him] to ask him, "Who are you?" he admitted and did not deny it, but admitted, "I am not the Messiah." So they asked him, "What are you then? Are you Elijah?" And he said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No." So they said to him, "Who are you, so we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself?" He said: "I am ‘the voice of One crying out in the desert, "Make straight the way of the Lord,’" As Isaiah the prophet said." Some Pharisees were also sent. They asked him, "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah or Elijah or the Prophet?" John answered them, "I baptize with water, but there is One among you whom you do not recognize, the One who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie." This happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
John the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus
John 1:29-34
Police polluters
LAST year’s most shocking news image was that of a group of policemen, somewhere in Bulacan, polluting an already murky river, while hapless citizens watched rather indifferently. The uniformed men had just confiscated firecrackers stuffed in cardboard boxes and yellow plastic bags, which looked pretty ordinary to me; none resembled the deafening "cinturon ni judas" or the sinister "crying cow," nothing came close to the "big lolo." But the police officers insisted the pyrotechnics were the oversized, forbidden types sold clandestinely under sidewalk stalls and store counters. With righteousness and a dash of drama, they threw the confiscated hoard into that brown, syrupy river in Bulacan. Evidently, the act was more symbolic than punitive. Stretching one’s imagination a bit, it could be considered didactic; teaching with the use of concrete examples for the benefit of millions of televiewers. The head of the police contingent gave a pep talk before he threw the firecracker booty into one of our waterways.
Breaking away from our gloom
POLITICAL stability and national recovery are the only ways by which we can break away from the gloom that hovers about the country but our leaders must act more decisively or we are in danger of being totally left out and defeated.
Time’s pick for Persons of the Year
THIS year Time magazine’s choice for "Man of the Year’’ is, in this instance, Persons of the Year, an unlikely trio of philanthropists – Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, chosen for tackling world health, through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which is today the largest foundation in the world, and the Irish rock star Bono, leader of the world’s most successful rock band U-2, for his advocacy for the poor.
Shambhala warriorship
NO Resolution has been made by me for new year’s 2006. I just read a book as my resolution entitled "SACRED WORLD (The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery, and Power)," authored in 1998 by Jeremy and Karen Hayward, who were the first Tibetan Buddhist teachers in America and founders of the Naropa Institute. They illuminate the powerful and elegant philosophy behind warriorship with practical guidelines, meditations, personal insights, and mindfulness exercises to guide the reader on the warrior’s path, which ultimately leads to self-liberation and harmony with the world. Their Shambhala warriorship teaching calls on personal energies for transformation, showing how to use all situations to unite mind, body, and emotions in harmonious whole.
The unhappy years
SINCE Independence 1946, we have shouted 60 times for a happy and prosperous New Year. From Independence 1898, the shouting or rejoicing has reached 108 times.
The reawakening
AN auspicious augury for the new year is Malacañang’s announcement that it’s withdrawing its puerile proposal for a "government of national unity" as it realized that "rabid detractors" have refused to bite the bait.
2006, a critical turning-point year
MIXED predictions notwithstanding, the fact is that 2006 is a critical turning point for the Philippine Republic which calls for strategic and bold decisions that will define not only the fate of the Arroyo administration but also the destiny and future of the nation.
A New Year’s message
CEBU Archbishop Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal called on politicians to set aside their vested interests and work for the common good.
Cha-cha or samba?
UFO sighted in Zamboanga! The advance for our liberation is here.
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