WRITE TO EMPOWER

I did not come to Fairview, Quezon City, for a vacation. There were no carefully planned itineraries, no sightseeing agenda, and certainly no excitement about checking into a hotel. I was there because my dad was confined at Commonwealth Hospital and Medical Center, and during those difficult days, all I really needed was a place nearby where I could sleep, regroup, and prepare myself for whatever the next day might bring. SotoGrande Neopolitan Hotel turned out to be exactly

For generations, the Himalayas have been described as eternal—immovable walls of rock and ice rising above Nepal and Tibet. But there was nothing eternal about what came crashing down from those mountains this week. On August 26, a massive section of glacier and mountainside collapsed near the Nepal–Tibet border, releasing a violent mixture of ice, water, mud, boulders and other debris into the narrow valleys below. The torrent tore through communities along the Himalayan riv

MANILA — Flooding in the Philippines has become so routine that the images almost arrive with the predictability of the monsoon itself: commuters wading through brown water, stalled vehicles, families carrying children above waist-deep floods, classrooms converted into evacuation centers, and mountains of garbage collecting along waterways. This August has been no exception. Weeks of southwest monsoon rains, repeatedly enhanced by tropical cyclones, have inundated communiti

For months, the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte was treated like another episode in the Philippines’ favorite political teleserye: Marcos versus Duterte, former allies turned enemies, accusations of persecution, loyalty tests, conspiracy theories, and enough political drama to keep Facebook comment sections employed full-time. Then the Senate impeachment trial started doing something considerably less exciting. It began looking at receipts. And that may be where Sa

My father may indeed have been medically stable enough to leave the hospital. I was never insisting that he remain simply because I was frightened to bring him home. I wanted to know what bringing him home would require so we could have the right people, equipment, instructions, and follow-up care ready.

My support for the Philippines’ claim of sovereignty over the West Philippine Sea is not rooted in hostility toward China, nor in the easy excitement of waving a flag whenever another country tests our patience. It comes from a simpler conviction: a nation that refuses to defend what is legally and historically its own eventually teaches others that its boundaries, rights, and dignity are negotiable. For Filipinos, the West Philippine Sea is not an abstract patch of blue disc