A minister and close confidante of British premier Gordon Brown had warned that the current recession is worse than the 1930s Great Depression, while the US Congress passed a US$787bil stimulus package containing a strong protectionist element.

Using even the government’s unrealistically low poverty line, the number of poor Filipinos will likely increase by 4 million this year from 2006, according to research group IBON Foundation.

DECEMBER 2008 (IPS) - As the global financial crisis evolves, more and more migrants will lose their jobs. Because migrants are a key component of the workforce in both developed and developing countries, addressing their plight is a major concern, writes Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Cha-cha proponents argue that removing the Constitution’s nationalist provisions is key to reviving foreign investment flows into the country. Yet this is a weak argument for an effort that is also about Pres. Arroyo’s extension in power beyond 2010.

Amsterdam, 30 January – As corporate CEOs and heads of states gather in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, an international panel of experts on political economy and a wide spectrum of civil society organizations gathered on Friday in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to make heads out of the current global economic crisis and pointed to concrete and radical measures for building an alternative financial and economic system that works for the poor majority and the environment.

Yet another Israeli led and U.S. backed massacre is taking place as the world watches in horror. The western media, is desperately trying to peddle the puny rockets of Hamas as bullying, does journalistic back flips in avoiding the utter carnage brought down by the much more powerful –U.S. made and paid for—Israeli missiles.

Thirty three years after the EDSA I People Power Revolution, hundreds of militant activists from Manila once again held a protest caravan against the revival of Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), a project of the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Church people, environmentalists, scientists, health professionals and women joined the caravan which was organized by the multi-sectoral alliance NO to BNPP Revival.

The employment outlook for the year is grim as the global economic crisis kicks in.

The global economic crisis is expected to lead to a dramatic increase in the number of people joining the ranks of the unemployed, working poor and those in vulnerable employment, the International Labour Office (ILO) warned on Wednesday.

The current deep recession that is expected to lead into a severe depression has began to kick into high gear in the Philippines in the first few weeks of the new year, portending worse things to come for the country’s 36-million strong labor force. Despite the government’s claims at “safeguarding” the workers “amidst the global storm”, the people and the ordinary workers will evidently be made to bear the heaviest blows of the crisis.

“The seriousness of this crisis is such that we cannot expect any solution within the system and certainly not from the US administration, certainly not from the G-20 because within that group, except for a couple of exceptions, is the dominant Washington consensus of the neoliberal agenda, ” said Michel Chossudovsky, a progressive economist and academician. “In the Philippines, this crisis will be extremely severe because it is imposed upon an existing situation…of dependency, lack of sovereignty, crisis of the real economy, and poverty of the large majority of the population.”

CAPE TOWN, Jan 19 (IPS) - Climate change will have a significant impact on southern Africa’s already compromised food security, environmental experts warned at the fifth Alexander von Humboldt International Conference at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa.

The International is hyped as being a relevant film in these times of global financial crisis. It is, after all, a thriller about the nefarious and illegal activities of a multinational bank. Instead of achieving the hoped-for timeliness, however, the film ends up a throwback to seventies-era paranoid thrillers, when the Watergate scandal made audiences deeply suspicious of political and social institutions. Packaged as a thriller, the film downplays the responsibility of financial giants in the current global financial meltdown.

CAP calls on the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Environment to ban the use of polystyrene material for use as food containers. This is in view of the health and environmental effects of polystyrene.

Table 1. NUMBER OF OFWs DISPLACED BY THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS BY COUNTRY October 2008 to January 31, 2009