Riza Lozada (First of two parts) Overshadowed by the papal visit was the “birth” of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) economic community, a bloc envisioned to be similar to the European Union, and which Philippines officials hope to put the country in equal footing with its neighbors in the association.

Luis Leoncio Underspending in the government remains a spoiler to the Philippines’s economic growth momentum, according to the Philippines Economic Update that the World Bank (WB) released recently as the multilateral lender slashed growth projections this year to 6.5 percent from the previous 6.7 percent.

Alegria A.Imperial / Peregrine Notes Browsing Vanity Fair back in my youth, when nary a shadow of living in Canada hovered on my palm during those lunch-break visits to Aling Cely — Lolit’s, Eileen’s and my personal fortune teller —I , too had fantasized sashaying along snow-paved sidewalks the likes of New York, suffused in the glamour of a fur-trimmed …