The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business

It was a revealing moment of genuine inspiration. So moved by the tears of an abandoned child, who broke down and could not finish her prepared welcome speech, an emotional Pope Francis told an audience of youth on Sunday the world must “learn how to cry” over the plight of the millions of poor, hungry, homeless and abused children.

He just couldn’t help it—the endless blaming game. While Pope Francis listened intently on his earphones, minutes away from delivering his first speech during his five-day apostolic visit, President Aquino went hammer and thongs at unnamed members of the clergy—“once advocates of the poor, the marginalized and the helpless,” he said, but whom he accused of silence allegedly during the …

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 …

Ed Javier / Where I Stand What better way to start the year than to eagerly await the arrival of Pope Francis?

Edmund Tayao / Mettle Works Almost two years into Pope Francis’s papacy, we have seen how the Catholic Church can be vibrant, forward-looking and ennobling. We have seen it first hand, as he visited us, the biggest Catholic nation in Asia. Many will remember not only the rousing experience of their fleeting encounter with this people’s Pope but more so, …

LAS VEGAS—Floyd Mayweather Jr. wants a fight with Manny Pacquiao more than ever, a top Showtime executive said Thursday, and negotiations continue to make the long anticipated bout a reality on May 2.

(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from the sports book “Years of Glory,” a history of Philippine basketball, and the National Five’s seven Olympic stints between 1936 and 1972, written by veteran sportswriters Noel Albano and Ignacio Dee. It will be released in June this year.) (Last of two parts)

The HiLux accounted for almost a quarter of that number to be the nation’s third best selling vehicle behind the Corolla and Mazda3. Hyundai has finally revealed the first tangible evidence of its intention to enter the same market segment as Toyota’s HiLux.