CENTRAL Pangasinan, including low-lying areas like Calasiao and Dagupan City, recently endured a debilitating flood that persisted for at least 10 days, resulting in millions of pesos in property damage and livelihood losses. Local authorities have identified the severe siltation and degradation of the province’s river systems as the primary…

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will deliver his 4th State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 28, in the aftermath of widespread flooding across Luzon and its neighboring islands in the southwest, as well as fresh from his trip last week to the United States, where he met with…

MORE congressmen and senators have filed separate bills seeking to completely ban online gambling. It’s about time. However, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he is inclined to support a plan by the Department of Finance (DOF) to impose new taxes on online gambling operators, provided the measure would be thoroughly studied…

A new dawn is clearly in the offing. We have been receiving news reports on good governance in towns and cities that are initiatives of both reelected and newly elected mayors with visions. These are not programs worth millions of pesos, but programs that exemplify how political will alone can…

ON July 5, 1956, PUNCH founder-editor Ermin Erfe Garcia, decided to publish a pocket-sized weekly community newspaper with contributions from some close friends. He believed that newspaper readers would find it more convenient to be updated with local news that could be folded to fit a man’s back pocket. (Nobody…

EVERY time the country finishes a regular or midterm elections, all local government candidates who won look forward to the day when they can speak with confidence about the new dawn that awaits all. There would generally be expectations about another three years pregnant with possibilities, innovations, and ambitions under…

NOW that an impressive defense panel for Vice President Sara Duterte has been formed, the varied voices of dissent as to how the Senate handled the scheduling of the impeachment trial is beginning to die down. There is no more doubt in anybody’s mind that the trial will proceed on…

GIANT “white and black smoke” again soared high off the coasts of Bolinao, Bani, and Agno, one after the other, as fishermen hauled off an estimated P8 billion worth of shabu off the sea. While it was not the first time for such a supply to be fished out from…

THE recent appointment of then PMaj Gen. Nicolas Torre as Chief PNP was met initially with mixed reactions from politicians, depending on their affiliations: with Marcos Jr. or the Dutertes. But it was the early endorsement of newly-elected Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former Chief PNP and a no-nonsense police official…

IS there no magnanimity, decency, or benevolence or honor between and among our local politicians after the elections? Is there nothing more that our young can learn from our elder politicians, that after all the fun distributions of ayuda, obvious exchanges of black propaganda in social media that they can…