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A BOY waits
for health checkups at a hospital in Hong Kong on
Monday. Worried Hong Kong parents took their children
for health checkups on Monday after the government
announced over the weekend a three-year-old local girl
who drank contaminated Chinese milk was diagnosed with a
kidney stone. The tainted milk laced with the industrial
chemical melamine had previously affected only children
in mainland China, where it has sickened nearly 53,000
children and was blamed in the death of four.
--AP |
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TOP STORIES |
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Loan policies start to tighten |
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PHILIPPINE
banks are asking themselves where they are most vulnerable
to the ongoing financial turmoil, and have started to
tighten their loan policies—no matter that their collective
exposure to soured mortgage debts in the US is but a
fraction of their total capital. |
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Metrobank seeks action vs
Lehman subsidiaries |
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THE
Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. (Metrobank) is seeking legal
action against the two subsidiaries of failed US investment
house Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to prevent claimants
from swamping the firms and thus hindering the payment of
the P2.4 billion the firms owe Metrobank. |
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AIG Philam affirms nonexposure
status to Lehman |
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AIG Philam
Savings Bank Inc., an affiliate of Philippine American Life
Insurance Co., (Philamlife) on Monday said the bank does not
have any exposure to the US investment-banking firm Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc. |
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Banks’ hedging contracts eased impact of crisis |
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PHILIPPINE
banks that invested in soured mortgage debts of Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc. and other US financial institutions
that failed have made up for their weakness with hedge bets,
regulators said on Monday. |
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‘The Economist’ sees growth
only 4.3% |
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THE economic
outlook for the Philippines is deteriorating, with growth
forecast to fall from 7.2 percent in 2007 to 4.3 percent
this year. The latest group to issue a very sober outlook
for Philippine growth is The Economist, even as it qualified
such pessimism with the view that in the longer term, a
number of Philippine industries could lift growth to more
exciting levels. |
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Foreign chambers endorse
competitive bidding in BOT |
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THE question
was, would more investments pour in if competitive bidding
is included in the provisions of the build-operate-transfer
(BOT) law? The answer came loud and clear from foreign
business—“Yes”—and with that they threw their full support
to the move of Congress to amend the BOT law. |
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Local dairy firms allay worries
over tainted milk |
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THE rising
cases of milk-poisoning incidents in baby-powder formula in
China have prompted two of the country’s largest companies
in the food business to assure the market their products are
safe. |
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Tampinco new Napocor chief
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MALACAÑANG
announced on Monday the appointment of Power Sector Assets
and Liabilities Management Corp. (Psalm) vice president
Froilan Tampinco as the new president and chief executive of
the National Power Corp. (Napocor), replacing Cyril del
Callar, who resigned. |
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RP sailors held by Somali
pirates now 97 |
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WITH 17 more
Filipino crew men of a hijacked cargo vessel in the waters
off Somalia seized by pirates at the weekend, nearly a
hundred have been seized within the short space of a month
by sea plunderers who continue to operate with seeming
impunity. |
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CA
upholds NTC order vs CATV |
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THE Court of
Appeals (CA) has affirmed the order of the National
Telecommunications Commission (NTC) compelling the
Lopez-owned Central CATV Inc., a member of the SkyCable
group of cable-television companies, to comply with its
obligations to carry free-to-air (FTA) TV stations in their
proper channel assignments. |
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2
passenger boats in Cebu get entangled |
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TWO
passenger vessels got entangled at the Cebu International
Port in Cebu City on Monday when a passenger liner
maneuvering out toward Mactan Channel hit another that was
docked at the time. |
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Latest review raises Galoc reserves data |
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AN
independent review of the Galoc oil field after development
drilling and well testing has updated the reserves
certification to a material uplift across all three
categories of reserves—proved, probable and possible. |
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Soon
transformed.
A par t of Al bay’s BacMan (Bacon-Manito) geothermal
energy facility sits, aging and waiting for the
P20-billion expansion program by Energy Development
Corp., recently acquired by t he Lopez group of
companies. BacMan is a 25,000-hectare geothermal-energy
reservation developed by Philippine National Oil Co.
into a major power-producing field over the past two
decades. --DANNY
CALLEJA |
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