Standstill. Thousands of commuters are stranded after different public-transport groups declared a strike Tuesday in Manila. The transport group demanded a unified traffic-violation ticket system. Right now different local governments issue different violation tickets, which the transport groups claim to be detrimental to them. The strike was called off after President Arroyo herself initiated the crafting of a unified ticketing system. --AP

PRESIDENT Arroyo signed Tuesday the P1.23-trillion national budget for 2008, with two of her economic managers characterizing it as a buffer for a slowdown in the US economy, though they ruled out any immediate decision to forgo the ambitious goal of balancing the budget in order to spur growth.

Acting Socioeconomic Planning chief Augusto Santos said in an interview that the P45-billion stimulus package, which is 5 percent of the 2008 budget, “will help prevent a slowdown in the Philippine economy in the event that the US economy really slows down.”

THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) hit its target for the first two months of the year but the Bureau of Customs (BOC) fell short of its goal, prompting President Arroyo to call for a revenue command conference to pinpoint weak points in BOC collections, Malacañang said Tuesday.

Palace officials said the BIR and the BOC presented their respective progress reports during the Cabinet meeting, where the Chief Executive directed the Department of Finance to convene a revenue command conference “soon” to determine the cause of the shortfall.

HIGH electricity and labor costs are again being pointed to as the culprits for the apparently slower inflow of foreign seed money into the Philippines compared with other neighbor- countries, John D. Forbes, chairman of the legislative committee of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines Inc. (AmCham), said Tuesday.

AN undisclosed amount in foreign-loan proceeds is tiding over the requirements of the national government that, for several months now, has found it difficult to meet its funding needs due to a rival instrument that pays more than any other government securities in existence.

HONG KONG—Every Sunday, from morning till sundown, the only time when their bone-weary frames would find respite from back-breaking toil, thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) fill the skyscraper canyons of Central District for a ritual that could be the envy of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

Here, at Statue Square, in the shadows of Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corp. (HSBC), Bank of America, the Central Government, Office and, not far away, the International Finance Corp.’s two towers, the tallest of them all at 88 floors, the OFWs take part in a contest of singing, poetry reading, declamation and dancing.

THE Stroke Society of the Philippines (SSP) warned Tuesday that illegal-drug use is becoming an “emerging” cause of stroke among Filipinos together with other risk factors already identified like hypertension, diabetes, aging and smoking.

Jose Navarro, SSP vice president, said that shabu or methampethamine hydrochloride can cause stroke because the substance can initiate inflammation of the arteries in the brain.

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT ZONE—The death toll at the Hanjin shipyard has increased with the gruesome deaths of two slingmen employed by a subcontractor of Hanjin Heavy Industries Co. Philippines, a billion-dollar Korean firm located inside the Subic Bay Freeport Zone.

CHINA and the member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) have forged cooperation on projects aimed at complementing their growth as they set a framework of standards to secure and facilitate global trade while gearing toward strengthening their respective small and medium enterprises.

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FILIPINOS from Northern Luzon display their region’s cultural wares—minus the loin cloth, considering Hong Kong’s coldness. --RECTO MERCENE