Heart-wrenching. A Burmese refugee begs for alms on the Thai-Myanmar friendship bridge near the border between the two Asean member-countries. An average of 1,000 people cross the border illegally every day, trying to escape the hard life and oppression they experience inside Myanmar from the ruling military junta. The junta has been forced to let in more foreign aid workers after the United Nations warned that stalling on the foreign offers of rescue and relief for more than a million Burmese affected by a cyclone will make it liable for the massive humanitarian debacle. --VJ VILLAFRANCA

BUSINESS groups have quietly alerted Malacañang Palace to an open-ended congressional inquiry that they consider a risk to their operations because it is forcing the Department of Finance (DOF) to release its sensitive database on the operations of companies applying for tax credits.

While Congress has the power to require an Executive office to submit records and pertinent documents when Congress performs policymaking and oversight functions, the demand by Rep. Arnulfo Fuentebella for the DOF’s One-Stop Shop (OSS) Tax Credit and Duty Drawback Center to release to his office its entire database could jeopardize the welfare of private businesses, according to highly reliable sources.

“MORE to come.” That’s the grim message of oil companies, even after increasing diesel and kerosene prices by P1.50 per liter and gasoline by P1 per liter over the weekend.

“If we could just increase prices by P3/liter over the weekend, [it] would  sort of help us accelerate [efforts to] recoup our underrecoveries,” an oil-industry source said, by way of indirectly justifying the latest price hikes by noting that these covered just half of what they needed to get back.

LARGE power users, particularly industries, would soon be given the power of choice to select their power supplier, with President Arroyo certifying the Philippine Independent Power Producers Association’s (Pippa) petition for interim open access as priority resolution for the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).

Ernesto Pantangco, president of Pippa, told a press conference Friday interim open access will not, however, immediately bring down rates but would do so in the long term.

DESCRIBING its efforts as simply meant to help bring down prices of electricity within the franchise area of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) revealed it is now thoroughly reviewing the contracts entered into by the country’s largest power distributor.

“Our goal is to eventually lower power rates by as much as P2 per kilowatt-hour [kWh] to P3/kWh, and this can be done by reviewing Meralco’s contracts with its independent power producers [IPPs],” said the GSIS spokesperson, lawyer Estrellita Elamparo, in an interview at the weekend.

THE first waves of Filipinos who went abroad to work are growing older, and the National Statistics Office (NSO), interpreting its survey data, said the large role of these workers in propping up the economy is now devolving to the younger batches between 25 and 29 years old.

NSO data showed active overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) during the period April to September last year numbered 1.75 million, an increase of 15 percent over the estimated 1.52 million in the same period in 2006.

CONSUMER group TXTPower has urged the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) to work together and find a way to refund consumers for the text- messaging fees imposed by mobile- phone firms.

In a statement, TXTPower said it supports a call by Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza and several members of Congress who want to abolish the SMS (short message service) fees, currently pegged at P1 each.

THE government Sunday pledged to help make up for time lost in terms of relief efforts to Burma, through a 30-member medical team that will leave Monday to bring medical relief and goods to disaster victims there.

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‘Olympinoy’ Springboard diver Sheila Mae Perez of the Beijing Olympics Philippine Team is presented a Windows Vista-loaded Lenovo Y410 notebook PC by Lenovo Philippines’ retailer Raymond de los Reyes and country manager Michael Ngan at their Concept Store in the SM Mall of Asia. China-based Lenovo, a major sponsor and equipment provider for the Olympics, and Microsoft have teamed up for the “Olympinoy” campaign to support Filipino athletes. Aspects of the campaign include Torch displays at several Lenovo Concept Stores and a pot which will serve as a gold-medal incentive, funded by every purchase of any Microsoft OEM license product. --LEON MEDADO