NEW DELHI, May 15 (PNA/Bernama) -- India has revealed that it has destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile, keeping its promise to the international community to completely eliminate its weapons by March this year. The IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) reported that India informed the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that it had destroyed its stockpile on March 26, fulfilling its obligation to the arms control agreement.

MANILA, May 15 -- The Commission on Elections (Comelec) resumed on Friday the opening of the bids for the 2010 poll computerization project after granting on Wednesday the motions for reconsideration filed by four automation companies. Atty. Ferdinand Rafanan, head of the Comelec's Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC), said they would try to finish the deliberations on the eligibility documents so that they can proceed immediately with the technical and financial documentations.

UNITED NATIONS, May 15  -- A new global agreement on climate change will be difficult to reach, but still achievable at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, the head of the UN's climate change body said on Thursday. "Things really are becoming very urgent," with only 200 days left before the meeting, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters at the UN Headquarters in New York.

SORSOGON CITY, May 15 (PNA) - Certain provisions of the Local Government Code of 1991 have been breached and thousands of poor families here would be groping in the dark. This developed amidst non-receipt for the past 11 months of their royalty shares by the city and eight barangays that play host to a giant geothermal energy facility being operated by the Energy Development Corporation (EDC).

Naga City (May 11) - With the existing global financial crisis nowadays, the government found a way to mitigate its impact to our country through our very own nurses. The fact that more and more nurses migrate each year for higher salaries and more job opportunities also leads to the fact that many nursing graduates here in the Philippines remain to be either underemployed or unemployed. The government has come up with a project, the Nurse Assigned in Rural Areas (NARS),

NAGA CITY --- Everyone here heaved a sigh of relief after the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) based in Alabang, Muntinlupa City informed Naga City Mayor Jesse M. Robredo and City Health Officer Vito 'Butch' Borja Tuesday night that the medical examination and laboratory test conducted on the 4-year old child suspected to have acquired the dreaded Influenza A(HiN1) proved negative.

NEW YORK, May 16 -- Crude prices retreated on Friday on the weak outlook for global energy demand. The International Energy Agency forecast the global oil demand would hit a 28-year low this year, saying optimism about an economic recovery was not reviving appetite for energy.

LEGAZPI CITY -- DENTAL AND MEDICAL Missions including relief distribution and engineering works are being conducted by units of the Philippine Army in the typhoon-stricken locality and surrounding villages of Hubo, Magallanes in Sorsogon province, where 18 people had died and scores of dwellings lost in destructive landslides.

When I was a child I felt that it takes nothing to grow older to gain true freedom. I thought it was only a matter of age when I would be in the state of making decisions of my own. One day, when already adult, I would no longer obey to what is not mine. I would break free, would be independent in my thinking, in my judging, in my values and norms, in my decisions and in my doing. One day I would be free!

Last March, we wrote about the Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo's "confidential expenses" worth Php1,420,500.00 of taxpayers' money, after Vox Bikol columnist Che Carpio subjected to scrutiny the city government's proud claim of transparency in its operations. Carpio had taken to task the city government's claim of transparency by tracking down a Commission on Audit report for 2007 which declared the existence of such an expense of the city mayor.