During the 2024 Global Governance Summit in Manila organized by the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), it was inevitable to have discussions on the grim reality that the Philippines lingers with a pervading risk environment that continues to exacerbate its arduous task towards achieving our dream of becoming a high-level economy by 2046, our centennial year celebrating 100 years of Philippine independence. According to the World Bank, a high level economy is currently pegged at US$14,005. Assuming we average a respectable 6 percent annual growth rate and based on today’s per capita of $4,200, per capita shall hover at $13,500 by 2046 — nominal at that and still stuck at mid-level economic status. This is alarming and embarrassing. More importantly, millions of Filipinos will continue to face poverty, hunger, social inequality and unemployment for an extended amount of time, not to mention the lost opportunities that we as a decent society deserve and pray for. We have to shape up fast. If India and Vietnam have excelled towards 8 percent annual economic growth in 2024, surely we can do the same through long term sustainable growth but not just in traditional manufacturing, tourism, information technology, foreign remittances, trade and investments but quite necessary to act also in highly underdeveloped but extremely high potential industries such as reforestation and responsible mining. Yes, we have to shape up fast not just in a few key industries but across the board! A reflection of industry performance could be traced on our capital markets. According to Dr. Jess Estanislao, our stock market should be more inclusive and must grow considerably, as it transforms itself in line with the further professionalization and modernization of our ASEAN counterparts. The main difference, as our Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) now ranks 5th among the ASEAN in terms of market capitalization, is the sheer number of listed companies stuck at less than 300. Further to this, the market capitalization of top publicly-listed Philippine companies far outweigh the rest of the bourse. Unlike our ASEAN neighbors, the stock exchanges are truly representative of a true market rather than a boutique list of players that seemingly pervades the PSE. Fortunately, the PSE is constantly upgrading and its management has identified its priorities. Let us support our beloved PSE in our joint aspirations for a more formidable Philippine stock exchange. As of November 2024, the total market capitalization of the PSE hovers around US$340 billion (CEIC), representing a modest share of the global market. This figure pales in comparison to traditional Asian powerhouses like Japan, with over US$6 trillion in market capitalization, and emerging markets such as India, with over US$3.5 trillion. The gap is widening. There have been conclusions that it is just too expensive to list, thus making this quite restrictive. Further to this would be the avoidance of the responsibility and costs involved for full disclosures — a short term investment no doubt, however, quite necessary to consider for long term strategic plans for enterprises, particularly as part of a conglomerate design for corporate sustainability. Another contributing factor is the concentration of family-owned businesses in the Philippines, many of which are dissuaded by public listing due to concerns over transparency and the costs of compliance... but that would be another full article by itself. Looking ahead To bridge the gap with global standards, the Philippines must prioritize reforms that promote inclusivity, resilience and sustainability. Key focus areas include: Expanding market participation: Encouraging more companies to go public through incentives and capacity-building programs for SMEs. Enhancing regulatory enforcement: Strengthening the capacity of regulators to monitor compliance and impose sanctions for violations. Integrating strategic governance and sustainability principles: Supporting businesses and organizations in adopting frameworks through the highest levels of excellence in good governance practices. Promoting diversity, equality and inclusiveness: Addressing imbalances in corporate leadership to align with global trends of inclusivity. Digital transformation: Leveraging technology to improve transparency, streamline compliance processes, and enhance stakeholder engagement. Until then..Preview: Stevenage vs. Bristol Rovers - prediction, team news, lineups
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee running back Dylan Sampson is heading to the NFL draft after leading the Southeastern Conference in rushing and setting a handful of school records. The SEC Offensive Player of the Year announced on social media his intention Friday to leave after his junior season. He helped the seventh-ranked Vols go 10-3 with a first-round loss in the College Football Playoff where Sampson was limited by an injured hamstring. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.
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WASHINGTON — Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Sunday. He was 100. A Democrat, he served as president from January 1977 to January 1981 after defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in the 1976 U.S. election. Carter was swept from office four years later in an electoral landslide as voters embraced Republican challenger Ronald Reagan, the former actor and California governor. Carter lived longer after his term in office than any other U.S. president. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a better former president than he was a president -- a status he readily acknowledged. His one-term presidency was marked by the highs of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, bringing some stability to the Middle East. But it was dogged by an economy in recession, persistent unpopularity and the embarrassment of the Iran hostage crisis that consumed his final 444 days in office. In recent years, Carter had experienced several health issues including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain. Carter decided to receive hospice care in February 2023 instead of undergoing additional medical intervention. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at age 96. He looked frail when he attended her memorial service and funeral in a wheelchair. Carter left office profoundly unpopular but worked energetically for decades on humanitarian causes. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." Carter had been a centrist as governor of Georgia with populist tendencies when he moved into the White House as the 39th U.S. president. He was a Washington outsider at a time when America was still reeling from the Watergate scandal that led Republican Richard Nixon to resign as president in 1974 and elevated Ford from vice president. "I'm Jimmy Carter and I'm running for president. I will never lie to you," Carter promised with an ear-to-ear smile. Asked to assess his presidency, Carter said in a 1991 documentary: "The biggest failure we had was a political failure. I never was able to convince the American people that I was a forceful and strong leader." Despite his difficulties in office, Carter had few rivals for accomplishments as a former president. He gained global acclaim as a tireless human rights advocate, a voice for the disenfranchised and a leader in the fight against hunger and poverty, winning the respect that eluded him in the White House. Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts to promote human rights and resolve conflicts around the world, from Ethiopia and Eritrea to Bosnia and Haiti. His Carter Center in Atlanta sent international election-monitoring delegations to polls around the world. A Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher since his teens, Carter brought a strong sense of morality to the presidency, speaking openly about his religious faith. He also sought to take some pomp out of an increasingly imperial presidency - walking, rather than riding in a limousine, in his 1977 inauguration parade. The Middle East was the focus of Carter's foreign policy. The 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, based on the 1978 Camp David Accords, ended a state of war between the two neighbors. Carter brought Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland for talks. Later, as the accords seemed to be unraveling, Carter saved the day by flying to Cairo and Jerusalem for personal shuttle diplomacy. The treaty provided for Israeli withdrawal from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the establishment of diplomatic relations. Begin and Sadat each won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. By the 1980 election, the overriding issues were double-digit inflation, interest rates that exceeded 20% and soaring gas prices, as well as the Iran hostage crisis that brought humiliation to America. These issues marred Carter's presidency and undermined his chances of winning a second term. On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionaries devoted to Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seized the Americans present and demanded the return of the ousted shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was backed by the United States and was being treated in a U.S. hospital. The American public initially rallied behind Carter. But his support faded in April 1980 when a commando raid failed to rescue the hostages, with eight U.S. soldiers killed in an aircraft accident in the Iranian desert. Carter's final ignominy was that Iran held the 52 hostages until minutes after Reagan took his oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981, to replace Carter, then released the planes carrying them to freedom. In another crisis, Carter protested the former Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also asked the U.S. Senate to defer consideration of a major nuclear arms accord with Moscow. Unswayed, the Soviets remained in Afghanistan for a decade. Carter won narrow Senate approval in 1978 of a treaty to transfer the Panama Canal to the control of Panama despite critics who argued the waterway was vital to American security. He also completed negotiations on full U.S. ties with China. Carter created two new U.S. Cabinet departments -- education and energy. Amid high gas prices, he said America's "energy crisis" was "the moral equivalent of war" and urged the country to embrace conservation. "Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth," he told Americans in 1977. In 1979, Carter delivered what became known as his "malaise" speech to the nation, although he never used that word. "After listening to the American people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America," he said in his televised address. "The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America." As president, the strait-laced Carter was embarrassed by the behavior of his hard-drinking younger brother, Billy Carter, who had boasted: "I got a red neck, white socks, and Blue Ribbon beer." Jimmy Carter withstood a challenge from Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination but was politically diminished heading into his general election battle against a vigorous Republican adversary. Reagan, the conservative who projected an image of strength, kept Carter off balance during their debates before the November 1980 election. Reagan dismissively told Carter, "There you go again," when the Republican challenger felt the president had misrepresented Reagan's views during one debate. Carter lost the 1980 election to Reagan, who won 44 of the 50 states and amassed an Electoral College landslide. James Earl Carter Jr. was born on Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, one of four children of a farmer and shopkeeper. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, served in the nuclear submarine program and left to manage the family peanut farming business. He married his wife, Rosalynn, in 1946, a union he called "the most important thing in my life." They had three sons and a daughter. Carter became a millionaire, a Georgia state legislator and Georgia's governor from 1971 to 1975. He mounted an underdog bid for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, and out-hustled his rivals for the right to face Ford in the general election. With Walter Mondale as his vice presidential running mate, Carter was given a boost by a major Ford gaffe during one of their debates. Ford said that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration," despite decades of just such domination. Carter edged Ford in the election, even though Ford actually won more states -- 27 to Carter's 23. Not all of Carter's post-presidential work was appreciated. Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both Republicans, were said to have been displeased by Carter's freelance diplomacy in Iraq and elsewhere. In 2004, Carter called the Iraq war launched in 2003 by the younger Bush one of the most "gross and damaging mistakes our nation ever made." He called George W. Bush's administration "the worst in history" and said Vice President Dick Cheney was "a disaster for our country." In 2019, Carter questioned Republican Donald Trump's legitimacy as president, saying "he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf." Trump responded by calling Carter "a terrible president." Carter also made trips to communist North Korea. A 1994 visit defused a nuclear crisis, as President Kim Il Sung agreed to freeze his nuclear program in exchange for resumed dialog with the United States. That led to a deal in which North Korea, in return for aid, promised not to restart its nuclear reactor or reprocess the plant's spent fuel. But Carter irked Democratic President Bill Clinton's administration by announcing the deal with North Korea's leader without first checking with Washington. In 2010, Carter won the release of an American sentenced to eight years hard labor for illegally entering North Korea. Carter wrote more than two dozen books, ranging from a presidential memoir to a children's book and poetry, as well as works about religious faith and diplomacy. His book "Faith: A Journey for All," was published in 2018.Trump promises to end birthright citizenship: What is it and could he do it?
LOS ANGELES — In an effort to fight the sexual exploitation of children, federal authorities will teach Los Angeles Unified School District students, staff and parents how to stay safe online. A memorandum of understanding between the nation's second-largest school district, the U.S. Attorney's Office and Homeland Security Investigations was announced Friday. HSI Los Angeles special agents, primarily from the Child Exploitation Investigations Group, will offer the so-called iGuardian trainings, which aim to educate participants about the dangers of online sexual predators and instruct them how to avoid and report abuse. The in-person training program will focus mainly on preteens and teenagers but can be tailored to younger children, as well as staff and parents, officials said in a news release . The program is part of a national campaign by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to raise awareness about online child sexual exploitation, which the agency calls a "rapidly escalating threat." That effort also stems from a long-running U.S. Department of Justice initiative that seeks to combat technology-facilitated sex crimes against children. ©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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If there’s anything more trying than the heat-and-dust of the Indian election campaign trail, it is the final hours of nominations closing for any poll. Party managers handle scores of documents, notarised affidavits, B-forms, and supporting documents to be submitted in grubby government offices before the deadline, while other troubleshooters work behind the scenes to convince rebels and smaller candidates to withdraw. Even by these standards, the run-up to the Maharashtra elections was extraordinarily chaotic as both jumbo alliances — the Mahayuti and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — struggled to keep a handle of 40-plus rebels on each side, and work out internal seat share pacts. Even by 5pm on November 4, the last date of withdrawal of nomination, the contours of the electoral battle were not clear. But in that disarray, there was one clear front-runner that managed rebels, focussed on building a disciplined campaign, and working on plugging weaknesses — the Mahayuti. As MVA leaders squabbled in public and struggled to put together an emotive campaign, the Mahayuti worked on neutralising factors such as Maratha anger (which hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party in Marathwada in the Lok Sabha elections) and Dalit dissonance (which buoyed the Congress in Vidarbha). Both from Delhi and Mumbai, the focus was on smart alliance management, which is key in an election where six major and around 20 smaller outfits were in the fray. Leaders such as Bhupender Yadav broke the state down into safe and swing seats, apportioning resources and leaders to maximise the catchment area. In India’s second-most populous state, grassroots campaigning is important given the breadth of the province and the disparate regions that have distinct identities and issues. Mahayuti’s superior handle on the campaign logistics meant that each of the three members — the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) — focussed on their individual constituencies and regions and did not allow some contradictory statements to disrupt a coherent campaign. As the campaign progressed, the Mahayuti fine-tuned its using surveys, reaching out to every constituent and community possible, painstakingly turning groups that voted adversely four months ago into allies. The ideological backbone of the campaign was provided by the grassroots army of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which fanned across the length and breadth of the state and helped carry the ruling combine’s message to every home. In the MVA, the picture was the opposite. In a repeat of the Haryana fiasco, the Congress and its allies took far too long to get off the blocks, complacent in their Lok Sabha victory (the MVA had won 30 of the state’s 48 seats, compared to the Mahayuti’s 17). But hidden in that performance was the kernel of a more competitive fight. Just like in Haryana, the NDA had done far better assembly segment wise than what the headline Lok Sabha numbers suggested. Even as Mahayuti leaders hit the campaign trail, MVA leaders struggled to tide over rebels and hammer out an internal seat pact — the delay damaging the momentum gained by the combine this summer. The MVA also dithered on candidate selection and on building an emotive campaign, focussing on questions such as the future of the Constitution that were beyond their sell-by date and had stopped generating the kind of emotive response they had in the Lok Sabha. Too much time was spent on discussing who a possible chief minister could be than on reversing the Mahayuti’s rapid regaining of ground across the state. Even when it found itself outgunned by the resource-rich opponent, the MVA failed to make the campaign emotive or effectively utilise its senior leadership. At no point in the campaign could it generate the kind of viral moment that could boost its flagging march — akin to the photograph of an elderly Sharad Pawar addressing a rally alone in the rain that galvanised supporters and pushed the united NCP past 50 in the 2019 assembly elections. Its manifesto promises, too, came late in the day. The result was a complete reversal of the Lok Sabha show. Not only did the Mahayuti reverse its losses, it also managed to expand its vote share by around eight percentage points from this summer, to 51%; the BJP posted its best-ever performance in the state, bettering its breakthrough show in 2014, and its two major partners both trounced their regional rivals — and decisively. In the contrasting styles and eventual fates of the two campaigns was the story of a historic victory, one that has the potential to change the vocabulary of Maharashtra politics.
