By Rose de la Cruz

It is quite disturbing that 7.5 million Filipinos do not have birth certificates, about half of them children.

There are several implications to this: One, more children are being born in houses by midwives—many of them non-professionals who have honed their skills at administering birth through practice and quite a number of them are not aware that they have to register such births or are too lazy to do so.

Two, the public healthcare system has reached its point of breakdown with more indigent patients not able to get…

Read more: 7.5 million Filipinos don’t have birth certificates

Are we treating our elderly right?

By Rose de la Cruz

Filipinos are widely- known as family-centered and particularly loving and caring of their lolos and lolas, unlike the Westerners who stash their elderly to the care of staff in homes for the aged. In fact, even the young, those in junior and senior high school in Western cultures are being encouraged to leave the safety of their parental homes in favor of independence.

Recent years, however, showed that more Filipinos are adopting the Western practice. They, too, have learned to rid themselves of the responsibility of…

Read more: Are we losing our sense of family?

By Rose de la Cruz

The number of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks rose by a third (32 percent) in the third quarter compared to 30 percent in the previous quarter primarily due to the spike in malicious activity in autumn, according to statistics of (global cybersecurity company) Kaspersky. Of these attacks, 53 percent were done in September alone.

Kaspersky also reported that 60 percent of the attacks that were prevented were conducted against schools and electronic journal sites.

The rise is mostly from simple types of attack while in the previous quarter, the total growth stemmed…

Read more: DDOS attacks rise by a third in Q3

By Rose de la Cruz

So much has been posted on Facebook and Twitter about the ill effects of vaping and the menace posed by vaporized nicotine and other liquefied chemicals to public health.

Yet the users of vapes openly spew artificially- scented smoke in the streets and parking lots, where foot traffic is high and potential unknowing second-hand and third- hand “smokers” could acquire the diseases caused by vaping.

Rep. Bernadette Herrera of Bagong Henerasyon partylist said the "confirmation of the first case of illness directly-attributable to vaping ascertains vaping as a new public…

Read more: Bill against vaping