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By RONALYN V. OLEA
Elke Bacalso was abducted on September 8. He is not even an activist, but he is the son of a former political detainee and he campaigned for Kabataan Party-list during the recent elections.
By MARYA SALAMAT
In the short-term, this may close the gap in air transport service that a strike in the Philippine flag carrier would create, but at the expense of sabotaging the demands of Filipino workers.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Her labor case took seven years before the DOLE issued a decision saying Wheng Hidalgo is supposed to be treated as regular employee at ABS-CBN. But instead of gaining job security, Hidalgo was moved around from graveyard to late afternoon shift, and later terminated for rejecting the company's insulting, long-delayed regularization offer. “I cannot understand why...I gave ABS-CBN my service, love, loyalty,” Hidalgo said.
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
"The farm workers of Hacienda Luisita had been through so many referendums already. All of these were merely used by the Cojuangco family to deceive the farm workers and keep the land." – Lito Bais United Luisita Workers Union acting chairperson.
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
and MARYA SALAMAT
Medardo “Ka Roda” Roda, a towering presence in the struggle for the just treatment of transport workers and of the marginalized sectors for more than three decades, is unarguably the most famous and most well-loved transport leader this country has ever had. He inspires the younger progressive transport leaders and stymies the yellow transport leaders into ignominy by comparison.
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO, MARYA SALAMAT and ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
After playing tough against the Luisita SDO during the first oral argument, the SC justices seemed to have "retreated" during the second hearing, forming a mediation panel for a "happy compromise." The peasants' desire for actual distribution of land, which the peasants say is no longer negotiable, should have been clear by now.
Alexander Martin Remollino, who died from an illness on Sept. 3, was a journalist, poet and activist who devoted the best years of his life to serving the Filipino people.
“The president cannot feign neutrality in this issue, for his silence and inaction will mean an implicit endorsement of the unjust compromise deal orchestrated by Cojuangco-owned HLI,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a statement.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Highlights in Wednesday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court: Why farmers' shares of stocks were diluted, why new workers who were not party to the SDO in 1989 were given new shares, why shares were distributed within 15 years and not within three years as the law required, why the estate should not have been fragmented, why PARC’s revocation order is not a violation of the Bill of Rights, and why HLI’s failure to get DAR's "compliance certificate" could put SDO in trouble. 
Watch Bulatlat's video primer on the SDO | Read more about the SDO
The violence that marred the strike of plantation and milling workers of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16 was bound to happen and government authorities may have to account for it.
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
and MARYA SALAMAT
A study on abortion in the Philippines argues that the government has committed violations of human rights by criminalizing abortion regardless of circumstance. Another study, done by Gabriela, finds that abortion is increasingly becoming acceptable to Filipinos.
In the Philippines, there is today an alarming trend on incidences of abortion that, because these are forced to be done clandestinely, have also often been unsafe.
After the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council ordered the revocation of the SDO in Hacienda Luisita, the farmer beneficiaries launched what they call a "bungkalan" or the cultivation of idle Luisita land. It was both a political statement and a matter of survival for the farm workers who were facing extreme poverty in the hacienda owned by President Benigno S. Aquino III and his family. Farmers who participated swear that their lives improved after the "bungkalan." 
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By RONALYN V. OLEA
Ulwu chairman Lito Bais said the financial package from Hacienda Luisita management was meant to lure farm workers into the compromise-agreement bait. “They exploited the poverty of the farm workers and used money to deceive them,” he said. Bais also accused the Cojuangco-Aquinos of "hoodwinking" farm workers of hundreds of millions from earlier land deals.
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Kicked out of farmers' groups and the workers’ union in Hacienda Luisita, the two key signatories in the compromise agreement supposedly representing the farmer beneficiaries have a history of betrayal against the farm workers and collaboration with the Cojuangco-Aquinos.
Luisita Farmers Endure Harassment
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Jobert Pahilga, lawyer of the farm workers’ group Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Hacienda Luisita (Ambala), enumerates some of the provisions of the compromise agreement that are inimical to the interest of the farm workers.
By MARYA SALAMAT
Weeks before the management of Hacienda Luisita announced the signing of the controversial “compromise agreement” with farm workers, the villages in and around the sugar plantation owned by President Benigno S. Aquino III and his family were subjected to militarization, the kind that sowed fear among the residents, particularly those opposed to the stock distribution option. Video Sidebar: Military Tries to Intimidate Luisita Farmers
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