Foreign Exchange Rates | July 28, 2026
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Tuesday, July 28, 2026
FAMILY AS FOUNDATION OF SOCIETY
Article XV of the 1987 Philippine Constitution recognizes the Filipino family as the foundation of the nation, requiring the State to strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its development. It declares marriage an inviolable social institution, protects family rights, and mandates care for children and the elderly.
The family is considered the fundamental unit and bedrock of society, vital for social stability, continuity, and the initial socialization of individuals. It shapes personalities, teaches values like honesty and love, and provides essential emotional and practical support. A strong family unit leads to lower crime, poverty, and higher social solidarity.
Living in the Philippines since 1999 for good, I found out about this. I learned so many things being a part of a Philippine family. I was born in a parish house in Germany but experienced years later how to survive in a broken family.
My Philippine mentor, Hermogenes E. Bacareza, former Chaplain of the Philippine community in Berlin and author of German-Philippine Relations, taught me in 1988: The Christian family is also called to be a sacrament. They are called, like the Church, to be Christ to one another, as well as to the broader community. By becoming what they are called to be, the family lives the sacramental life, and the sacred can bubble up through the ordinary things of everyday life.
What on earth can be more of a sign of God’s grace than the authentic self-giving love of a fully committed married couple whose love for each other brings life and spills out upon their children and with them onto those beyond the family? This, I believe, is the new vision of the Christian family for the 21st century.
Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom.
Families are central to God's plan for His children. They are the fundamental building block of strong societies. Families are where we can feel love and learn how to love others. Life is tough, and we need people we can lean on.
What's the purpose of family? These bonds are important because family helps us get through the most disastrous times and the best times. Family is important because they can offer support and security coupled with unconditional love; they will always look to see and bring out the best in you even if you cannot see it for yourself.
Since residing in the Philippines, I experienced that family is important to Christians because family is about witnessing to the Lord’s faithful love for the Church and for the whole of humanity; family is about making present, in a concrete and daily manner, the reciprocity and beauty of the love that characterises God’s life. Family is a rich school where we learn to be humane and generous, to be patient and steadfast, to be just and merciful, to be faithful and committed, to be together and to connect.
Single parented or mother-father; childless or fertile; in big cities or in the countryside; in harmony or in conflict/domestic violence; in home country or refugees; at peace or at war, married or cohabitating, separated or remarried; healthy or in illness/addiction, free or in prison, in a house or homeless, able or disabled, working locally or away from home, with or without pets; whatever the family… all families are precious in the eyes of God.
EZB enthüllt neue Euro-Banknoten: So wird sich das Bargeld verändern
Zum ersten Mal dürfen Bürgerinnen und Bürger der EU über das Design der neuen Euro-Banknoten abstimmen – mit echten Gesichtern statt imaginären Brücken.
Frankfurt – Zum ersten Mal seit der Einführung des Euro können die europäischen Bürgerinnen und Bürger das Gesicht der künftigen Banknoten wählen. Die Europäische Zentralbank hat die zehn finalen Entwürfe der neuen Euro-Serie vorgestellt und eine öffentliche Konsultation eröffnet, die bis zum 21. September offen bleibt. Die Bürgerinnen und Bürger sollen gemeinsam mit Expertinnen und Experten sowie dem EZB-Rat zur Auswahl des neuen Designs der gemeinsamen Währung beitragen, der ersten Serie, die seit ihrer Einführung im Jahr 2002 vollständig überarbeitet wird.
Content-Partnerschaft
Dieser Artikel von Massimiliano Jattoni Dall’Asén entstand in Kooperation mit Corriere della Sera
„Die Euro-Banknoten sind mehr als ein Zahlungsmittel: Sie gehören zu den greifbarsten Ausdrucksformen Europas. Durch Designs, die Schönheit und Bedeutung verbinden, werden sie unsere gemeinsame Identität stärken“, erklärte die Präsidentin der EZB, Christine Lagarde, bei der Präsentation der zehn finalen Entwürfe am 23. Juli. Die Vorschläge sind das Ergebnis eines internationalen Wettbewerbs, auf den über 1200 Designer aus der gesamten Europäischen Union reagiert haben.
Nach einer ersten Auswahl wurden 25 Grafikerinnen und Grafiker eingeladen, ihre Konzepte weiterzuentwickeln. Eine unabhängige Jury aus 21 Expertinnen und Experten – Fachleute für Grafik, Kommunikation, Neurowissenschaften und Geschichte, benannt von den Zentralbanken des Euro-Raums – wählte anschließend die zehn finalen Vorschläge aus, geordnet nach den beiden von der EZB festgelegten Themen: „Kultur Europas“ und „Flüsse und Vögel“.
Die Veränderung betrifft jedoch nicht nur das grafische Erscheinungsbild, denn mit der neuen Serie verabschiedet sich die EZB von der vor über zwanzig Jahren eingeschlagenen Linie: Nach dieser wurden die Banknoten mit imaginären Brücken, Fenstern und Portalen gestaltet, um zu vermeiden, Monumente oder Symbole eines Mitgliedstaates gegenüber anderen zu bevorzugen.
ALL GOOD INTENTIONS
Sharing valuable information and public service from the No. 1 regional newspaper in Western Visayas. https://lnk.bio/panaynews
WHEN someone says they have “good intentions”, it typically means they mean well or have positive motives behind their actions or words. It suggests that they aim to do something beneficial or kind, even if the outcome does not always align with what they intended.
When working with people, assume good intentions. When listening to them, interpret their words generously. You will occasionally get burned or mistreated by always assuming the best in others, but it is still a far better way to live than assuming the worst.
Many of us begin a new year with resolutions: to get fit, learn a new skill or eat differently. But if we truly want to do these things, why wait for an arbitrary date that marks nothing more significant than a timekeeping convention?
British psychologist Tom Stafford has asked this question, and he is not alone. The answer reveals something important about the psychology of motivation and what popular theories of self-control overlook.
At bedtime, you may intend to get up early and go for a run, but when the alarm sounds, you discover that what you really want is to sleep longer.
As exam day approaches, you may wish you were the kind of person who had spent every afternoon studying, yet on each of those afternoons, you preferred to spend time with friends on social media.
We could view these contradictions as failures of self-control: impulses for immediate pleasure somehow override our long-term interests.
One well-known theory of self-control, proposed by Roy Baumeister of Florida State University, is the “ego-depletion” account. It holds that self-control is like a muscle that can be exhausted in the short term. Thus, every temptation you resist supposedly makes you more likely to yield to the next one, even if that temptation involves something entirely different.
A corollary of the “self-control as a muscle” theory is that willpower can be strengthened through practice over time. Baumeister, for example, found that people instructed to keep their backs straight whenever possible for two weeks demonstrated improved willpower when they returned to the laboratory.
More importantly, however, the theory does not explain why we wait until New Year’s Day to begin exercising self-control. If willpower is a muscle, we should start strengthening it as soon as possible rather than wait for an arbitrary date.
Another explanation may answer this question, although it is not as fashionable as ego depletion. In his book “Breakdown of Will”, George Ainslie presents a theory of the self and self-control that uses game theory to explain why we struggle with our impulses and why our attempts to control them take the forms they do. The blank page of a new calendar creates a clean break between the old and new versions of ourselves — a psychological boundary that may help us keep our resolutions.
To borrow Stafford’s phrasing once more, Ainslie offers an answer to why our resolutions so often begin on January 1. The date is entirely arbitrary, but it draws a clear line between our old and new selves. The theory’s practical lesson is that a resolution should be framed so that, at any moment, it is absolutely clear whether we are keeping it. Such lines may be arbitrary, but they help preserve the truce among our competing interests.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” is a familiar proverb. An alternative version says, “Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.”
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Email: doringklaus@gmail.com, follow me on Facebook or LinkedIn, or visit www.germanexpatinthephilippines.blogspot.com or www.klausdoringsclassicalmusic.blogspot.com./PN
Monday, July 27, 2026
MUCH THE BETTER!
We could spend all year living healthier, more productive lives, so why do we only decide to make the change at the start of the year? Why do we all make (and break) New Year resolutions?
Many of us started with resolutions – to get fit, learn a new skill, eat differently. If we really want to do these things, why did we wait until an arbitrary date which marks nothing more important than a timekeeping convention? British psychologist Tom Stafford asked this. And not only him. The answer tells us something important about the psychology of motivation, and about what popular theories of self-control miss out.
Today is a very cool and rainy day. I am lazy. Not in the mood to do anything. It's even difficult to write this column. But my motivation gets bigger and bigger while writing.
My family and friends found out that what we want isn't really straightforward. At bedtime you might want to get up early and go for a run, but when your alarm goes off you find you actually want a lie-in. When exam day comes around you might want to be the kind of person who spent the afternoons studying, but on each of those afternoons you instead wanted to hang out with your friends. Believe me - I heard it many times from my students.
You could see these contradictions as failures of our self-control: impulses for temporary pleasures manage to somehow override our longer-term interests. One fashionable theory of self-control, proposed by Roy Baumeister at Florida State University, is the 'ego-depletion' account. This theory states that self-control is like a muscle. This means you can exhaust it in the short-term – meaning that every temptation you resist makes it more likely that you'll yield to the next temptation, even if it is a temptation to do something entirely different.
A corollary of the 'like a muscle' theory is that in the long term, you can strengthen your willpower with practice. So, for example, Baumeister found that people who were assigned two weeks of trying to keep their back straight whenever possible showed improved willpower when asked back into the lab.
Another explanation may answer these questions, although it isn't as fashionable as ego-depletion. George Ainslie's book 'Breakdown of Will' puts forward a theory of the self and self-control which uses game theory to explain why we have trouble with our impulses, and why our attempts to control them take the form they do. The virgin page of a new calendar marks a clean break between the old and new you - a psychological boundary that may help you keep your resolutions.
And, so to speak with Tom Stafford again, Ainslie gives us an answer to why our resolutions start mostly on 1st January. The date is completely arbitrary, but it provides a clean line between our old and new selves. The practical upshot of the theory is that if you make a resolution, you should formulate it so that at every point in time it is absolutely clear whether you are sticking to it or not. The clear lines are arbitrary, but they help the truce between our competing interests hold.
'I am feeling better' means you are feeling better than before. It doesn't mean you are completely well or have fully recovered. 'I am feeling much better' means you are feeling a lot better than before. It means you have almost fully recovered.
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