Mariejo Ramos

After the body of 25-year-old Filipino fisherman Sam Dela Cruz was returned to his shipmates after his sudden death in Somalia, they carried his body, wrapped in a blanket, into the ship's freezer to take him home to his family.

One fisherman "got water and a cloth to clean Sam's face," said Gilbert, another Filipino on the ship who used a pseudonym due to concerns for his safety. "Then we all just cried."

From staffing to screening and treatment, the sharp decline in donor funding marked by the swift dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) this year has led to severe disruptions in tuberculosis services in high-burden countries, a new report shows.

According to the Global Tuberculosis Report 2025 published this month by the World Health Organization, the funding cuts affected many national TB programmes in low- and middle-income countries that were dependent upon both USAID bilateral support and grants from the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

When a Chinese tourist in Pattaya murdered a trans woman in April, the LGBTQ+ community in Thailand called the incident a hate crime.

But Thai law doesn't include the designation hate crime, leaving accountability for bias-motivated violence elusive in the Southeast Asian country.

Record numbers of women use modern contraception worldwide, but experts at the world's largest family planning conference warned aid cuts could reverse gains in reproductive health and restrict access to birth control in low and middle-income countries.

Family Planning 2030, a global partnership for advancing access to reproductive health services, said in a report this week that a decade of hard-won gains in reproductive health could be undone after the United States, which once covered 41% of global family planning budgets, largely stopped its funding.

Living in the riverside village of Sipat in the Philippines, Josephine Dela Cruz watches the soil erode with every storm, haunted by the fear that one day the ground will wash away completely and take her family with it.

One night this summer, heavy rains toppled trees and knocked down a bamboo stilt house in their settlement in Bulacan, a densely populated province north of Manila, she said.

Melissa thought her financial troubles would disappear with just a few clicks in a Philippines online lending app that promised "fast cash".

Without access to loans from traditional banks to pay her bills, the working student tried an app last month and received money in a number of loans that were instantly approved.

The Philippines is a global leader in nickel mining - crucial if the world is ever to switch to clean energy - but it's an industry that comes with a heavy environmental cost.

Scientists say extracting minerals poses a grave threat to vast swathes of forests and the Filipinos who depend on them, raising questions about the land's long-term survival and how to restore all the felled trees.   

Blue carbon - a magic ingredient found in mangroves and salt marshes - is worth billions as a natural shield for nations that are most vulnerable to floods, storms and climate change.

But those same countries are struggling to unlock funds to protect their natural marine and coastal defences, leaving millions at risk of the deadly fallout from climate change.

Home to several endemic species like the endangered Philippine pangolin, the province of Palawan has faced threats to its biodiversity for decades from illegal wildlife trafficking to deforestation.

Now the island's forests and communities are vulnerable to mining for its nickel, with the Philippines ramping up operations to meet global demand for metals and minerals to support the green energy transition.

Before helping fellow gamblers quit the roulette wheel or forgo the glory of a Royal Flush, Filipino Reagan Praferosa fought his own addiction - a passion that almost cost him his life.

Enthralled by the “big-shot identity” that came with early casino victories in Las Vegas and later in Manila, Praferosa went on to lose 50 million pesos ($873,515) in seven years.