Half-day work, classes on Holy Wednesday

To reap the benefits of amicable relations with both China and the U.S., as the Philippines and many of its counterparts across Southeast Asia seek to do, says Anna Malindog-Uy, a geopolitical analyst at the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute in Manila, the Philippines must “prevent at all costs the possibility of becoming a pawn of any superpower to encircle another superpower.”