Walk any city block and you’re moving across layered stories—rivers channeled into pipes, fields paved over, names translated or erased. Urban planning decides whose stories keep shaping the place. If Indigenous Peoples are missing from that table, the city is built on a partial truth—and partial truths make for brittle towns: more conflict, weaker ecosystems, poorer health, and fewer chances to belong. Consulting indigenous communities in urban planning isn’t a courtesy; it’

We don’t mint new human rights lightly. But we should add one now: the right to access capable, safe AI. Around the world, language is the gateway to opportunity; AI is a universal language machine that translates, tutors, summarizes, designs, and reasons across barriers of literacy, disability, and geography. When a technology is this general and transformative, withholding it isn’t neutral—it sorts people into those who can participate fully in education, the economy, civic

This past month, I had the distinct honor of addressing the 12th National Congress of the Association of Special Libraries in the Philippines. The conversation with the dedicated attendees centered on a silent emergency: the rapid disappearance of the world's languages. Each time a language falls silent, it is not merely a mode of communication that is lost. It is a unique window onto the human experience, a library of knowledge, and a pillar of identity that crumbles, leavin

Linguistics is the science of the human mind. Each language is a unique experiment in how to structure thought, perceive time, and relate to the world. We are shutting down these experiments before we even under-stand what they can teach us. The alarming rate of language extinction is not just a cultural tragedy; it is a sci-entific crisis of unparalleled scale, robbing us of the essential data needed to comprehend the full architecture of human cognition.

We understand that when a species goes extinct, we lose a unique thread in the web of life. But we rarely feel the same urgency when a language disappears, even though the loss is just as profound and irreversible. This disconnect is a critical blind spot in our fight for a sustainable planet.

AI promises to “know” everything—but who decides what can be known, and by whom? As a young leader, I am honored to be part of One Young World’s Indigenous Advisory Circle and to work alongside thousands of Indigenous youth who are advancing data sovereignty in our communities. For us, data is not raw material. It carries story, ceremony, and responsibility. When algorithms scrape the internet and call it “open,” they often ingest our culture without consent. The fastest way

Call it an “agricultural amendment.” Read it as a trust‑building instrument. Rabat and Brussels have agreed to amend their farm accord, with provisional application upon signature in Brussels. On paper, it is technocratic—clarifying tariff preferences, harmonizing market access, and updating origin labels. In practice, it is strategic. The deal aligns treatment of products from Morocco’s southern regions with those from the north, with labels such as “Laayoune–Sakia El Hamra”

Spain’s National Day arrives in Manila this October not merely as ceremony, but as a living exchange. The Embassy of Spain, through its Cultural and Education Office and the Instituto Cervantes, is unfurling a month-long tapestry of films, lectures, exhibitions, and design dialogues—proof that the Spain–Philippines relationship is as contemporary as it is historical.

Imagine a library burning down, one that holds the oral histories, poetry, and wisdom of countless generations. This is not a metaphor; it is happening right now, as the world's languages disappear at an alarming rate. With every language that falls silent, we are not merely losing a list of words. We are incinerating a unique chapter of the human story, an irreplaceable archive of culture, memory, and identity that diminishes us all.

We are racing to teach machines to understand human language. But what if the data we're feeding them represents only a tiny fraction of human expression? Our AI future, often portrayed as a pinnacle of intelligence, risks being culturally impoverished and fundamentally biased if we don't act now. The fight to preserve the world’s endangered languages is not a nostalgic look backward; it is an urgent, forward-looking necessity to build a truly intelligent and equitable techno

Telling someone their mother tongue is “backward” or “useless” is an act of cultural violence. The global crisis of language extinction is not a natural phenomenon; it's the direct result of historical oppression and ongoing marginalization. As we champion social justice, we must recognize that the fight for human dignity is inextricably linked to the fight for linguistic rights.

When Alan Turing imagined artificial intelligence, he didn’t picture a finished adult mind striding out of a lab. He proposed “child machines”—modest systems that learn through experience, guidance, and a bit of luck. It’s a humane idea from the century’s sharpest logician: don’t build a genius; raise one.

Alan Turing is remembered as the man who made thinking mechanical—universal machines, halting proofs, crisp bounds on what can and can’t be computed. But read him closely and a different figure appears: a logician who kept leaving the back door ajar for luck. He didn’t worship randomness as magic. He treated it like a tool in the kit—useful whenever tidy procedures ran out of road.

When we imagine a livable city, we often think of efficient transport, vibrant public spaces, and sustainable infrastructure. But we rarely ask a more fundamental question: Is this a city where a child can safely play, learn, and grow? For too long, cities have been designed for cars, commerce, and convenience — not for children. It's time to see cities through a different lens: the eyes of a child.

They tell you the future is here. That soon your brain will be enhanced, your body rebuilt, your life extended. You’ll think faster, live longer, feel less pain. They call it transhumanism, the next step in human evolution. And you—numbed by the comfort of screens and the endless drip of entertainment—believe them...

In the midst of the AI revolution, a paradox defines our era: While technology accelerates beyond imagination, much of our workforce is struggling to keep pace. This dissonance is not a failure of individuals, but a collective oversight in how we prepare for the future. If we continue to advance machines without equally investing in human potential, we risk deepening economic divides and squandering the greatest asset any society has—its people. Artificial intelligence is not

In the long and winding conversation about education reform in the Philippines, much has been said about curriculum, pedagogy, infrastructure, and teacher training. Yet one of the most insidious roots of our educational woes remains largely untouched — our textbooks. These silent authorities in classrooms across the country continue to reproduce a version of history that undermines our identity and reinforces colonial narratives. If we are truly serious about meaningful refor

For centuries, cities have been designed with clear goals in mind: maximize productivity, fortify defense, facilitate trade, and ensure efficiency. The measures used to determine urban success have followed suit: gross domestic product (GDP), real estate values, traffic throughput, and infrastructure investments. These are quantifiable and easy to chart on a graph or balance sheet. Yet, they are remarkably poor at telling us how it feels to live in a city.

Let us begin not with the city, but with the purpose of the city. For everything that exists, exists for the sake of some good. The flute is made for music, the ship for sailing, and the city — the polis — is formed for the good life. Yet modern cities seem to forget this. We build for speed, for capital, for expansion — but rarely for virtue, rarely for happiness in its truest form. If we wish to build happier cities, we must ask not what makes a city large, rich, or efficie

Last month, the International Court of Justice delivered the most consequential legal text on climate change in history, and it could not have come at a more urgent moment for the Philippines. In a unanimous advisory opinion, the Court said in plain language that every State now bears binding obligations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, help each other adapt, and repair the damage already done. These duties flow not only from the Paris Agreement and its predecessors but also