Manila - A Filipino broadcast journalist was killed Monday in the southern Philippines in the sixth deadly attack against the media in the country this year, police said.

Aresio Padrigao, a commentator for local radio station DXRS, was shot to death by gunmen aboard a motorcycle in Gingoog town in Misamis Oriental province, 795 kilometres south of Manila.

Padrigao, a known critic of local government officials in Misamis Oriental, had just brought his child to school when the assailants attacked him.

Manila - Senior bishops of the influential Philippine Roman Catholic Church on Friday warned that a proposed law that aims to curb the country's runaway population growth would be a threat to life and family.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) urged legislators not to pass the Reproductive Health bill without fixing "fatal flaws" that make it unacceptable.

Manila - Philippine economic managers on Wednesday cut domestic growth forecasts for this year and 2009 amid grim prospects of recession in some of the world's largest economies.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008 was forecast to grow only between 4.1 per cent and 4.8 per cent, down from the government's earlier target of 5.5 per cent to 6.4 per cent.

Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya said GDP growth next year was expected to average between 3.7 per cent and 4.7 per cent, from the previous forecast of 6.1 per cent to 7.1 per cent.

Manila - An official of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Wednesday urged South-East Asian countries to prepare programmes to mitigate the negative impact of the global financial crisis on food security.

Purushottan Mudbhary, chief of the Policy Assistance Branch of the FAO regional office, said food supply would not be a problem as production was expected to be "quite good" for the rest of the year and 2009.

But he warned that "the problem is the access."

Manila - More than half of Filipinos distrust Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo amid unresolved political and economic controversies, a survey showed on Wednesday.

According to an October poll by Pulse Asia Inc, 51 per cent of 1,200 respondents nationwide have "small or no trust" in Arroyo, who has been struggling with low ratings for the past three years.

Only 24 per cent have "big trust" on Arroyo, while the rest were undecided, Pulse Asia said.

The distrust rating was down from 57 per cent in October 2007 and 53 per cent in March 2008. The rating was the same in July 2008.