BY STAFF REPORTER

PRESIDENT Gloria MacapagalArroyo of the Philippines has claimed that she will address episcopal concerns about hunger and violence in the second half of her term of office.
In her State of the Nation address last week, Ms Arroyo told officials and guests that her administration would focus on fighting poverty and hunger and generating foreign investments.
"It is my wish that the Philippines be among the ranks of developed nations in 20 years," Ms Arroyo said. "By then poverty shall have been marginalised and the [formerly] marginalised raised to a robust middle class." The president, whose term ends in 2010, said her administration would work to counter poverty and hunger through infrastructure and other projects focused in underdeveloped regions, such as Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
Hours before Arroyo spoke, Bishop Dinualdo Gutierrez of Marbel told the Asian church news agency UCA News that the government urgently must address the hunger problem.
Bishop Gutierrez, chairman of the Philippine bishops' social justice and peace commission, said Ms Arroyo's administration "has done something" to address poverty, such as setting up government-funded stores in communities that sell basic goods and rice at cost. However, government programmes must aspire to develop more permanent food security, the bishop said. A survey of the Social Weather Stations, a private research group, estimated recently that nearly 15 per cent of the country's families experience hunger.
Bishop Gutierrez said Congress also must prevent moves to open the country to foreign mining corporations, as well as create laws to stop extrajudicial killings and reform the electoral process. The human rights group ICarapatan reported that, as of July 7, 885 people had been killed and 183 had been abducted since Ms Arroyo became president in 2001. Many victims belonged to Leftist groups that accuse the state of resorting to killings and abductions to silence critics and suspected sympathisers of the Communist Party. About 5,000 members of Leftist groups rallied with human rights advocates, including priests and other religious, outside the House of Representatives as Ms Arroyo delivered her address.
Ms Arroyo said she wants to "fight against lawless violenceby asking Congress to enact laws enabling a proper state response to political violence.
Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon echoed the Church's concern about the killings and poverty in the country.