BusinessMirror July 07, 2024

ADVENTURES IN ‘FREEDOMLAND’

By Joel C. Paredes

THE son of the “founder” of disputed Philippine islands and atolls in the Spratlys says his father did not discover the territory, but he was the first to declare a sovereign claim and call it “Freedomland.”

According

ning a commercial fishing boat when he and his men accidentally landed on one of the Spratly is

lands near Itu Aba Island to seek shelter from a storm in October 1947. The elder Cloma immediately decided to set his claim on the unchartered territory and planted a Philippine flag. That move, he said, prompted the Philippines to initially assert its sovereignty since Filemon and his elder brother Tomas later proclaimed a micronation that covered the Spratly within Philippine waters off the South China Sea, now known as the West Philippine Sea. Right after the incident, Filemon sailed back to the fishport town of Navotas to brief Tomas on the unclaimed islands since they were business partners in the Visayan Fishing Company.

According to Ramir, his uncle never set foot on the Spratly, but he became the de facto “chief of state” of the micronation, which the brothers named the “Free Territory of Freedomland.”

“I don’t want to diminish neither of their role, but each person

has its own role. Tomas was the general and my father was the soldier,” he said.

A cursed micronation

PROTECTIVE of his elder brother, Filemon never encouraged him to sail to the Spratlys, according to Ramir. Filemon documented their claim through photos and movie reels, which were destroyed during the fire that gutted Filemon’s residence in Sampaloc, he said.

“This is how audacious they were. Tomas even granted citizenship [to certain people], believe it or

of China eventually also restated its own claim.

Five days later, two Taiwanese ships intercepted Filemon Cloma’s vessel during an expedition near North Danger Reef and invited him, his chief engineer and other crew members on board the Taiwanese naval vessel Tai He for a conference.

After burning the building and confiscating property on one of the disputed islands,they then forced Filemon to

and acknowledge ROC’s jurisdiction over the Spratly islands.

The martial law factor WHEN President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. declared martial law in 1972, Filemon and Tomas were ordered arrested to pressure them to waive their claim. “Tomas was a lawyer who passed the Bar a year before Marcos in 1940 so it was not impossible that they knew each other,” Ramir said.

is the second largest of the naturally occurring islands in the Spratly Islands archipelago. It lies about 500 km west of Puerto Princesa, Palawan. AP/AARON FAVILA

Tomas Cloma UP NCPAG

The questions about Joe Biden’s age and fitness are reminiscent of another campaign: Reagan’s in 1984

By Laurie Kellman | The Associated Press

THE age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. President Ronald Reagan answered it with a pledge to resign if he became impaired, and later with a clever joke that reset his campaign from a stumbling debate performance to a 49-state landslide and a second term.

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan said to the question he knew was coming in perhaps the most famous micdrop moment in campaign history. “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The audience roared, even Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale laughed—and Reagan’s reelection was back on track.

Today, Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, is struggling for such a redemptive moment after a disastrous debate performance against Republican former president Donald Trump, 78. Those 90 minutes set off alarms among Democrats hoping Biden would keep Trump from returning to the

White House—and heightened concern among voters long skeptical of how either elderly man would govern a complex nation of more than 330 million people for four more years.

More than two dozen people who have spent time with the president privately described him as often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused, they said. Sometimes he doesn’t grasp the finer points of policy details. He occasionally forgets people’s names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room, they said. Biden has vowed to stay in the

race, despite signs of eroding support on Capitol Hill.

“I am running…no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call Wednesday with staffers from his reelection campaign. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

But the question facing him is far more intimate, according to one expert who covered Reagan’s health during his presidency.

“The most important debate of the campaign is the one taking place right now in Joe Biden’s head between the part of mind telling him he’s the chosen one, and the more self-aware part,” said Rich Jaroslavsky of the University of California Berkeley, formerly of the Wall Street Journal

A nation ever more accustomed to dealing with aging AT its heart, the question—how old is too old to be president?—is about competence. And Americans have never had wider personal experience with the effects of aging than they do today.

A surge of retiring baby boomers means that millions more Americans know when they see someone declining. For many, this widespread experience made Biden’s halting performance during Thursday’s debate a familiar reality check.

Trump seemed more vigorous, even though he lied about or misstated a long list of facts. When he challenged Biden to a cognitive test, Trump flubbed the name of the doctor who had administered his. For now, he’s ceding the spotlight.

“Is this an episode, or is this a condition?” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., 84, wondered on MSNBC, reflecting the question dominating Democratic circles this week. “It’s legitimate—of both candidates.”

Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected as the oldest president to that point. In 1980, at 69, he pledged to resign if he sensed serious cognitive decline while in office.

“If I were president and had any feeling at all that my capabilities had been reduced before a second term came, I would walk away,” he told the New York Times on June 10, 1980. “By the same token, I would step down also.”

That didn’t happen. Reagan served two full terms, leaving office in 1989. He announced in 1994

that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 2004.

Neither Trump nor Biden has made a similar pledge, and their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

For Reagan, the age issue faded in his first term as any health questions focused on his recovery from a nearly fatal assassination attempt in 1981. He seemed headed for an easy reelection. And debates seemed natural settings for the smooth-talking former Hollywood actor. But his performance in the first showdown with Mondale in the 1984 campaign brought the age issue roaring back.

The president, then 73, rambled and hesitated. He seemed to lose his train of thought at one point, and appeared tired at others. No one had seen him perform publicly in such a way, recalled Jaroslovsky, who co-authored a story headlined: “New Question in Race: Is Oldest US President Now Showing His Age?”

Important differences between 1984 and 2024 REAGAN’S age—really, his fitness for a second term—was now indelibly part of the 1984 race, a striking parallel to what is happening in 2024 in the aftermath of Biden’s shaky debate performance. But there are key differences. Reagan was leading going into the first debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually tied. Onstage, “Biden was terrible out of the gate,” said Jaroslovsky, the founder of the Online News Association.

Then, as now, Jaroslovsky said, the embattled president’s supporters provided vigorous spin.

Reagan’s operation said he had been tired. There was sniping about the staff overpreparing him, Jaroslovsky said. Biden’s team cited fatigue from two overseas trips that had exhausted even younger staffers. It was a bad night, they said. Blame flew at the president’s aides.

Democrats on Capitol Hill griped that Biden’s performance had damaged their chances at the polls. And press critics asserted that reporters had failed to hold the president and his staff to account.

By Tuesday, pressure was building on Biden to withdraw from the race and open a difficult process for Democrats to nominate someone else. The crisis rippled across the Democratic Party just over six weeks before its convention in Chicago. It’s not clear that Biden and Trump will debate a second time.

Reagan’s moment in 1984 came during the second debate at the 33 minute-mark, when The (Baltimore) Sun’s Henry Trewhitt said: “You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.” Here, Reagan squared his feet and suppressed a smile. He was ready. Trewhitt noted that President John F. Kennedy (the youngest American elected president) got hardly any sleep during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan said. Later, he declared, “I am in charge.”

Tomas was jailed for four months on charges that he was “impersonating a military officer by being called an ‘admiral’.”

Filemon, on the other hand, was released on the intercession of some friends in the guerrilla movement who were still active in the military service at that time. A law student, Filemon decided to join the US Army shortly before World War II broke out and then joined the guerrilla movement in Mindanao when they were driven out of Corregidor for four years.

After the war, Filemon was commissioned as a naval officer under the US Sea Lift Command. In 1961, Filemon was named Veteran of the Year by the Philippine Legion. Meanwhile, Ramir also noted that during the years that the Clomas were aggressive in asserting their claim, Tomas had befriended Mr. Marcos’s predecessors. His fellow Boholano, former President Carlos P. Garcia, and President Diosdado Macapagal were his golfing buddies in Wack Wack.

Given the geopolitics at that time, the late President Ramon Magsaysay tried to pacify Tomas over his claim since relations between the Philippines and Taiwan had become fragile, and “you need allies rather than enemies.”

Despite silence from the Clomas, Ramir said nothing was abandoned by both his family and the

Philippine government. In the meantime, the military reportedly started building a military base. As early as 1971, garrisons were already being established on three of the islands.

Destined to be doomed?

IN 1973, Tomas attempted to organize his own expedition to the disputed islands but was asked to turn back by the Philippine Navy. He was accompanied by his younger brother George, who acted as the navigator, being a seafarer himself.

Tomas Cloma and the Supreme Council of Freedomland then drafted a new constitution, declaring the country to be a principality and encouraging its colonization.

In August, he changed the name of the country from Freedomland to Colonia and retired as titular head of state.

In 1974, Tomas was arrested again and forced to sign a document to convey to the Philippines whatever rights he might have had in the territory for one peso.

Ramir, now a Canada-based retired maritime captain, said his father died a “happy man” at the age of 60 in 1979, a year after Mr. Marcos officially declared Freedomland as part of the Philippines.

Filemon Cloma, he said, eventually became a successful businessman and his last venture was a manning company deploying Filipino workers to Saudi Arabia and international commercial vessels.

It was on June 11, 1978, that Mr. Marcos issued a decree officially incorporating the Kalayaan Island Group, which covered the area claimed by Freedomland or Colonia St. John, into its national territory as the Municipality of Kalayaan.

Tomas Cloma passed away on September 18, 1996, his 92nd birthday. By that time, the elder Cloma had expanded the Philippine Maritime College, which he founded to be the nation’s largest in maritime education.

In 2012, the Philippines sought adjudication of its territorial dispute with China at the International Court of Arbitration. This time, Manila asserted a 200-mile territorial claim as an exclusive economic zone under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos). The arbitration court ruled on July 12, 2016, that China has no historic title over the waters of South China Sea and has breached the Philippines’ sovereignty rights with its action. Beijing, however, dismissed the case as a farce.

Often described as “adventurers,” the Cloma brothers and their claim to Freedomland may not be doomed after all.

Now recognized as a legitimate Philippine claim, it is in the Philippine interest to protect the disputed territory, not just because of its geographical proximity, but since two Filipinos once dared to lay an original claim to it in the not-so-distant past.

PRESIDENT Ronald Reagan and his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale shake hands before debating in Kansas City, Missouri, October 22, 1984. The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. AP/RON EDMONDS

Editor: Angel R. Calso

Supreme Court term reflects conservative victories, Trump’s reshaping of the bench

By Mark Sherman & Lindsay Whitehurst

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON—Donald Trump and the conservative interests that helped him reshape the Supreme Court got most of what they wanted this term, from substantial help for Trump’s political and legal prospects to sharp blows against the administrative state they revile.

The decisions reflected a deep and sometimes bitter divide on a court in which conservatives, including three justices appointed by Trump, have a two-to-one advantage over liberals, and seem likely to reinforce the views of most Americans that ideology, rather than a neutral application of the law, drives the outcome of the court’s biggest cases.

The justices also contended with ethics controversies that led to the adoption of the court’s first code of conduct, though one with no means of enforcement. Months later came public statements from Justice Samuel Alito rejecting calls that he step aside from several cases over questions of his impartiality, including following the revelations that two flags associated with rioters who attacked the US Capitol flew over Alito’s homes in New Jersey and Virginia.

Chief Justice John Roberts, often viewed with suspicion by Trump and his allies over his concerns about judicial independence and worries about the court’s reputation, delivered the most consequential decisions. Those include the court’s grant of broad immunity from criminal prosecution to former presidents and its reversal of a 40-year-old case that had been used thousands of times to uphold federal regulations.

“He’s got competing inclinations. One is to be the statesman and institutionalist,” University of California at Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen said. The other, Hasen said, is to dig in “when it is something that is important enough to him.” Presidential power is one of those issues for Roberts, who worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Reagan administration.

The end of the court’s term marked a remarkable reversal of fortunes for Trump as he seeks a second term as president.

Six months ago, he was readying for a criminal trial in early March in Washington on charges of election interference following his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020 and he was in danger of being kicked off the presidential ballot in several states.

In the court’s final decision issued Monday, the justices handed him an indefinite trial delay and narrowed the election interference case against him. Last week, they separately limited the use of an obstruction charge he faces that should give him even more legal arguments, months after the court restored Trump to the presidential ballot.

Each of the three cases stemmed from Trump’s actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election, culminating in the attack on the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. But Roberts’ opinions offered only dry accounts of the events of January 6, insisting the court “can not afford to fixate...on present exigencies.”

The court also overturned the Chevron decision, stripped the SEC of a major fraud-fighting tool and opened the door to repeated, broad challenges to regulations that, in combination with the end of Chevron, could lead to what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson described as a “tsunami of lawsuits.” The demise of Chevron marked the third straight year that conservatives explicitly or effectively got rid of major, decadesold court precedents. Two years ago, Roe v. Wade fell. Last year, it was affirmative action in higher education.

The Trump and regulatory cases seem to point in different directions about the power of the executive branch, said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University.

“On the one hand, the court is making it much harder for the government to act through administrative agencies but,

The World

Global markets on alert for Biden exit as Trump-win trades mount

By Sydney Maki

THE red-hot Washington debate over whether President Joe Biden will scrap his run for re-election is spilling into Wall Street, where traders are shifting money to and from the dollar, Treasuries and other assets that would be impacted by Donald Trump’s return to office.

The recalibration of portfolios kicked off at the end of last week after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump heightened concerns the 81-year-old Democrat is too old to serve another term. The trading action afterward was most acute in the bond market, where yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries jumped as much as 20 basis points across the following days.

With speculation now mounting rapidly that Biden could drop out of the race— betting markets see less than a 50 percent chance he remains a candidate—investors are hastily making contingency plans to react to such an announcement during Thursday’s Fourth of July holiday and the subsequent weekend.

One fund manager, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the topic, said he was heading into the vacation stretch biased toward the dollar and short-term debt as hedges against the spike in risk he reckoned would be sparked by a Biden withdrawal. No president has opted against seeking a second term since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and the election is just four months away.

“Markets have already been repricing election odds since the debate, so the news over the past 24 hours has really only added fuel to the fire,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities in New York.

The consensus among traders and strategists is a re-election of Trump, a 78-year-old Republican, would spur trades that benefit from an inflationary mix of looser fiscal policy and greater protectionism: A strong dollar, higher US bond yields and gains in bank, health and energy stocks.

Even some 10,000 miles away, in Sydney, they’re bracing. Rodrigo Catril, a strategist at National Australia Bank, said “everyone” is preparing trading plans in case Biden ends his campaign.

“Either way, the market is betting on Trump winning the election,” said Catril. “It seems Democrats are stuck with very difficult choices, none of them easy, and none of them likely to yield a better outcome.”

Here’s how the so-called Trump trade is materializing across markets:

Dollar’s signal THE dollar gave one of the earliest signals as to how markets would adjust to a potential Trump victory, gaining in the hours after last week’s debate. While the greenback has gotten a boost this year from the Federal Reserve’s indications that it intends to keep interest rates for higher longer, the currency got a clear bump in real-time as Trump dominated the faceoff with Biden.

“A Trump victory raises the prospect of higher inflation and a stronger dollar, given his promise of more tariffs, and a tougher stance on immigration,” said JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists led by Joyce Chang. Potential losers in the face of a rising dollar and Trump’s expected support for tariffs include the Mexican peso and Chinese yuan.

Yield-curve trade

IN the aftermath of the debate, money managers in the $27 trillion Treasury market reacted by buying shorter-maturity notes and selling longer-term ones—a wager known as a steepener trade.

A slew of Wall Street strategists have touted the strategy, including Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc, urging clients to prepare for sticky inflation and higher long-maturity yields in another Trump term.

In a two-day span starting late last week, 10-year yields rose by about 13 basis points relative to 2-year rates, in the sharpest curve steepening since October.

Signs of traders bracing for near-term volatility in the Treasury market emerged Wednesday, through a buyer of a so-called strangle structure, which benefits from a move higher or lower in futures through the strike prices. Along with potential risk over the holiday weekend around Biden’s candidacy, the expiry also incorporates Friday’s US jobs data and testimony next week from Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Stocks gain

THE prospect of a Trump victory has supported myriad stocks that stand to benefit from his perceived stances on the regulatory environment, mergers and trade relations. The broad market has powered higher in the wake of the debate.

The turn in the electoral tide since last week has “meant higher stocks as Republicans are generally viewed as more business friendly,” said Tom Essaye, president and founder of Sevens Report.

Health insurers UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc. and banks stand to benefit from looser regulations. Discover Financial Services and Capital One Financial Corp. are among credit card companies that have risen on optimism over Trump, given that pair’s pending deal and speculation around possible changes to late fee rules.

Energy stocks like Occidental Petroleum Corp. rose after the debate, given the former president is seen as having a pro-oil stance. Private prison stocks like GEO Group Inc. have reacted to his perceived tough-onimmigration views.

The recalibration of portfolios kicked off at the end of last week after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump heightened concerns the 81-year-old Democrat is too old to serve another term. The trading action afterward was most acute in the bond market, where yields on benchmark 10-year Treasuries jumped as much as 20 basis points across the following days.

Financials ETFs T HE exchange-traded fund market has shown one clear investing strategy of late: Long banks on bets that Trump will spur deregulation and a steeper Treasury curve thanks to his potentially inflationary agenda.

The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (ticker XLF), a $40 billion fund, last week saw its largest inflow in more than two months, with investors adding roughly $540 million. So far this week, they’ve added $611 million amid the latest gyrations in the interestrate market.

Meanwhile, a thematic-investing strategy designed to ride the Trump trade has struggled to gain traction. An ETF that sports the eye-catching ticker MAGA and invests in Republican-friendly stocks has been slow to garner assets and hasn’t seen any material inflows this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Asian impact ASIA’S markets aren’t immune to the speculation either, with US-China tensions simmering and tariffs in play.

Trump has floated slapping 60 percent tariffs on imports from China and 10 per -

cent duties on those from the rest of the world as he campaigns for a second term.

“The re-election of Mr. Trump should be a negative factor for China equities as Mr. Trump supports the idea of imposing substantially higher tariffs on US imports from China,” said Tomo Kinoshita, global market strategist at Invesco Asset Management Japan. “In that regard, Japanese stocks with high exposure to Chinese market are likely to be hurt if Mr. Trump wins.”

Crypto support

TRUMP has shown support for the crypto industry in recent weeks by meeting with industry executives and promising he would ensure all future Bitcoin mining is done in the US.

That makes the Solana token—the fifthlargest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of about $67 billion, according to CoinMarketCap—one potential beneficiary of a Trump return to the White House. Asset managers VanEck and 21Shares have filed for ETFs that would directly invest in the digital currency.

While many consider approval a long shot, the thinking among some market participants is that a newly re-elected Trump would appoint a Securities and Exchange Commission chair who is more cryptofriendly than Gary Gensler has been under Biden. That’s an outcome that would make a Solana ETF—and a corresponding rally in the token—more likely.

The prospect of a shakeup to the Democratic ticket is also likely to boost Bitcoin, according to Stephane Ouellette, chief executive of FRNT Financial.

“The crazier that the US political system looks, the better that Bitcoin looks,” Ouellette said “This is the kind of vibe that Bitcoin would go for. Craziness in the US political system is a pro-Bitcoin factor.” With assistance from Jan-Patrick Barnert, Natalia Kniazhevich, Ruth Carson, Bre Bradham, Nazmul

and Anya Andrianova.

Ahasan, Winnie Hsu, Carter Johnson, Vildana Hajric, Liz Capo McCormick, Ye Xie, Emily Nicolle, Katie Greifeld, Edward Bolingbroke

PRESIDENT Joe Biden speaks during a presidential debate hosted by CNN with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. AP/GERALD HERBERT

Sizzling sidewalks, unshaded playgrounds pose risk for surface burns over searing Southwest summer

By Anita Snow The Associated Press

PHOENIX—Ron Falk lost his right leg, had extensive skin grafting on the left one and is still recovering a year after collapsing on the searing asphalt outside a Phoenix convenience store where he stopped for a cold soda during a heat wave.

Now using a wheelchair, the 62-year-old lost his job and his home. He’s recovering at a medical respite center for patients with no other place to go; there he gets physical therapy and treatment for a bacterial infection in what remains of his right leg, too swollen to use the prosthesis he’d hoped would help him walk again.

“If you don’t get somewhere to cool down, the heat will affect you,” said Falk, who lost consciousness due to heat stroke. “Then you won’t know what’s happening, like in my case.”

Sizzling sidewalks and unshaded playgrounds pose risks for surface burns as air temperatures reach new summertime highs in Southwest cities like Phoenix, which just recorded its hottest June on record. The average daytime high was 109.5 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius), without a single 24-hour high below 100 (37.7 ° C).

Young children, older adults and homeless people are especially at risk for contact burns, which can occur in seconds when skin touches a surface of 180 degrees Fahrenheit (82%C).

Since the beginning of June, 50 people have been hospitalized with such burns, and four have died at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, which operates the Southwest’s largest burn center, serving patients from Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Southern California and Texas, according to its director, Dr. Kevin Foster. About 80 percent were injured in

Ominous

ASupreme Court term reflects conservative victories, Trump’s reshaping of the bench

metro Phoenix.

Last year, the center admitted 136 patients for surface burns from June through August, up from 85 during the same period in 2022, Foster said. Fourteen died.

One out of five were homeless.

“Last year’s record heat wave brought an alarming number of patients with life-threatening burns,” Foster said of a 31-day period, including all of last July, with temperatures at or above 110 degrees (43 ° C) during Phoenix’s hottest summer ever.

In Las Vegas, which regularly sees summer-time highs in the triple-digits, 22 people were hospitalized in June alone at the University Medical Center’s Lions Burn Care Center, said spokesperson Scott Kerbs. That’s nearly half as many as the 46 hospitalized during all three summer months last year.

As in Phoenix, the desert sun punishes Las Vegas for hours every day, frying outdoor surfaces like asphalt, concrete and metal doors on cars and playground equipment like swings and monkey bars.

Surface burn victims often include children injured walking barefoot on broiling concrete or touching hot surfaces, adults who collapsed on a sidewalk while intoxicated, and older people who fell on the pavement due to heat stroke or another medical emergency.

Some don’t survive. THERMAL injuries were among the main or contributing causes of last year’s 645 heat-related

deaths in Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix.

One victim was an 82-year-old woman with dementia and heart disease admitted to a suburban Phoenix hospital after being found on the scorching pavement on an August day that hit 106 degrees (41.1° C).

With a body temperature of 105 degrees (40.5 ° C) the woman was rushed to the hospital with second-degree burns on her back and right side, covering 8 percent of her body. She died three days later.

Many surface burn patients also suffered potentially fatal heat stroke.

Valleywise hospital’s emergency department recently adopted a new protocol for all heat-stroke victims, submerging patients in a bag of slushy ice to quickly bring down body temperature.

Recovery for those with skin burns was often lengthy, with patients undergoing multiple skin grafts and other surgeries, followed by months of recovery in skilled nursing or rehabilitation facilities.

Bob Woolley, 71, suffered second- and third-degree burns to his hands, arms, leg and torso after he stumbled onto the broiling backyard rock garden at his Phoenix home, wearing only swim trunks and a tank top.

“The ordeal was extremely painful, it was almost unbearable,” said Woolley, who was hospitalized at the Valleywise burn center for several months.

He said he considers himself “95 percent recovered” after extensive skin grafts and physical therapy and has resumed some former activities like swimming and motorcycle riding.

Some skin-burn victims, both in Phoenix and Las Vegas, were children.

“In many cases, this involves toddlers walking or crawling onto hot surfaces,” Kerbs said of those hospitalized at the Las Vegas center.

Foster said about 20 percent of the hospitalized and outpatient skin-burn victims seen at the Phoenix center are children.

Small children aren’t fully aware of the harm a sizzling metal door handle or a scorching sidewalk can cause.

“Because they’re playing, they don’t pay attention,” said urban climatologist Ariane Middel, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who directs the SHaDE Lab, a research team that studies the effects of urban heat.

“They may not even notice that it’s hot.”

In measuring surface temperatures of playground equipment, the team found that in 100-degree

Fahrenheit (37.7 ° C) weather without shade, a slide can heat up to 160 degrees (71.1° C), but a covering can bring that down to 111 degrees (43.8 ° C). A rubber ground cover can hit as high as 188 degrees (86.6 ° C), a handrail can heat up to 120 degrees (48.8 ° C) and concrete can reach 132 degrees (55.5 ° C).

Many metro Phoenix parks have covered picnic tables and plastic fabric stretched over play equipment, keeping metal or plastic surfaces up to 30 degrees cooler. But plenty do not, Middel said.

She said cooler wood chips are better underfoot than rubber mats, which were designed to protect kids from head injuries but soak up heat in the broiling sun. Like rubber, artificial turf gets hotter than asphalt.

“We need to think about alternative surface types, because most surfaces we use for our infrastructure are heat sponges,” Middel said.

Hot concrete and asphalt also pose burn risks for pets.

Veterinarians recommend dogs wear booties to protect their paws during outdoor walks in summer, or keeping them on cooler grassy areas. Owners are also advised to make sure their pets drink plenty of water and don’t get overheated. Phoenix bans dogs from the city’s popular hiking trails on days the National Weather Service issues an excessive heat warning.

Recovering at Phoenix’s Circle the City, a respite care facility he was sent to after being released from Valleywise’s burn unit, Falk said he never imagined the Phoenix heat could cause him to collapse on the broiling asphalt in his shorts and T-shirt.

Because he wasn’t carrying identification or a phone, no one knew where he was for months.

He has a long road ahead but still hopes to regain part of his old life, working for a concessionaire for entertainment events.

“I kind of went into a downward spiral,” Falk acknowledged. “I finally woke up and said, ‘Hey, wait, I lost a leg.’ But that doesn’t mean you’re useless.”

history for Joe Biden: Incumbents trying to win over their parties often struggle to win again

By Bill Barrow The Associated Press

TLANTA—There’s plenty of worry among Democrats about whether 81-year-old President Joe Biden is up to the job itself or the task of defeating Donald Trump. Previous presidential campaigns offer lessons. None convey reasons for optimism. Going back to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, several presidents eligible for reelection faced significant primary challenges or questions about whether they should run again. George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford pushed forward and won their nominations, only to be defeated in November. Johnson opted to withdraw—and Democrats lost anyway. Biden had no real primary fight. But his allies now acknowledge how poorly the president performed in his debate against Trump. They’ve fretted privately about Biden’s ability to serve until he is 86, and, more immediately, whether he can keep the job by defeating the Republican former president—himself a 78-year-old saddled with a felony conviction, other indictments and voter concerns over his values and temperament. The warning from history is ominous: Incumbent presidents still working to consolidate and reassure their own party this late in a first term typically do not get a second.

George H.W. Bush and the ‘culture war’ of 1992 AN Ivy League-educated Episcopalian, Bush was a moderate Republican and never a favorite of the Christian right or anti-tax, small-government activists. Bush appealed to the right flank ahead of his victory in 1988, saying, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” He was riding high in 1990 after a quick US military victory drove Iraq and Saddam Hussein from oil-rich Kuwait. Within months, though, Bush broke his tax pledge, the US economy began to falter (albeit mildly in retrospect), and the president grew vulnerable.

Primary challengers emerged, notably Steve Forbes, an anti-tax crusader, and commentator Pat Buchanan, a Christian conservative. Bush won every primary but many by unimpressive margins. Buchanan, rather than endorsing Bush enthusiastically, used his GOP convention speech to enlist religious conservatives in a “culture war” against Clinton, liberals and secularism— standard Republican rhetoric today but a more divisive tone alongside Bush’s talk of a “kinder, gentler” nation.

Democratic challenger and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton hammered Bush as out of touch with middle-class Americans. And billionaire Ross Perot entered the contest as an independent.

On Election Day, 62.6 percent of voters opted against Bush. Clinton won 370 electoral votes, the second-highest total for any Democrat since 1964.

Jimmy Carter and the Kennedy ‘dream’ in 1980

A FORMER Georgia governor, Carter was a moderate Southerner from outside the liberal Democratic power structure. His 1976 nomination and eventual victory over the Republican incumbent Ford was less about ideology, though, and more about Carter’s promise never to lie to Americans disillusioned after Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.

Legislative successes followed, but Carter rankled Washington Democrats. Global inflation, US unemployment and interest rates climbed, and Carter’s popularity fell.

“Carter was never expected and accepted by the establishment,” said Joe Trippi, a 1980 Kennedy campaign staffer.

Sen. Ted Kennedy mounted a primary challenge in 1980, inspiring young progressives like those who had once adored his slain older brothers. Carter famously said of Kennedy, “I’ll kick his ass.” The president won enough delegates for the nomination, even as the Iran hostage crisis compounded his problems.

Yet in defeat, Kennedy used his convention speech more to rouse his own supporters rather than reconcile with the incumbent.

“The work goes on, the cause endures...and the dream shall never die,” Kennedy declared, exposing Carter’s weaknesses.

Against Republican Ronald Reagan, Carter carried just six states and Washington, D.C.

Gerald Ford and the budding Reagan revolution in 1976

REAGAN won two general election landslides, but the foundation was his 1976 primary challenge against Ford.

A mild-mannered Michigander, Ford had a unique path to the White House.

President Richard Nixon elevated him from House leadership to the vice presidency in 1973 after corruption forced Spiro Agnew’s resignation. Ford ascended to the presidency a year later when Nixon resigned because of Watergate.

Controversially, Ford pardoned Nixon. He faced inflation, high unemployment and roiled energy markets. And he had to prepare quickly to seek his own election, never having been part of a national campaign.

Ford hailed from Capitol Hill’s centerright, a Republican cohort that mostly accepted the federal government’s expanded scope since Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Reagan, meanwhile, was corralling conservatives who never embraced FDR’s America and blanched at the Civil Rights Movement and social revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s.

In the ‘76 primaries, Ford won 27 contests to Reagan’s 24. That gave the incumbent 1,121 delegates, just 43 more than the insurgent challenger. Reagan had dominated most primaries in the South, the most conservative region of the country.

In the fall campaign, a wounded Ford made a late comeback against Carter but fell

short. Carter carried the South. And Reagan was positioned to take the Republican mantle four years later.

When a president did step aside: LBJ and 1968

Ford, Carter and Bush are not perfect parallels for 2024: Biden did not draw a credible primary challenge and, even with the debate fallout, he has a well of personal goodwill across his party. Perhaps the best comparison, then, is Johnson.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy thrust Johnson into the Oval Office in November 1963. Known as LBJ, the colorful Texan trounced Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. Johnson amassed the most sweeping legislative record since FDR: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare and Medicaid. But Johnson vastly expanded US involvement in Vietnam—and lied to the country in the process. He also found himself unable to shepherd Americans through social changes of the era.

Presidential campaigns were shorter then, so it was not until March 31, 1968, that Johnson mulled his sagging standing and announced his intentions. After weak showings in early primaries, which were not then binding affairs, Johnson said in an Oval Office address, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

What followed, though, is not necessarily encouraging for Democrats hoping to hear the same from Biden.

on the other hand, the court is licensing the president to act lawlessly,” Dorf said. “Taken together, I think those two moves concentrate power in the White House in the political operations of the president and outside the context of what you might think of as the bureaucracy.”

The decisions also provoked spirited, sometimes barbed, discussions of judicial modesty. “A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent from overturning Chevron. Roberts responded, saying humility in this case meant “admitting” and “correcting our own mistakes” in the original Chevron decision.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson chided Roberts for the “feigned judicial humility” of his opinion on immunity. Roberts mocked the dissenters’ “tone of chilling doom.”

In each of the Trump cases, the majority included Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two of Trump’s three appointees, and two others, Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, who also rebuffed calls to sit out the Trump cases. Those same justices, plus Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, formed the majority in the cases about federal regulations. The conservatives also voted together on a major homelessness case that found outdoor sleeping bans aimed at homeless encampments don’t violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment—even when shelter space is lacking.

Roberts, though, has repeatedly defended the court from criticism that its justices were little more than politicians in robes. In a memorable clash with Trump in 2018, Roberts rebuked the then-president for complaining about the ruling of an “Obama judge.”

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,” Roberts said then.

But the court’s public standing has taken a hit in recent years, particularly since Roe was overturned. Seven out of 10 Americans said the justices are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters of government authority, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that was conducted before the final round of decisions was issued.

Abortion was one issue in which the court sidestepped the liberal-conservative divide by avoiding major rulings in a presidential election year when abortion is an animating issue, mainly because of the justice’s 2022 decision that led to abortion bans or severe restrictions in most Republican-controlled states.

A one-sentence order in a case from Idaho cleared the way for emergency abortions to resume, despite the state’s strict abortion ban. But it didn’t end the court case or answer key questions about whether doctors can provide emergency abortions elsewhere, even in states where abortion bans would prohibit them. The Idaho decision was accidentally posted on the court’s website a day early, reminiscent of the leak of the draft opinion two years ago that ended the constitutional right to abortion. In a second abortion case, the justices unanimously dismissed a lawsuit from antiabortion doctors who sought to roll back decisions made by the Food and Drug Administration to ease access to mifepristone, a pill used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States last year. The decision explicitly avoided any ruling on the FDA’s actions, focusing entirely on the doctors’ lack of legal standing to sue. The mifepristone case

RON FALK , 62, speaks of losing his leg on June 25, 2024 in Phoenix. Falk lost his right leg, had extensive skin grafting on the left one and is still recovering a year after collapsing on the searing asphalt outside a convenience store where he stopped for a cold soda during a blistering heat wave. AP/MATT YORK

UP mathematician develops model for heat propagation

SUPPOSE you have a pair of pants you need to wear tomorrow. The problem is, you just washed them, and they are still damp. So you resort to a handy tool: the flat iron.

Using the iron, you can easily dry the flat parts of the pants, but you will notice that it is more difficult to dry some areas where the surface is uneven—near the zipper, the side and back pockets, the seams, and the waistband, said Harvey Sapigao of University of the Philippines Diliman-College of Science (UPD-CS) in a news release.

That’s because the heat from the iron does not reach the uneven areas as quickly as it does the flatter areas.

In other words, the heat propagation, or the heat transfer from the iron to the pants, is not uniform on rough surfaces.

Understanding how heat propagates from one material to another is important in designing efficient cooling devices, such as air conditioners, or constructing infrastructures that minimize heat from the sun.

In some cases, heat propagation is simple to model when the boundary at which the two materials touch is flat, such as ironing the flat areas of the pants.

In other cases, however, the heat propagation model is more complex when the boundary is rough, such as when ironing the uneven areas of the pants.

Jake Avila of the UPD-CS Institute of Mathematics formulated a theory to model heat propagation through rough surfaces.

With the help of mathematicians in Italy, Avila’s theory uses a method called homogenization.

Homogenization is a way of combining

the tiny details of the material with its bigger, more uniform properties.

For example, the flat areas of the pants may look flat under the naked eye, but if you examine them under a microscope, you will notice the individual bumps made by the interwoven threads, which don’t look flat at all.

“Homogenization theory aims to describe the macroscopic or effective properties of composite materials while taking into account simultaneously the microscopic or local properties of its components,” Avila explained.

Homogenization helps simplify the problem and provides a more accurate model for heat propagation.

According to Avila, homogenization incorporates the effective properties of the material, such as the thermal conductivity, while also considering the individual features of the material’s components.

Although he only applied his theory to heat propagation, it can be used for other physical phenomena as well.

“[It] can also be applied to describe the acoustic wave propagation over rough walls or the turbulence flow in the rough ocean surface,” Avila said.

The next step is to develop a more general version of the theory for wider application.

“The next plan is to study a more complicated and general problem. wherein a sign-changing density function is involved in the eigenvalue problem in a domain through rough surfaces,” Avila said.

“The problem in the article is a special case where a unit density function is treated,” he added.

Ex-DA chief Dar is chairman of global ISAAA biotech org

DR . William D. Dar, former secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA), is the new chairman of the board of trustees of a nonprofit global agri-biotech organization

Dar succeeded Dr. Paul S. Teng, who led the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications Inc. from 2013 to June 1 this year, ISAAA announced in.Biotech Updates online newsletter on June 26.

Dar has served as the DA secretary under President Joseph Estrada’s administration in 1998 and 1999.

During his term, the agricultural sector recorded a 9.6 percent growth, an achievement that has never been achieved until today.

He also served as the DA secretary during the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte from August 2019 to June 2022.

In 2016, Dar received The Outstanding Filipino Award for being instrumental in transforming the India-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), making it one of the topperforming centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

As Icrisat director general for 15 years, Dar promoted and established the Inclusive Market-Oriented Development, which empowered farmers to actively participate in

improving their welfare. Dar studied BS in Agricultural Education in 1969 and MS in Agronomy in 1976 at the then Mountain State Agricultural College, now known as Benguet State University, in La Trinidad, Benguet. He took his Ph.D. in Horticulture degree from the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He was appointed as the first director of the Bureau of Agricultural Research in 1987. Dar served as executive director from 1994 to 1998 of the now called Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development based in Los Baños, Laguna.

He has received eight doctorate degrees (honoris causa) in various fields from several state universities and colleges in the country. In 1988, Dar was among the Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines, and received an “Outstanding Administrator Award” from the Department of Science and Technology In 2014, he received the “Outstanding MS Swaminathan Leadership Award” from India, and the “Pamana ng Pilipino Award” from then President Benigno Aquino III, that honored outstanding overseas Filipino individuals and organizations.

KatHABI makes history: Holds first fashion show in New York

THE KatHABI Fashion Innovation Show made history for holding the event at the Philippine Center in New York—the first time outside the Philippines.

The milestone event was organized by the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Textile Research Institute (DOSTPTRI) in collaboration with the Philippine Consulate General in New York and the Philippine Trade and Investment Center in New York on June 27.

The event highlighted the rich

Legarda, a Filipino-American fashion designer, presented his “Haute Culture, Kawayarn, and TechStyle Collection,” which drew inspiration from the rich cultural heritage of the Philippines and modern textile technologies.

tapestry of Philippine Tropical Fabrics (PTFs) and honored the craftsmanship of Filipino weavers through the creative lens of designers Anthony Legarda and Avel Bacudio.

This showcase also featured the latest advancements in textile technology developed by DOSTPTRI.

He integrated local weaves with blended fabrics made from cotton, pineapple leaf, silk, abaca, and bamboo, finished with enzyme, fire retardant, and water-repellent technologies.

Meanwhile, Bacudio, an acclaimed fashion icon, unveiled his “Spring and Summer Collection,” using PTF, such as pineapple-leaf fiber, abaca, and banana blend textiles, enhanced with enzyme finishing technologies.

Renowned for his ability to reinterpret seasonal trends with a fresh perspective, Bacudio’s capsule collection creatively interprets the light silhouettes of the summer season for comfort and utility, incorporating color blocks for visual interest and contrast. The fashion show marked a significant moment in the global promotion of Philippine textile innovation. It served as a platform to showcase not only the artistic prowess of Filipino designers but also the cutting-edge advancements in textile technology developed by DOST-PTRI, reinforcing the Philippines’ position in the international fashion industry. S&T Media Service

Searca researcher bags UN’s bioenergy youth award

ROME, Italy—Engr. Czaneil Gomez, a Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research (Searca) researcher, received the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2024 Youth Award for her invaluable contribution to sustainable and renewable energy through her research, “Harnessing Rice Straw to Empower Rice Farming Communities in the Philippines.”

Gomez received the award during the United Nations’ Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) 11th Bioenergy Week held in Rome on June 17, said Shielo Pasahol in Searca news release.

Maria Michela Morese, FAO senior natural resources officer and energy team leader, presented the award to Gomez, who bested seven other finalists.

Gomez is working under Searca’s Rice Straw Biogas Hub (RSBH), an Innovate UK-funded project to utilize rice straws as an alternative clean fuel for cooking and industrial use.

GBEP Bioenergy Week is an annual congregation of bioenergy stakeholders hailing from different countries, promoting sustainable and efficient use of bioenergy and biomass, particularly in developing countries. 127 stakeholders from 27 nations participated in this year’s conference, including country representatives, experts, industry leaders, and researchers.

Gomez’s study, which was conducted in Spring of 2023 at Aston University, was

supervised by a team of experts from Aston University Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) and University of the Philippines Los Baños, Pasahol said.

The GBEP Youth Award recognizes their contributions to advancing knowledge and practice in bioenergy, encompassing a range of topics, including circular economy, technologies, supply chain and logistics, societal practices, policy and strategies, and climate change.

Besides presenting at GBEP-Youth and United Nations Global Alliance Bioenergy Youth Day, Gomez will present her study at different international events co-organized by GBEP this year, Pasahol said. Searca’s team of experts, led by Dr. Rex Demafelis, expressed their praise on Gomez’s

achievement.

Lichelle Dara Carlos, Searca’s project specialist for RSBH, commended Gomez for bagging the award.

“Searca is deeply committed to nurturing young researchers who are at the forefront of sustainable agriculture and renewable energy innovations,” Carlos said.

In her presentation, Gomez highlighted the conversion of rice straw into biogas as a sustainable method for rice straw management, benefiting rice- farming communities in the Philippines.

“This approach not only addresses waste-management issues but also provides a renewable energy source and has the potential to improve the livelihoods of rice farming communities,” Gomez said.

Dr. Mirjam Röder, one of Gomez’s study supervisors from EBRI, said this was a prestigious award for celebrating and recognizing Gomez’s work in promoting bioenergy, especially in one of the highest-profile international bioenergy organizations.

“Czaneil’s [Gomez] GBEP Youth Award success is a fantastic achievement. It shows the importance of empowering future generations to develop skills and knowledge in the field of sustainability and renewable energy for local communities,” Roder said as quoted from Aston University-EBRI press release.

Reflecting on the honor, Gomez expressed that receiving the award was a wonderful experience.

“Having my research recognized by a prestigious international organization is truly amazing. This award will serve as a reminder that with passion, hard work, and the right support, anything is possible,” she stated.

Winning the award has further motivated Gomez to advance her career and continue promoting bioenergy research and sustainability. She plans to build on this recognition to contribute further to the bioenergy field, seek new opportunities for collaboration, and inspire other women and early-career researchers.

“I aim to contribute further to my field, seek out new opportunities for collaboration, and inspire other women and early career researchers,” she pointed out.

INNOVATIVE “Haute Culture, Kawayarn and TechStyle Collection” of Anthony Cruz Legarda are featured at KatHABI Fashion Innovation Event in New York. DOST-PTRI PHOTOS

SPRING and Summer Collections” of Avel Bacudio are showcased at KatHABI Fashion Innovation Event Fashion Show in New York.

INNOVATIVE designers Anthony Cruz Legarda (second from left) and Avel Bacudio (third from left) are applauded by Consul General Senen Mangalile (left) and DOST-PTRI Director Dr. Julius Leaño Jr. at the historic first fashion show of Philippine tropical fabrics in New York.

(FROM left) Josyline C. Javelosa (agriculture attaché and deputy permanent representative to Rome-based Agencies of the United Nations), Tiziana Pirelli (coordinator, secretariat GBEP), Mirjam Röder (professor, EBRI), Czaneil Gomez, Michela Morese (energy team leader and senior natural resources officer, FAO), Katie Chong (senior lecturer, EBRI). PHOTO CREDIT TO DR. MIRJAM RÖDER

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Devout athletes find strength in their faith

IT’S been 100 years since a Scottish runner famously refused to race on a Sunday at the Paris Olympics because of his Christian beliefs.

Devout top athletes say elite sports performance still poses some hurdles for the faith practices that are central to their lives on and off the field.

At this summer’s Paris Olympics, much of the controversy has centered around Islam, because France’s unique secularism principles forbid its athletes from wearing headscarves as well as other visibly religious symbols—though the ban doesn’t affect Olympians from other countries.

But athletes of different faiths argue sports organizations and major events should better respect the breadth of religious practices, especially as they strive to be more inclusive.

To many, faith and spirituality are also essential to mental well-being, which has come under the spotlight especially since U.S. gymnastics star Simone Biles’ open struggles at the last Olympics.

“Most people would see sports and religion as very separate, but I see a big overlap. Everything we have is a gift from God— He’s the one who’s given me this strength,” said Beatie Deutsch, an Orthodox Jewish runner who qualified to represent Israel in the Tokyo Olympics but didn’t compete because the women’s

marathon was scheduled for a Saturday, when she observes shabbat.

“I’d love governing bodies of sports to do more to accommodate religion,” said the 34-year-old American Israeli mother of five.

Injuries kept her from qualifying for the Paris Games, but Deutsch recently started training again with her eyes on next year’s World Championship—and the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

Her refusal to race on a day dedicated to the Lord mirrors the 1924 saga of Eric Liddell, immortalized in the Oscar-winning movie “Chariots of Fire.”

Liddell refused to run the heats on a Sunday in his strongest challenge, the 100-meter sprint, but went on to improbably win a gold medal in the 400-meter race.

American Olympic champion

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who broke her own world record at Olympic trials Sunday in the 400-meter hurdles, describes how Liddell’s words about running to glorify God resonated with her in her new book, “Far Beyond Gold.”

Embracing her Christian faith has transformed her life and career, she said, by helping her move beyond doubt and fear.

“For a long time, my identity

was in track and field,” she told The Associated Press days before the US Olympic track and field trials. “But I realized that first and foremost, I’m a child of God. It set me free to run the race God has set out for me to run.”

McLaughlin-Levrone, 24, said she has shared devotionals and lessons from her faith journey on Instagram, where she has more than 1 million followers, and prays with her coach, trainer and husband before every race.

When her mind is rooted in God, that’s when she is able to handle the pressures and high expectations of being an Olympic athlete—“especially in track, where things are so uncertain and always changing.”

“That means being in the word, being in prayer, keeping that in the forefront and allowing that to be what centers my mind and not

A Filipino’s Guinness-certified

the outside voices of the world,” McLaughlin-Levrone said.

Athletes with a secure attachment to God tend to be less depressed, anxious and lonely than those with a negative perception of a punishing God or those who are not religious, said Laura Upenieks, a Baylor University sociology professor who has studied elite athletes at US colleges.

That’s in large part because they don’t base their self-worth on others’ approval, are less self-centered and can find greater meaning beyond being “only as good as the last race,” Upenieks added.

“Faith gives me the ability to stand firm and to keep going, and it reminds me that there’s always a larger and higher goal to pursue,” said Tunisian steeplechase runner Marwa Bouzayani, 27, as she trained for the Paris Olympics.

popes

stamp collections on display at Lipa Cathedral

TO commemorate the liturgical feast day honoring two martyrs of the Christian faith, Saints Peter and Paul, the Philippine Postal Corp. (The Post Office) has launched its “Travelling Pope Stamps Exhibit” at Lipa City Cathedral in Batangas.

The exhibit featured certified Guinness Book of World Records “Pope Stamp collections” of Boy Scouts of the Philippines Secretary General Kim Robert de Leon.

The public is invited to see the exhibit from until July 7 at the La Pieta Chapel Basilica in Lipa City.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest collection of stamps featuring Popes is 2,398, was achieved by de Leon, a Filipino from Navotas City, National Capital Region on 22 February 2022.

Arvin Macandili, administrative and finance manager of Postal Area 4, in his message in behalf of new Chairman and Postmaster

General Mike Planas, thanked the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Sebastian, commonly known as Lipa Cathedral, headed by Archbishop Gilbert Armea Garcera for

allowing the Post Office to hold the exhibit, which is a celebration of the life and legacy of different popes and their apostolic visit to the Philippines.

POPE UNVEILS PLAN FOR VATICAN TO GO SOLAR

VA devout Muslim who first competed at the Tokyo Games, she races the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase wearing modest attire, including a hijab or head covering.

She regularly trains during Ramadan, when Muslims abstain from food and water from dawn to sundown—a challenge that this year made the news in France, where the soccer federation refused accommodations for observant players.

“I’ve faced many challenges, whether when it comes to reconciling religious obligations with the demands of training or when it comes to confronting stereotypes and biases, but every challenge I’ve faced has strengthened my resolve,” Bouzayani said.

In fact, she hopes to be a role model for Muslim girls, showing them “that success in elite sports can be realized without forsaking religious values and beliefs.”

She also wants to increase awareness in sports circles about the importance of respecting cultural and religious diversity.

Deutsch is a fan of both Bouzayani and McLaughlin-Levrone for their commitment to, and openness about, their faith.

She hopes to be a model for Orthodox Jewish girls who might have never seen an elite athlete compete while dressed like them— head covering, long sleeves, skirt below the knee.

In races where every fraction of a second counts, such modest attire can be “a hindrance,” Deutsch said, but inspiring others far outweighs that.

“I hope my story empowers athletes,” she said.

In the past few decades, athletes, coaches and fans have become far more accepting of the need to protect players’ well-being by incorporating mental and spiritual care with physical training, said Tamir Goodman.

Known in the late 1990s as “the Jewish Michael Jordan,” he was the only observant Jew playing Division I college basketball in the United States, though never on the Sabbath.

Carl Lewis, a US track and field legend who won nine Olympic gold medals and now mentors young athletes, told the AP that while he doesn’t consider himself religious, he’s a follower of Sri Chinmoy, the late Indian teacher who believed that a spiritual life and running went hand in hand.

“Young athletes now also look to their spirituality for guidance and hope, and I think that is wonderful for them,” he said.

Right after qualifying for Paris, her third Olympics, US high jumper Vashti Cunningham—whose father and coach is longtime NFL quarterback Randall Cunningham—told AP how her faith helps at intense competitions like the Oregon trials.

“Without my spirituality, I feel like I would genuinely be lost,” said Cunningham, 26. “Especially in a high-level sport like this where a lot of people depend on their self and on their strength and on their training. I really just rely on God, and his strength, and his power.”

And

The Post Office wishes to make the memory of the popes close and alive among Filipinos through the Pope Stamps Exhibition.

During the program, de Leon said, “It is an honor for me to be given this opportunity to recognize my work, and for my fellow Filipinos to appreciate it, which I hope would inspire others, especially the youth to collect postage stamps.”

Besides its traditional postal service, the Post Office is gearing toward innovation in a digitalforward approach, improve its production and promote nontraditional uses of the collectible stamps using the technology and the diverse social media.

The traveling Pope Stamps exhibit has previously been held in Manila and Malabon, and is set to visit other venues in the country for the public, especially the current young generation, to cherish and appreciate the value of stamp collecting.

See for nearly two decades.

400,000 people left Germany’s Catholic Church last year, but lower than in 2022

BERLIN—Another 400,000 people left the Catholic Church in Germany last year, though the number was down from a record set in 2022 as church leaders struggle to put a long-running scandal over abuse by clergy behind them and tackle calls for reform, official figures showed last week.

The German Bishops’ Conference said that 402,694 people left the church in 2023. That was down from 522,821 the previous year, but still the second-highest figure so far. At the same time, 1,559 people joined the church and another 4,127 rejoined.

conservatives and drew open opposition from the Vatican.

Its final assembly last year called for the church to approve blessings of same-sex unions.

A follow-up process also has been marked by tension with the Vatican, though it did get underway this year after Rome initially insisted that German bishops scrap a vote on the statutes of a committee that is supposed to pave the way for a future decision-making council bringing together bishops and laypeople.

ATICAN—Pope Francis has announced measures to transition Vatican City to using solar energy as its main source of electricity, as outlined in his latest motu proprio titled “Fratello Sole,” or “Brother Sun.” The Holy Father has tasked the relevant Vatican governing bodies to collaborate with Italian authorities and build an “agrivoltaic system,” which would use land in Santa Maria di Galeria, an extra-territory of Vatican City situated outside of Rome, for farming and solar energy production. “We need to make a transition toward a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere,” reads the motu proprio, a decree authorized by the pope.

change on our “common home.”

“Humanity has the technological means necessary to face this environmental transformation and its pernicious ethical, social, economic, and political consequences and, among these, solar energy plays a fundamental role,” the document reads. In “Brother Sun,” the Holy Father expressed his desire to “contribute to efforts of all states” to abide by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] and the Paris Agreement, which came into effect in Vatican City in 2022 on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi (October 4) to combat the challenges of climate

Though the UNFCCC reports the Vatican’s global emissions were around 0.0000443 percent in 2022, it recognized the state is “committed to achieving a reduction in emissions in line with the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, as well as to pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels as foreseen in the Article 2 of Paris Agreements.”

The transition to solar energy as the main power source is the latest initiative of the Vatican to become more “green” and ecologically sustainable. But solar energy has already been in the sight of the Holy

During his pontificate, Benedict XVI encouraged the international community “to respect and encourage a ‘Green Culture’ characterized by ethical values,” according to Cardinal Paul Poupard, the former head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, in a 2007 statement.

In 2008, Benedict XVI also approved the installation of 2,400 solar panels on the roofs of the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall “to power the lighting, heating, and cooling of a portion of the entire country” according to a National Geographic report.

Under Pope Francis, the Vatican partnered with Volkswagen to introduce an all-electric car fleet to reduce the state’s carbon footprint in 2023. Kristina Millare/ Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

In Germany, people who are formally members of a church pay a so-called church tax that helps finance it in addition to the regular taxes the rest of the population pays.

If the German Catholics register their departure with local authorities, they no longer have to pay that. There are some exemptions for low earners, jobless, retirees, students and others.

The country’s Catholic Church had around 20.35 million members at the end of last year.

In an annual summary of statistics, the bishops’ conference didn’t detail reasons for the departures.

But many people have turned their backs on the church in recent years amid fallout from the scandal over abuse by clergy and others.

In response to that crisis, German bishops and an influential lay organization led a threeyear reform process, the “Synodal Path,” which was marked by tensions between liberals and

“The figures are alarming. They show that the church is in a wide-ranging crisis,” said the head of the bishops’ conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Bätzing, whose diocese last year saw 13,000 people leave the church—2,000 fewer than a year earlier.

“Reforms alone will not solve the church crisis, but the crisis will get worse without reforms. And so changes are necessary,” Bätzing said in comments posted on the Limburg diocese’s website.

Christians in Germany are roughly evenly split between Catholics and Protestants, and it’s not just the Catholic Church that is losing members. The Protestant Church said in May that it saw about 380,000 formal departures last year, around the same level as 2022, leaving its membership at 18.56 million. It also has grappled with past abuse cases. Geir Moulson/Associated Press

BEATIE DEUTSCH, an Orthodox Jewish runner (fourth from left, with head cover), competes in

Giovanna Dell’orto

Deepa Bharath/Associated Press

PEOPLE wait for the beginning of an Easter Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit “Heilig Geist Kirche” in Munich, Germany, on April 4, 2021. AP/MATTHIAS SCHRADER

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Ecoparks are haven for urban biodiversity

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

UNDER its new management, the La Mesa Ecopark was reopened on June 29, showcasing the improvements made with the rehabilitation of one of Metro Manila’s famous ecoparks.

La Mesa Ecopark features the flora and fauna in the city and promotes environmental and climate awareness among its visitors.

Under the stewardship of the Manila Water Foundation, the reopening of the ecopark is the culmination of the celebration of Philippine Environment Month in June.

The ecopark features spaces for environmental learning and leisure activities, including picnic and teambuilding areas.

According to Manila Water, which took over management of the facility from ABS-CBN Bantay Kalikasan that started the rehabilitation of the public park in 2004, families and groups can relax and spend time at the viewing deck pavilion and the food park.

Respite from city life

THE La Mesa Ecopark offers residents of Metro Manila and nearby areas a respite from the stressful city life.

Eco-tours can also be arranged to include an experience at its Ecopark Museum.

With more spacious areas, the walkways and road networks of the 33-hectare facility were also upgraded to enhance accessibility for persons with disabilities and senior citizens.

At the same time, parking areas have been expanded to accommodate more vehicles.

As an added attraction, a nursery area has been established, where plant enthusiasts, or “plantitos” and “plantitas,” can purchase seedlings.

Experience ‘BiodiverCity’

AN innovation introduced by Manila Water is to make La Mesa Ecopark a destination of choice for eco-learning with its tailor-fit group tours.

By first learning more about its vibrant flora and diverse fauna, a tour of the area could ignite environmental consciousness for watershed and biodiversity conservation, and forest protection, leading to climate action.

Situated in the La Mesa Watershed in Largo, Novaliches, Quezon City, it is home to a variety of plant and animal wildlife.

In a recent study by the Center for Conservation Innovation, the

ecopark is home to more than 30 small animal species, 130 plant species, and 53 bird species, including the Philippine eagle-owl, Philippine pied fantail, and the ashy trush.

New face

ITS star resident, the rough-crested malkoha—found only in Luzon—will be the new face of the ecopark logo, which features natural elements inspired by the work of National Artist Architect Francisco T. Mañosa.

On top of these, the exciting new amenities groups and families to look out for at the ecopark include the environmental canopy or boardwalk, landscaped flower hill and amphitheater, a revamped lagoon that is perfect for fishing, wetland habitat and butterfly garden, children’s playground, additional infrastructures for learning hubs, eco-lodging for overnight stay, spaces for outdoor cooking, biking and hiking trails, and a campsite to be rehabilitated by the Quezon City government.

In his message during the re -

National Museum houses PHL eagle ‘Geothermica’

THE legacy of Philippine eagle

“Geothermica” lives on at the National Museum of the Philippines.

The remains of the 19-year-old raptor who met her untimely demise in September last year due to an infection, have been preserved through taxidermy and turned over as a permanent specimen exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History section.

Along with Geothermica’s mate, “Sambisig,” the Philippine eagle pair became the country’s first Biodiversity Ambassadors.

The two were sent to Singapore in 2019 as part of a Wildlife Loan Agreement between the Philippines and Singapore for an off-site captive breeding program in Singapore.

The agreement was in line with the efforts to conserve critically endangered species, not only in terms of mating and reproduction but also for educational and information campaigns on forest management and biodiversity.

Unfortunately, Geothermica succumbed to infection despite efforts by veterinarians to save the eagle’s life.

First Gen’s pure renewable energy arm, Energy Development Corporation (EDC),

opening of the ecopark, Manila Water President and CEO Jocot De Dios said: “Today’s event marks a small but very meaningful step toward ensuring that sustainable water supply, a sustainable environment is possible. The approach here is to make it a scientific consciousness, but larger than that, to create a nature-nurturing consciousness among all the people that we work with, our stakeholders, our communities, and engage them as partners.”

Protecting Metro Manila’s green spaces

ENVIRONMENTALIST Gregg Yan, a

wildlife photographer and explorer who visits ecoparks, such as La Mesa, when he is not out in the wild, underscored the importance of maintaining these so-called patches of green even in the concrete jungle that is Metropolitan Manila.

“We should do all we can to protect the last remaining green spaces in Metro Manila,” Yan told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on July 1.

“There are so few of them left.

Green spaces, such as the La Mesa Ecopark or the Arroceros Forest Park, provide us and our kids a refuge from city life, while providing badly-needed habitats for birds, bats, insects and other types of life,” Yan pointed out.

“They also help regulate temperature amid climate change and the urban heat island effect that has been making our cities less and less liveable each summer,” he added.

“A few moments of meditating or forest bathing under the trees can do wonders for one’s soul,” Yan noted.

Urban heritage parks

ACCORDING to the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), in the region, there are urban Asean Heritage Parks, such as Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve both found in Singapore.

The ACB said these areas are of high conservation importance within urban landscapes, and are being managed by the National Parks Board of Singapore.

Moreover, the Langkawi Geopark, Malaysia, is a Unesco Global Geopark that combines environmental sustainability education and ecotourism. Its goal is to promote sustainable development through the preservation of natural and cultural resources.

The geopark acts as a demonstration site for water and environmental sustainability in conjunction with ecotourism projects

In the Philippines, the 17-hectare Mandaue City Mangrove Ecopark was established to “perform a significant role in shoreline protection, acting as a buffer against strong winds and waves.”

It is considered particularly important in light of the anticipated effects of climate change.

In terms of size, function and features, La Mesa Ecopark can be compared to numerous other ecoparks within the Asean region.

For example, the Cibinong Science Center-Botanic Gardens Ecopark in Indonesia, spans 32 acres. It focuses on plant conservation, research, public education and recreation area.

It has a variety of plant species from different Indonesian bioregions.

What defines an ecopark?

ACCORDING to ACB, ecoparks, a conjunction of the words ecological and parks, are large, connected landscapes with high nature conservation and environmental protection.

They are parks that use ecological landscape features to reduce watering and other maintenance requirements, while enhancing wildlife and human values.

They serve as a vehicle for reconnection, and for developing the systems necessary for creative and resilient problem-solving.

Restoring nature

AN ecopark is not just about preservation, but also about restoring nature, and a large-scale transformation of both the social and environmental landscapes.

Creating an ecopark begins with an inventory and a tailor-made management plan submitted to local, provincial, and/or national authorities for termed agreements, depending on the location.

The ACB said an ecopark is a fully inclusive, integrated biospheric program for any given site that ensures sustainability on all levels.   It should meet and surpass the ecopark model, including all social, economic, environmental, architectural, and agro-ecological international standards.   It should also be self-sufficient in terms of energy, water and food security, and economically sustainable.

Vital biodiversity corridors

ASKED about the importance of Ecoparks, ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim told the BusinessMirror via Messenger on July 3 that as urban biodiversity areas, ecoparks serve as green spaces amid rising infrastructure and housing development.

“For city dwellers, these areas provide an accessible means to commune with nature and promote mental and physical wellness,” Lim pointed out.

Ecoparks, such as La Mesa, she said, can also serve as a remaining sanctuary for wildlife that may have been displaced by the urban development.

“They are, therefore, vital as biodiversity corridors that can connect natural ecosystems, and help reduce habitat fragmentation,” Lim said.

adopted Geothermica at the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF)- Philippine Eagle Center in Davao City in 2012. It gave the eagle’s monicker after the company’s core business in geothermal energy.

“In more ways than one, ‘Geo’ truly represented EDC’s vision of a bright and green future of energy that nurtures all living creatures on this planet,” Ma. Nancy Ibuna, EDC Corporate Relations and Communications Department head, explained in a statement. The unveiling of the taxidermy mount at the National Museum was held recently to coincide with the annual celebration of Philippine Eagle Week and included a special exhibit on the national bird and its natural forest habitat.

“Geothermica will be a valuable part of the Philippine zoological reference collections that are here in the National Museum,” said National Museum Director-General Jeremy Barns at the event.

“Each one of us has a critical role to play, whether supporting local conservation organizations, reducing our carbon footprint, or advocating for more robust environmental policies… Let us protect the Philippine eagle

To save spotted owls, US to kill half-million other owl species

TO save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, US wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a halfmillion barred owls that are crowding out their cousins.

PHILIPPINE eagle “Geothermica”

and all endangered species that share our planet,” said PEF Chairman Edgar Chua.

“We are here to celebrate the life of ‘Geo’ and the legacy that it represents in terms of our dedication to the conservation and preservation of valuable keystone species,” added Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga.

A unit of First Gen Corp., EDC is a 100 percent renewable energy subsidiary. It has over 1,464.5MW total installed capacity that accounts for almost 20 percent of the country’s total installed RE. Its 1,169.85MW geothermal portfolio comprises 80 percent of the country’s total installed geothermal capacity, making the Philippines the third largest geothermal producer in the world.

First Gen is the Philippines’ leading clean energy company. Jonathan L. Mayuga

The US Fish and Wildlife Service strategy released on Wednesday is meant to prop up declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

Documents released by the agency show up to about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades after the birds from the eastern US encroached into the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls.

The smaller spotted owls have been unable to compete with the invaders, which have large broods and need less room to survive than spotted owls.

Past efforts to save spotted owls focused on protecting the forests where they live, sparking bitter fights over logging but also helping slow the birds’ decline.

The proliferation of barred owls in recent years is undermining that earlier work, officials said.

“Without actively managing barred owls, northern spotted owls will likely go extinct in all or the majority of their range, despite decades of collaborative conservation efforts,” said Fish and Wildlife Service

Oregon state supervisor Kessina Lee.

The notion of killing one bird species to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists. It’s reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants that prey on the fish, and to preserve warblers by killing cowbirds

THE La Mesa Ecopark is a perfect place for people, young and old alike, to reconnect with nature. PHOTOS COURTESY OF GREGG YAN

ONE of the creeks inside the La Mesa Ecopark.

THE Philippine pygmy woodpecker is just one of many bird species that can be spotted inside the La Mesa Ecopark.

EUGENE, Oregon—While Nikki Hiltz took a victory lap to celebrate a long-awaited trip to the Olympics, some fans reached out and handed bracelets to their favorite 1,500-meter runner—a runner who is doing this, in part, for them. These days, Hiltz, who’s transgender and nonbinary, is shining in two lanes—on the track as one of the world’s top middle distances runners with a trip to Paris upcoming, and away from it as a role model for the queer community.

Hiltz, who’s always competed in the female category, uses the pronouns “they” and “them,” and highly suggests people get used to that because they aren’t going anywhere.

“I’m just looking forward to keep showing up as myself and keep taking up space,” the 29-year-old Hiltz said Sunday at the US track trials after earning their first trip to the Olympics. “I use they/them pronouns and people stumble all the time. But it’s like, ‘You can’t really ignore me anymore, because I’m a two-time, back-to-back champion. I’m here, getit-right’ kind of vibe.”

Hiltz’s race plan last Sunday went exactly according to how they drew it up. They got out to a fast start, stayed close to the lead pack and took off at the end. Hiltz ran a personal best and meet-record time of 3 minutes, 55.33 seconds to hold off Emily Mackay and Elle St. Pierre by less than a second. Flashback to the 2021 Olympic trials: It didn’t go as planned and they finished last in a final won by St. Pierre.

“I’ve just done so much work since then,” Hiltz said. “So much mental work and obviously physical work, too. It’s just a journey.”

Three months before the trials in ‘21, life began to change for Hiltz. In a post on social media, they announced—“I’m Nikki and I’m transgender.”

The American record holder in the women’s mile remembers March 31, 2021, as a day when friends, family, fans and even track rivals could see Hiltz for who they really were.

As Hiltz gets ready to run in Paris next month, they know they are not just running for themselves. They are now equal parts athlete and LGBTQ+ advocate in a world where transgender participation in sports has become one of society’s most divisive lightning rods.

“I definitely pour a lot of myself and a lot of my time and energy into the queer community and being an advocate,” Hiltz said last summer in an interview before world championships in Budapest, Hungary. “But I do that because I get so much in return. I feel like every time I meet another nonbinary person in the queer community, they provide me with more representation. They always say that I’m doing that for them, but I think representation is a two-way street and I definitely feel empowered.”

Hiltz competing in the female category doesn’t raise the same issues as faced by transgender women.

Two years ago, swimmer Lia Thomas became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship. It triggered new policies across sports.

World Aquatics effectively banned transgender women from competing in women’s events and World Athletics, the governing body for track and field, has grappled with versions of this issue for a while.

Last year, it implemented stricter rules for intersex athletes with differences in sex development. Caster Semenya , the two-time Olympic 800-meter champion who has differences in sex development, is now barred from competing. She’s said she won’t undergo the medical or surgical procedures she would need to in order to compete under the new rules, which ban her from all events unless she undergoes hormone-suppressing treatment for six months before competing.

“The overarching principle for me,” World

Athletics

President Sebastian Coe said last year, “is we will always do what we think is in the best interest of our sport.” AP

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | SundAy, July 7, 2024 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph

Editor: Jun Lomibao

FILIPINO paddlers from the Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force compete with intensity.

FILIPINO paddlers topped the International Open category and wound up third in two other events in the recent Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Races in Hong Kong.

A team from the Philippine Dragon Boat Federation (PDBF) beat two Hong Kong squads, including the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club which clinched bronze— in the premiere category of the competition that drew 170 teams from 12 countries among them Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

The PDBF also clinched a bronze medal in the International Women’s Championship behind Jiujiang Double Steam Women’s Dragon Boat Team and the Singapore National Dragon Boat Team.

The other bronze came in the PRC 75th Anniversary Celebration

Trophy—China Tourism Group International Women’s Grand Championship dominated by the Lecong Louvre Dragonboat Team from China and the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. The races were organized by the Hong Kong Tourism Board and the Hong Kong (China) Dragon Boat Association and drew more than 4,000 athletes at the East Tsim Sha Tsui harbour front.

“We had less than a month to prepare, with a diverse team where the majority are from the Philippine Navy,” team manager Marcia Cristobal said.

Olympic golf: Getting there is the hard part

By Doug Ferguson The Associated Press

ONE of the best indications that golf was starting to catch on as an Olympic sport came from a player who never even made it to the podium.

Rory McIlroy was part of a sevenman playoff for the bronze medal at the Tokyo Games, eliminated on the third of four extra holes. He said when it was over, “I never tried so hard to finish third.”

McIlroy was among those who skipped the Olympics when golf returned to the program in 2016 at Rio de Janeiro. He said then he wouldn’t be watching golf, only “the stuff that matters.” The next time around, he was all in. And he’s not alone. Only two eligible players are sitting out the men’s competition when it begins August 1 at Le Golf National outside Paris.

One is Bernd Wiesberger of Austria, who withdrew from the Tokyo Games right after

and Frances Benson (1:34:00) finishing second and third, respectively, in the event that saw fur parents bonded on the trail with their ShihTzus, Poodles, Jack Russels, Huskies, Retrievers and Aspins in the 1.4-km Dog Run. “We are delighted to give the running community a worthy cause to support,” said Chrissy Roa, AyalaLand Inc. marketing and communications group head. “The Green Run’s main mission is to give

he moved into position to make it. The other is Cristobal del Solar of Chile, who plays on the Korn Ferry Tour and doesn’t want to miss a week if it jeopardizes his chance to get a Professional Golfers Association

In most cases, the competition was fierce just to get to the Paris Games.

“Qualifying was my first goal this year,” defending gold medalist Xander Schauffele said. “It’s a very hard team to qualify for on the US side.”

The Americans have two players in the top 10 who won’t be going, including US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau.

Of course, there are no excuses for skipping this year. Rio de Janeiro carried the threat of the Zika virus. The Tokyo Games were postponed one year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning no spectators, no opportunity for athletes to attend other events and daily coronavirus testing. Still to be determined is the value of gold, silver and bronze.

Given the endless golf schedule, the silver claret jug from the British Open will be awarded just 11 days before the pursuit of a gold medal.

Edgar &

“For track and field, gymnastics, winning a gold medal from when you were a kid was the top of the top,” said Schauffele, who won his first major this year at the PGA Championship.

“People ask me now about a major and a gold medal. Growing up, it was about watching the majors. Maybe in 50 years it will be different.

“But there’s added emphasis on trying to win one,” he said of an Olympic gold. “It’s starting to pull some of its own weight. And I imagine it will be pulling more and more.”

The gold medalists from Rio de Janeiro (Justin Rose and Inbee Park) and Tokyo (Schauffele and Nelly Korda) all have major championship hardware at home.

Schauffele and Korda will be among the contenders to give golf back-to-back gold medalists, a difficult task in golf regardless of the brand of trophy.

Scottie Scheffler remains the clear favorite everywhere he goes, already a six-time winner against the best fields in golf, including the Masters and The Players Championship. The gap between Scheffler and the rest of golf in the world ranking is a size not seen since the peak years of Tiger Woods.

“Playing for your country is always extremely exciting. Especially I think it will be extra special doing it on the Olympic stage,” Scheffler said. “It’s also good bragging rights for people when they tell me golf’s not a sport. I

can say it’s an Olympic sport.” Korda is more of a mystery. The American, who will be 26 when the women’s competition begins, was unbeatable in March and April as she tied an LPGA record with five consecutive victories, including her second major at the Chevron Championship.

But then she took a 10 on one hole in the US Women’s Open and shot 80, missing the cut. She missed another cut in Michigan, and then shot 81 in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship and missed another cut in a major.

Typical of golf these days, there is a LIV Golf effect. Seven players from the Saudi-funded league will be in the Olympics. The list starts with Jon Rahm, the two-time major winner who defected to LIV at the end of last year. His world ranking was high enough that it didn’t affect his Olympic standing.

The same can’t be said of DeChambeau, who this year tied for sixth in the Masters, was the runner-up to Schauffele at the PGA Championship and beat McIlroy at the US Open. Because majors are the only events where he can accrue world ranking points, it left him out of the top four Americans who get to play. The Olympic ranking is based on the world ranking, and countries get a maximum of four players provided they are among the top 15 in the world.

Joaquin Niemann of Chile and Abraham Ancer of Mexico were among those who played where they could—mainly the Asian Tour—to get whatever ranking points they could. Ancer narrowly made it back for his second Olympics. The venue will be familiar to a handful of players and a television audience. Le Golf National has hosted the French Open 29 times—three past champions, including Tommy Fleetwood, will be in the Olympics— and more famously it hosted the Ryder Cup in 2018.

THE US’s Xander Schauffele holds his men’s golf gold medal at Tokyo 2020 in Kawagoe, Japan. AP

THE Green Run gathers more than 2,500 humans

Will the influence of tiktok trends last?

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME

The Eraserheads are off to another overseas tour

IT’S great to know that Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and Marcus Adoro are still friends—or to be precise, friends again.

That’s to paraphrase Marasigan, who said some years ago that one reason the disbanded Eraserheads can’t play again as a quartet is “when we’re not friends.”

Being friends means yet another new Eraserheads tour overseas—the latest of which will happen this weekend.

Five dates in North America are bankrolled by promoters Tiana Entertainment and Live Nation PH:

n July 6, Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu

n July 12, The Warfield, San Francisco

n July 13, Peacock Theater, Los Angeles

n July 19, Pechanga Resort Casino, Temecula, California

T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Lourdes M. Fernandez

Aldwin M. Tolosa

Jt Nisay

Edwin P. Sallan

Eduardo A. Davad

Niggel Figueroa

Anabelle O. Flores

Tony M. Maghirang

Rick Olivares

Jill Tan Radovan

Reine Juvierre S. Alberto

John Eiron R. Francisco

Pocholo Concepcion

Francine Y. Medina

Rory Visco

Bea Rollo

Trixzy Leigh Bonotan

Bernard P. Testa

Nonie Reyes

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n July 21, Great Canadian Casino Resort, Toronto

ABS-CBN Global Asia Pacific is also putting in money as promoter of two dates, one in Asia, and one in the Middle East:

n November 23, Arena @ Expo, Singapore

n December 8, Dubai Exhibition Centre, Dubai

This tour is an offshoot of the band’s hugely successful “Huling El Bimbo” reunion concert on December 22, 2022 at the SMDC Grounds in Parañaque.

A previous tour in 2023 consisted of nine dates in the United States and Canada.

To go further back, the Eraserheads performed overseas between 2012 to 2014—a spinoff from its historic “Final Set” concert on March 7, 2009 at the SM Mall of Asia Grounds that drew an estimated 100,000 people.

This was in turn a direct consequence of the very first Eraserheads reunion concert on August 30, 2008 in BGC— which was unfortunately cut short when Buendia complained of chest pains due to his heart condition.

It’s been 16 years since that health emergency and Buendia is currently in fine form, busy fronting his own bands (Oktaves, Apartel), running a record label (Offshore) which also manages its artists, riding his Harley-Davidson on weekends, and even finding time to post guitar

tutorials dubbed “Secrets of the Chords” on his Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Marasigan is likewise an active musician in his own right, still fronting Sandwich which has just released a new single, “Morena.”

Zabala had played bass with Moonstar88, The Dawn, and Hilera, while not much has been heard musically from Adoro.

But in the next few weeks they’ll be playing together like in the old days and coming home with hefty paychecks in their bank accounts.

Red Rocks, 1989

THE Eraserheads story is a prime example of a band that came at the right place at the right time.

The place was Red Rocks, forerunner of Club Dredd in Timog, QC. The year was 1989, a time when the live music scene needed rejuvenation.

There was a lot of buzz about a new band from UP Diliman that would play at Red Rocks, which itself was owned by Peyups alumni. The word was, the band played like amateurs, but had damn good original songs.

When the band auditioned for an album deal with BMG Records executives,

then-producer Ed Formoso held it at Red Rocks. I was there as part of Formoso’s posse of DJs since he ran LA 105.

Buendia was laughing onstage as the band couldn’t keep time in some of the songs. But, in musicians’ lingo, “Andun e,” to mean the Eraserheads had what it takes to strike gold.

“Ano isusuot niyo pag magpo- promote na kayo sa TV?” asked then-BMG boss Buddy de Vera.

Buendia, who, like his bandmates, was then wearing the standard college kid attire of white T-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, said, “Ganito,” looking at himself. And that was how the band had its way as it recorded seven studio albums that are now part of contemporary Filipino music history’s second golden age (the first being Pinoy Rock and OPM of the ’70s).

If the Beatles had George Martin as record producer, the Eraserheads had Robin Rivera, a UP professor whom Buendia asked to guide them in the studio. Rivera had also been behind the console for the band’s virtual first album, a demo cassette tape titled “Pop U!”—a euphemism for “f**k you” to record labels whose formula for success was to look for a pop hit among their songs.

REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD: Eraserheads' Buddy Zabala, Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan and Marcus Adoro PHOTOS COURTESY OF ERASEHEADS CONCERT TOUR PUBLICITY

THE Eraserheads on tour in 2023

THE Eraserheards’ ongoing overseas tour is an offshoot of its hugely successful reunion concert on December 22, 2022 in Parañaque.

ON its second season, Globe Hangouts GoJAM Talent Search – Band Edition continues to empower Gen Z when it comes to owning their music and turning passions into professions. Once more, the pioneering talent search proves it is home to

JAM SESSION

the country’s top musical talents.

The latest band edition of the GoJAM Talent Search follows its formula for success. The initial batch of band applicants was screened and then shortlisted to semi-finalists who went through workshops and challenges to hone their craft. Eight bands came out

SACRED RED

Members:

Harlee Aguila

Marv Zafe

Bryden Eclavea John Paul Saliva.

Globe Hangouts

GoJAM Talent Search Season 2Band Edition Part 2

unscathed and will show their prodigious wares in the GoJAM Talent Search Second Season finals to be announced soon.

Soundstrip introduced the first four finalists in Part 1 of this feature. Here are the stories of the remaining four finalists of the GoJAM Talent Search Season 2.

Bassist Bryden formed Sacred Red after the pandemic. In their first meeting, the prospective keyboardist didn’t show up so they moved on as a four piece. In their first gig, a new drummer sat in and the resulting chemistry was just great so the current Sacred Red line-up forged on to this year’s GoJAM band edition finals. Sacred Red is still exploring the music genre it would pursue distilling it from various personal influences that include IV of Spades, Sunkissed Lola, Bruno Mars, and Michael Jackson, among others. The young band is very happy with the unique opportunity of being part of GoJAM band edition. They hope to record their first demo of original songs and eagerly look ahead to more school gigs.

THAT BAND ASTRA

Members:

Buffy | Gibson | Theo | Zoie | Miles

Zoie and Buffy organized the band for their senior high prom and the others coming from different schools subsequently joined to form the original That Band Astra. Following the end of the pandemic, the current line-up got together to make music again. In performances since, the band is partial to the indie pop/alt-rock hybrid that saw them play at major events and festivals around the Metro and gigs at Saguijo, Social House, and Ellipsis.

Joining GoJAM has opened the band’s understanding of making music beyond writing and performing songs to encompass other aspects of the music business. Presently, That Band Astra is on Spotify and Soundcloud and while they’re in the GoJAM finals frenzy, they may yet pull a surprise with a batch of new releases in the coming months.

Members:

Emilio Seña

Jiggy Santos

Jeric Santos

Joseph Dineros

Neil Sandico

Starting as a collaboration of high school friends, Social Climb gelled into a five-piece band that shared a common interest in making music. The band wants to make a name in the alternative music scene with their mix and match of pop, funk, electronic, math rock, and even bossa nova. Some personal favorites are I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, Delta Sleep, Chon, and Cage The Elephant.

Social Climb didn’t expect to be in the final 8 but the surprising turn in their GoJAM journey has been fun, mind-blowing and challenging so far. The band will be releasing new singles in the coming months to add to their discography that’s available on most music streaming platforms.

WAKI & THE WINSTONS

Members: Waki Ignacio

Lenard Magtira

Reisa Elgincolin

Diego Cerrudo

Nathan Salera

During the pandemic, it was just Waki and Lenard passing each other demos for online gigs. After the pandemic, the band Waki & The Winstons was formed around members of other bands the initial duo sessioned for. The current band plays mostly blues, funk, fusion, and soul music and counts John Mayer, Cory Wong, Vulfpeck, and Stevie Wonder among their biggest influences.

Being part of the GoJAM Talent search has been a major learning experience citing the songwriting session with Gab Alipe of Urbandub and recording insights from the Tower of Doom staff. The band has songs on Spotify and they have new recordings lined up as they look forward to professional help to market their new music.

SOCIAL CLIMB

ON its second season, Globe Hangouts GoJAM Talent Search – Band Edition continues to empower Gen Z when it comes to owning their music and turning passions into professions. Once more, the pioneering talent search proves it is home to

JAM SESSION

the country’s top musical talents.

The latest band edition of the GoJAM Talent Search follows its formula for success. The initial batch of band applicants was screened and then shortlisted to semi-finalists who went through workshops and challenges to hone their craft. Eight bands came out

SACRED RED

Members:

Harlee Aguila

Marv Zafe

Bryden Eclavea John Paul Saliva.

Globe Hangouts

GoJAM Talent Search Season 2Band Edition Part 2

unscathed and will show their prodigious wares in the GoJAM Talent Search Second Season finals to be announced soon.

Soundstrip introduced the first four finalists in Part 1 of this feature. Here are the stories of the remaining four finalists of the GoJAM Talent Search Season 2.

Bassist Bryden formed Sacred Red after the pandemic. In their first meeting, the prospective keyboardist didn’t show up so they moved on as a four piece. In their first gig, a new drummer sat in and the resulting chemistry was just great so the current Sacred Red line-up forged on to this year’s GoJAM band edition finals. Sacred Red is still exploring the music genre it would pursue distilling it from various personal influences that include IV of Spades, Sunkissed Lola, Bruno Mars, and Michael Jackson, among others. The young band is very happy with the unique opportunity of being part of GoJAM band edition. They hope to record their first demo of original songs and eagerly look ahead to more school gigs.

THAT BAND ASTRA

Members:

Buffy | Gibson | Theo | Zoie | Miles

Zoie and Buffy organized the band for their senior high prom and the others coming from different schools subsequently joined to form the original That Band Astra. Following the end of the pandemic, the current line-up got together to make music again. In performances since, the band is partial to the indie pop/alt-rock hybrid that saw them play at major events and festivals around the Metro and gigs at Saguijo, Social House, and Ellipsis.

Joining GoJAM has opened the band’s understanding of making music beyond writing and performing songs to encompass other aspects of the music business. Presently, That Band Astra is on Spotify and Soundcloud and while they’re in the GoJAM finals frenzy, they may yet pull a surprise with a batch of new releases in the coming months.

Members:

Emilio Seña

Jiggy Santos

Jeric Santos

Joseph Dineros

Neil Sandico

Starting as a collaboration of high school friends, Social Climb gelled into a five-piece band that shared a common interest in making music. The band wants to make a name in the alternative music scene with their mix and match of pop, funk, electronic, math rock, and even bossa nova. Some personal favorites are I Don’t Know How But They Found Me, Delta Sleep, Chon, and Cage The Elephant.

Social Climb didn’t expect to be in the final 8 but the surprising turn in their GoJAM journey has been fun, mind-blowing and challenging so far. The band will be releasing new singles in the coming months to add to their discography that’s available on most music streaming platforms.

WAKI & THE WINSTONS

Members: Waki Ignacio

Lenard Magtira

Reisa Elgincolin

Diego Cerrudo

Nathan Salera

During the pandemic, it was just Waki and Lenard passing each other demos for online gigs. After the pandemic, the band Waki & The Winstons was formed around members of other bands the initial duo sessioned for. The current band plays mostly blues, funk, fusion, and soul music and counts John Mayer, Cory Wong, Vulfpeck, and Stevie Wonder among their biggest influences.

Being part of the GoJAM Talent search has been a major learning experience citing the songwriting session with Gab Alipe of Urbandub and recording insights from the Tower of Doom staff. The band has songs on Spotify and they have new recordings lined up as they look forward to professional help to market their new music.

SOCIAL CLIMB

Will the influence of TikTok trends last?

By Anne D’innocenzio, Haleluya Hadero & Dee-Ann Durbin

The Associated Press

NEW yORK—

TikTok and its bite-sized videos arrived in the united States as a global version of the Chinese app Douyin. less than six years later, the social media platform is deeply woven into the fabric of American consumerism.

TikTok has shortened the shelf life of trends and revamped how people engage with food and fashion. Its popularity, however, coupled with its roots in Beijing, led Congress to pass a law that would ban the video-sharing app unless its Chinese parent company sells its stake, citing national security concerns. Both the company, ByteDance, and TikTok have sued on First Amendment grounds.

But while the platform faces uncertain times, its influence remains undisputed— nd for now, arguably unrivaled.

Interest in bright pink blush and brown lipstick soared last year, for example, after the cosmetics were featured in TikTok videos with looks labeled as “cold girl” and “latte” makeup. An abundance of clothing fads with quirky names, from “cottagecore” to “coastal grandma,” similarly owe their pervasiveness to TikTok, turning these trends into cultural currency. And, sometimes, into actual dollars for creators and brands. (see boxed item—Ed.)

Plenty of TikTok-spawned crazes last only a week or two before losing steam. Yet even mini trends have challenged businesses to decipher which ones are worth jumping on and stocking up for. A majority of the more than 170 million Americans who use TikTok belong to the under-30 age group coveted by retailers, according to the Pew Research Center. Whether fans of the platform or not, shoppers may have a #tiktokmademebuyit moment without knowing the origin story behind an eye-catching product.

“The impact has been almost immeasur-

“[TikTok’s] impact has been almost immeasurable,” said Christopher Douglas, a senior manager of strategy at the influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

able,” said Christopher Douglas, a senior manager of strategy at the influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

TikTok’s secret sauce

Wh AT made TikTok such a trendsetter compared to predecessor platforms? Researchers and marketing analysts have often described the platform’s personalized recommendation algorithm as the “secret sauce” of TikTok’s success. The company has disclosed little about the technology it employs to populate users’ “For You” feeds.

Jake Bjorseth, founder of the advertising agency Trndsttrs, which specializes in Generation Z, thinks the app’s use of an interestbased algorithm instead of personal contacts to connect like-minded people is what gave TikTok the edge. Predecessors like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat were known more for peer-to-peer networks.

TikTok also changed the standard for what was considered desirable in social media content. Because the platform was designed to be easy to use, many videos lacked filters, lighting setups or production-level audio. “These minimally planned and produced” recordings made TikTok creators seem more authentic and allowed them to develop more intimate relationships with their followers than earlier breeds of influencers, Bjorseth said.

Addictive and harmful?

The platform naturally has plenty of critics. Some experts argue that TikTok, like other social media sites, can be addictive and promote hours of endless scrolling, as

well as unnecessary spending. Others accuse TikTok of promoting harmful behavior, like young girls engaging in skin care rituals and procedures intended for older women.

Some observers accuse prolific TikTok video-makers of using gimmicks to concoct ersatz trends or repackaging the looks of an earlier era with attention-grabbing names. Yet for all the detractors who won’t mourn TikTok if it goes away, a vocal base of fans hopes it doesn’t come to that.

Niki Maragos, a 26-year-old digital marketer from Charlotte, North Carolina, is one. She credits TikTok with transforming her personal style. Before frequenting the platform, she wore clothes from a single genre at a time and followed the same makeup routine.

Now she’s into experimenting. To attend a recent music festival, for example, Maragos wore white ruffled bloomers, a black top and cowboy boots—a vintage-inspired look known as “cottagecore” in TikTok speak. She’s also tried applying faux freckles—a sun-kissed cosmetics trick that’s experiencing a renaissance—and latte-toned makeup.

“TikTok has allowed everybody to be their own fashionista,” Maragos said. “I have become free. I am going outside the box.”

Trend-setter

C ASeY LeWIS, a trend analyst based in New York who previously worked as an editor at Teen Vogue, said TikTok’s clout in the fashion arena first became apparent to her when videos about Birkenstock’s Boston clogs overtook her “For You” feed in 2022.

Lewis thought it was odd since her

brother, whom she described as a “frat boy” and not a fashionista, wore the cork-soled comfort shoes in college. As the number of TikTok videos exploded, some creators took to advising their followers where they could find the suddenly sold-out clogs.

“I’m not a psychologist, but I’m sure there’s some psychology where your brain goes from thinking like, ‘how weird? Is that fashion?’” she said. “And then suddenly you’re obsessed with it.”

With easy-to-follow cooking videos and clever hacks, TikTok also became a go-to spot for home cooks during the Covid-19 pandemic. The platform made humble ingredients a star but, in the process, earned endorsements from some of the stars of the food world.

“every day, honestly, I am blown away by the creativity from the FoodTok community,” restaurateur and chef Gordon Ramsay said in a TikTok video late last year.

Like the clothing styles of earlier eras, foods that had fallen out of fashion were resurrected via TikTok. US sales of cottage cheese jumped 34 percent between April 2022 and April 2024 after videos promoting cottage cheese ice cream, cottage cheese toast and other recipes racked up millions of views.

Likewise, TikTok has upended the cosmetics industry by promoting do-it-yourself skin and hair treatments, causing ingredients to get labeled as the next miracle cure or to be avoided, and featuring videos of people gleefully applying or panning the contents of their latest shopping hauls.

Tiffany Watson, a college student who posts makeup tutorials on TikTok, says the platform has made the beauty space more fun by giving specific looks winsome titles.

“It brings lightheartedness. It’s fun to be able to put a cute little name on it, try something new and then see a community of people trying the same thing,” said Watson, who currently has more than 31,000 followers on TikTok and has done paid partnerships with brands like Colourpop Cosmetics.

Though the desire for clicks can encourage creators to follow the same hair and makeup trends, it also has given a diverse group of influencers a larger platform on which to champion or call out brands, said Lewis, the trend anaylst. She pointed to a recent controversy involving Youthforia, a brand that was criticized by some Black content creators after it released a foundation shade that resembled jet black paint.

“With TikTok,” she said, “people who otherwise weren’t heard were suddenly heard.”

n Cover photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Confused by all the TikTok trends? This glossary might help

Fashion and style

n Coastal grandma: A beachfront, white linen-clad fashion look that incorporates light blue and loose clothing in a way that subtly communicates a peaceful and carefree lifestyle. Lex Nicoleta, a TikTok creator who has 325,000 followers on the platform, coined the term.

n Cottagecore: This style captures colors and patterns from countryside meadows. Think greenery, long flowery dresses and the aesthetic of Middle-earth, the planet’s mythological past as imagined

in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

n Mob wives : An aesthetic that incorporates the bold cheetah prints, fur and big (often teased-out) hair seen on women in mafia-themed films and TV shows. The term appears to have been coined by TikTok creator Kayla Trivieri.

Beauty

n Clean girl aesthetic: A no-makeup makeup look that often typically features glistening, hydrated skin and glossy lips. Oftentimes, it’s paired with slicked-back buns and minimalist clothing such as a

white t-shirt, gold jewelry and jeans.

n Cold girl makeup: This look attempts to recreate what happens to many people when they get cold. Think red or pink blush for rosy-flushed cheeks and nose, combined with sheer lipstick or gloss. TikTok creator Zoe Kim Kenealy posted the term and the look in 2022.

n Latte makeup : What color is a latte? This look incorporates smoky shades of brown and nude tones. The term was coined by TikTok creator Rachel Rigler, who was, in part, inspired by a 2018 makeup look from Australian

Food

n Girl dinner : Girl dinners can be anything, but are popularly known as a snack plate that requires less cooking and cleaning up than a typical evening meal. The phrase is credited to TikTok creator Olivia Maher.

n Smash burger taco: A burger fried with a tortilla on top. Burger tacos aren’t a new thing. But they went viral last year when TikTok creator Brad Prose posted a video about it. AP

makeup artist Tanielle Jai.

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com