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SECRETARY John R. Castriciones personally hands over a Certificate of Land Ownership Award to agrarian reform beneficiary Anthony delos Reyes in the middle of his farm in Barangay Pagolingan, Palauig, Zambales, on July 2, 2020. Delos Reyes, who had been a tenant and farming the land for 30 years, received his land title comprising a total of 7,500 square meters agricultural land. DAR.GOV.PH

DAR-TO-DOOR SERVICE A

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

MID the onslaught of the 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19), the Duterte administration, through the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), has stepped up the implementation of various programs to help Filipino farmers who belong to the “poorest of the poor” sector in the country cope with the times.

Despite travel restrictions with the imposition of community quarantines to control the spread of the virus since March, the DAR continued to distribute certificates of land ownership awards (CLOAs) and provide support services to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) through various ARB organizations (ARBOs).

Aside from the land acquisition and distribution backlog it inherited from the previous administrations, DAR is also implementing the Duterte administration’s version of agrarian reform, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) Phase 2, targeting the distribution of public agricultural lands to qualified farmer-beneficiaries.

The DAR is also on its toes in implementing agrarian justice delivery (AJD), addressing legal conflicts arising from the implementation of the land acquisition and distribution (LAD) component of the program, while providing vital support services, including access to credit and/or finance to boost farmers’ capacity.

Tedious legal battles

IN distributing CLOAs to 605

ARBs in San Narciso, Quezon, last month, DAR Secretary John R. Castriciones said the process went through tedious legal battles that even reached the level of the Supreme Court before the DAR was finally able to implement land acquisition and distribution.

During a brief message highlighting the CLOA distribution, Castriciones declared: “We will not stop distributing land titles, help and support to our farmers.”

Land distribution, or CLOA distribution, under Castriciones is marked by “Serbisyong DARto-Door” wherein the official takes time to personally hand over CLOAs to select farmer-beneficiaries, mostly aging, if not ailing farmers, who have long been waiting to receive the CLOA from the DAR, before proceeding to a designated venue for the ceremonial CLOA distribution and turnover of the package of support services to ARBOs. “We, in the Department of Agrarian Reform, are bringing the message of hope for our farmers.

We are going around the country, bringing to them the good news that the Department of Agrarian Reform will always be there to sup-

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 48.3500

Agrarian reform chief personally delivers land titles to farmer-beneficiaries to speed up implementation of CARP Phase 2

quarantine was lowered in some provinces starting April 2020, he reported that CARP-partner agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, LandBank, and Registry of Deeds/ Land Registration Authority were implementing skeletal deployment of personnel.

For calendar year (CY) 2020, he reported that the DAR was able to distribute 12,684 hectares to 9,043 recipient-agrarian reform beneficiaries, or 61 percent of DAR’s annual target in terms of area and 46 percent in terms of ARBs. However, the official is optimistic that the target will be surpassed by the end of December 2020.

If emancipation patents (EPs) and CLOAs from LandBank were to be included in the total accomplishment, distribution is pegged at 455,094 hectares, benefiting 365,169 ARBs. EPs and CLOAs from LandBank are turned over to the DAR by virtue of DAR MC 5, Series of 2019.

CARP Phase 2

DAR Secretary Castriciones hands over a land title to a CARP agrarian reform beneficiary. DAR.GOV.PH

port them and to extend to them the much-needed assistance at this point in time,” Castriciones said during a virtual news conference held a week after distributing CLOAs in Arakan Valley in North Cotabato, comprising 4,663 hectares of land to 3,035 ARBs last month.

More CLOAs registered

THE DAR, CARP’s lead implementing agency, has always been criticized for its backlog in terms of land acquisition and distribution.

Undersecretary for Field Operations David D. Erro reported that

DAR’s backlog remains at 523,000 hectares.

Reporting on the performance of the agency under the Duterte administration, Erro however said that from July 2016 to June 31, 2020, CLOAs for 124,648 hectares benefiting 103,450 beneficiaries have been registered.

“It can be observed that while CLOA registration targets were reduced annually since 2016, accomplishments increase from 2018 to 2019. For the calendar year 2019, DAR accomplished 32,241 hectares out of its target of 41,077 hectares,

or this is 78-percent performance, the highest since 2016,” he reported.

‘Lockdown’ effect

THE DAR accomplishment as of August 31, 2020, is 8,366 hectares, benefiting 5,993 ARBs. “This accomplishment is only 28 percent of DAR’s annual target. The primary reason for low accomplishment was the nationwide lockdown with the implementation of the enhanced community quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic from mid-March 2020 to date,” he said.

Although the community

UNDER CARP Phase 2 under the Duterte administration’s agrarian reform program, Erro said, government-owned land under Executive Order 75, Series of 2019 is ongoing.

There are 217,120.98 hectares of government-owned land (GOL) that can be covered under Executive Order 75, Series of 2019, he said.

However, Erro said out of 217,120.98 hectares of GOL identified for coverage and eventual distribution, only the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority had executed a Deed of Transfer for over 289 hectares (Davao de Oro) in favor of the department.

“Other agencies of the government are not cooperative but the department is exerting all efforts, Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4673 n UK 63.5706 n HK 6.2367 n CHINA 7.3147 n SINGAPORE 35.8254 n AUSTRALIA 35.2085 n EU 57.1739 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.8919

Source: BSP (November 6, 2020)

NewsSunday DAR-TO-DOOR SERVICE BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, November 8, 2020

Continued from A1

including legal confrontations, to cover these GOLs,” he reported.

Meanwhile, Erro said the DAR is working to further subdivide collective CLOAs under the Project Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project.

According to Erro, a total of 1,380,420 hectares nationwide will be parceled and issued individual titles.

Swift, efficient agrarian justice

FOR his part, DAR Legal Affairs Office Undersecretary Luis Meinrado Pañgulayan said the implementation of a swift and efficient agrarian justice delivery program is on the right track.

DAR’s agrarian justice delivery program, he said, gives life to the DAR’s mandate.

As of June 30, 2020, the DAR Adjudication Board (DARAB) Central Office, which had 4,183 as the total number of cases for the action of the secretary from 1988 to 2020, now only has 6 pending cases.

The Bureau of Agrarian Legal Assistance (BALA) Central Office, on the other hand, which has a total of 1,469 total number of cases for the action of the secretary from 1988 to 2020, now only has 41 total number of pending cases.

For Agrarian Law Implemen-

all cases from 2018 and the preceding years.

“I believe that we will all resolve them before the year ends,” Pañgulayan said.

tation (ALI), as of June 30, 2020, from 1988 to 2020, the backlog was recorded at 132,233. Now it has only a remaining 3,760 total number of pending cases.

Special ALI cases, which had a total of 2,808 backlog for the same period, now only has a total number of 196 pending cases.

Pañgulayan said the cancellation cases, which reached a total of 11,064 from 1988 to 2020, now only has 454 total number of pending cases as of June 30, 2020.

Package of support

MEANWHILE, the DAR continues to provide support services to ARBs. The latest beneficiaries of the package of support services are more than 1,000 farmers from the Province of Pangasinan, who received more than P7 million worth of assistance and interventions extended by DAR through its Support Services Office.

The bulk of the assistance comprised of farm machinery and equipment was distributed to 11 ARBOs. Castriciones, who led the turnover of farm equipment on October 28, 2020, handed over five farm tractors, 80 backpack sprayers, and one unit each rice thresher, soybean grinder and pulverizer.

Also, turned over by DAR are 1,000 kilos of soybean seeds, 1,173 bags of fertilizers, 176 boxes of foliarbio fertilizers, 464 bags of palay seeds, and 64 cans of onion seeds.

Zero backlog program

THE DAR’s zero-backlog program was launched in January 2019. It covers the two prongs of the agency’s Agrarian Legal Services: first is the agrarian legal assistance of BALA, which handles the resolution of agrarian cases, representation of beneficiaries before judicial and quasi-judicial bodies, and mediation and consultation; second is the adjudication of agrarian cases of the DAR Adjudication Board (DARAB), which handles regular cases (ejectment, declaration of tenancy status, termination of leasehold relation, etc.) and determination of land valuation.

The zero-backlog program aims to achieve a 100-percent accomplishment rate in the resolution of the beginning balance of cases in 2019, or the resolution of

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Financial services CASTRICIONES: “We, in the Department of Agrarian Reform, are bringing the message of hope for our farmers. We are going around the country, bringing to them the good news that the Department of Agrarian Reform will always be there to support them and to extend to them the much-needed assistance at this point in time.” DAR.GOV.PH

MEANWHILE, the DAR vowed to intensify access to financial services of ARBOs and production clusters under the agro-enterprise development approach of the Linking

Smallholder Farmers to Markets with Microfinance (LinkSFarMM) to help uplift the lives of ARBs and smallholder farmers and farmer organizations.

In a statement issued by DAR on November 3, Undersecretary for Support Services Office Atty. Emily O. Padilla said the goal is to continuously provide financial services to 48,000 ARBs or 50 percent of the targeted 90,000 cluster ARB-members until calendar year 2022.

As of December 2019, the project’s total accomplishment showed big opportunities for the agri-credit programs to expand its outreach, since only 11 percent, or 5,222, out its 484,000 ARBs and smallholder farmers cluster-members have been provided with production loans by the 85 (52 percent) ARBOs from the 118 target sites.

There are still 89 percent, or 478,778 cluster ARB-members, who can still be provided with financial assistance to enable them to comply with the production requirements of their identified institutional buyers.

Padilla said that the specific objective of LinkSFarMM is to make smallholder farmers increase agricultural productivity. The agroenterprise development approach is adopted by the DAR to identify supply, demand and access to market chains of products.

In Spain, coronavirus puts the poor at the back of the line

M

By Aritz Parra | The Associated Press

ADRID—Erika Oliva spends at least three hours a week standing in line at a soup kitchen.

She spends a couple more at the social worker’s office with her 8-year-old son, who has autism.

She waits on the phone to the health center, or when she wants to check if her application for a basic income program will get her the promised €1,015 ($1,188).

So far, it hasn’t.

“They are always asking for more papers but we still haven’t seen a euro. Everything seems to be closed because of the pandemic.

Or you are told to go online,” said Oliva. She managed to apply online, but others in her situation don’t know how to use a computer, or simply don’t have one.

“Poor people queue. It’s what we know how to do best,” Oliva said.

Bearing the brunt

LOWER-INCOME families around the world have often suffered most from the pandemic for several reasons: their jobs might expose them more to the virus and their savings are typically lower. In Spain, their situation has been worse than in much of Europe due to the big role of hard-hit industries like tourism and weaker social welfare benefits.

“The pandemic is extending and intensifying poverty in a country that already had serious inequality problems,” said Carlos Susías, president of the European Anti-Poverty Network, which encompasses dozens of nonprofits.

He says insufficient welfare spending, too much red tape, lack of access to technology and a resurgence of the pandemic are likely to widen what is already one of the developed world’s biggest gaps between rich and poor.

In Spain, over 38,000 have died and nearly 1.3 million have contracted the virus, although the real infection tally could be at least three times higher.

Contagion has spread faster in densely populated workingclass neighborhoods like Vallecas, in southern Madrid, where Oliva’s family of seven share a 35-squaremeter street-level apartment.

Manual workers like her husband, many in essential jobs and commuting on public transporta-

tion, are at greater peril of infection. And they have less financial safety to cope when they do fall ill.

It’s what many experts are describing as a “K-shaped” economic recovery. The affluent are able to recover from the crisis—many working from home—while the most vulnerable lose what economic gains they made since last decade’s financial crisis.

Vulnerable economy

THE International Monetary Fund expects Spain’s economy to shrink 12.8 percent this year, the most among developed economies.

Lara Contreras, a campaigner with the Intermón Oxfam aid group, said the Spanish economy is more vulnerable due to its reliance on construction and tourism, where labor conditions have been squeezed.

When the pandemic hit, halting most global travel, 1 million people lost their jobs in Spain, and the unemployment rate hit 16.3 percent in September. That is more than double the average in the EU or the US, which reports new figures Friday.

The government has supported the wages of some 3.4 million workers and still keeps 600,000 under its national furlough scheme. The coalition of Socialists and the farleft led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is heralding what he calls a “progressive” re-activation of the economy largely relying on billions of euros from the EU.

Poverty rise

BUT experts warn that Spain needs to fix its job market, which is plagued with temporary and part-time contracts. Women and migrants tend to have the least job security, according to a survey by the main Catholic charity, Caritas.

And yet, only one in four vulnerable households was receiving a government subsidy last year.

The pandemic can lead to a “totally broken economy,” said Contreras. Her organization, Oxfam, has warned that the number of Spaniards who live under the poverty threshold—on less than €9,000

RESIDENTS of the southern neighborhood of Vallecas pick clothes from a donation program at a Catholic parish in Madrid, Spain, October 1, 2020. AP/BERNAT ARMANGUE

“The pandemic is extending and intensifying poverty in a country that already had serious inequality problems.”

—CARLOS SUSÍAS, PRESIDENT OF THE EUROPEAN ANTI-POVERTY NETWORK

per year—could rise by 1.1 million from the current 9.8 million unless more is invested in health and social protection and the government broadens its flagship basic income scheme.

That program was touted in April as a way to help as many as 2.3 million families living in poverty. Although more than one million have applied for the support, only half of the requests have been processed and 136,000 applicants have been granted the

subsidy. Regional governments, meanwhile, have taken the opportunity to save on similar programs to reduce poverty.

“The political decision was right, but its execution has been hellish,” Contreras said.

Take Oliva’s case. When her husband lost his job delivering milk to bars and restaurants in April, the family also lost a regional subsidy of €300 for those who work but struggle financially.

While surviving on a small

unemployment benefit, Oliva then applied for the new national subsidy. More than six months later, Oliva has yet to see any of the money. She’s also been told that she can’t apply to get the regional allowance back. And although her husband has found work delivering beer, the family is facing a potential €100 rent hike.

‘Hunger queues’

PERHAPS more worryingly, competition at the so-called “hunger queues” at soup kitchens is getting fiercer. At the Servants of Jesus monastery in Vallecas, each family can now only receive food handouts once per week instead of three times, Oliva explains as she pulls zucchinis, carrots, apples, washing powder and a dozen milk cartons from her groceries’ cart.

“We are now living from day to day,” she said.

The lines have also been getting longer at the Somos Tribuk community pantry, one of the many grassroots networks that have popped up to help people in Vallecas. Volunteers gathered in a warehouse recently to sort out donations of food, diapers, oil and cleaning products.

Fernando Fernández Diego, who at 69 found himself with no pension and unable to sell garlic cloves in markets as he did before the pandemic, said that his household of six adults and three children now survive entirely on food handouts.

As he pulled a shopping cart with donated goods, Fernández said that with politicians “quarreling all the time” while the virus spreads he had little trust in any government help for his family.

“Only the people will save other people,” he said.

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Angel R. Calso

The World

Vaccine storage issues to leave 3 billion people without access

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AMPELA, Burkina Faso—The chain breaks here, in a tiny medical clinic in Burkina Faso that went nearly a year without a working refrigerator.

From factory to syringe, the world’s most promising coronavirus vaccine candidates need nonstop sterile refrigeration to stay potent and safe. But despite enormous strides in equipping developing countries to maintain the vaccine “cold chain,” nearly 3 billion of the world’s 7.8 billion people live where temperature-controlled storage is insufficient for an immunization campaign to bring Covid-19 under control.

The result: Poor people around the world who were among the hardest hit by the virus pandemic are also likely to be the last to recover from it.

The vaccine cold chain hurdle is just the latest disparity of the pandemic weighted against the poor, who more often live and work in crowded conditions that allow the virus to spread, have little access to medical oxygen that is vital to Covid-19 treatment, and whose health systems lack labs, supplies or technicians to carry out large-scale testing.

Maintaining the cold chain for coronavirus vaccines won’t be easy even in the richest of countries, especially when it comes to those that require ultracold temperatures of around minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 F). Investment in infrastructure and cooling technology lags behind the high-speed leap that vaccine development has taken this year due to the virus.

With the pandemic now in its eighth month, logistics experts warn that vast parts of the world lack the refrigeration to administer an effective vaccination program. This includes most of Central Asia, much of India and Southeast Asia, Latin America except for the largest countries, and all but a tiny corner of Africa.

The medical clinic outside Burkina Faso’s capital, a dirt-streaked building that serves a population of 11,000, is a microcosm of the obstacles.

After its refrigerator broke last fall, the clinic could no longer keep vaccines against tetanus, yellow fever, tuberculosis and other common diseases on site, nurse Julienne Zoungrana said. Staff instead used motorbikes to fetch vials in insulated carriers from a hospital in Ouagadougou, making a 40-minute roundtrip drive on a narrow road that varies between dirt, gravel and pavement.

A mother of two who visits the Gampela clinic says she thinks a coronavirus inoculation program will be challenging in her part of the world. Adama Tapsoba, 24, walks four hours under scorching sun to get her baby his routine immunizations and often waits hours more to see a doctor. A week earlier, her 5-month-old son had missed a scheduled shot because Tapsoba’s daughter was sick and she could only bring one child on foot.

“It will be hard to get a [Covid-19] vaccine,” Tapsoba said, bouncing her 5-month-old son on her lap outside the clinic. “People will have to wait at the hospital, and they might leave without getting it.”

To uphold the cold chain in developing nations, international organizations have overseen the installation of tens of thousands of solar-powered vaccine refrigerators. Keeping vaccines at stable temperatures from the time they are made until they are given to patients also requires mobile refrigeration, reliable electricity, sound roads and, above all, advance planning.

For poor countries like Burkina Faso, the best chance of receiving a coronavirus vaccine is through the Covax initiative, led by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance. The goal of Covax is to place orders for multiple promising vaccine candidates and to allocate the successful ones equitably.

The United Nations’s children’s agency, Unicef, began laying the global distribution groundwork months ago, in Copenhagen. At the world’s largest humanitarian aid warehouse, logistics staff are trying to foresee shortages by learning from the past, especially the spring chaos surrounding global shortages of masks and other protective gear that were commandeered off airport tarmacs or stolen and traded on the black market.

Currently, 42 coronavirus vaccine candidates are in clinical trials and another 151 are in pre-clinical evaluation, according to WHO. The ones most likely to end up in the Covax mix must be stored at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (26-46 F).

A Pfizer candidate is among the ones in advanced testing requiring storage at ultracold temperatures.

The company, which has designed a special carrying case for its vaccine, has expressed interest in Covax and signed contracts with the United States, Europe and Japan.

Medical freezers that go down to minus 70 degrees Celsius are rare even in US and European hospitals.

Many experts believe the West African countries that suffered through a 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak may be the best positioned, because a vaccine against that virus also requires ultracold storage.

For more than two-thirds of the world, however, the advanced technology is nowhere on the horizon, according to a study by German logistics company DHL. Meanwhile, billions of people are in countries that don’t have the necessary infrastructure to maintain the cold chain for either existing vaccines or more conventional coronavirus candidates, the study said.

Opportunities for vaccines to be lost expand the farther a vaccine travels. DHL estimated that 15,000 cargo flights would be required to vaccinate the entire planet against Covid-19, stretching global capacity for aircraft and potentially supplies of materials such as dry ice.

“We need to find a bridge” for every gap in the cold chain, DHL chief commercial officer Katja Busch said. “We’re talking about investments...as a society, this is something we have to do.”

Gavi and Unicef worked before the pandemic to supply much of Africa and Asia with refrigeration for vaccines, fitting out 40,000 facilities since 2017. Unicef is now offering governments a checklist of what they will need to maintain a vaccine supply chain and asking them to develop a plan.

“The governments are in charge of what needs to happen in the end,” said Benjamin Schreiber, who is among the directors of Unicef’s vaccination program.

Cracks in the global cold chain start once vaccines leave the factory. Container ships are not equipped to refrigerate pharmaceutical products with a limited shelf life. Shipping vaccines by air costs a lot more, and air cargo traffic is only now rebounding from pandemic-related border closures.

Even when flights are cold and frequent enough, airfreight carries other potential hazards. WHO estimates that as much as half of vaccines globally are lost to wastage, sometimes due to heat exposure or vials breaking while in transit. With coronavirus vaccines, which will be one of the world’s most soughtafter products, theft is also a danger.

“They can’t be left on a tarmac and fought over because they would actually be spoiled and they would have no value—or worse still, people would still be trying to distribute them,” said Glyn Hughes, the global head of cargo for the International Air Transport Association.

Tinglong Dai, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who specializes in health-care logistics, said creativity will be needed to keep the cold chain intact while coronavirus vaccines are distributed on a global scale. Gavi and Unicef have experimented with delivering vaccines by drone. Indian officials have floated the idea of setting aside part of the country’s vast food storage network for the coronavirus vaccines.

“If people can figure out how to transport ice cream, they can transport vaccines,” Dai said.

Temperature-sensitive labels that change color when a vaccine is exposed to heat too long and no longer safe to use, and live delivery tracking to ensure vaccines reach their destinations as intended also have allowed for progress in delivering safe shots.

Yet chances for something to go wrong multiply on the ground as vaccines are prepped to leave national depots. Since the cold chain is so fragile, logistics planning is crucial; syringes and disposal boxes must be available as soon as vaccine shipments arrive.

By the end of the year, Unicef expects to have 520 million syringes pre-positioned for coronavirus vaccines in the developing world and maps of where the refrigeration needs are greatest “to ensure that these supplies arrive in countries by the time the vaccines do,” Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

The last vaccine requiring cold storage that India’s national program adopted was for rotavirus, a stomach bug that typically affects babies and young children. Dr. Gagandeep Kang, who led the research for that vaccine, estimated that India has about 30 percent less storage capacity than it would need for a coronavirus vaccine.

In countries such as India and Burkina Faso, a lack of public transportation presents another obstacle to getting citizens inoculated before vaccines go bad.

Dr. Aquinas Edassery, who runs two clinics in one of India’s poorest and least developed regions, said patients must walk for hours to receive health-care. The trip on a single road that winds 86 kilometers (53 miles) over steep hills and washes out for months at a time will pose an insurmountable barrier for many residents of the eastern district of Rayagada, Edassery said.

As with most logistics, the last kilometer (mile) is the hardest part of delivering a coronavirus vaccine to the people who need it. In Latin America, perhaps nowhere more than Venezuela provides a glimpse into how the vaccine cold chain could go dramatically off course.

When a blackout last year left much of the nation in the dark for a week, doctors in several parts of Venezuela reported losing stocks of vaccines. The country’s largest children’s hospital had to discard thousands of doses of vaccines for illnesses like diphtheria, according to Dr. Huníades Urbina, head of the Venezuelan Society of Childcare and Pediatrics.

“We won’t be able to halt either the coronavirus or measles,” Urbina said.

Preserving the cold chain has only grown more difficult since then. Gas shortages limit the ability to move vaccines quickly from one part of Venezuela to another. Dry ice to keep vaccines cool during transport is harder to find. And after years of economic decline, there also are fewer doctors and other professionals trained to keep the chain intact.

“I’m not optimistic on how the vaccine would be distributed in the inner states because there is no infrastructure of any kind to guarantee delivery—or if it gets delivered, guarantees the adequate preservation under cold conditions,” said Dr. Alberto Paniz-Mondolfi, a Venezuelan pathologist.

Venezuela presents an extreme example, but a coronavirus vaccine also is likely to test parts of Latin America with more robust health-care systems. In Peru, private businesses that typically transport fish and beef have offered their trucks, though it remains unclear whether the Health Ministry will accept.

Back in Burkina Faso, vaccination days became an ordeal at the Gampela clinic when the refrigerator went out, said Zoungrana, the nurse. Staff members on hospital courier runs must buy fuel they often can’t afford and make a second trip to and from the capital to return any unused doses.

“We’re suffering,” said Zoungrana, who was run off the road on her motorbike just a few weeks ago.

Days after journalists from The Associated Press visited the clinic this month, a long-awaited solar refrigerator arrived. With technicians in short supply, the clinic was waiting to be sure the appliance would function properly before stocking it with vaccines. AP

BusinessMirror

Sunday, November 8, 2020

A3

Developing nations can’t ease up on Covid-19 now

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By Mihir Sharma Bloomberg Opinion

s Europe braces for a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that in parts of the continent looks to be more intensive than the first, it is tempting to assume that the developing world has gotten off lightly. In India, which has the world’s second-highest total of Covid-19 cases, the number of new infections has been trending downwards since September.

Other large developing nations flattened their curves even earlier: Brazil peaked in August and South Africa in July.

Back in March, we would have gratefully accepted this outcome: There were very real and logical fears that once the virus began to spread in poorer countries in Asia and Africa, their limited health-care systems would struggle far more than Italy’s and Spain’s. It looks as though the world has dodged a bullet.

Yet, I am not at all sure that we should be confident about the winter and next year. Even in the bestcase scenario, a vaccine will not be available in much of the developing

world before the second half of 2021.

There is more than enough time for new waves of transmission to strike between now and then.

That’s why the causes of Europe’s second wave and the continent’s response are so worrying. European nations opened up too much and, when curves began climbing again, they were much slower to lock down than they had been in the spring.

Experts warned as early as August that summer vacations were causing new cases to spike. The response

was tragically slow.

An unwillingness to lock down again is understandable even without appealing to some nebulous notion of “pandemic fatigue.” The plain fact is that we all understand now, a little better than in the spring, the enormous human and economic costs of strict lockdowns.

It is also true that the costs paid by the developing world, particularly those countries that instituted broad nationwide lockdowns, were even harsher. In South Africa, for example, where President Cyril Ramaphosa responded early and firmly to the virus, GDP fell by over 50 percentage in annualized terms. India, which also shut down in late March, took a huge hit from its national lockdown, which was gradually eased over the summer.

In developing countries with minimal or leaky welfare systems, such costs are disproportionately borne by those who can least afford it. In Bangladesh, the poverty rate has risen 10 percentage points to almost 30 percentage of the population since last year. According to the Dhaka-based think tank SANEM, it may cross 40 percentage before the pandemic is done—a doubling of poverty that would bring the country back to where it was in 2005.

If and when another wave arrives in the developing world, then, which national leaders will be able to respond as strongly as they did in the spring? In India, politicians dread the thought of reimposing harsh restrictions on movement. The Indian state

of Bihar is headed for elections and, given that a significant proportion of its 100 million people are migrant workers who were left stranded by the March lockdown, the government’s “callousness” has become a major issue in the polls.

That’s why it’s even more important for the developing world to avoid a second wave: The only tool that worked to control Covid-19’s spread may no longer be available. Earlier this year, poorer nations could at least benefit from Europe’s experience; public health techniques and therapeutics developed on the fly in the West could be adopted swiftly. And their younger populations helped keep hospitals from being over-burdened.

This time, the lessons from Europe are different. Most important, even if their primary focus has shifted to the economy and jobs, leaders must appreciate the difficult trade-offs to be made. Reopening for travel and leisure might seem like it is essential for struggling economies.

But, as Europe’s second wave proves, the eventual costs of allowing the virus to spread through such laxness are even higher.

If the developing world wants to avoid lockdowns later, it will have to resist the urge to reopen fully now. That means no large indoor gatherings, no uncontrolled travel, no potential super-spreader events, and continued strictness on social distancing. Whether you’re thinking in terms of lives or livelihoods, that’s the only choice available.

Vote-counting is a job for the states; president has no power to intervene

By Cass R. Sunstein

Bloomberg Opinion

T

he current confusion and anxiety surrounding presidential vote-counting, with different states using different rules and procedures, make it natural to wonder: Wouldn’t it have been better to let the federal government oversee the process?

The framers of the US Constitution didn’t think so, for reasons of principle. Some of the foundations of their thinking can be found in the Federalist Papers, written mostly

by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (with a few by John Jay), among the greatest works in all of political science and the most important contemporaneous explanation of the framers’ thinking.

Federalist No. 51, written by Madison, may be the best of the 86 essays, and it speaks, with great specificity, to the situation following this week’s national election.

The least famous passage in that essay, and the most relevant today, is about one thing: federalism. It tells us a lot about how to think about vote-counting—and about the role of the president and Congress in that process.

The essay is mostly a celebration of the system of checks and balances. As Madison put it, “Dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” The system of separated powers—Congress, the president, the judiciary—provides some of those precautions.

But that was not nearly enough.

Madison drew attention to “considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of America.”

Ours is a “compound republic,” he

Protesters hold letters that spell Count Every Vote as they cross an overpass while marching in Portland, Oregon, on Wednesday, November 4, following Tuesday’s election. AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez

wrote, in the sense that “the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments.” There is the national government, and then there are the states, and this division creates essential security for “the rights of the people.” In important cases, “the different governments will control each other.”

These are abstract ideas, but they bear directly on presidential elections, and they help explain the constitutional provisions that govern them.

Under Article II, the states are plainly in charge. A central goal was to ensure the integrity of the election process, which would be badly endangered if a sitting president, or his allies in Congress, could engage in self-dealing.

The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, says more about the process, but similarly ensures that the fundamental questions will be settled by state officials and state law.

Madison had this to say in The Federalist No. 10: “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest

would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.” Under the Constitution, the president has no power at all over the electoral process. The role of Congress is narrowly circumscribed.

It is true that the Constitution leaves many open questions. To answer them, much of the governing law is now provided by the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which maintains continuity with the idea of a “compound republic,” and whose principal goal was again to reduce the role of national authorities.

As one member of Congress said during the legislative debates, “The political conscience is a flexible and elastic rule of action that readily yields to the slightest pressure of party exigencies.” He added that when “the great office of President is at stake...it would be expecting too much of human nature, under the tyranny of party, to omit any opportunity to accomplish its ends, more especially under that loose code of morals which teaches that all is fair in politics, as in war or in love.”

This is not the place to describe the technicalities of that 19thcentury election law, which may or may not prove to be relevant to the 2020 presidential contest. The larger point is that under the act, state law is what governs, whether it is Nevada’s, Arizona’s, Pennsylvania’s or Georgia’s. Congress has the authority to intervene only under narrowly defined circumstances (as, for example, when a state’s electors vote for someone who is too young to be eligible for the presidency).

The president’s own power is weaker still. He has none at all.

(Pause over that, if you would.)

The reason is again clear: He cannot be allowed to pick his successor—and if his own job is at stake, he cannot be trusted at all.

People don’t march under banners these days that cry out, “Compound republic!” But for national elections, the allocation of authority to state officials is a crucial safeguard against bias, self-dealing and corruption. We’re seeing that now. It’s hardly perfect, but it is creating, in real time, some security for “the rights of the people.”

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Sunday, November 8, 2020

The World BusinessMirror

Suu Kyi’s party expected to win second term in Myanmar polls L

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World’s top hedge fund soars 275% with huge bet on China schools

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ANGKOK—Myanmar’s citizens go to the polls on Sunday, today, in an effort to sustain the fledgling democracy they helped install just five years ago.

There are about 37 million registered voters, though turnout is expected to suffer because of a recent surge in coronavirus cases.

In 2015, excitement was high over the opportunity to end more than five decades of army-directed rule. The National League of Democracy (NLD) party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi roared to a landslide election victory, and she became her country’s leader after many hard years at the forefront of a non-violent struggle against military dictatorships that won international admiration.

This year, her party is expected to again top the polls, but some critics feel her administration has failed to embrace democratic principles.

Chances for real reform were always dicey, as the 2008 constitution drafted under the military assures it of enough seats in parliament to block charter changes.

Key ministries are also under the control of the military.

Critics accuse 75-year-old Suu Kyi and her party of being more concerned about entrenching itself in power than encouraging a broad-based democracy.

“This time, neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor her party is bringing democracy to Myanmar. Instead, they are trying to bring in a oneparty democracy system,” charged Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadipa Institute, a Yangon-based policy advocacy group.

Enfeebling other parties has

meant there has been little real debate about policies during the campaign. Myanmar needs a better political mix, he said.

Even the voting process has become enmeshed in controversy, as the state election commission has been accused of conniving with Suu Kyi’s ruling party by canceling voting in some areas where parties critical of the government were certain to win seats.

T he Un ion E lec t ion Comm i ssion i n si ste d t he vot i ng was canceled because of armed conf lict with ethnic guerrillas in those areas.

The decision was one of several points criticized this past week by Thomas Andrews, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar, he said, would not be able to hold free and fair elections “as long as... the right to vote is denied based on race, ethnicity or religion, as it is with the Rohingya.”

Long-standing prejudice against the Muslim Rohingya minority, whom many consider to have immigrated illegally from South Asia even though their families have lived in Myanmar for generations, has deprived most of them of the rights of citizenship.

Western friends of Myanmar were shocked at the brutal 2017 counter-insurgency campaign by Myanmar’s army that drove about 740,000 Rohingya to flee into neighboring Bangladesh, drawing

In this October 29, file photo, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi casts her ballot during advance voting at the Union Election Commission office in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. Myanmar’s citizens go to the polls, November 8, in an effort to sustain the fledgling democracy they helped install just five years ago. AP

accusations of genocide.

It also sent Suu Kyi’s reputation with Western admirers into a tailspin when she failed to restrain the security forces. But for most people in Myanmar, the Rohingya are not an issue in the election.

Andrews also said opposition political parties claim they are denied access to state media and their messages have been censored for criticizing government policies.

Measures to control the coronavirus severely restricted traditional large-scale campaigning by all parties, but Suu Kyi benefits from frequent reports in state media about her carrying out her official duties, and from her regular updates about fighting the coronavirus streamed on her Facebook page.

Her administration had already been criticized by free speech advocates. It scrapped some censorship and licensing laws, but aggressively employs defamation and telecommunications laws against journalists and activists critical of the government and the military.

Failure of much-touted plans

to reconcile with the country’s fractious ethnic minorities is another dent in Suu Kyi’s reputation.

Ethnic minority groups, mainly in border areas, have for decades been engaged in on-again, off-again armed struggle for autonomy.

Ethnic politica l par ties in 2015 worked out tactical agreements with the NLD to ensure v ictor y against the militar ybacked Union Solidar it y and Development Party, the main challenger to Suu Kyi ’s party.

This year, disappointed with Suu Kyi’s failure to seal a deal expanding their political rights, they will be pushing only their own candidates.

Nevertheless, Suu Kyi remains the country’s most popular political figure by far.

“I think it is really the personal support, even love, that many people have for Aung San Suu Kyi herself, almost irrespective of how the government administration performs, how the economy performs and so on,” Yangon-based political analyst Richard Horsey said of her appeal.

Lam: Next U.S. president should not interfere in HK

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EIJING—Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said Friday that whoever wins the US presidential election should end US interference in the internal affairs of her city and China overall.

She accused the Trump administration of repeatedly interfering over the past year, citing US sanctions on officials including herself and the suspension of special trading conditions previously granted to Hong Kong.

“That is totally unreasonable,” she said at a news conference wrapping up a four-day visit to Beijing. “I hope that they will come back to normalcy and accept that the relationship has to be built on mutual respect and cooperation.”

The US took issue earlier this year with China’s

enactment of a national security law for Hong Kong which was designed in part to snuff out pro-democracy protests that rocked the city for months last year.

The Trump administration backed democracy activists who said that the law ended the “one country, two systems” framework under which Hong Kong is part of China but given a high degree of autonomy over local affairs.

Lam said the national security law has been an effective deterrent after pitched battles between demonstrators and police during protests last year. Some more radical protesters attacked businesses seen as pro-Beijing and set fires in the streets. They said the escalating tactics were necessary to get the attention of a

Japan to open entry office for foreign firms to rival HK

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apan is creating an office to make it easier for foreign asset managers to enter the country, part of its bid to challenge Hong Kong as Asia’s main financial hub.

The Financial Services Agency and local bureaus will establish a financial market entry office in January that handles registration and supervision in English for incoming asset management firms, the regulator said on Friday. Japan has been known for its largely non-English language working environment, which is seen as an obstacle to luring foreign companies.

“Strengthening Japan’s capabilities as an international financial center is our urgent priority,” Finance Minister Taro Aso said at a news conference. “We are making efforts to bring the center of Asia’s

financial market from Hong Kong in light of the turmoil in the city.”

Hong Kong’s political tension set off earlier this year by the passage of a Chinese national security law has made the city a key target for Japanese officials in their bid to attract overseas firms. Tokyo recently set up an office in Hong Kong to advise companies considering a move to the Japanese capital, while Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has signaled determination to tackle obstacles such as taxation.

The FSA said it will amend relevant regulations to allow firms to submit required documents in English. It plans to start offering preliminary consultation in English this month before setting up the financial market entry office in January. Bloomberg News

government that was ignoring their demands.

“Hong Kong has recovered its stability and has not seen any large-scale violent incidents,” Lam said. “With this stable environment we can focus on economic development and improving people’s lives.”

Earlier Friday, Lam met with a top Chinese Communist Party official who endorsed her rule, saying her government had restored order and revived the economy.

Vice Premier Han Zheng, one of seven members of the party’s top leadership body, praised her administration for implementing the national security law and protecting Hong Kong’s stability, and for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, easing the economic burden

on the population.

Under Lam, the government has “overcome all kinds of difficulties and dealt with the challenges,” he said.

It was a far cry from a year ago, when parts of the city were awash in tear gas and Lam’s leadership and ability to return peace to her city seemed to be in question.

China responded by enacting the national security law, which curtailed protests that were already dwindling because of coronavirus restrictions on public gatherings.

Lam was accompanied on her visit by several top city officials, which she said demonstrates the breadth of Hong Kong’s integration into China’s national development. AP

ong before he ran the world’s bestper forming hedge fund, Qian Yongqiang chaired China’s biggest online dating ser vice.

The Yale graduate would spend hours tracking down attractive users with suspicious profiles, sifting through accounts and deleting thousands of scammers to improve the site’s authenticity and ensure its success.

Now he’s betting that same attention to detail and strong returns will help turn his Singaporean firm into a wealth management giant. Between January and September, QQQ Capital Management posted gains of 275 percent, making it the top hedge fund in the world, according to Eurekahedge data. QQQ says assets under management rose to about $1 billion last month, with most of the money coming from Qian.

The gains have come with concentration risks that many fund managers would balk at: QQQ has more than a third of its assets invested in Chinese education companies.

While those stocks had soared this year, they’ve been hit with concerns about regulatory crackdowns and allegations of accounting fraud, and one has plunged in recent weeks amid downgrades from analysts.

“When we invest, we know everything about an industry, its top 5 people, their personality, their weakness, their greatness, everything about them,” Qian said in an interview.

Cultural revolution

Qian’s experience with the Chinese education system runs deep. Born in 1972—the same year US President Richard Nixon visited China—Qian grew up amid the rapid economic growth that followed the Cultural Revolution.

After graduating from North China University of Technology, he joined a teaching center, specializing in helping students prepare for universities abroad. Then he took the leap himself, earning an MBA from the Yale School of Management in 2000, where he now sits on its Greater China Board of Advisors.

After returning to China, Qian was coaxed back to the teaching center and made a cofounder as it expanded. It later became the New Oriental Education & Technology Group, a giant in the space with a market capitalization of almost $26 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.

After leaving New Oriental, he helped build and sell mobile content provider Atop Century Ltd. and bought a substantial stake in online dating service Jiayuan.com. But as Beijing’s haze got worse and his children developed asthma, he moved to Singapore in 2013.

“I wanted to start an Internet company in Singapore but it wasn’t feasible because you couldn’t find enough talented technology people,” he said. “So the only thing I could do was the financial industry.”

After five years running his own account, Qian, 48, turned professional in 2018— seeding QQQ with $100 million of his own money. That year the fund returned almost 40 percent despite only running for three quarters. In 2019 it gained 31 percent, outpacing the S&P 500 Index both years.

The fund was granted an upgraded license

by Singapore in August, removing a S$250 million ($183 million) asset cap.

Botanic Gardens

QQQ trades almost exclusively in US-listed

stocks, so Qian gets up at noon and eats before exercising around Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. The rest of the day is spent catching up with friends and family before starting work by 8 p.m., 90 minutes before the New York market opens. Over the next eight hours he lives online, absorbing news and company reports while trawling social media and trading stocks.

Like other hedge funds, his team of six people does plenty of alternative data analysis. They frequently trade Tesla Inc. shares, so it checks satellite pictures of car lots and shipping manifests. QQQ also has people attend after-school tutoring classes in China to gauge attendance, and buys calls and puts on the indexes to help hedge tail risk.

Qian says his edge is entrepreneurial experience from running companies, adding that every business QQQ bets on represents thousands of hours of research—giving it the confidence to make massive bets in selected areas. Ahead of the US election, it has about 55 percent of assets in cash, betting that stimulus negotiations would fail and roil markets. The S&P 500 dropped in four of five sessions last week, hitting a five-week low.

Forged sales

The concentrated calls have paid off so far.

Over the past year, New Oriental Education has risen 31 percent, while GSX Techedu Inc. has soared almost fourfold and TAL Education Group is up 55 percent.

“In large part the superior performance could be attributed to good stock selection in the edu-tech space,” said Eurekahedge head analyst Mohammad Hassan in an e-mail, noting the fund has returned 444 percent since June 2019. So far this year, the Eurekahedge Long Short Equities Hedge Fund Index is up 4.7 percent.

The bets come with plenty of risks. TAL in April admitted that an employee may have forged sales contracts. GSX announced last month it was being investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regulators demanded financial records dating to 2017 following reports by short sellers including Muddy Waters. When Credit Suisse Group AG—one of the banks that took GSX public last year—downgraded the company to sell on October 21, the stock plunged 31 percent. The recent declines could topple QQQ from the No. 1 spot among hedge funds.

“Under diversification can go both ways—if you’re right in your investment thesis you could potentially make a lot of money, but if you’re wrong there’s a big downside,” said Melvyn Teo, a finance professor at Singapore Management University. The concentration may also deter blue-chip investors from QQQ’s funds, as they tend to prefer more diversification, Teo added.

A QQQ spokesman said there had been a “small drawdown” recently but the fund’s positions were hedged and it was still doing well.

Qian declined to comment on claims against the education companies, though he said he trusts many of the key leaders and understand the fundamentals. QQQ is open with clients about the risks, at times declining money from investors that he feels can’t handle the potential losses.

“I haven’t given my team any targets for fund-raising—we’re only two and a half years old and the track record is the most important thing,” he said. Bloomberg News

UN to commemorate all victims of World War II on December 1

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NITED NATIONS—The UN General Assembly decided on Thursday to hold a meeting on December 1 to commemorate all victims of World War II, which ended 75 years ago.

The Russian-drafted resolution was adopted by consensus after the 193-member assembly voted 54-40 with 45 abstentions to eliminate a paragraph in the text that Germany, the US and many European and Western nations objected to.

It emphasized that victory in the war “is the common legacy” of all UN member-nations. And it noted the importance of preserving and not desecrating or destroying “monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought in that war on the side of the United Nations.”

Germany, which sponsored the amendment with three dozen cosponsors, said it introduced the

measure to eliminate the controversial paragraph because it politicized the resolution and didn’t promote its main aim of commemorating victims of the war.

Ina Heusgen, the country’s legal adviser, said Germany was forced to do this because Russia “ignored” European Union efforts to edit the draft resolution and reach consensus.

The language in the paragraph “is highly sensitive for many member-states as the Second World War brought about painful divisions in Europe,” she said. “We cannot change this memory 75 years later.”

World War II is considered the deadliest conflict in history, involving the vast majority of countries and leading to the deaths of an estimated 70 million to 85 million people—the majority of them civilians including those who perished in the Nazi

Holocaust. It began with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945 after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States.

The former Soviet Union was part of a military alliance with the United States, Britain and other Western nation that fought the Axis alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Russia accepted a US amendment saying that “2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a war which brought untold sorrow to humankind, particularly in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Pacific and other parts of the world.”

It expanded the Russian draft, which only singled out Europe and Asia.

The resolution asks General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir “to hold a special solemn meeting of the General Assembly on December 1, 2020 in commemoration of all

victims of the war.”

It also asks all UN member-states, UN bodies, nongovernment organizations and individuals to pay tribute to all victims of the war “in an appropriate manner.”

T he resolut ion u nderl i nes progress in overcoming the war’s legacy “and toward reconciliation, international and regional cooperation and the promotion of democratic values, human rights and fundamental freedoms,” in particular through the United Nations, which was established on the ashes of World War II and regional organizations.

The measure calls on UN member-states “to make every effort to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” AP

Science

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday

Sunday, November 8, 2020 A5

‘Untapped potential exists Diwata-2 microsatellite celebrates 2nd year in space for animal biotechnology’ Diwata-2 proves Filipinos are capable

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more progressive regulation on animal biotechnology may hold the potential to contribute to food security and a more sustainable agriculture, according to an Argentinian exper t in regulation and policymaking for biotechnology.

“If the Philippines has the oppor tunity to revise regulations on animal biotechnology, it can provide the capacity to assess if these technologies may be used for food production in the country and contribute to food security and a more sustainable agriculture,” Dr. Martin Lema of the University of Quilmes in Argentina said.

Lema spoke at the recent Searca Online Learning and Virtual Engagement (SOLVE) webinar of the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca).

He provided a broad perspective on regulatory frameworks applied to the genetic improvement of animals using innovative breeding tools like marker-assisted breeding, cloning, transgenesis and genome editing.

He also emphasized the need for a sound regulatory framework on animal biotech.

The SOLVE webinar was jointly organized by Searca in collaboration with the United States Embassy Manila and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) to provide unbiased science-based information.

US Embassy Manila Chargé d’affaires John Law affirmed the shared commitment of the United States and the Philippines to a science-based approach to agriculture.

Both countries, together with a diverse group of nations, strongly support safe technologies by cosponsoring an international statement on precision biotechnology at the World Trade Organization.

“The Philippines is continuing to demonstrate its commitment and leadership in the global stage in providing farmers the tools they need to address the array of challenges we face in producing safe, sustainable, and abundant food, feed, and energy,” Law said.

He added that the 10-year Science and Technology Agreement between US and the Philippines “celebrates the strong cooperation between US and Philippine research institutions and expands our joint activities in agricultural, environmental, and health sciences.”

Besides Lema, experts from the United Kingdom and the Philippines shared their expertise on global and local animal biotech applications as well as the regulations and challenges in the field.

Dr. Simon Lilico of the University of Edinburgh presented the global state of animal biotechnology and introduced current initiatives being done and technologies being explored in other countries.

Dr. Claro Mingala of the Philippine Carabao Center gave updates on initiatives being done locally.

He said that since the use of genetically modified organisms in the Philippines is still confined to biotech crops, the benefits from animal biotechnologies in the country are in the developed rapid animal disease test kits, reproductive biotechnologies, and product development.

Mingala also cited potential benefits of animal biotechnologies for Filipino farmers in conjunction with proper animal management, such as increased income of livestock food producers, doubled food production to meet the supply in demand, creation of climate change and disease resilient or resistant animal and development of rapid diagnostics and modern animal disease surveillance.

He said the Philippines is not far behind in terms of animal biotechnology applications.

Mingala pointed out that “biotech has a lot of potential in increasing our livestock production, but it is only one of the options.”

He added that “biotech does not take your freedom of choice. We agree what biotechnology offers to farming communities—to sustain supply of food and food security. As scientists, we are here to help achieve a food secure community.”

The experts also addressed the participants’ questions on animal welfare, food security and safety, benefits of animal biotech, future of animal biotech research in the Philippines, and regulatory policies.

Since 2000, Searca has been a partner of ISAAA in responding to information needs and promoting and advancing a broader public understanding of crop biotechnology.

The webinar on the “Unrealized Potential of Animal Biotechnology” is an effort in monitoring the local agri-biotech environment and within Searca’s priority focus on food and nutrition security under its current five-year strategic plan (2020-2025), which is intent on Accelerating Transformation Through Agricultural Innovation.

Innovations during pandemic to be featured in 5th NRDC

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ame-changing innovations in the industry, energy and emerging technologies are set to take centerstage as the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) features its latest technologies in the upcoming Fifth National Research and Development Conference (NRDC).

To be held virtually on November 9 to 11, with the theme “Research and Development: Making Change Happen,” the fifth NRDC will present the latest researches and technologies that the DOST and other government agencies have produced, including those developed in response to Covid-19.

Updates on the Harmonized National R&D Agenda will also be highlighted in the event.

Executive Director Dr. Enrico C. Paringit of DOST’s Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD) encouraged partners from industry, government and academe to join the event and learn about the latest innovations in the country.

“May our partners in the industry, government, and academe be inspired on how our local researchers are answering to the challenging times.

We enjoin everyone to be with us in this three-day conference and meet the researchers who generated these technologies,” he said.

The technologies that will be featured under the industry, energy, and emerging technology sectors include the following.

1. Usher GoClean—The first locally made disinfection booth in the country which can be installed at the entrances of hospitals and buildings to sanitize and disinfect the whole body of a person.

Developed by Usher Technologies Inc., the booth provides sanitation through misting of electrolyzed saline solution, or Anolyte, that takes up only to 5 seconds to 10 seconds per person.

2. Project Ramdam, or Resource Allocation Management, Distribution and Monitoring—It is a system developed by Geographic Innovations for Development Solutions Inc. (GrIDS) to serve as a platform for community citizens and the government to share accurate information regarding relief distribution activities, contents of relief packs, schedule of distribution, and feedback from the recipients. It can be accessed via a mobile app or through a web site.

3. Tracing for Allocation of Medical Supplies (TrAMS+) project—It is an online geographic system for tracking information about health facilities’ medical resources. It relies on crowd-sourced data to aid in the proper allocation of medical resources needed by healthcare facilities.

4. 3D-printed face shields for frontliners produced by Bataan Peninsula State University (BPSU) through the Additive Manufacturing Research Laboratory (Amrel)— Amrel serves as a facility for the BPSU community to do research, share and create their ideas, essentially serving as a playground for generating new products and world-class research projects.

5. The Multiple Materials Platform for Additive Manufacturing (Matdev) 3D-printing initiatives—It mass produced over 2,000 pieces of 3D-printed face shields that were donated to 21 hospitals in Metro Manila and other nearby cities.

The Matdev team has also produced more than 1,800 pieces of 3D printed ear relief bands to alleviate ear pain caused by prolonged wearing of face mask.

They have facilitated the 3D-printing of venturi valves (also called the respirator valve) to four hospitals.

They also produced various 3D-printed devices, such as prototypes of N95 mask, multiple patient ventilator splitter, modified oxygen concentrator mask, doorknob handle and mechanical ventilator.

6. The Swab Collecting Booths designed by Futuristic Aviation and Maritime Enterprise Inc. (FAME)—It aims to mitigate the exposure of frontline health workers to the virus Using the technology, people with coronavirus symptoms can get tested without being in direct contact with the medical staff.

7. The Egg White Powder of Batangas Egg Producers Cooperative’s (Bepco)—This product has a longer shelf-life than raw eggs, making it easier for bulk transport and storage without losing its functional properties and nutritional benefits.

The project is under DOST’s Collaborative Research and Development to Leverage Philippine Economy (Cradle) Program.

8. The Platform for Assessment and Tracking of Urbanization- Related Opportunities (Paturo)—It aims to formulate a smart index that can reliably and accurately capture the city’s “health,” such as the diverse interactions between the city’s people, land, transportation system and various economic activities.

It intends to build a data hub allowing realtime and interactive access to data for simulation modeling to support decision making 9. The Infrastructure Monitoring Petrography—It aims to provide in-depth analysis and assessment of the health of concrete used in constructions, roads, bridges, and buildings.

DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Dr. Rowena Cristina Guevara stressed the importance of investing in R&D to uplift the country.

“We, at DOST, believe that research leads innovation, and innovation drives sustainable economic growth, even in the face of a pandemic. Innovation offers avenues to overcome challenges halting normal operations and offers the possibility of new products or business disruptors that will succeed in the new environment,” Guevara said.

She added: “The fifth NRDC is a platform for our researchers and scientists to tell the world how R&D can make change happen. It is, therefore, imperative for us to continue to invest and prioritize R&D for the betterment of our economy, our community, and our country.”

of owning and developing satellites

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he Filipino-made microsatellite Diwata-2 marked its second year in orbit on October 29.

In its two-year journey, Diwata-2 allowed the Filipinos to take a peek through a typhoon, provided clues on the extent of Taal volcano’s ashfall, and even took us on a quick sight-seeing trip to the moon.

Diwata-2 has already acquired 19,439 images of the Philippines, spanning 82.01 percent of the country, Stamina4Space Program said in a news release.

Globally, the microsatellite has captured 32,256 images. These images are part of the data being collected to conduct scientific measurements and experiments for environmental assessment and monitoring.

“Diwata-2 has already covered twice as much half the time than its predecessor, Diwata-1. This is mainly due to its sun-synchronous orbit, allowing more frequent revisits and improvements made in pointing accuracy and mission operations from the ground,” said Dr. Gay Jane Perez, Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (Stamina4Space) program leader.

Diwata-2 is a 50 -k ilog ram Earth observation satellite developed by a team of scientists and engineers from the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) and the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI), in cooperation with Tohoku University and Hokkaido University in Japan.

It is the third Filipino-made satellite that has been sent to space, following the 50-kg microsatellite Diwata-1 (deployed to space April 27, 2016), and the 1-kg nanosatellite Maya-1 (deployed to space on June 29, 2018).

Diwata-2 was launched into space via an H-IIA F40 rocket on October 29, 2018.

To mark this important milestone, the Stamina4Space Program has organized a virtual tou r high l ight ing Diwat a-2 ’s feat u res a nd l atest develop ments. Nearly 50 space enthusiasts have joined the sessions while over 200 have expressed their interest in the event.

The pandemic did not stop the researchers from conducting experiments to further enhance the capabilities of Diwata-2.

In fact, researchers working on Diwata-2 were able to optimize image download from the satellite to the Ground Receiving Stations, marking the start of a faster turnover rate of images from acquisition to processing.

They were also able to improve the target pointing capabilities of the microsatellite after a successful experiment using the moon as a reference point.

Like how Diwata-2 built upon the learnings from Diwata-1, Diwata-2 is paving the way for the development of a more robust microsatellite, a testament to the continuous advancement of space

research and development in the country, the new release said.

“Moving forward, we also see Diwata to continuously serve as a seedbed to nurture growth in space science and engineering in our country through research and capacity building in satellite technologies and relevant space systems for the benefit of the society,” Perez said.

Diwata-2 has proven that Filipinos are capable not only of owning and operating satellites, but owning and developing them.

“Prior efforts in space science technology applications in the countr y such as the development, launch and operation of Diwata-2 help produce strategic

know-how, vital infrastructure and skilled manpower,” said the Philippine Space Agency Director General Dr. Joel Joseph S. Marciano Jr. “ The Philippine Space Agency welcomes the challenge and opportunity to institutionalize and operationalize the various space science technolog y ap plications initiatives towards s u s t a i n e d p r o d u c t i v it y a n d socioeconomic benefit for the country,” Marciano added.

Diwata-2 flies at an altitude of 605 km above sea level at the speed of 7.5 km per second in a sun-synchronous orbit. It is expected to serve the country for another three years.

Ateneo, Pisay sign pact to train over 500 teachers on ADL

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he 500 teachers of Philippine Science High School (PSHS) System will have the chance to be trained on Adaptive Design for Learning (ADL) and respond more to the challenges under the new normal.

This will be made possible through the partnership between the PSHS and the Ateneo de Manila University through the signing of a memorandum of agreement signed last October 29.

The agreement was signed by Ateneo President Fr. Roberto Yap, SJ, and PSHS System Executive Director Fr. Lilia Habacon, and was witnessed by a benefactor of the program, JJ Atencio, CEO of Januarius Holdings and chairman of the Dr. Rosario Bustos-Atencio (RBA) Endowment Fund for the Scholarship of Public School Teachers, an alumnus of Ateneo.

“We are proud to work together with our partners in the Philippine Science High School System as they equip their educators with the knowledge that will allow them to better serve the needs of their students during these unprecedented times,” Yap said. “ The Philippine Science High School System is grateful for the Ateneo de Manila University for the teacher-capability building on Adoptive Design Learning.

This partnership is a trailblazer for many ideas that shall improve teaching and learning,” Habacon added.

T he training prog ram was launched by Ateneo Science and Art of Learning and Teaching (SALT) Institute last September 21 and will be conducted for three months.

The ADL professional certificate course for the teachers of

PSHS and Ateneo de Manila University leaders sign an agreement to train 500 PSHS teachers on Adaptive Design for Learning. The signatories are Ateneo President Fr. Roberto Yap, SJ, (center) and PSHS System Executive Director Fr. Lilia Habacon (right), and witnessed by JJ Atencio, CEO of Januarius Holdings and chairman of the Dr. Rosario Bustos-Atencio Endowment Fund for the Scholarship of Public School Teachers.

PSHS, also popularly known as Pisay, is expected to conclude by the latter part of January 2021.

The ADL is a unique asynchronous project-based program for educators who want to learn online course design and delivery.

The program offers a unique framework that enables educators to design an engaging holistic learning experience and to resist the usual temptation of dumping online content on students.

Over 2,000 educators from the nationwide network of Jesuit schools and universities have undergone the ADL course in preparation for the fully online academic year.

To make this program more accessible for the PSHS System, Ateneo is subsidizing 65 percent of the cost of the training program through the RBA Endowment Fund and the VTL Teacher Education Endowment Fund.

These endowment funds were

established to promote teacher educat ion and professiona l de ve lopment.

“It is both a joy and a privilege for my siblings and I to be part of this endeavor between my alma mater [Ateneo] and one of the foremost public school institutions, PSHS,” Atencio said. “ The scholarship fund that we established in honor of our mother was to help, even in some small way, to uplift the delivery of education services in the public school system. The family is thankful that through this venture, we are able to do that and, at the same time, enhance the legacy of our mother, Dra. Rosario Bustos-Atencio.”

According to Ateneo SA LT Director Fr. Johnny Go, SJ, the 65 percent subsidy of the cost of this nationwide training demonstrates how much Ateneo values PSHS’s unique mission of providing premier science high school

education in the country.

The training could not have come at a better time. Like educators in schools all around the world, without warning, the PSHS teachers have found themselves thrust into participating in a global teaching experiment where the teachers themselves need to learn and figure out how best to respond to the needs of their students in the online environment.

Five online classes have been opened to conduct and deliver the six-module ADL course to the participants from PSHS through a team of professional trainers from multiple disciplines—Filipino, Sociology and Anthropology, English, Biology, Chemistry and Physics.

Tod ate t wo webinars have been conducted: an initial orientation last September 21, and a presentation on the most important ADL principles by Fr. Go last October 29.

Faith A6 Sunday, November 8, 2020

Sunday

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion • www.businessmirror.com.ph

While churches need immediate repairs, rebuilding of many homes is the prime concern

Albay bishop: Priority is to help people

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lthough the repair of churches damaged by Super Typhoon Rolly in the Bicol region is a major concern, a Catholic bishop considers the welfare people affected by the disaster to be their priority.

Bishop Joel Baylon of Legazpi, Albay province, said it is the diocese’s desire to stand with the displaced families and to do whatever they can to support them.

“While we are working on the immediate repairs of these churches, we do not forget that many homes have been destroyed,” Baylon said.

He said the diocese is already sourcing out funds and building materials to help in the rehabilitation efforts.

Several Catholic churches in Albay province were not spared by Rolly when it slammed into the Bicol region on November 1.

But Baylon said the St. John the Baptist Church and the San Antonio Church, both in Tabaco City, were the only “heavily damaged” places of worship.

Masses were temporarily celebrated outside the Tabaco churches, said the prelate.

Several other churches were reported to have sustained “minimal” damage “so Masses can still be held inside.”

Caritas to help typhoon-hit areas At the same time, Various Caritas organizations from different countries

People stand outside their destroyed houses in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Rolly in Virac, Catanduanes, on November 2. CIVIL DEFENSE PH pledged to help the Philippines recover from the disastrous impact of Super Typhoon Rolly.

The organizations conveyed to Caritas Philippines, the humanitarian arm of the Philippine Catholic Church, their readiness to support its emergency and recovery efforts.

“Several Caritas Internationalis member organizations have responded not only with messages of solidarity, but likewise an offer to help in any way possible,” said Bishop Jose Colin

The San Antonio Church in Tabaco City was among the churches damaged during the onslaught of Super Typhoon Rolly in Albay province in the Bicol region on November 1. FR. REX PAUL ARJONA/CBCPNEWS Bagaforo, national director of Caritas Philippines.

He sa id t hese i nc lude C a r it a s Espa ñol a , It a l i a n a , Nor way, C a r it a s G er m a ny, Sw it z erl a nd a nd New Z ea l a nd.

The Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, Cordaid and Trócaire have also pledged to support the local Church’s response to help communities devastated by the storm.

With wind speeds of 225 kph, the

Pope: Consistent prayer strengthens us in times of tribulation

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ATICAN—Jesus teaches us that we must be consistent in our prayer, Pope Francis said at the recent general audience.

Speaking in the library of the Apostolic Palace, the pope described prayer as an “art” that must be “practiced insistently.”

“We are all capable of sporadic prayers, which arise from a momentary emotion; but Jesus educates us in another type of prayer: the one that knows a discipline, an exercise, assumed within a rule of life,” he said.

“Consistent prayer produces progressive transformation, makes us strong in times of tribulation, gives us the grace to be supported by Him who loves us and always protects us.”

This morning’s audience was the first since August without members of the public present.

The Vatican decided to hold the pope’s weekly catechesis behind closed doors amid a rising number of coronavirus cases in Italy and after at least one person attending the pope’s October 21 audience was discovered to have been positive for Covid-19.

Addressing pilgrims via livestream, the pope said: “Unfortunately, we’ve had to return to holding this audience in the library, to defend ourselves against contagion from Covid.”

“This also teaches us that we must be very attentive to the prescriptions of the authorities, both political authorities and health authorities, to defend ourselves against this pandemic.”

He continued: “Let us offer to the Lord this distance between us, for the good of all, and let us think a lot about the sick, about those who are already marginalized when they enter hospital. Let us think of the doctors, the nurses, the volunteers, the many people who work with the sick at this time. They risk their lives but they do so out of love, love of neighbor, as a vocation. Let us pray for them.”

In his address, Pope Francis continued his catechesis on prayer, which he began in May and resumed in October after a series of audiences devoted to the coronavirus crisis beginning in August.

The pope observed that Jesus’ public life was sustained by solitary prayer.

“There is, therefore, a secret in Jesus’ life, hidden from human eyes, which is the fulcrum of everything else. Jesus’ prayer is a mysterious reality, of which we

Pope Francis during his general audience as it is live streamed from the library of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican on November 4. VATICAN MEDIA have a slight intuition, but which allows us to interpret His entire mission from the right perspective,” he said.

He recalled an episode in the town of Capernaum, recorded in Mark 1:35-38 , when Jesus spent an evening healing the sick. In the morning, he rose early and withdrew to a deserted place to pray. When his disciples found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you,” to which Jesus replied, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”

The pope commented: “Prayer was the rudder that guides Jesus’ course. It was not success, it was not consensus, it was not the seductive phrase ‘Everyone is searching for you,’ that dictated the stages of His mission.”

He said that Jesus’ example revealed four essential characteristics of Christian prayer.

First, Jesus shows that prayer must come before all else.

He said: “First and foremost, it possesses primacy: it is the first desire of the day, something that is practiced at dawn, before the world awakens. It restores a soul to that which otherwise would be without breath. A day lived without prayer risks being

transformed into a bothersome or tedious experience: all that happens to us could turn into a badly endured and blind fate.”

When we put prayer first, daily trials turn into opportunities to grow in faith and charity, he explained.

“Prayer has the power to transform into good what in life could otherwise be condemnation; prayer has the power to open the mind and broaden the heart to a great horizon,” he said.

Second, Jesus shows the impor tance of persistence in prayer.

Third, Christ prayed in solitude, indicating that we should also retreat daily to “deserted places” to pray.

“There, in silence, many voices can emerge that we hide in our innermost selves: the most repressed desires, the truths that we insist on suffocating, and so on. And, above all, in silence God speaks,” he said.

“Every person needs a space for him- or herself, to be able to cultivate the inner life, where actions find meaning. Without the inner life we become superficial, agitated, and anxious—how anxiety harms us! This is why we must go to pray; without an inner life we flee from reality, and we also flee from ourselves, we

are men and women always on the run.”

Fourth and finally, Jesus shows that prayer enables us to see our dependence on God. “Sometimes we human beings believe that we are the masters of everything, or on the contrary, we lose all self-esteem, we go from one side to another,” he noted. “Prayer helps us to find the right dimension in our relationship with God, our Father, and with all creation.”

Concluding his reflection, the pope said: “Dear brothers and sisters, let us rediscover Jesus Christ as a teacher of prayer in the Gospel and place ourselves in His school. I assure you that we will find joy and peace.”

Following the catechesis, Francis addressed the recent spate of terror attacks in Europe.

He said: “In these days of prayer for the dead, we have remembered and continue to remember the helpless victims of terrorism, which is escalating in its cruelty throughout Europe.”

“I am thinking, in particular, of the serious attack in Nice in recent days, in a place of worship, and of the other one the day before yesterday in the streets of Vienna, which caused dismay and reprobation among the population and those who cherish peace and dialogue.”

“I entrust to God’s mercy the people who have tragically departed and I express my spiritual closeness to their families and to all those who suffer as a result of these deplorable events, which seek to compromise fraternal cooperation between religions through violence and hatred.”

In his greetings to Polish pilgrims, the pope highlighted a global rosary initiative launched in Poland on All Saints’ Day. The “Rosary to the Gates of Heaven” hopes to unite people around the world in prayer for unborn children from November 1 to 8.

“During this week, throughout Poland, the common prayer ‘Rosary to the Gates of Heaven’ unites your families and parishes,” Francis said.

“May this supplication, brought to heaven through the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, obtain the healing of wounds associated with the loss of unborn children, the forgiveness of sins, the gift of reconciliation, and fill your hearts with hope and peace.” Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

2020 Catholic Social Media Summit set online this Nov

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he annual Catholic Social Media Summit (CSMS) will be held online this November due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The year’s CSMS is a series of weekend conferences within the whole month and organizers decided to hold it virtually.

With the theme “Transform,” it is inspired

by Pope Francis’s message for the 54th World Communications Day that calls for a kind of storytelling that “transforms life.”

“Content matters because it holds stories that activates, connects and most importantly, transforms,” organizers said.

“We also recognize the need to galvanize a new generation of Catholic communicators and social media personalities to respond to the ever-shifting context of post-Covid new normal,” they added.

It is also the last of the three-year campaign

dubbed as “ACT” or activate, connect and transform, which culminates in 2021 for the 500th anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines.

Now on its ninth year, all topics and talks aim to update the participants about the latest trends in online evangelization, especially in the midst of the health crisis.

Among this year’s speakers are Archbishop Socrates Villegas, Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara, Bishop Marcelino Antonio Maralit, Bishop Midyphil Billones, Fr. Jerry Orbos and Fr. Luciano Felloni.

Also giving talks include journalists Christian Esguerra of ABS-CBN News, Felipe Salvosa of Press One, EWTN host Dale Ahlquist, and couple Eric and Giny Dooley of Catholify.

CSMS is organized by YouthPinoy, a group of young “online missionaries,” in collaboration with Areopagus Communications and the Media Office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

First held in 2012, the summit’s previous speakers include Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Bishop Paul Tighe from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications and Sean Patrick Lovett of Vatican Radio.

For more information and to register, check the link https://catholicsocialmediasummit.com/.

CBCP News.

typhoon slammed into southern Luzon on November 1 and touted to be the world’s strongest tropical cyclone for 2020, so far.

Rolly claimed at least 24 lives as of November 3, and destroyed many homes and forced thousands to evacuate.

The tropical cyclone also destroyed many homes. An estimated 1.6 million people were affected with around 408,473 individuals being served inside and outside evacuation centers.

Francis’s same-sex civil union marks evolving Catholic definition of family

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ope Francis referred to gay people as “children of God” in a recently released documentary, “Francesco.” He further noted that “a civil union law” needs to be created so gays are “legally covered.”

The Vatican later confirmed the pope’s comments, but clarified that the church doctrine remained unchanged.

Public support for civil unions from Pope Francis is not entirely new. When he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, and again in a 2014 interview, he spoke about civil unions for same-sex couples.

While the Vatican is right in saying that church doctrine remains the same, as a theologian who has been writing about Catholicism and family for over two decades, I see in the pope’s comments evidence that Catholic understanding of who counts as family is evolving.

From judgment to mercy

Traditional Catholic doctrine holds that marriage between a man and a woman is the foundation of the family.

Sex outside of marriage is judged to be immoral and, while gay people are not seen as inherently sinful, their sexual actions are.

Same-sex marriages and civil unions, the Vatican says, are harmful to society and “in no way similar” to heterosexual marriages.

Yet in his comments made public on October 21, the pope framed his support for civil unions in the context of family.

“They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable because of it,” he said in a news-breaking interview used in the documentary.

In researching for a book on Pope Francis, I found that he has consistently offered compassion for Catholics without traditional families.

Soon after becoming pope in 2013, in response to a journalist’s question about a gay person, he famously said, “Who am I to judge?”

Mercy over judgment has been the mark of his papacy. The pope’s priority on extending mercy, theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper explains, especially pertains to families.

Surveys commissioned by the Vatican in 2015 found that Catholics desire more acceptance from the church for people who are single parents, divorced or have live-in relationships.

Knowing that people often feel judged because their families aren’t perfect, Francis has tried to make them feel welcome. He has stressed that the doors of churches must be open to all.

When, in discussing same-sex civil unions, Francis said that gay people have “a right to a family,” he seems to have implied that civil unions create a family.

Though he is not changing Catholic moral teaching, I argue that he is departing from traditional Catholic rhetoric on the family and offering an inclusive, merciful vision to guide church practice.

From family structure to family action

Preparing for Hindu Diwali festival of light.

An Indian woman in Jammu, India, colors earthen lamps that will be used for lighting for the upcoming November 14 Hindu festival Diwali. Nearly 1 billion Indians will celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, and the country’s biggest. Socializing is key part of the most highly anticipated event of the year, with malls and markets buzzing with shoppers. It also traditionally brings in a massive increase in consumer spending across India. But because of the coronavirus pandemic this year’s festivities have started on a pale note. AP/Channi Anand

Crops were destroyed and P5.89 billion worth of infrastructures were damaged, most of which are in the Bicol region.

Caritas Philippines has earlier launched an international appeal for aid after the typhoon caused “massive destruction” in the country.

Bagaforo said that several dioceses were also fast in responding to the call including Manila, Iba, Borongan, Sorsogon, Lucena and several parishes in Metro Manila. CBCP News

Changes in Catholic teaching in the 20th century paved the way for Francis’s recent moves.

In a 1930 Vatican document on marriage, Pope Pius XI defended the traditional family structure against perceived threats of cohabitation, divorce and “false teachers” who asserted the equality of men and women.

Three decades later, at Vatican II, a meeting of the world’s bishops from 1962 to 1965 that led to sweeping reforms in the Catholic Church, emphasis shifted to the role families could play in shaping society.

Marriage was defined as an “intimate partnership of life and love,” and the family was praised as “a school of deeper humanity,” where parents and children learn

how to be better human beings.

Pope John Paul II, who was pope from 1978 to 2005, is often viewed as a foil to Pope Francis.

In his writings, John Paul II defended heterosexual marriage and traditional gender roles, as well as rules against divorce, contraception and same-sex relationships.

Yet the former pope contributed to shifting the Catholic conversation to ethical actions families can take.

In this regard, John Paul II’s most important document on the family Familiaris Consortio, 1981, gave families four tasks: growing in love, raising children, contributing to society and praying in their home.

He taught that being a family means engaging in actions related to these tasks.

Catholic scholars like Mary Doyle Roche have since built on his framework to urge families to become “schools of solidarity” in which parents and children learn compassion for others.

Though same-sex couples remain excluded from official Catholic teaching, Catholic theologians, such as Margaret A. Farley have suggested that these families, too, could prioritize love, social action and spirituality.

Gay couples, she argued, “deserve the same protection under the law” as heterosexual couples.

They also have the same moral obligations to each other and to the common good.

Pope Francis on inclusion

Pope Francis built on work done at Vatican II and the decades following it. One of his favorite ways of describing the church is as a “field hospital” that goes where people are hurting.

Though he has addressed many important social issues during his papacy, including economic inequality and climate change, he called the world’s bishops to special meetings in Rome only to discuss families.

He urged them to find creative ways of ministering to people who feel excluded because they are not living in line with Catholic doctrine on marriage.

Themes of welcome and inclusion for single parents, divorced and remarried people and cohabiting unmarried couples were amplified in the document Francis wrote in 2016, Amoris Laetitia, or The Joy of Love.

For instance, theologian Mary Catherine O’Reilly-Gindhart sees Francis saying that cohabiting unmarried couples “need to be welcomed and guided patiently and discreetly.”

This allows priests to meet couples where they are rather than shaming them or forcing them to hide their living situations.

What’s the future of the church?

Francis’s critics worry that the pope is watering down Catholic doctrine on marriage and family.

What I argue is that Francis is not changing doctrine. He is encouraging a broader view of who counts as families inside and outside the church.

In the same documentary in which Francis made his remarks on same-sex civil unions, he also criticized countries with overly restrictive immigration policies, saying, “It’s cruelty, and separating parents from kids goes against natural rights.”

He was referring to the right to family, which “exists prior to the State or any other community.”

The comments in the documentary show a persistent move toward welcoming families in contemporary Catholic thought.

Francis proposes that a welcoming church should support all families, especially those who are hurting.

Similarly, as he says, governments should do the same—including supporting gay and lesbian couples.

Julie Hanlon Rubio/The Conversation

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Sunday, November 8, 2020

EU Delegation discuss green recovery and sustainable reporting in webinar

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nvironmental, science and business journalists, government communications officers and journalism students from across the country participated recently in “State of Play: Green Recovery and Sustainable Reporting,” a webinar mounted by the European Delegation to the Philippines that discussed issues and actions in dealing with climate change and environmental degradation.

The European Union is implementing a new growth strategy called the “European Green Deal” to build back better green policies, programs, investments, and commitment to green, digital and resilient recovery.

The European Green Deal outlines an action plan to boost the efficient use of resources by moving to a clean, circular economy, restore biodiversity, and cut pollution to become a climateneutral economy by 2050.

Part of the EU’s agenda is helping other countries, such as the Philippines, in sustainability efforts— from financing to addressing climate change, to technology and research collaboration.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, in his videotaped address, thanked the EU for being a dependable partner in taking action against the climate crisis as the country shifts its investments to clean energy resources and green technologies.

“There is no Planet B. We either save the Earth or perish with it,” Dominguez said.

“There is no quick solution to the climate crisis. We need to act together now and EU has helped us expand our sustainable energy generation capacity to meet our economy’s growing needs. We hope to learn more from the European Union’s technological innovations in water management and conservation, sustainable energy, and modern agriculture,” he added.

He said the world can address the climate emergency “with a better and more informed approach.”

“We have a wealth of information and innovative solutions on how to best deal with the climate crisis. We should be more prepared to save lives and prevent the worst possible outcomes,” he added.

Thomas Wiersing, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the EU Delegation to the Philippines, said the EU is ready to continue

its engagement with the Philippines in approaches to ensure environmentally sustainable economic activities.

“The EU also supports the Philippines in making energy efficiency and conservation a national way of life,” he said.

The EU Delegation to the Philippines hosted the webinar to foster greater awareness among journalists about the effects of climate change and how the EU and the Philippines cope with these challenges.

“The EU recognizes that journalists play a critical role in creating awareness to help the public know how to act against climate change and governments to make informed decisions,” Wiersing said.

The Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists (PNEJ) President Imelda Abano discussed the important role journalists play in solving the world’s environment crisis in her talk “Reporting Beyond Disasters and Climate Change.”

“As journalists, we need to build increasingly compelling stories so we can act decisively, with urgency. It can save lives, formulate plans, change policy and empower people to make informed choices. We can push our governments to do more by writing solution-oriented stories,” Abano shared.

In his talk on “Climate Change Disinformation,” Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Manny Mogato advocated for fact-checking and accuracy in news reports to counter rampant disinformation in environment reportage.

“In the Philippines, false information easily spreads because Filipinos rely on social-media platforms to get information. As journalists, we cannot allow disinformation to win. We have to fight back by becoming more accurate, fair, impartial, and transparent, and we can achieve this with available tools we have at our disposal,” he said.

Other speakers included Finance Assistant Secretary Paola Alvarez; GA Circular’s Head of Operations Tam Nguyen; Republic Cement’s Ecoloop Director Atty. Angela Edralin-Valencia; EU Delegation to the Philippines’s Programme Manager Giovanni Serritella and International Relations Officer for Southeast Asia, DG Environment, European Commission Katarina Grgas Brus.

Cryptic Philippine pit vipers

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

uzon is home to one of the most venomous snakes in the world. Yet, there is no antivenom for this endemic reptile.

A highly venomous lowland ambush predator, the Philippine pit viper is notorious to camouflage in its natural environment using its color or markings.

Besides, this snake has the ability to stay still for hours before attacking, or by hiding from potential predators in plain sight.

The bite of a Philippine pit viper transfers its deadly venom, causing excruciating pain. At the very least, the victim can lose a limb if untreated immediately, or worse, end up dead.

While there is no record of human death attributed to the bite of a Philippine pit viper, a researcher seeks to establish the cryptic diversity of this endemic reptile with the hope that life-saving antivenom can be developed someday.

USAID-funded research Speaking during a webinar, dubbed “Connected to the Wild Biodiversity Research Series,” held on October 6, Yñigo del Prado, an MS Biological Science Student at the University of Santo Tomas, presented his study on Philippine pit viper and highlighted the country’s richness in terms of biological diversity and endemism.

The biodiversity research series features different researches funded and supported by the United States Agency for International Development under its Protect Wildlife Project and in cooperation with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and its Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB).

During his talk, del Prado said, “This rich biodiversity is explained partially by [the Philippines’s] equally rich geographic history and unique topography.”

Ecological importance Snakes are ecologically important for being part of the food cycle in a particular ecosystem, said DENR Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon.

In a telephone interview on October 21, Calderon said a healthy population of snakes, including the Philippine pit vipers, ensures a healthy or balanced ecology.

“They are part of the food cycle. As much as possible, we don’t want to disrupt the hierarchy. Any disruption to the food cycle will result in an imbalance,” said Calderon, the concurrent director of the DENR-BMB. Snakes, he said, feed on small animals, like rats. “When your snake population goes down, the population of rats increases,” he explained.

Biogeographic regions

Refinitiv joins global reforestation campaign

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efinitiv Philippines completed a reforestation project at the La Mesa Dam and Reservoir as part of the company’s global reforestation initiative called the “Refinitiv Global Forest.”

Through the project, led by its Sustainability Action Team, Refinitiv aims to help combat climate change by planting and conserving 1 million trees across the world by 2030 through its identified sites.

The activity served as a prelude to the identification of a third Refinitiv Global Forest site, to be unveiled in the Philippines in 2021. The first two sites were launched this year in

Scotland and Tanzania, respectively.

The Refinitiv Global Forest mirrors Refinitiv’s 2020 sustainability goals, which are guided by three core pledges on environment, social impact and sustainable initiatives—all in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Early this year, the global provider of financial markets and data also announced the early achievement of these targets and is already moving forward with a new set of goals for 2025 and 2030.

Refinitiv is one of the world’s largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure, serving over 40,000 institutions in over 190 countries.

A7

According to del Prado, following the numerous biodiversity studies done in the Philippines, lower sea levels during the glacier period repeatedly connected adjacent islands forming the Pleistocene Aggregate Island Complexes (PAIC), which allowed animals to cross nearby islands.

He said the country has five PAIC, namely Luzon, Mindoro, Palawan, Greater Mindanao and Negros-Panay islands.

“Each of these PAIC contains unique animals and are now considered as primary regions of biodiversity hosting distinct sets of wildlife,” he said.

He added that the unique topography of each landmass has helped explain intra-island biodiversity.

“Mountain ranges, such as [those] in Luzon, have been found to contain localized micro endemism found only on specific mountains or islands, further identifying them as biogeographic regions,” he added.

Biodiversity hot spot While the Philippines is indeed rich in

biodiversity, del Prado agreed with other biodiversity experts in saying that unfortunately the country is also recognized as a global biodiversity hot spot because of numerous threats that result in a rapid rate of biodiversity loss.

These threats include habitat loss, climate change, disease, invasive alien species that propels plants and animals toward extinction, he explained.

“This puts us in a race to identify and underscore each and every species to take appropriate conservation steps,” he said.

Species identification However, he said that naming one species from another is easier said than done.

Philippine pit vipers, he said, are also known for different names: ahas tulog, dupong, hingunguto, mandadalag, ramuranon and arimuranon.

A lot of species are described solely on the basis of looks, measurement and unique features, he said.

However, he said two or more species that are superficially indistinguishable and exist in a separate region has been the cause of confusion for taxonomist.

“This so-called cryptic diversity has been discovered, distinguished through distribution, morphology and ecology,” he said.

To avoid the pitfalls of mistakenly naming a species, scientists rely on molecular technique, which he used along with morphological analysis.

Cryptic speciation Notorious for cryptic speciation—a biological process that results in having a group of species that contain individuals which are morphologically identical to each other but belong to different species—is the Asian green pit viper, the most diverse group of venomous snakes in tropical Asia, del Prado said.

“It is also the most commonly encountered venomous snake in Southeast Asia.

Its members are very difficult to classify because of their wide distribution range and very similar anatomy,” he said.

According to del Prado, there are 50 different species of green pit vipers, with a number still increasing through reexamination using molecular techniques.

Common lowland snake The Philippines, he said, has three species of pit vipers occurring in separate, nonoverlapping regions. They are common lowland snakes that can benefit from further studies to differentiate them from other species of pit vipers.

These are the Trimeresurus schultzei that is known to occur only in Palawan; the Trimeresurus mcgregori that occurs exclusively in Batanes, a nd Tr imeresur us f lavomaculatus found throughout the country.

T. schultzei, commonly known as Schultze’s pit viper that was named after W. Schultze, who collected the type specimen; T. mcgregori, is known as

Philippine pit vipers

Photos from Yñigo del Prado

McGregor’s pit viper, McGregor’s Tree Viper or Batanes Bambusotter; while T. flavomaculatus, is more commonly known Philippine pit viper.

“The [Philippine pit viper] occurs in all major Philippine islands except in Palawan,” del Prado said. All three species belong to the Indo-Malayan pit vipers.

Complicated history The Philippine pit viper’s wide distribution has led to complicated taxonomy history, del Prado said.

The species was earlier described as three distinct species, which was found to be one and the same in 1879.

It was split into three subspecies again in 1964. Between 2001 and 2004, eventually, it was split into two valid species with the reestablishment of the T. mcgregori as a separate species.

But del Prado, in an e-mail message to the BusinessMirror on November 2, said there are other pit vipers that are known to occur in the Philippines.

Study focus “There are five species of pit vipers [meaning they belong to the subfamily Crotalinae] in the Philippines. These belong to two genera, Trimeresurus and Tropidolaemus,” he said.

According to del Prado, for his study, he focused on only one species, the Philippine pit viper, but included the other two species for the molecular analyses.

“With plans of covering the entire archipelago, here I first focused on comparing [viper] populations on Luzon island,” he said.

Initial findings As a result of his study, del Prado found and described four morphotypes which refer to their color and pattern morphs for individuals of the species found on Luzon island.

“Interestingly, based on previous

fieldwork, photos and publications, there appear to be a unique set of morphs for those on Mindanao although I still need to examine live specimens from the area and, hopefully, all Philippine islands for comparison,” he said.

He added that molecular analyses reveal what taxonomists call a species complex.

“We found that [McGregor’s pit viper], which has been described as a separate species based on morphological evidence, nested within the [Philippine pit viper] group, separating [Philippine pit vipers] of Mindanao and Luzon,” he said.

But he said more data, such as taxon sampling, morphological analyses and molecular analyses are needed to make considerable taxonomic decisions.

Hemotoxic venom Philippine pit vipers are known to have hemotoxic venom, or venom that destroy red blood cells. It damages the circulatory system and muscle tissue and causes swelling, hemorrhage and necrosis, or death of a body tissue.

But del Prado said during the webinar that Philippine pit viper bites are very rare. If ever, a bite causes intense swelling of the arm followed by extreme pain and necrosis.

While there is no record of deaths caused by snake bites, he said it doesn’t mean there are zero incidents.

“Maybe it is just because people are not reporting it,” he said.

Ambush predator What makes the Philippine pit viper deadly is that it is an ambush predator and has the ability not to move, which explains why many call it ahas tulog.

He said there are reports, especially among local hunters from the Agta tribe that hunt shrimps, having been bitten by ahas tulog.

This happens when the pit viper feels threatened.

“The first defense of pit viper is a bite,” he said.

Need for antivenom According to del Prado, while the Philippines is known for having some of the world’s most venomous snakes, it has no antivenom to speak off.

“We still have no antivenom. We have 150 species of snakes, 33 species of which are venomous and dangerous, but [antivenom for] only 1 species, for the Philippine cobra, was produced,” he lamented.

“Antivenom are supposed to be species-specific because venom toxicity and effects vary for every species,” he said.

Sports

Saudi Arabia hosts F1 D race in 2021 in Jiddah

BusinessMirror

A8 | S

unday, November 8, 2020 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

FERRARI’S Charles Leclerc (center right) and Sebastian Vettel (center left) steer their cars during the start of the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain. AP

I

NDONESIAN President Joko Widodo ordered his Cabinet to prepare a dedicated plan for the country’s bid to host the 2032 Olympics.

Indonesia is one of several nations to have expressed interest in staging the Games, and Widodo has now instructed ministers to outline how the country can be successful, the Jakarta Post reports.

The Indonesian Olympic Committee (KOI) called on the country’s government to fully support a bid for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games in August, so Widodo’s intervention will be welcome news to the KOI. Youth and Sports Minister Zainudin Amali told the Jakarta Post that the President had instructed aides to form a bid committee, responsible for producing a budget, overall proposal and feasibility studies.

The Indonesian Sports Council (KONI) is among the government organizations set to be involved in the process.

“The bid committee will concentrate on the bidding first, how [Indonesia] can be appointed as the host,” Amali, who claimed the Cabinet had not discussed host cities, said.

Previously, the KOI insisted the country’s

INDONESIA GETS SERIOUS ON 2032 OLYMPICS BID

Olympic bid is focused on Jakarta as opposed to a future capital being built in East Kalimantan. Jakarta staged the 2018 Asian Games, along with Palembang.

Queensland in Australia is among the rival bidders for the 2032 Games, although that bid is “on hold” because of the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic hardship.

The Qatar Olympic Committee announced its interest in hosting the Olympics and Paralympics as early as 2032, while India is also expected to bid.

In Germany, there are proposals for a RheinRuhr bid and Hasan Arat, vice president of the Turkish Olympic Committee, urged Istanbul to attempt to host the Games in 2032.

A joint bid from South Korea and North Korea

had been mooted, but is unlikely to materialize given relations between the two have worsened since the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

KOI President Raja Sapta Oktohari suggested that pencak silat, an Indonesian martial arts, could feature if Indonesia’s bid is successful, and also claimed the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Agenda 2020 and New Norm reforms made it possible for the Games to take place across multiple cities, according to the Jakarta Post.

“If Indonesia is chosen, it will mark a new history of the first time the Olympic is held in Southeast Asian country,” Oktohari said.

The region staged the first Youth Olympic Games with Singapore as host in 2010.

Los Angeles 2028, meanwhile, praised for its “great progress” during the first meeting of the IOC Coordination Commission—with its brand launch, youth development funding and venue master plan among the items discussed.

IOC President Thomas Bach joined the opening part of two days of virtual meetings, which were led by Coordination Commission chair Nicole Hoevertsz. Bach reportedly appreciated work carried out by Los Angeles 2028 during the coronavirus pandemic.

“2020 has provided unprecedented challenges to the world and the Olympic Movement, but we have demonstrated that flexibility and innovation will be embraced to adapt to the new landscape and deliver Olympic Games fit for a post-corona world,” Bach said.

“We have shown in recent months that we are indeed stronger together,” he said.

“This was uniquely illustrated in the launch of the Los Angeles 2028 brand last month—the Organizing Committee’s innovative and creative approach receiving plaudits from across the world.”

“From its inception, the Los Angeles 2028 project has embedded the very essence of Olympic Agenda 2020 in all its strategic plans,” he added.

Los Angeles 2028 unveiled its new logo last month with the digital design featuring an “ever-changing A.” Officials have said this will allow cocreation with members of the public able to design their own version.

Los Angeles 2028 also announced Delta Air Lines as the inaugural founding partner of the Games back in March.

Insidethegames

INDONESIAN President Joko Widodo wants to bring the Olympics to the Southeast Asian region.

UBAI, United Arab Emirates—Saudi Arabia will host a Formula One race next year, a move aimed at attracting well-heeled globe-trotting visitors and raising the kingdom’s profile internationally as a tourist destination.

The kingdom said Thursday it will host the race in November 2021 in the Red Sea city of Jiddah, using scenic roads along the coast.

Gulf locales including Manama, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, already host F1 races, which see A-list Hollywood stars, royals, billionaires, ministers and social-media influencers gather for days of partying, discreet talks and deal-making.

Last year, 21 cities hosted races, but that has been scaled back this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some cities in 2020 have hosted multiple races. Concerns about large crowds amid the pandemic have also caused most races to be held without fans.

“Motorsports for us is very important,” Prince Khalid bin Sultan al-Faisal, chairman of the Saudi Automobile and Motorcycle Federation, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday. “We would like to host these events as long as we can because our local people here in Saudi Arabia like to attend these events and be entertained and meet people from all around the world.”

The kingdom did not say how long it’s contract with F1 will last, but the country has plans to build a race track in the capital, Riyadh, by 2030. Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil and gas giant, is already a global sponsor of the heavily sponsored race.

The cost of hosting the F1 could exceed $100 million, though Prince Khalid said he also expects it will generate revenue for Saudi Arabia as the country races to diversify its economy away from dependence on the export of oil, which has plunged to less than $38 a barrel amid weaker global demand.

One standout feature of the Saudi race will be the absence of champagne popping by the winners and alcoholic beverages flowing in the stands and at the after parties. Consumption of any alcohol in the Muslim kingdom is outlawed.

“The priority is for our own people. We assure that we’re going to throw a lovely event, a nice event. People will not be concerned about if there is alcohol or not, they will come for the event—not for the alcohol,” Prince Khalid said.

“We are proud of who we are and how we do things in Saudi Arabia.”

The kingdom has experience hosting the electric Formula E series, which was held on the outskirts of Riyadh. Prince Khalid said international visitors then have respected the cultural differences.

By hosting major sporting events, Saudi Arabia aims to draw attention to the sweeping social changes under way in the country and encourage Saudis to turn their attention to sports. Yet some big-name athletes have stayed away amid criticism the events are also an effort at “sportswashing” by diverting attention from the kingdom’s human-rights record.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reputation took a hit following international outcry over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Turkey in 2018.

Human Rights Watch launched a campaign in October to counter what it says has been an effort by the Saudi government to spend billions of dollars hosting major events as “a deliberate strategy to deflect from the country’s image as a pervasive human-rights violator.”

“If we wanted to cover anything up, we wouldn’t open up our country so people can come and see our country and meet our people and talk freely with them,” Prince Khalid said when asked about such criticisms. “Maybe we do some things differently than others in the world, but for us we are improving, we are opening up, we have nothing to hide so there’s nothing to wash.” AP

$1B slated for Milan-Cortina Winter Games infrastructure

R

OME—A wide swath of northern Italy will benefit from more than $1 billion in infrastructure development that the government has signed off on to improve access to the venues for the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 2026.

Milan-Cortina Foundation CEO Vincenzo Novari said the decree—approved Wednesday despite a second wave of the coronavirus sweeping through the country—shows that hosting the games “is already an efficient source of economic development that will realize projects that citizens have been waiting for.”

The €1 billion ($1.2 billion) in funds are destined for road and railway projects in the Lombardy and Veneto regions and the autonomous provinces of Bolzano and Trento that will host the games.

“The works that are being financed serve to improve access and connections for [the Olympics] but they

were conceived to maintain their usefulness over time, even after 2026, and will be realized according to environmental sustainability standards,” Infrastructure and Transport Minister Paola de Micheli said.

The decree sets aside €473 million ($560 million) for the Lombardy region, €325 million ($384 million) for the Veneto region, €120 million ($142 million) for the province of Trento and €82 million ($97 million) for the province of Bolzano.

All of the projects must be completed before the games begin in February 2026, according to the decree.

The venues for the games themselves will be financed privately according to the agreements with the International Olympic Committee. The 2026 Games’ budget— which does not include the infrastructure spending—is €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion).

Still, the government’s financial commitment will likely be disputed in

THE Palazzo del Ghiaccio (Ice Palace) in Cortina d’Ampezzo northern Italy. AP

years ahead on the sensitive subject of how much the Olympics will cost taxpayers to host.

The Milan-Cortina Games are taking full advantage of more flexible hosting rules provided by recent reforms from IOC President Thomas Bach—resulting in venues dotted throughout northern Italy.

Figure skating, hockey and short track speedskating will be contested in Milan; sliding sports and curling in 1956 host Cortina; and speedskating, biathlon and Nordic sports in Trentino-Alto Adige.

Alpine skiing will be divided between Bormio (men) and Cortina d’Ampezzo (women).

The opening ceremony is slated for the 80,000-seat San Siro in Milan or a new stadium that is proposed for the city, with the closing event at the Verona Arena, a large Roman amphitheater.

Meanwhile, the IOC is still awaiting a response from the Italian government regarding accusations of political interference that could—under extreme circumstances— result in the country being stripped of hosting the 2026 Games. AP

Why young people tune out government Covid-19 messaging

2

BusinessMirror NOVEMBER 8, 2020 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

EMBRACING VISAYAN POP’S GLOBAL POTENTIAL PhilPop 2020 Introduces second batch of Songs

JERIKA Teodorico and her song “Ayaw Na Lang”

MICHAEL Catarina and his song “Hinungdan”

P

HILPOP, the country’s premier songwriting competition, returns with an eclectic set of new releases from the finalists of the Visayas cluster.

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: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

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: Aldwin M. Tolosa

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The sophomore batch takes regional pride to unprecedented heights with its sterling showcase of contemporary pop songs representing authentic Visayan expressions through language, culture, and experience.

Distributed by Warner Music Philippines, the homegrown tracks are available today, October 30 (Friday) on all digital and streaming platforms worldwide. The entries include “Suyo,” composed and interpreted by Noah Alejandre and Reanne Borela also know as the duo reon; “Hinungdan,” composed by Michael Catarina and interpreted by James Gulles; and “Ayaw Na Lang,” composed by Jerika Teodorico and interpreted by Lourdes Maglinte.

Suyo: Love beyond cultural differences

BREAKING cultural barriers, “Suyo” tells the story of quarreling lovers from the opposite sides of the country. Over the course of the intricately produced jam, composers Noah Alejandre and Reanne Borela exchange sweet banters to win each other back in Bisaya and Tagalog, respectively.

“This song breaks the norms of OPM songs having only one language and giving emphasis on couples who are from different parts of the country,” Alejandre explains the inspiration behind the new tune. “Both of us never really

NOAH Alejandre and Reanne Borela and their song “Suyo”

experienced being in a relationship, yet we made the song as if we were in one and took inspiration from our imaginations. Reanne took inspiration from her friends who were in relationships and have witnessed how they would fight about the simplest things and get back together right after. They took this as an opportunity to create a playful song that resulted into the song.”

With its understated charm and infectious pop songwriting, “Suyo” stands out for putting a new spin on the classic love song template.

It seamlessly blends the charm and tension points of two different languages, showcasing a pure kind of love that goes beyond cultural and geographical differences.

Hinungdan: Subtlety done right

WEAVING folk-pop instrumentation with striking vulnerability, “Hinungdan” brings back earnestness and subtlety at the forefront of the songwriting process, allowing words and melodies to wander into the open space and take off.

Cebu-based composer Michael Catarina cites British singersongwriters Ed Sheeran, Passenger, and James Bay as major influences in writing “Hinungdan”—a song about “a person who is having a hard time telling his feelings for someone.”

Catarino relates to the universal appeal of the self-penned composition, sharing how he felt the same at some point in his life: “I can’t deny but I have personally experienced this as well. Way back then, when I wrote this song, I was just embracing the moment

of being frustrated by writing the things that I couldn’t say.”

Ayaw Na Lang: Sultry jam for the lovelorn

ACCORDING to PhilPop finalist Jerika Teodorico, “Ayaw Na Lang” is a Bisaya phrase that translates to “never mind” in English. “The lyrics are from the perspective of a lovelorn person slowly acknowledging and accepting the fact that although her love interest seems to return even a fourth of the feeling, a romance between them just won’t do,” the Cebuana composer and songwriter reflects. “It’s a very confusing feeling to deal with, and as a songwriter and a person who has a hard time processing my thoughts and emotions, I felt compelled to make a monument out of that half-joyous, half-torturous moment. It was also me trying to assure my love interest that it was fine, and there were no hard feelings after that night.”

From a musical standpoint, there’s nothing over-the-top about “Ayaw Na Lang” in terms of production and arrangement, but its charm lies on the gritty, throwback vibe that arranger and co-producer Anjelo Calinawan brought to the mix, making it sound like an ‘old-meets-new’ kind of jam.

The overall product is something that Amy Winehouse or Duffy wouldn’t mind singing their hearts out, but in the entry’s case, it’s songstress Lourdes Maglinte filling in the shoes to interpret this smoky, jazz-pop original with both sass and soul.

“Suyo,” “Hinungdan,” and “Ayaw Na Lang” are now available on streaming and digital platforms worldwide via PhilPop and Warner Music Philippines.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | NOVEMBER 8, 2020

BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

LIVING IN THE INTERIM

Reese Lansangan finds inspiration in imposed isolation

L

IVING and surviving in a time of enforced quarantine and measured distancing can be frustrating for artists who feed off from the appreciation and energy of their fans and community.

“This idea came from an online writing prompt generator I came across during my two-week long research for this EP. I had the funniest time putting myself in the shoes of a ghost (if ghosts had shoes) sleeping in a grand piano and getting booted out by a cat.” The unique album title is simply described as a way of escaping reality for a moment, allowing room But rather than sulk in a period of imposed isolation, folk musician Reese Lansangan released a brand new EP titled “Playing Pretend in the Interim.” It essentially reflects how she’s been in a period of quarantine from the rest of the world, most especially from performance spaces that have showcased her musical dexterity and lyrical virtuosity.

On her YouTube channel where her latest EP is readily accessible, Reese wrote, “My new album is a five-track EP of songs completed during (Covid-19) isolation. I composed the songs from the perspectives of different characters, telling hyper-specific experiences with borrowed eyes.

It’s a combination of research, imagination, secondhand stories, histories, and things I’ve heard and witnessed along the way.”

Reese is a guitar-toting folk artist by trade. In her time producing the new EP, she managed to build on her musical roots to go happily yonder where she has not yet gone before. She relates, “The writing process was both an experiment and an examination of the self as a human living with and for others.

“The song “Ghosting,” for instance, is an experimental riot of a song about a ghost searching for a new home.

is performed at a slow tempo, foregrounded by sad piano lines and mournful strings to turn Reese into an emotive balladeer. “Extended Vacation” will do Meghan Trainor proud, elevating Reese among the best pop rock composers in OPM. “The Encyclopedia Salesman” scratches the folk itch and its meandering melody ramps up to memorable chorus. And “When It Happens” opens with a trumpet wail before moving to a playful pop surprise.

Unsurprisingly, Reese’s gift for imaginative character sketches is in full bloom overcoming the hurdles imposed by a silent killer disease.

“Extended Vacation” is about the struggles of the working class, in this

REESE Lansangan

for wonder and play.

There’s wonder also how Reese came up with more robust music on her latest album. In previous releases, she lived up to her billing as a pop folk artist initially in the mold of Barbie Almalbis and in later incarnations, playing around with jazzy inflections and vocodered vocals.

Produced while in isolation mode, the new EP finds Reese expanding on her folkie roots.

Album opener “Mall Rats”

case a pizza delivery man who has to serve his customers no matter the health risks in the time of a pandemic and the hazards of Manila’s roads.

Reese said. “Extended Vacation” came out of a heated conversation I overheard at a restaurant during my first time out post-enhanced community quarantine. The song hopes to be a fair take on our current reality in the pandemic through the lenses of hardship and privilege.”

She disclosed, “Mall Rats” is a

self-examination of my own relationship with consumption and material things I lightly touch on themes of loneliness, discontent, and capitalism through the eyes of a girl in the middle of an abandoned mall.”

In “The Encyclopedia Salesman.” Reese imagines the day in a life of a door-to -door salesman as he hustles to find his place and fulfill his purpose at the brink of the new millennium. She spent many summers poring over her Childcraft and World Book volumes and she finds a sense of security that comes with owning words on a page and knowing they’ll never change.

Reese thinks the song is a beautiful, melancholy narrative of finding a foothold through the passing of time, specifically being in a situation she eloquently describes as “sandwiched between the era of hardbound facts and digital information.”

“The final song ‘When It Happens’ is about death and how we collectively mourn in public through different means,” she shared. “The tributes come in and it’s all we could ever talk about but after a week or a month, everybody moves on.”

“I lost my father when I was very young and thought it unfair that people could go home and be okay right after, while I’m not.

This song is an outpouring of things I often think about: passing and being forgotten, missing out on loved ones, but also living on through stories, songs, and memory.”

The absence of agitation in her words and music in the context of enforced quarantine due to the pandemic makes “Playing Pretend in the Interim” Reese’s meditation while waiting for the first day of unfettered freedom.

To paraphrase Jarvis Cocker, Reese has creatively embraced isolation and everything that it entails, and fans of introspective, non-invasive music is all the better for it.

3

Why young people tune out government Covid-19 messaging

By Jaigris Hodson

“It’s in part due to the fact that governments are not communicating in ways that resonate with them.”

Royal Roads University

A

cross Canada, Covid-19 infection rates are climbing amid the coronavirus’s second wave.

Since a short flattening of the curve in the summer, transmission has continued to rise, particularly among young people who have been scolded by politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford for having parties and other get-togethers without appropriate distancing.

But the various reprimands by political leaders are falling on deaf ears. Covid-19 rates among those 20 to 29 years old are the highest of any age group in the country.

Governments simply don’t seem to be able to reach young people with Covid-19 safety messages, though this isn’t for lack of trying.

Ryan Reynolds enlisted In British Columbia, where I live and work, Premier John Horgan convinced Vancouver native and movie star Ryan Reynolds to record a message telling young people to act responsibly and prevent the spread of Covid-19.

But his humorous appeal wasn’t enough to prevent the current second wave, and Covid-19 cases in young people continue to climb in Québec, Ontario, B.C. and Alberta.

Why are young people so hard to reach? I suggest in part it’s due to the

Young people are much more responsive to communication that involves dialogue. UNSPLASH fact that governments are not communicating in ways that resonate with them.

One-way communication doesn’t work Most government communication still works on a one-way or broadcast model.

But research shows that when government communicators actually engage in dialogue with younger citizens, instead of just broadcasting to them, their messages are much more effectively received.

These findings are consistent when it comes to current pandemic-related information. Recent research out of China shows that while communicators may try to get creative with interesting video, audio and image-based content, audiences are more likely to engage with content that involves dialogue.

People respond better when govern-

ments listen to them and then speak to them, rather than just talking at them.

Young people are especially likely to tune out broadcast-style messages because they’ve grown up with social media that is centered on dialogue.

In Canada, our government and public health communicators are generally using old control-the-message tactics to reach people, and this is a losing proposition.

The fact is, the demographic most likely to be on Twitter is over 30, and young people feel that Facebook is the place where they interact with their parents, making neither of these platforms “cool,” even if Ryan Reynolds is on them. YouTube news conferences and broadcaststyle Twitter feeds that stay on message aren’t going to work because they come across as tone-deaf and inauthentic.

Go to where young people hang out online Instead, communicators actually need to go to where young people reside online and engage with them in their preferred communication style. Some public health agencies around the world have begun to experiment with TikTok, and have been having some success.

In Canada, though, top-down government messaging and PR are often not compatible with the light-hearted and fast communication style of TikTok. And so even though NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been applauded for

his viral TikTok videos, public health agencies have yet to follow suit.

Some might argue that a message suitable for TikTok would be too short, too silly or too irreverent to convey the seriousness of Covid-19 prevention. But those who believe that are missing out on the potential of the medium and its ability to connect with young people.

Doctors using TikTok In fact, some physicians have already begun to use TikTok to reach others, including Naheed Dosani, a Toronto doctor and health communicator. Public health officials and other politicians, including provincial premiers and health ministers, should take a page from Dr. Dosani’s playbook and make the most of the platforms favored by young people.

In addition to going to the platforms most frequented by young people online, public health communicators must also spend time understanding the needs of their audience. They need to listen to young peoples’ frustrations, fears and concerns. Then they must speak to young people like human beings, rather than scolding them or speaking as a parent or teacher would to a child.

That’s what Singh continues to get right about his communication strategy, and is where current leaders and public health officials are falling short.

The Conversation

SNAP scholar calls on the youth to promote indigenous culture

A

s the country commemorated Indigenous Peoples’ Month last month, 19-year-old Carol Jean Mendoza of the Ibaloi and Kankanaey-Buguias tribes in Benguet called on her fellow youth to “support our own.”

In 2009, Proclamation 1906 designated October as Indigenous Peoples’ Month to promote the preservation and protection of Philippine indigenous peoples’ rights and culture. The Ibaloi—also called Nabaloi—of which Mendoza is part, is an indigenous ethnic group in Benguet, particularly in the municipalities of Kabayan, Bokod, Sablan, Tublay, La Trinidad, Tuba, and Itogon, and the southern portions of Kapangan and Atok.

According to Mendoza, the value of respect is deeply ingrained in the Ibaloi community. Mendoza carries pride in this part of her identity and makes sure to integrate her cultural practice and beliefs in life.

“Nakaman-Ibadoy ni inaakew [I speak my own language on the daily],” she said.

On the challenges faced by IPs, Mendoza finds the country’s poor impression of indigenous people as problematic. However, she is far from intimidated by these misconceptions.

“Many people don’t realize that we are the hope of the country,” she said. “Being part of the indigenous people makes us the bravest, strongest, and highly respected. We uplift the Filipino humanity with the values and self-esteem that we develop in ourselves.”

Currently staying with a family belonging to another IP community, the Kankanaey-Buguias, in the urban areas of La Trinidad, Benguet, Mendoza continues to make her way in the world with her identity as IP and her commitment to explore and promote indigenous cultures.

Mendoza is taking up BS Education in Benguet State University, where she is a beneficiary of SN Aboitiz Power-Benguet’s Bridging Gaps in Higher Education through Tertiary Scholarships (BRIGHTS) Program. The

4 BusinessMirror

Carol Jean Mendoza, 19 scholarship initiative is under SNAP’s corporate social responsibility program, targeting deserving students with limited means from the company’s immediate host communities.

Mendoza’s hope is for the younger generation to have more interest in advocating for IP culture, and

November 8, 2020

she believes that education brings her a step closer to this goal.

“I believe that it is our duty to prepare ourselves as future stewards of our beloved land,” she said.

“My degree helps me to further enlighten myself, and to get along with other people better. We study about culture-related topics, particularly indigenous knowledge, political institutions, and the languages of Cordillera. All of this will be my guide in my future teaching career.”

She encourages participation in community activities related to their culture and practices, something that being a SNAP scholar has helped her amplify.

“I’m always inspired to wave the banner of IPs in various activities and competitions, such as cultural dances and indigenous games,” Mendoza said.

“SNAP became one of my bridges to fill the gap between me being a voiceless youth and me becoming the ‘voice’ of youth.”