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POWER NEED TO MOVE

PHL transport sector resumes slow but steady shift to electric-powered vehicles on the road

By Rory Visco

registered in the country.

In terms of sourcing EV engines, Araga said major motor suppliers mostly come in from China as it is the acknowledged industry leader on all aspects related to EVs, from infrastructure to supply chain, processes and battery supplies.

M

ORE and more vehicles are getting back on the road again as mobility restrictions ease down on the metropolis and other major cities in the country.

However, as more vehicles plow the road, expect smoke emissions to rise to dangerous levels again, which can wreak havoc on the health, respiratory in particular, of commuters who are also slowly going back to commuting again to go to work.

The Philippines’s 2021 air quality average in terms of PM2.5 concentration—an air pollutant composed of tiny particles in the air that reduce visibility and cause the air to appear hazy when levels are elevated—was 3.1 times above the World Health Organization (WHO) annual air quality. This placed the country at 64th out of 118 countries in the 2021 AQI Country Ranking through IQAir, the world’s largest free real-time air quality information platform.

The country continues to look for healthier alternatives when it comes to the transportation sector and is now turning an eye on electric vehicles (EVs) for significantly lesser to zero smoke emission and promote healthier travel.

As prices of petroleum products continue to skyrocket with the Russia-Ukraine conflict still raging, this furthered the case of EVs being a wiser choice for the future of transportation in terms of air and even noise pollution compared to fossil fuel-powered vehicles.

The state of EV

GLOBAL EV car sales got hit by the Covid-19 pandemic but still, the EV industry sold 3 million cars in 2020, about 40 percent higher from 2019. The International Energy Agency (Agence Internationale de l’Énergie) said last year, sales of EVs hit 108 percent and some analysts are looking at 2022 to be a

Legislative action and support

THE Kona Electric, Hyundai’s first all-electric subcompact crossover, is seen at the Manila International Auto Show on April 7, 2019, in Pasay City. WALTER ERIC SY | DREAMSTIME.COM

“rosy” year for the EV industry.

In the Philippines, awareness about EVs is slowly picking up as many automotive enthusiasts slowly turn to this technology and solid support is also picking up.

Currently, there are 110 charging stations in the country, and even the Department of Energy (DOE) is moving into the EV picture in terms of providing more support to the EV industry and EV owners themselves. There is also a law waiting for the President’s signing that will hopefully institutionalize the adoption of the use of EVs in both public and private transport sectors and support for necessary infrastructure.

The Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines (eVAP) is taking the lead in the promotion of the use of EVs in the country, as it advocates a more environmentfriendly transportation landscape

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.1750

ARAGA: “It’s just a matter of implementation in order to actually feel the changes in the entire auto industry as it shifts into electric vehicle mode.”

in the country, ecologically and economically.

According to Edmund Araga, eVAP president, the association was established back in 2009 and currently has over 500 industry partners and 54 active members. “Our main purpose is to educate the pub-

lic on environmental awareness, including the economic and ecological benefits of EVs,” he said.

He said eVAP is already accelerating the needed recognition in order to push for more Filipinos to make that switch from gaspowered to eventually electricpowered vehicles, and also to collaborate with the government in the creation and implementation of appropriate legislation that will support and encourage the use of electric vehicles.

During last year’s Philippine Electric Vehicle Summit by the eVAP with the theme “Accelerating the Switch to Electro-Mobility in the Philippines,” the association continues to make the call for the fast-tracking of EV adoption in the local transport sector, which is very much aligned with the national government’s objective of achieving a low-carbon economy.

The event was also highlighted with the signing of a stakeholder memorandum of understanding that hopes to speed up the switch to electro-mobility by 2025.

EV usage, Philippine-style

ARAGA said the use of EVs in the country started way back in 2008 through a group of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that anticipated the future of the auto industry would be electric.

Slowly, the public transportation industry in the country is getting an upgrade, where commuters began to see e-jeeps and etrikes plying some of the country’s major roads. According to the Land Transportation Office (LTO) 2019 data, around 12,865 EVs, mostly e-trikes, were

ARAGA acknowledged that the EVIDA or Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act would be a big help to the EV cause in the country. The proposed measure, endorsed by Sen. Win Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, and his counterpart in the Lower House, Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo, is awaiting President Duterte’s signature for it to become a full-fledged law.

The law states provisions that aim to promote the industry in the country and update some roadmaps in addressing concerns related to infrastructure, such as the establishment of an EV charging network, plus feasible business models for EV adoption and supply-chain concerns, plus classification, registration and operations of various types of EV. “The law also states mandatory procurement of at least 5 percent of electric vehicles on both private and public sectors to support the industry,” Araga said.

Araga said the law is also calling for the allocation of free parking on malls and other establishments, including exemption of EVs from the government’s vehicular volume reduction scheme or “color coding” upon approval.

As to the future of EVs in the country, Araga said eVAP is very optimistic that more players, investors and charging stations will be established once the law is approved and supported by all. “It’s just a matter of implementation in order to actually feel the changes in the entire auto industry as it shifts into electric vehicle mode,” Araga concludes.

n JAPAN 0.4161 n UK 67.8536 n HK 6.6577 n CHINA 8.1955 n SINGAPORE 38.2599 n AUSTRALIA 38.8912 n EU 56.5055 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.9134

Source: BSP (April 13, 2022)

News A2 Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

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Here’s how China’s lockdowns are rippling through the economy

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By Jill Disis | Bloomberg News

HINA’S lockdowns to contain the country’s worst Covid outbreak since early 2020 have battered the economy, stalling production in major technology and financial hubs like Shenzhen and Suzhou, and halting spending by millions of people shut in their homes.

The restrictions are intended to eradicate any trace of the virus in the community, but they’ve also pressured everything from manufacturing and trade to inflation and food prices.

Premier Li Keqiang has repeatedly warned of risks to economic growth, telling local authorities on Monday they should “add a sense of urgency” when implementing existing policies. The government is holding firm to its

Covid Zero approach for now, a strategy economists say will push growth down to 5 percent this year, below the official target of around 5.5 percent.

Here’s a deeper look at how the lockdowns are impacting critical sectors across the world’s secondlargest economy.

Commodities hit

CHINA posted sluggish commodities imports in March, as elevated

A MEDICAL worker swab tests a resident during a round of Covid-19 testing in a neighborhood placed under lockdown in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. China hasn't budged in its opposition to living with the virus even in the midst of the country's worst outbreak, but its leaders are now pursuing an easier containment strategy in the uphill battle to tame the hyper-infectious coronavirus. QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG

prices due to the war in Ukraine and tightening virus restrictions took their toll on demand.

Natural gas purchases were worst affected, dropping below 8 million tons to their lowest level since October 2020. Crude and coal purchases were also running well behind last year’s schedule.

Chinese demand for jet fuel is projected to drop by 25,000 barrels per day from a year earlier, a 3.5-percent fall, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA previously expected 10,000 barrels per day of growth. The number of daily flights in China, as averaged over seven days, has fallen below the lowest level seen in 2020, with less than 2,700 active flights on Tuesday, according to Airportia, a real-time flight tracker.

China’s domestic metals fabricators are facing hurdles to transport raw materials and finished products, which have led to output cuts. Six out of twelve copper-rod plants in Shanghai’s neighboring provinces surveyed

by Shanghai Metals Market earlier said they either have halted or plan to halt output. The researcher also predicted a rise in aluminum inventories.

Meanwhile, Chinese buyers have slashed liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world’s biggest LNG importer as prices soar and domestic demand stalls. Imports in the first quarter fell 14 percent from the same period last year, according to shipping data, and private companies are spurning offers to use once-highly coveted slots at state-owned receiving terminals.

Port congestion

SHANGHAI’S city-wide lockdown has created congestion at the world’s largest port, with queues of vessels building there and at other stops handling diverted shipments. The number of container ships waiting off Shanghai as of April 11 was 15 percent higher than a month earlier, according to Bloomberg shipping data.

A shortage of port workers in Shanghai is slowing the delivery of documentation needed for ships to unload cargoes, according to ship owners and traders. Meanwhile, vessels carrying metals like copper and iron ore are left stranded offshore as trucks are unable to send goods from the port to processing mills, they said.

Data on Wednesday also showed the lockdowns having a

notable impact on imports, which fell 0.1 percent on year in March, the first contraction since August 2020.

Manufacturing woes

CHINA’S purchasing managers surveys show manufacturing contracted in March, with small and medium-sized firms particularly shaken by operational snags. The Caixin index, based on surveys of smaller, export-oriented businesses, dropped to its worst level since the start of the pandemic two years ago.

Some large manufacturing firms have been able to keep operations going by adopting a so-called closed loop system, in which employees were kept at factory locations and tested regularly. However, those protocols aren’t perfect: One member of a European Union trade group said last week that work can be “very, very difficult,” even with permission to operate amid restrictions.

Tech disrupted

SOME technology companies have suspended production as China’s restrictive policies weigh on a sector already contending with a shortage of components.

Most major tech manufacturers—from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group—froze operations in the early days of Shanghai’s outbreak. Many have since resumed after setting up closed-loop systems.

As of Wednesday, more than than 30 Taiwanese companies, including Pegatron Corp. and Macbook maker Quanta Computer Inc. had halted production in eastern China’s electronics hubs because of Covid rules.

Logistics jams are constricting shipments of components, draining inventories to the point where some manufacturers including Pegatron, Wistron Corp. and Compal Electronics Inc. are down to just a few weeks’ stocks, consultancy Trendforce estimates. The ongoing global supply crunch could worsen if local manufacturing is disrupted, constraining stock of computers and gaming consoles to smartphones, servers and electric vehicles.

Automotive pain

OVERALL passenger vehicle sales slid 10.9 percent last month, sug-

gesting pressure in the massive car market.

Some automakers are hitting production snags because of lockdowns. Tesla Inc.’s Shanghai factory has been shut down since March 28 because of restrictions in the city. The plant typically produces more than 2,000 cars every day, according to an estimate earlier this month from Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc. Volkswagen AG was also forced to suspend production in Shanghai this month, while Chinese EV upstart Nio Inc. said Saturday it halted production and delayed deliveries because many suppliers had to close shop.

Auto parts maker Robert Bosch GmbH said Monday it shuttered two of its factories in China and operated closed-loop systems at two others, adding that it was seeing “temporary effects on logistics and supplychain sourcing.”

Construction snags

DOMESTIC sales of excavators— a leading indicator for construction—plunged almost 64 percent in March from a year ago, indicating strain in the sector.

China’s home sales slump also deepened last month: The 100 biggest companies in the debt-ridden property industry saw a 53-percent drop in sales from a year earlier, according to preliminary data from China Real Estate Information Corp. The decline was the steepest this year.

Steel rebar inventory in China suggests construction activity “may have shifted to a lower gear,” according to analysis published last week by David Qu, an economist covering China for Bloomberg Economics.

Inflation risks

THE lockdowns have driven up food costs and may endanger the nation’s ability to secure enough grains for the year as the curbs complicate China’s important spring planting season.

Fresh vegetable prices jumped 17.2 percent on year in March, compared to a drop of 0.1 percent in February, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed this week. Chinese farmers in some parts of the northeast, which produces more than a fifth of China’s national grain output, have had to contend with restrictions that prevent them from plowing their fields and sowing seeds.

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News BusinessMirror

Duterte urged to sign law on perks for SK officials T HE Kabataan Partylist has urged President Duterte to immediately sign the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) Empowerment Bill into law to aid young public servants amid economic crisis.

The party-list group, in a statement, said the SK Empowerment Bill seeks to amend the SK Reform Act of 2015 to provide additional privileges, including honoraria and civil service eligibility, to all SK officials, including the Secretary and Treasurer.

“Given skyrocketing oil prices and the over-all health and economic crisis, we stand for better government support and compensation for young public servants who continue in the line of duty,” the group said.

“Given the absence of regular elections and despite all challenges they faced amid the pandemic, SK officials have went over and beyond their mandated term to bring services to communities and empower the Filipino youth,” it added.

In its series of consultations, the group said it found that SK officials are generally overworked, underequipped and understaffed to run their local councils

properly.

“In fact, many have already resigned from their prolonged terms due to personal or filial obligations that cannot be ignored especially with the overwhelming economic burden imposed by oil, energy and pandemic crises,” said the party-list group.

According to the group, many youth leaders have left public service without even experiencing needed reforms and compensation.

“These proposed reforms are needed not only to maintain the operations of the Sanggunian amid the pandemic but also to truly empower SK officials and aspiring leaders to mobilize the youth in their communities for genuine social change,” it said.

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Sarah Elago is a principal author and the Technical Working Group Chair of the House of Representatives for House Bill 10698, and is the designated chair of the House panel for the Bicameral Conference Committee that consolidated House Bill 10698 with its Senate counterpart.

Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

Australia gifts airport screening training software to PHL’s OTS

Ambassador Steven J. Robinson AO together with other Australian Embassy officials, handed over to Undersecretary Raul del Rosario Australia’s gift of training software and laptops for the Philippines Office for Transportation Security. The training package will help aviation security screeners detect prohibited items in air cargo. Manila, 8 April 2022.

T

he Australian Government provided laptops installed with X-Ray Tutor (XRT) training software to the Philippines Office for Transportation Security (OTS) to help aviation security screeners detect prohibited items in air cargo. Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Steven J. Robinson AO handed over the training software and laptops to the Administrator of the Philippines Office for Transportation Security, Undersecretary Raul del Rosario. Ambassador Robinson joined Undersecretary del Rosario in a simulation of the X-Ray Tutor software. During the demonstration, Ambassador Robinson said, “While no security screener ever wants to detect an improvised explosive device when carrying out their functions, this software helps screeners ‘know what to look for’ and ‘what to do’ should this situation ever arise. Successfully detecting concealed components of an improvised explosive

device (IED) in a simulated environment could result in many lives being saved.”

Undersecretary del Rosario said, “Not only will the XRT software help screeners sharpen their skills in detecting prohibited items, it will also help screening supervisors identify gaps in staff skills and their training needs.” The Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre, part of the Australian Department of Home Affairs, funded the gifting of the XRT software and laptops. This complements the updated cargo screening guidance issued by the Philippines Office for Transportation Security. The delivery of the XRT training software and laptops also meets the priorities of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Global Aviation Security Plan, applying technical solutions and improving human capability to detect new and emerging threats to achieve better civil aviation security outcomes for the Philippines and Australia.

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In a letter to the BusinessMirror, the law office of Fortun Narvasa & Salazar revealed that Salem, on November 12, 2021, filed the Qualified Theft and Falsification case against Mariano Jr. for allegedly taking rental payments rightfully belonging to the corporation amounting to P128,069,792.80, and for executing two contracts in Salem’s name, misrepresenting himself as its Executive Vice President with authority from the Board of Directors to contract on behalf of the corporation.

However, Salem’s lawyers said, he had no authority, nor was he the Executive Vice President of the corporation. Mariano Jr.’s case against shareholders and officers of Salem was, they stressed, clearly retaliatory and intended to hit back at

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Solon’s inflation-busting formula: Excise tax halt, 5% savings rate

By Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz

F

ORMER House Speaker A lan Peter Cayetano has reiterated his call for a two-pronged approach to address the country’s record-high inf lation: suspending excise taxes on fuel and imposing a 5-percent savings rate across all government agencies to make up for the resulting revenue shortfall.

“Number one is that we have to suspend the excise tax on fuel. Isn’t that the reason why we don’t want to remove the excise tax, because we need the funds? But if you have fivepercent savings, then the government will spend 5 percent less anyway,”

Cayetano said, partly in Filipino.

The lawmaker said the focus right now should be on mitigating rising fuel prices to contain potential runaway inflation, which hit a six-month high of 4 percent in March.

He also said the problem is that the rising price of fuel causes a domino effect on all other commodities.

To enable the government to withstand the revenue loss from suspending fuel excise taxes, Cayetano called for the imposition of a mandatory savings rate of 5 percent across all state agencies—a move that he said will free up P250 billion out of the P5.04-trillion national budget for 2022.

10K ‘ayuda’

Cayetano explained, meanwhile, that without some form of financial assistance, any attempt to address inflation through the suspension of taxes would provide insufficient relief to vulnerable sectors such as transportation and agriculture.

“If it has to be a choice, I’d still get 5-percent saving, and even if the ayuda [aid] is not P10,000, even if it’s less …

But I’d make sure prices of goods don’t rise,” the former Speaker said.

Cayetano and his allies in Congress filed House Bill10832 or the Mandatory Savings Bill on March 31, 2022, which proposes a 5-percent mandatory savings to generate a projected amount of P250

billion “to fund assistance to our countrymen who are in dire need to recover from the adverse effects of the present pandemic.”

He had also previously urged Congress to adopt the 10K Ayuda Bill which requires the government to provide a minimum cash grant of P10,000 to every Filipino family to help them recover from the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Speaker noted that Thailand implemented price controls on food a nd med icines in the 1980s amid runaway inf lation partly caused by the effects of the 1979 global energy crisis, as well as other domestic factors.

Duterte admin strengthens local treasury service with appointment of 958 local govt treasurers

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TOTAL of 958 municipal, city, and provincial treasurers and assistant treasurers have been appointed by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III since 2016 in line with the Duterte administration’s goal of improving the fiscal position of the local government units (LGUs) through a professionalized local treasury service.

In his business review report to Dominguez, Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF) Executive Director Niño Raymond Alvina said this number of appointees is 60 percent higher than the 597 appointments issued during the previous administration.

Dominguez approved 91 appointments of local treasurers in the first six months of the Duterte administration, followed by 199 in 2017; 104 in 2018; 147 in 2019; 111 in 2020; and 261 in 2021, Alvina said.

Alvina reported that from January 1 to March 2 this year, Dominguez already approved the appointments of 45 treasurers.

He said the BLGF immediately complied with the directives of Dominguez to set and implement policies that improve and speed up the appointments process for local treasurers, while helping ensure that qualified applicants are appointed to their respective LGU posts.

These include DOF Department Order No. 053.2016, institutionalizing the Standardized Examination and Assessment for Local Treasury Service (SEAL), a three-level treasury certification process that focuses on tacticaloperational competencies (Level 1), strategic-managerial competencies (Level 2), and leading-for-innovation competencies (Level 3), in the evaluation and assessment of local treasury appointments.

The SEAL program, which is implemented in partnership with the Civil Service Commission (CSC) for exam design and development, and nationwide test administration, aims to instill a culture of professionalism, excellence, integrity, and proficiency in the local treasury service, Alvina said.

Earlier, Dominguez ordered that,

Salem Investment Corp: Case filed by Mariano Nocom Jr. dropped; qualified theft vs him pends ARIANO Nocom Jr., the son of the late tycoon Mariano Nocom Sr., withdrew the case for qualified theft that he filed last January against the other children and relatives of the tycoon over what he claimed were monies they took from the family corporation, Salem Investment Corporation (Salem).

The case was filed by Mariano Jr. after Salem itself filed in November last year a suit for Qualified Theft and Falsification against him for alleged misappropriation of over P128 million from the company.

While Nocom Jr. voluntarily withdrew his complaint against Salem’s officers and shareholders, Salem said it will not withdraw and intends to pursue its case against Mariano Jr.

Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

and harass them.

He filed his own Qualified Theft case only last January against Matthew Nocom, Martin Nocom, and the law firm’s clients Albert O. Nocom, Caroline Nocom-Ng, and Helen Lim. But, in his affidavit of desistance dated March 29, a copy of which was furnished to the B usiness M irror , Mariano, Jr. said he decided “to desist from prosecuting the above criminal case...”

However, the law firm said that Mariano, Jr. withdrew the case after their clients and the other respondents had effectively refuted his claims before the Pasay City Prosecutor. “Mariano Jr.’s desistance results from the realization of the falsity of his claims against our clients,” said the law firm.

effective June 2019, non-passers of the SEAL Level 1 or the Basic Competency for Local Treasury Examination (BCLTE), cannot be designated as officers-in-charge (OICs) or acting local treasurers, except when the designees are already regularly appointed assistant treasurers of their respective local governments.

Together with the SEAL Program,

the processing of local treasury appointments has also improved, after Dominguez directed under Department Personnel Order No. 477.2019 the two-level screening and deliberation process by the BLGF Central and Regional Offices.

Alvina said that in compliance with Dominguez’s instructions, the BLGF has given weight to the SEAL examina-

tions in the evaluation of the permanent appointments of local treasurers and assistant treasurers.

This year, the CSC will conduct the SEAL Level 1 test, or the BCLTE, on April 24, 2022 and October 23, 2022, while the SEAL Level 2 test or the Intermediate Competency on Local Treasury Examination (ICLTE) is scheduled on August 7, 2022.

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Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

Features BusinessMirror

‘A dream come true’: BaSulTa provinces receive medical equipment and supply

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By Manuel T. Cayon

F THERE’S ONE bright spot to observe during the fasting month of Ramadan among the mostly Muslim residents of the country’s southern backdoor, it would be the series of construction of new medical facilities and donation of medical equipment that were once nonexistent and inaccessible to the island residents of archipelagic BaSulTa (Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi) Region.

The latest of these are additional sea ambulances equipped with life-saving emergency devices for patients en route to the nearest hospital facility, also in any one of these islands, the closest provincial territories the Philippines have with its next-door neighbor, Malaysia.

For the once most neglected region in the country and where the nearest medical facility is in Zamboanga City at the southernmost tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula, the sea ambulances provide the most assuring presence of emergency transport for the indigent patients of these poorest provinces of the Philippines.

The sea ambulances were provided by the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), while a few others were donated.

The latest came from the Japanese embassy and the International Organization for Migration, which donated two sea ambulances, along with 24 Covid-19 antigen test kits, three cold chain vehicles, 18 vaccine carriers with thermo loggers (six per province of BaSulTa), five gen expert machines with cartridges, and six multi-purpose tents for community-based vaccine campaign support.

Archipelagic transport What turned out best was the conception of a sea ambulance for the BaSulTa region, which has more than 400 islands and islets.

On February 13, the Bangsamoro government turned over to Tawi-Tawi one sea ambulance for Languyan Municipal Hospital worth P3 million, and a land ambulance for Datu Halun Sakilan Memorial Hospital (DHSMH) worth P3-million.

These sea ambulances were the additional equipment given alongside the main donations of facilities and medicines to contain Covid-19.

Bigger facilities were given that day that included a two-storey ward building worth P16-million, laboratory building worth P4 million, operating room/delivery room worth P5-million and a Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facility worth P10 million for DHSMH. The BARMM also gave 12 laptops for the Integrated Public Health Office and the province’s 11 rural health units, 15 boxes of antigen test kits, all worth P750, 000.

Five other hospitals in the province received different equipment worth P34 million and a mobilization fund for National Vaccination Days amounting to P1.5 million.

Two days earlier, the BARMM Ministry of Health gave three sea ambulances and three land ambulances, 35 boxes of antigen tests kits, 43 units of laptops, and essential medicines to the three island provinces.

A year earlier, in August 2021, the MOH turned over two land and two sea ambulances to the Integrated Pub-

One of the donatedw sea ambulances to serve the medical needs of BaSulTa residents. Contributed photo. lic Health Office (IPHO) of Tawi-Tawi.

The sea ambulance is likewise equipped with first aid or emergency treatment equipment, such as a nebulizer, oxygen tank, automated external defibrillator, suction machine and delivery and airway set.

Each ambulance can accommodate 10 to 12 passengers.

All in all, the Bangsamoro government said it provided a total of 73 sea and land ambulances to different health offices, hospitals, and rural health stations across the region, including the BaSulTa area, MOH Minister, Dr. Bashary A. Latiph, said.

Thankful MOH Assistant Secretary Abdulhalik Kashim emphasized three points in his speech in one of the turnover ceremonies: a message of thanks saying, “We are always grateful for the blessings; a message of responsibility. “If we are given this ambulance and other equipment from government we must take care of them; and a message of love that “we are here Tawi-Tawi because we love Tawi-Tawi.”

Tawi-Tawi IPHO Chief Dr. Sangkula Laja expressed gratitude to the Bangsamoro government for the medical facilities and supplies. “We give thanks to Allah for all the things we receive from BARMM. We have this Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facility and we now have many ambulances when before we have zero,” he said.

BaSulTa Provincial Health Officers and representatives, Rural Health Units, and City Health Officer of Lamitan expressed their appreciation to the MOH and Bangsamoro Government for the huge assistance they received to augment emergency situation services and support in the delivery of basic health and social care in their respective localities.

“I could not believe that the key of ambulance is already on my hand. Rest assured that we will take good care of it and use it properly in serving our utmost needed constituents in our area,” said Ms. Parida Perez, Health Education and Promotion Officer of Basilan.

“No words of expression of thanks could describe our feelings we had now for the support we received from MOH and the BARMM government as a whole,” Lamitan City Health Office Dr. Mikaela T. Puri, Chief of Technical Division, said.

Both PHO of Sulu Dr. Fahra TanOmar and Chief of Hospital in Siasi District Hospital Dr. Ejil A. Imlan graced the event and expressed their deepest thanks to MOH and BARMM for the continuous support they received.

Dr. Imlan said, “for more than 20 years now, we requested ambulance but we failed always. Only this time in the Bangsamoro Government that our dream came true.”

Among the people that Dr. Sangkula Laja, chief of DHSMH, mentioned as having helped these donations was Member of Parliament, Amir Mawallil, who he said sponsored the procurement of these equipment and identified the provincial hospital (DHSMH) as recipient of one land ambulance, one mobile Xray ambulance, and one sea ambulance from his share of the development fund.

Mawallil is a native of the said municipality, Laja added.

Another legislator he identified was MP Al-Syed Sali, who Laja said identified the provincial hospital as recipient of one sea ambulance from his share of the fund too.

Left less prepared These were turned over in Zamboanga City, where the IOM said it hoped to scale up health-related operations in the BARMM. The IOM said the BARMM “has been left less prepared for health catastrophes such as the coronavirus pandemic because of years of underdevelopment and conflict”.

“The help comes at an ideal time as the government ramps up its efforts to recover from the pandemic and improve its Covid-19 vaccination program across the country,” said Troy Dooley, IOM Philippines officer-in-charge.

“We believe that the given equipment will help to ensure that no one is left behind in these vital services, including vulnerable populations like migrants, returnees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs),” Dooley added.

BAR MM Chief Minister A hod Ebrahim commended the IOM and the Japanese Government for their prompt assistance.

“The global pandemic struck at one of our most crucial political periods – the transition. I pray that the medical equipment would be useful to our beloved brothers and sisters in the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and TawiTawi,” Chief Minister stated.

The IOM recognized that the financial and organizational demands of responding to the pandemic had strained regional capacity, delaying the Bangsamoro transition and normalization process.

“As the Bangsamoro Government intends to complete its mandate by the regional election in 2025, IOM and the Government of Japan, strongly expect that the support would help decrease the Covid-19-induced limits and hurdles in establishing long-term

peace and prosperity in the region,” Chief Minister Ebrahim added.

Ambassador Kazuhiko Koshikawa of Japan also stated that Tokyo would continue to help the peace process in the region.

“I am hoping and looking forward that the ambulances could be used properly on its main purpose in responding to health emergency from home to hospital or RHU (regional health unit) to save the lives of our needy constituents and should not be used for personal interest,” Minister Latiph added.

The support is funded under the General Appropriations Act of of the Bangsamoro (GAAB) 2021, Special Development Fund, and National Immunization Program (NIP) Fund.

MOH Director for Operation Dr. Tato Usman said, “we should be thankful for whatever favor and blessings we received. In doing well our mandates, roles and responsibilities as health service providers, we will be rewarded not only here in the world but also in the hereafter.”

The new assistance to mobility and treatment of patients, as well as new medical infrastructure facilities came in the wake of declining cases of Covid-19.

The MOH said the number of coronavirus cases in the Bangsamoro Region continued to drop with only 18 active cases as of March 23, of which seven are from Maguindanao, four from Cotabato City, seven from Lanao del Sur, including Marawi City.

No infection was reported so far from the island provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi.

Although the BARMM has one of the lowest vaccination coverage in the country, the BaSulTa region has better coverage total vaccination coverage of 30.11 percent, than the BARMM’s mainland provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur with an average coverage of 20.79 percent.

Abas said vaccination activities in the region would be continued even during the month of Ramadhan “as the Bangsamoro Darul Ifta stated in its fatwa (sermon) that vaccines will not nullify or void the observance of fasting.”

MOH Director General Dr. Ameril Usman urged those who are yet to be vaccinated to get their Covid-19 shots and reminded the public not be complacent with the region being classified under Alert Level 2.

Under this level, establishments are allowed to operate at a maximum of 50 percent indoor venue capacity for fully vaccinated individuals and those below 18 years of age, even if unvaccinated, and 70 percent outdoor venue capacity.

“We are still far away from 80 percent vaccination rate (in achieving)… herd immunity in the region.

The cooperation of the general public and all sectors in the government including our media friends will play a crucial role in increasing the almost 27 percent or more than 900,000 total number of region’s population currently vaccinated compared to 3.5 million target population,” said Dr. Usman.

“MOH always stands firmly that vaccine really works against Covid-19, it is safe, halal and free,” added Usman, reiterating that fake news claiming vaccines can cause one’s death or turn an individual into a zombie are baseless since majority of the world’s population are already vaccinated.

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‘Play-to-earn’ games arise as an alternative pandemic livelihood

By Roderick L. Abad Contributor

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HE play-to-earn games are now making a disruption in the labor market as they continue to attract more people, whether employed or not, to push the button for their livelihood on regular or interim basis amid the ensuing health and economic crisis.

This is highly apparent in the inaugural of the Community Insights Report of non-fungible token (NFT) gaming platform Balthazar, which surveyed 1,103 participants (currently NFT gamers and not players yet)—98 percent of which were from the Philippines—from February 15 to March 7.

The study revealed that one in three respondents (32 percent) said they are inclined leave their jobs or consider quitting altogether if they could play NFT games full-time. A further 59 percent indicated their intention to play permanently and continue working other jobs.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on the growing demand for people to join NFT gaming platforms in scholarship programs like Balthazar. Some of our Wizards said they joined because they lost their jobs in the pandemic or have had trouble finding work,” Balthazar Chief Executive Officer (CEO) John Stefanidis told the B usiness M irror in an e-mail interview.

Greener pastures

ACROSS all industries, the search for the proverbial greener pastures is practically the main reason why so many employees call it quits. This holds true for career shifters who want to try their luck to the gamingfor-money sector.

Per the research of Balthazar, over two-thirds (65 percent) of participants said they would need to earn a minimum of $42 on average to consider quitting their job to become an NFT gamer full-time. More than half of which (55 percent) would have to make between $1 and $20 daily to afford leaving their current work to play. Out of those who are employed, they have a take home pay of $316 on average a month, or about $16 per workday.

The top executive of Balthazar was not surprised by these findings given the incredibly exciting future of the NFT gaming community. He said: “They love play-to-earn games and many are ready to quit their other jobs to play NFT games instead, as they could potentially be earning the same, if not more from playing NFT games.”

Preferred industry player

LAUNCHED in September 2021, Australian company Balthazar aims to become the largest decentralized autonomous organization in the play-to-earn space.

Despite being a newbie, though, it’s now starting to realize this ambition given that there’s no stopping it to become a top choice among the players in the tough world of NFT gaming platforms.

A ske d w hy t hey pr efe r i t to its competitors, 70 percent of the respondents said it’s because of the opportunities it offers to them to earn more money. Many people in this gaming community rely on play-to-earn games as their primary source of income, as 69 percent of survey respondents are not working (many of which are students), 27 percent have one job, while 3 percent have two or more.

Based on Balthazar’s report, 63 percent of the participants shared that they support at least one other person financially, of which 5 percent said they are a provider

for 6 to 10 people. When it comes to using their game earnings, more than half or 52 percent have spent them for basic necessities and personal needs such as food, housing and bills, while 19 percent have funded their education.

“I do NFT games full time because I don’t have a job right now. I play NFT games because it’s fun to play and of course because of the mechanics of play to earn. It is also a big thing because I have two children. It also helps to supplement the bills. Because of NFT games I help my partner with our needs,” shared unemployed-turned-Balthazar gamer Glyza Calambro, who also participated in the survey.

“I’m most excited about the redistribution of wealth from traditional gaming companies to people who need it most and into their economies. Gaming platforms like Balthazar are innovating in the metaverse, by not only creating token utility, but also building a self-sustaining ecosystem allowing more people access to crypto,” Stefanidis noted.

Game-changer

BALTHAZAR removes the barrier to entry for gamers to access play-to-earn games through its scholarship program with no upfront costs. To date, it has already deployed 1,100 scholars into several NFT games, including Axie Infinity, Splinterlands and Thetan Arena, with a further 30,000 people are on its waitlist and a community of more than 70,000 people in its Discord channel.

The company’s research bared that 85 percent of those who are Balthazar Wizards, or those who are signed up to its scholarship program, play in a guild because they love the community support and learning that is offered to them.

“Joining our scholarship program has given many of them a lifeline of financial support as well as a supportive community that they are a part of,” the CEO said.

“I am very grateful to Balthazar Guild for the opportunity to be a scholar in the guild,” added Calambro.

Nearly one-third (32 percent) of those who joined in the survey find it’s more fun than playing on their own. Nearly threefourths or 70 percent chose Balthazar due to the chance of earning more money, 63 percent opted this for the ongoing support, and 67 percent because it’s more engaging than other guilds.

While 69 percent unfortunately can’t afford to buy the NFT assets needed to play, the platform still makes it possible for them to enjoy the games as it allows them to rent from NFT holders. With its rent-to-earn model, not to mention the marketplace where people can buy and sell NFTs, a game launchpad, and NFT management service, among others, this gaming community only shows that it’s more than just a guild.

“There is something special about Balthazar’s community, as we bring a unique experience unlike other guilds. We believe in creating a fun and nurturing community and we provide support and training as well as loads of fun initiatives,” he said.

Given the vast opportunities that NFT gaming provides not only to the industry itself and its stakeholders but also to the people, he is certain it will continue to flourish ahead.

“We think this trend will definitely continue to grow,” Stefanidis stressed. “We believe that play-to-earn games will be the biggest disruptor in the crypto space this year, as well as the video game industry, as more gaming companies, crypto holders and traditional investors are investing in the space.”

SHDA expects latest property technology to propel real-estate industry recovery

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HE Subdivision and Housing Developers Association (SHDA) is bullish that property technology (proptech) can help future-proof the real-estate industry in the Philippines and bounce back from the Covid-19 crisis.

“Technology is quickly shaping the future of real estate and property industry.

Our coping with the pandemic is fueling the adoption of many new technologies.

In order to keep up, modern real estate technology companies create more ways and models to satisfy their customers,” May Rodriguez, SHDA national president and Ayala Land Inc. Residential Business Group assistant vice president, said at a

recent webinar.

Innovators, developers, partner government agencies and other stakeholders in the property sector discussed the importance of proptech solutions in improving the operations and customer experience in real estate.

According to Umpisa Inc. President and Cofounder Pamela Belen, some developers exceeded their performance even during the pandemic on the back of their digital investments and initiatives.

Industry players for her must focus on fulfilling end-user benefits through proper client management and sales automation, She cited, for instance, Umpisa’s

HomeJoy, which is an integrated online platform that enables the buyers, developers, sellers, funders and property managers to transact and coordinate online effectively. It offers cloud-based solutions, including lead generation, property documents management, data security, and client management through task automation, thus increasing sales conversion.

“Our goal is that by 2025, we want to modernize 1,000 developers in our country, which would equate to around 25 percent of the local real estate industry.

These developers would have an end-toend digital platform for automated home

buying, selling, and financing,” she said.

Nifty Hero Multimedia Services Founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeo Paz showed how technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence close the gap between homebuyers and sellers amid mobility restrictions due to the health crisis.

The tech innovation company offers an advanced marketing solution that allows developers to provide a more personalized and unique experience to customers like a visual tour of their prospective property using their mobile devices.

“The technology is already here in the country, and we were one of the pioneering

developers doing this,” Paz said.

Per Inventi Intellectual Holdings Corp.

President and Chief Technology Officer Edward Encarnacion digitization is a key to address the challenges brought about by manual processes in property management.

Inventi provides a complete property management solution including data libraries, gate management, online forms, billing and collection, frictionless communications and engagement, dashboard and reports, and maintenance management.

“Everything can be automated. We’re automating everything to allow developers

and associations to do more and to improve their service without having to add people,” he said. “Let people focus on addressing the concerns of their customers rather than doing admin work and following up. Let the machines do that.”

George Siy, SHDA chairman and Convergence Realty and Development Corp. president, said that these proptech solutions now on hand for application save developers time and energy, as well as keep them from having a full team to develop and maintain services, thus allowing them to focus on their core business of development, sales and customer service.

Roderick L. Abad

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

TheWorld BusinessMirror

Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

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China’s Covid outbreak is killing credit demand

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hina’s central bank is struggling to drive up lending in the economy despite cutting interest rates and giving banks a cash boost.

With a worsening Covid outbreak locking down mega cities Shanghai and Shenzhen, worries about jobs and incomes mean businesses and consumers are unwilling to take on more debt. Banks are reluctant to extend more loans too as a property downturn drives up bad debts and squeezes profits.

That creates a challenge for the People’s Bank of China, which is set to diverge further with a tightening US Federal Reserve by possibly cutting policy interest rates for a second time this year. Many economists also expect the central bank to reduce the amount of cash banks must hold in reserve, freeing up more money for lending.

Problem is, with restrictions to contain the spread of Omicron amid China’s ongoing Covid Zero strategy keeping consumers on edge, any new stimulus may end up being parked at banks rather than flowing through to the real economy.

“Credit demand is so weak, but there is abundant liquidity in the

interbank market and the banks are having trouble lending them out,” said Helen Qiao, chief China economist at Bank of America.

Since credit demand is very low, adjusting interest rates and cutting reserves isn’t the most effective form of monetary policy for China, she said.

With monetary policies in the world’s two biggest economies now headed in opposite directions, the traditional premium Chinese debt returns compared with US Treasuries vanished for the first time since 2010. That may constrain the PBOC’s policy options, for fears too much easing would spur money to shift out of the nation’s markets.

China’s leaders in early March set an ambitious GDP growth target of around 5.5 percent for the year. Since then, the war in Ukraine has pushed up energy costs, and virus outbreaks and shutdowns to contain infections have caused economists to cut

their forecasts. The State Council, China’s cabinet, has also pledged additional support.

Despite two reductions last year in the reserve requirement ratio—the level of deposits lenders must lock away at the central bank—and an interest-rate cut in January, China’s credit impulse, a measure of the ratio of new credit to gross domestic product, decelerated sharply in 2021 and has yet to pick up significantly.

Latest figures show a pickup in credit in March, largely due to a ramp up in bond sales from local governments and a seasonal boost as companies accelerated borrowing after the Lunar New Year holiday. But mortgage growth and long-term corporate loans remained weak, suggesting ongoing caution.

“Monetary policy transmission is a key issue for almost all central banks. The better the transmission is, the more willing the central bank would be to ease policy when necessary.

The demand in private sector in China has been weaker than before.

It is a hurdle for the PBOC to maintain credit expansion,” said David Qu, Bloomberg’s China economist.

T he ce nt r a l ba n k h a s acknowledged it has a problem. At the end of March, the monetar y policy committee promised to “unclog” the transmission sys-

tem, the first time since late 2020 it’s referred to the issue.

For Xu Gao, chief economist at Bank of China International, the key to getting credit flowing again lies in the property market, which remains under strain after Beijing tightened restrictions last year to curb runaway prices and debt.

“The core problem is a lack of confidence,” he said. “Even if banks lowered mortgages rates, residents still don’t dare to buy houses and take on mortgages because they fear the buildings won’t be finished and delivered.”

Signs of weak lending are everywhere.

Even though the average corporate loan rate trended lower last year, the growth of new medium and long-term corporate loans—reflecting companies’ fixed-asset investment demand—slowed in the first three months of this year from last year. Long-term household loans, a proxy for mortgages, shrank for the first time ever in February and remain below the levels reached in previous years.

And rather than a lack of liquidity, banks are actually flush with cash. The rate on one-year interbank loans has been below the policy interest rate on the one-year medium-term lending facility since mid-2021, implying that it’s cheaper for banks to borrow from each other than to take out low-cost loans from

Russian war worsens fertilizer crunch, risking food supplies

By Geoffrey Kaviti, Chinedu Asadu & Paul Wiseman

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The Associated Press

IAMBU COUNTY, Kenya— Monica Kariuki is about ready to give up on farming. What is driving her off her 10 acres of land outside Nairobi isn’t bad weather, pests or blight—the traditional agricultural curses— but fertilizer: It costs too much.

Despite thousands of miles separating her from the battlefields of Ukraine, Kariuki and her cabbage, corn and spinach farm are indirect victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The war has pushed up the price of natural gas, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and has led to severe sanctions against Russia, a major exporter of fertilizer.

Kariuki used to spend 20,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $175, to fertilize her entire farm. Now, she would need to spend five times as much. Continuing to work the land, she said, would yield nothing but losses.

“I cannot continue with the farming business. I am quitting farming to try something else,’’ she said.

Higher fertilizer prices are making the world’s food supply more expensive and less abundant, as farmers skimp on nutrients for their crops and get lower yields.

While the ripples will be felt by grocery shoppers in wealthy countries, the squeeze on food supplies will land hardest on families in poorer countries. It could hardly come at a worse time: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization said last week that its world food-price index in March reached the highest level since it started in 1990.

The fertilizer crunch threatens to further limit worldwide food supplies, already constrained by the disruption of crucial grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia. The loss of those affordable supplies of wheat, barley and other grains raises the prospect of food shortages and political instability in Middle Eastern, African and some Asian countries where millions rely on subsidized bread and

cheap noodles.

“Food prices will skyrocket because farmers will have to make profit, so what happens to consumers?’’ said Uche Anyanwu, an agricultural expert at the University of Nigeria.

The aid group Action Aid warns that families in the Horn of Africa are already being driven “to the brink of survival.’’

The UN says Russia is the world’s No. 1 exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and No. 2 in phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. Its ally Belarus, also contending with Western sanctions, is another major fertilizer producer.

Many developing countries— including Mongolia, Honduras, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Mexico and Guatemala—rely on Russia for at least a fifth of their imports.

The conflict also has driven up the already-exorbitant price of natural gas, used to make nitrogen fertilizer. The result: European energy prices so high that some fertilizer companies “have closed their businesses and stopped operating their plants,’’ said David Laborde, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

For corn and cabbage farmer Jackson Koeth, 55, of Eldoret in western Kenya, the conflict in Ukraine was distant and puzzling until he had to decide whether to go ahead with the planting season. Fertilizer prices had doubled from last year.

Koeth said he decided to keep planting but only on half the acreage of years past. Yet he doubts he can make a profit with fertilizer so costly.

Greek farmer Dimitris Filis, who grows olives, oranges and lemons, said “you have to search to find’’ ammonia nitrate and that the cost of fertilizing a 10-hectare (25-acre) olive grove has doubled to 560 euros ($310). While selling his wares at an Athens farm market, he said most farmers plan to skip fertilizing their olive and orange groves this year.

“Many people will not use fertilizers at all, and this as a result, lowers the quality of the production and the production itself, and slowly, slowly at one point, they won’t be able to farm their land

because there will be no income,’’ Filis said.

In China, the price of potash— potassium-rich salt used as fertilizer—is up 86 percent from a year earlier. Nitrogen fertilizer prices have climbed 39 percent and phosphorus fertilizer is up 10 percent.

In the eastern Chinese city of Tai’an, the manager of a 35-family cooperative that raises wheat and corn said fertilizer prices have jumped 40 percent since the start of the year.

“We can hardly make any money,” said the manager, who would give only his surname, Zhao.

Terry Farms, which grows produce on 2,100 acres largely in Ventura, California, has seen prices of some fertilizer formulations double; others are up 20 percent. Shifting fertilizers is risky, vice president William Terry said, because cheaper versions might not give “the crop what it needs as a food source.’’

As the growing season approaches in Maine, potato farmers are grappling with a 70 percent to 100 percent increase in fertilizer prices from last year, depending on the blend.

“I think it’s going to be a pretty expensive crop, no matter what you’re putting in the ground, from fertilizer to fuel, labor, electrical and everything else,” said Donald Flannery, executive director of the Maine Potato Board.

In Prudentopolis, a town in Brazil’s Parana state, farmer Edimilson Rickli showed off a warehouse that would normally be packed with fertilizer bags but has only enough to last a few more weeks.

He’s worried that, with the war in Ukraine showing no sign of letting up, he’ll have to go without fertilizer when he plants wheat, barley and oats next month.

“The question is: Where is Brazil going to buy more fertilizer from?” he said. “We have to find other markets.’’

Other countries are hoping to help fill the gaps. Nigeria, for example, opened Africa’s largest fertilizer factory last month, and the $2.5 billion plant has already shipped fertilizer to the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.

India, meanwhile, is seeking

more fertilizer imports from Israel, Oman, Canada and Saudi Arabia to make up for lost shipments from Russia and Belarus.

“If the supply shortage gets worse, we will produce less,” said Kishor Rungta of the nonprofit Fertilizer Association of India.

“That’s why we need to look for options to get more fertilizers in the country.”

Agricultural firms are providing support for farmers, especially in Africa where poverty often limits access to vital farm inputs. In Kenya, Apollo Agriculture is helping farmers get fertilizer and access to finance.

“Some farmers are skipping the planting season and others are going into some other ventures such as buying goats to cope,” said Benjamin Njenga, co-founder of the firm. “So these support services go a long way for them.”

Governments are helping, too.

The US Department of Agriculture announced last month that it was issuing $250 million in grants to support US fertilizer production. The Swiss government has released part of its nitrogen fertilizer reserves.

Still, there’s no easy answer to the double whammy of higher fertilizer prices and limited supplies. The next 12 to 18 months, food researcher LaBorde said, “will be difficult.’’

The market already was “super, super tight” before the war, said Kathy Mathers of the Fertilizer Institute trade group.

“Unfortunately, in many cases, growers are just happy to get fertilizer at all,’’ she said.

Asadu reported from Lagos, Nigeria, and Wiseman from Washington. Contributing to this story were: Tatiana Pollastri in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Debora Alvares in Brasilia, Brazil; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Lefteris Pitarakis in Athens; Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Joe McDonald and Yu Bing in Beijing; Lisa Rathke in Marshfield, Vermont; Dave Kolpack in Fargo, North Dakota; Kathia Martínez in Panama City; Christoph Noelting in Frankfurt; Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City; Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria; Tarik El-Barakah in Rabat, Morocco; Tassanee Vejpongsa and Elaine Kurtenbach in Bangkok; Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Edie Lederer at the United Nations; and Aya Batrawy in Dubai.

the PBOC. Even with all that cash sloshing around, banks are saddled with low profitability and rising debt though, making them less willing to give out loans.

John Beirne, vice chair of research at Asian Development Bank Institute, said interest rate cuts from the central bank reduce the net interest margins for banks, and combined with high levels of risk aversion and fears of taking on more debt, rate cuts may not be passed through to borrowers.

The amount of bad loans rose to 2.85 trillion yuan in the fourth quarter of last year, up around 18 percent from two years ago before the pandemic, according to figures from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.

Even though the non-performing loan ratio declined to 1.73 percent in the October-December period from a recent peak of 1.96 percent in 2020, it was still well above the level of around 1 percent a decade ago.

The situation is likely worse at smaller banks. Net income at Guangzhou Rural Commercial Bank Co., for instance, plunged 28.4 percent last year, mainly because it made more provisions for asset impairment losses to “enhance its ability to resist risks under the complex external environment and the epidemic,” the

lender said in its annual report.

Credit impairment losses surged nearly 60 percent last year to 12.5 billion yuan ($2 billion), it said.

A weaker monetary policy transmission means the PBOC may opt for only a small rate cut, a move that would be more about signaling supportive policy, said Jing Sima, a China strategist at BCA Research Inc. “Our view is that the PBOC has done its job,” she said. “More rate cuts won’t do much to boost the real economy.” Rather it’s regulatory policies that are preventing central bank measures from being more effective, she said.

Structural monetary tools are crucial to boosting credit growth and improving policy transmission, the Economic Daily said in a commentary Wednesday. The newspaper is affiliated with the State Council, China’s cabinet.

The PBOC is planning to widen its relending program, providing loans to banks to lend to sectors such as small businesses and agricultural firms, innovative industries and elderly care sectors.

“The PBOC will certainly avoid flooding the economy with liquidity, because that would lead to funds flowing into undesirable sectors,” said Peng Yuchao, associate professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics. “It should use its structural policies well.”

Bloomberg News

Gunmen kill more than 100 in Nigeria’s north: Survivors

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BUJA, Nigeria—An armed gang has killed more than 100 people in a remote part of northern Nigeria, survivors and local authorities said on Tuesday.

The attackers targeted four villages in the Kanam area of Plateau State, the most recent in a series of violent attacks in Nigeria’s north.

Such attacks in Nigeria’s northern region have become frequent, especially between Fulani Muslims who are mostly cattle herders and Christian communities from the Hausa and other ethnic groups who are mainly farmers.

The conflict over access to land and water has further worsened the sectarian division between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with its 206 million people deeply divided along religious lines.

In this recent attack, the assailants arrived Sunday afternoon, ransacking houses and shooting at residents, according to Alpha Sambo, a survivor and Kanam youth leader who is helping those displaced and injured.

“The people that have been killed are more than 100,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Other witnesses say as many as 130 died and many have been injured and displaced.

The police and the state government confirmed the attacks but did not give details on the cause or number of casualties.

Authorities in Nigeria have in the past been accused of withholding information about death tolls in such killings.

On social media, videos viewed by AP appeared to show razed houses and bodies wrapped in mats and bags in mass graves. Many were buried even before their loved ones heard of their demise, residents said.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest violence, residents said it was carried out by the herdsmen.

The assailants “were well-armed” with AK-47 rifles and machetes and arrived on dozens of motorcycles each carrying up to three men, said youth leader Sambo.

Two days after the attack, the Kanam area is still tense and calm has not been fully restored, Dayyabu Yusuf Garga, chairman of the Kanam local government authority, said.

Plateau State Governor Simon Bako Lalong directed security forces to restore peace and order in the affected villages and vowed “to make it difficult for terrorists and other criminals to set their bases in any part of the state,” according to a government statement.

The State Security Council has adopted “far-reaching measures to strengthen all security measures,” Lalong said, but similar commitments made in the past have not succeeded in improving security in the area, say residents.

President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in 2015 on promises that he would improve Nigeria’s security and is facing growing pressure to curb the killings as he reaches the end of his second and final four-year term as the country’s leader.

The West African nation continues to grapple with security challenges in other parts of the country. A decade-long insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast by the Islamic extremist rebels of Boko Haram and violence by armed groups in the northwest have led to the deaths of thousands more.

Nigerian security forces are often outnumbered and outgunned by the armed groups in those volatile areas, say security analysts, creating a serious challenge to Nigeria’s quest for peace and stability. AP

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Russia faces claims of chemical weapons use in city of Mariupol N

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Covid-19, overdoses pushed US to highest death total ever

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By Marc Champion

he Pentagon says it’s monitoring claims that Russian forces deployed a poisonous substance in the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which if confirmed as a chemical weapon could further escalate the war. Yet clarity will be difficult to achieve.

The allegations were made by members of the Azov battalion, a right wing militia folded into Ukraine’s National Guard that has been part of Mariupol’s defense and has now retreated to the city’s vast steel factory, Azovstal, to mount a final stand.

The group posted video footage of some soldiers and a civilian suffering effects they said included flushed faces, heartburn, inflamed mucous membranes and dryness of the eyes.

One soldier said he saw white smoke and immediately suffered tinnitus and extreme weakness, barely making it the 10 meters back to shelter. There, he said, the ventilation system brought the same smoke and symptoms to people below.

Yet , w it h t he fac tor y u nder fire and cut off by Russian troops, it would be difficult to secure environmental or biomed ica l samples for test ing.

Those would be needed to determine what may have poisoned the people, according to Dan K aszeta, a chemical weapons expert who ser ved in the US Army Chemical Cor ps and later as adviser to the US President’s office on chemical and biological weapons preparedness.

“It’s basically impossible to rely on just a witness account and symptoms,” Kaszeta said.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said in televised remarks that the incident was being investigated, but that a preliminary assumption was that phosphorous bombs—gruesome weapons not classed as chemical—may have been

responsible.

In his daily v ideo address President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “we take this as seriously as possible.” But he added authorities were unable for now to draw clear conclusions about what kind of substance may have been used. “Obviously it is impossible to conduct a full investigation and full analysis in the besieged city,” he said.

Confirming a chemical weapons strike could have significant consequences. US and European officials have said that any Russian use of banned substances in Ukraine would meet with an immediate reaction.

“The use of chemical weapons will get a response and all options are on the table for what that response could be,” James Heappey, the U.K.’s minister for the armed forces, said Tuesday on BBC radio.

He declined to answer whether those options would include direct intervention in the war.

Nato states have said so far they will not send troops into Ukraine, or deploy a no-fly zone over the country, out of concern it could drag them into a direct confrontation with Russia and see the war spiral into a broader conflict.

Having inherited a 40,000ton chemical weapons stockpile from the former Soviet Union, the Russian government said in 2017 it had destroyed them all.

Still, other nations have accused it of deploying chemical weapons several times since, something Moscow has denied.

A senior US defense official told

Volunteers load bodies of civilians killed in Bucha onto a truck to be taken to a morgue for investigation, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine on Tuesday, April 12, 2022. AP/Rodrigo Abd

reporters at the Pentagon that the US couldn’t confirm the use of chemical weapons and was monitoring the situation. The official said any incident may have been as limited as the use of tear gas, or may have been more widespread.

“We have credible information that Russian forces may use a variety of riot control agents” to incapacitate Ukrainian fighters and civilians in the city, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news briefing. But he too said he couldn’t confirm allegations that Russia already had used chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Events have been further muddied by a spokesman for the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic or DNR, Eduard Basurin, who said just hours before the alleged attack that Russian forces should “smoke” the Azov battalion out of the factory.

After the Azov battalion made their claim, Basurin denied any chemical attack had been made.

DNR forces are fighting alongside regular Russian troops in the effort to take Mariupol.

Another complicating factor is that Azovstal has numerous toxic substances that, if struck by munitions, could also make people sick.

Azovstal’s staff spent the first days of the war shutting down furnaces and removing stocks of ammonia, a particular risk, Yuriy Ryzhenkov, chief executive officer of Metinvest Holding LLC, which owns the plant, said in an

interview last month.

Ryzhenkov also said the plant had a number of secure bunkers that, at the time, were housing about 4,000 staff and family members. All had been pre-stocked with food and water in anticipation of a siege.

Some civilians have since been evacuated, while the Azov battalion has turned the plant into a fortress, making use of its bunkers.

That could also explain why both soldiers and civilians suffered effects from the same attack, whether with chemical or conventional munitions.

Earlier Tuesday, Kaszeta published a lengthy Twitter thread where he set out reasons for caution in assuming use of chemical weapons.

“Let’s look at the place. It’s a steelworks. There’s lots of scope in an industrial setting for conventional or incendiary weapons to cause chemical problems because of fires and explosions,” Kaszeta tweeted, before going on to say he could see little military reason for making such a small chemical weapons strike.

“Surprisingly, regardless of the thousands of civilians killed by the Russians in Mariupol, everyone began to talk about us only after the chemical weapons attack,” said an Azov battalion member speaking in the video. “But the city is daily attacked by aircraft, navy, heavy flamethrower systems, artillery and phosphorous munition.” Bloomberg News

EW YORK—2021 was the deadliest year in US history, and new data and research are offering more insights into how it got that bad.

The main reason for the increase in deaths? Covid-19, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s work on death statistics.

The agency this month quietly updated its provisional death tally. It showed there were 3.465 million deaths last year, or about 80,000 more than 2020’s recordsetting total.

Early last year, some experts were optimistic that 2021 would not be as bad as the first year of the pandemic—partly because effective Covid-19 vaccines had finally become available.

“We were wrong, unfortunately,” said Noreen Goldman, a Princeton University researcher.

Covid-19 deaths rose in 2021— to more than 415,000, up from 351,000 the year before—as new coronavirus variants emerged and an unexpectedly large numbers of Americans refused to get vaccinated or were hesitant to wear masks, experts said.

The coronavirus is not solely to blame. Preliminary CDC data also shows the crude death rate for cancer rose slightly, and rates continued to increase for diabetes, chronic liver disease and stroke.

Drug overdose deaths also continued to rise. The CDC does not yet have a tally for 2021 overdose deaths, because it can take weeks of lab work and investigation to identify them. But provisional data through October suggests the nation is on track to see at least 105,000 overdose deaths in 2021— up from 93,000 the year before.

New research released Tuesday showed a particularly large jump in overdose deaths among 14- to 18-year-olds.

Adolescent overdose death counts were fairly constant for most of the last decade, at around 500 a year, according to the paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

They almost doubled in 2020, to 954, and the researchers estimated that the total hit nearly 1,150 last year.

Joseph Friedman, a UCLA researcher who was the paper’s lead author, called the spike “unprecedented.”

Those teen overdose deaths were only around 1 percent of the US total. But adolescents experienced a greater relative increase

Nuclear power’s supporters Polish, Baltic presidents visit Ukraine in show of support in Japan face a reality check K

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oices calling for Japan to ramp up its use of nuclear power are getting louder, but a rapid return is unlikely even as the nation faces another possible energy crunch this summer.

The global power crisis is causing electricity bills to surge in Japan, while war in Ukraine is pressuring the country to seek alternatives to Russian energy. The fragility of the nation’s power grid was exposed last month when the one-two punch of a strong quake and frigid weather nearly delivered a blackout to Tokyo.

With few resources available to build capacity, and the threat of another power shortage looming with the return of hot, humid weather, lawmakers from both the ruling party and opposition are calling for a quick restart to reactors. Public support is also growing, as a recent survey showed a narrow majority in Japan now support turning idled plants back online.

But a web of red-tape governing nuclear reactors born from the Fukushima nuclear disaster 11 years ago means that resuming operations can’t speed up, no matter the political pressure.

“If the Nuclear Regulation Authority approves nuclear reactor restarts based strictly on scientific findings, and not political decisions, then the current pace won’t change anytime soon,” said Reiji

Ogino, an analyst at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. Japan’s NRA oversees the restart protocols of the country’s remaining 33 operable nuclear reactors. Ever since Japan turned its fleet of 54 reactors offline after the 2011 disaster, only 10 have restarted under the new rules that ensure the units are safe.

“The NRA is restarting nuclear reactors at a slower pace than everyone had expected,” Ogino said.

That’s putting Japan’s power grid under more strain, which nearly caused the blackout in Tokyo last month. Thermal power plants were knocked out by a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, followed by a blast of cold weather that boosted power demand, threatening outages in the nation’s biggest city. While Tokyo managed to prevent a disaster, the situation could repeat when summer demand spikes as residents turn on their air conditioners.

Seven nuclear power units, while being cleared by the NRA, have yet to finish additional construction work needed to restart. “It’s unlikely that these units will restart before the upcoming peak summer season,” Ogino said.

Syusaku Nishikawa, an analyst at Daiwa Securities Co., forecasts most of the seven reactors won’t resume operations until October next year at the earliest. Bloomberg News

YIV, Ukraine—he presidents of four countries on Russia’s doorstep visited Ukraine on Wednesday in a show of support for the embattled country, after Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to continue his bloody offensive until its “full completion.”

The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—all Nato countries that worry they may face Russian attack in the future if Ukraine falls—were traveling by train to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In one of the most crucial battles of the war, Russia said more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops had surrendered in the besieged port of Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces have been holding out in pockets of the city. The information could not be verified.

Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly one. In the seven weeks since, the ground advance stalled, Russia has lost potentially thousands of fighters—and the war has forced millions of Ukrainians to flee, rattled the world economy, threated global food supplies and shattered Europe’s post-Cold War balance.

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday called Russia’s actions in Ukraine “a genocide” for the first time, saying “Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”

Zelenskyy applauded Biden’s use of the word, saying “calling things by their

names is essential to stand up to evil.”

“We are grateful for US assistance provided so far and we urgently need more heavy weapons to prevent further Russian atrocities,” he added in his tweet.

The European leaders visiting Ukraine planned to deliver “a strong message of political support and military assistance.”

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said.

Nauseda, Estonian President Alar Karis, Poland’s Andrzej Duda and Egils Levits of Latvia also planned to discuss investigations into alleged Russian war crimes, including the massacre of civilians.

Putin has denied his troops committed atrocities, and on Tuesday insisted Russia “had no other choice” but to invade, saying the offensive aimed to protect people in parts of eastern Ukraine and to “ensure Russia’s own security.” He vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”

He insisted Russia’s campaign was going as planned despite a major withdrawal after its forces failed to take the capital and suffered significant losses.

Following those setbacks, Russian troops are now gearing up for a major offensive in the eastern Donbas region, where Russian-allied separatists and Ukrainian forces have been fighting since 2014, and where Russia has recognized the separatists’ claims of independence.

Military strategists say Moscow believes local support, logistics and the terrain in the region favor its larger, better-armed military, potentially allowing Russia to

finally turn the tide in its favor.

B r i t a i n ’s d e f e n s e m i n i s t r y s a i d Wednesday that “an inability to cohere and coordinate military activity has hampered Russia’s invasion to date.”

Western officials say Russia recently appointed a new top general for the war, Alexander Dvornikov, to try to get a grip on its campaign.

A key piece to that campaign is Mariupol, which lies in the Donbas and which the Russians have besieged and pummeled since nearly the start of the war. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak tweeted that the city’s defenders were short of supplies but were “fighting under the bombs for each meter of the city.”

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov said 1,026 troops from the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade had surrendered in the city. It was unclear when this occurred or how many forces were still defending Mariupol.

According to the BBC, Aiden Aslin, a British man fighting in the Ukrainian military in Mariupol, called his mother and a friend to say he and his comrades were out of food, ammunition and other supplies and would surrender.

Another Zelenskyy adviser Oleksiy Arestovych did not comment on the surrender claim, but said in a post on Twitter that elements of the same brigade managed to link up with other Ukrainian forces in the city as a result of a “risky maneuver.” AP

than the overall population, even though surveys suggest drug use among teens is down.

Experts attributed the spike to fentanyl, a highly lethal drug that has been cut into heroin for several years. More recently it’s also been pressed into counterfeit pills resembling prescription drugs that teens sometimes abuse.

The total number of US deaths often increases year to year as the US population grows. But 2020 and 2021 saw extraordinary jumps in death numbers and rates, due largely to the pandemic.

Those national death trends affect life expectancy—an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live.

With rare exceptions, US life expectancy has reliably inched up year after year. But the CDC’s life expectancy estimate for 2020 was about 77 years—more than a year and a half lower than what it was in 2019.

The CDC has not yet reported its calculation for 2021. But Goldman and some other researchers have been making their own estimates, presented in papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Those researchers think US life expectancy dropped another five or six months in 2021—putting it back to where it was 20 years ago.

A loss of more than two years of life expectancy over the last two years “is mammoth,” Goldman said.

One study looked at death data in the US and 19 other high-income countries. The US fared the worst.

“What happened in the US is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public’s rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission,” one of the study’s authors, Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a statement.

Some experts are skeptical that life expectancy will quickly bounce back. They worry about long-term complications of Covid-19 that may hasten the deaths of people with chronic health problems.

P re l i m i n a r y — a nd i ncom plete—CDC data suggest there were at least 805,000 US deaths in about the first three months of this year. That’s well below the same period last year, but higher than the comparable period in 2020.

“We may end up with a ‘new normal’ that’s a little higher than it was before,” Anderson said. AP

German economists lower growth outlook

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ERLIN—A group of leading economic think tanks slashed its forecast for growth in Germany this year, predicting Wednesday that Europe’s biggest economy will expand by 2.7 percent as Russia’s war in Ukraine weighs on prospects.

The five institutes’ revised outlook compared with a forecast of 4.8 percent they made last fall. They forecast an even worse performance if Russian gas supplies are cut off suddenly.

They blamed the war and the “worse than expected course” of the coronavirus pandemic over the winter for Wednesday’s outlook revision.

It is the latest in a string of downgrades for Germany’s economic outlook, but is still more optimistic than a recent prediction of 1.8 percent growth in gross domestic product by the government’s panel of independent economic advisers.

For 2023, the think tanks forecast moderately better growth of 3.1 percent.

The baseline predictions for this year and next assume continuing gas deliveries and “no further economic escalation from the war in Ukraine,” they said.

If energy deliveries are cut off, they forecast growth of 1.9 percent this year and a contraction of 2.2 percent in 2023.

They said “the cumulative loss of GDP in 2022 and 2023 in the event of a supply freeze is likely to be around 220 billion euros,” or $239 billion. AP

Faith

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

Afghan evacuees: 1st US Ramadan marked with gratitude and agony

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AS CRUCES, New Mexico—Sitting cross-legged on the floor as his wife and six children laid plates of fruit on a red cloth in front of him, Wolayat Khan Samadzoi watched through the open balcony door for the sliver of new moon to appear in the cloudless New Mexico sky, where the sun had set beyond a desert mountain.

Then, munching on a date, the bushybearded former Afghan soldier broke his first Ramadan fast in the United States—far from the Taliban threat, but also the three dozen relatives he would be marking the start of the Muslim holy month with if he was still home in Khost, Afghanistan.

A few minutes after naan was dipped into bowls of stewed okra and beans, Samadzoi, his wife and the two oldest children retired to worship on their prayer rugs.

On Saturday evening, the two-bedroom apartment filled with the murmurs of their invocations.

“I pray for them, and they pray for me, they miss me,” he said of his relatives back home.

His cousin Noor Rahman Faqir, who is also now in Las Cruces, translated from Pashto to the simple English he learned working with American forces in Afghanistan.

As they adjust to their new communities, Afghan families evacuated to the United States as the Taliban regained power last summer are celebrating Ramadan with gratitude for their safety.

Yet there’s also the agony of being away from loved ones who they fear are in danger under a Taliban leadership crafting increasingly repressive orders.

From metropolitan areas with flourishing Afghan diasporas to this desert university community less than 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Mexican border, tens of thousands of newly arrived Afghans share one predominant concern that’s amplified in what should be a celebratory time: With only temporary immigration status and low-paying jobs, they feel helpless to take care of their families here and back home.

Abdul Amir Qarizada repeats several times the exact moment, 4:30 p.m., when he was ordered to take off from Kabul’s airport during the chaos of the evacuation—with no time to get his wife and five children, who are still in Afghanistan more than seven months later.

“My concern is the aircraft is safe, but my family is not safe,” the former flight engineer says after Friday prayer at Las Cruces’s only mosque, where he goes by bike to find some “peace.”

So does Qais Sharifi, 28, who says he can’t sleep with worry for his kids left behind, including a daughter born two months after he fled Afghanistan alone.

Both men break into smiles when the mosque’s education director, Rajaa Shindi, an Iraqi-born professor at nearby New Mexico State University, invites them to register for the free iftar dinners held nightly in the meeting hall decorated with gold balloons spelling “Ramadan kareem”—an Arabic greeting to wish people a happy Ramadan.

Local congregations like the mosque and El Calvario United Methodist Church in Las Cruces, as well as the Jewish and Christian-based organizations that resettle refugees across their national networks, have been helping Afghans find housing, jobs, English-language classes, and schools for their children.

They decry the fact that most displaced Afghan families don’t have permanent legal status in the United States, despite their services for the US government, military or their Afghan allies during the post-9/11 Afghanistan war.

That would give them access to many

government benefits and an easier path to work and family reunification.

While Afghanistan’s decades of war and current food shortage mean far less extravagant feasts than in many countries where Ramadan is celebrated, the familiar tastes of home are top of mind for many displaced this year.

Qarizada recalls his mother’s signature festive dish of bolani, a stuffed fried bread like a giant samosa.

The mother of Shirkhan Nejat still cries every time the 27-year-old makes a WhatsApp video call home from Oklahoma City, where he was resettled with his wife and the couple’s baby was born.

Missing his close-knit extended family at Ramadan brings “bad emotions,” Nejat said, despite his gratitude for being safe.

It’s such bonds, the warmth of large family gatherings around the iftar meal and the cacophony of familiar sights, sounds and smells marking the end of a day’s fast that many are yearning for in America.

In Texas, Dawood Formuli misses his family’s typical pre-iftar routine: His hungry father irritably asking for his food. His mother asking her husband to calm down, and Formuli, 34, telling a joke to lighten the mood and make his father laugh.

His children, in another room with their many cousins, sometimes playing, sometimes fighting. “Allahu akbar,” the call to prayer, spilling over from the mosque down the street.

“Every day, it’s like Christmas,” the former translator at the US embassy in Kabul said of past Ramadans in the three-story house his family used to share with his parents, siblings and their families.

In his new apartment in Fort Worth, the call to prayer now comes from an app, not a minaret.

The transition has been especially hard for his pregnant wife, who is still learning English. Yet there are traces of the familiar in their new community: Muslim neighbors, mosques for the special Ramadan prayers, known as “taraweeh,” and halal food markets.

Khial Mohammad Sultani, who the day before Ramadan was still living in an extended stay motel on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas, had to ride nearly 80 miles (128 kilometers) round trip into New Mexico in a taxi to go buy and slaughter a lamb for Ramadan.

The 37-year-old former soldier, his wife Noor Bibi, and their six children broke the second day’s fast with pieces of that lamb stewed in an aromatic sauce around the one table in their duplex, newly built on a barren foothills lot unlike their house in Gardez, with its apple and pomegranate trees.

Right after iftar, four of the children got ready for their first day of school ever the next morning, another new thrill for their parents who never received a formal education.

But when it comes to faith, Sultani will continue to teach his children at home, as his father did for him.

The three oldest children—a boy, 11, and two girls, 9 and 8, with red headscarves loosely arranged over their long braids— pray in turn on a green rug that is among the family’s most treasured possessions.

The family’s Quran came from the military base in New Jersey where they first landed in the United States.

But Sultani’s father brought this rug from his pilgrimage at Mecca after another son was killed by the Taliban, a possible fate they escaped, crossing many checkpoints as they fled Afghanistan last summer.

“We are Muslim, and a part of our faith is to thank Allah for everything,” Sultani says in Dari through a volunteer translator. “As appreciation for him, we’re doing this.” AP

Sunday

Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022 A7

Why Easter is called Easter T

he date of Easter, when the resurrection of Jesus is said to have taken place, changes from year to year.

The reason for this variation is that Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.

I am a religious studies scholar specializing in early Christianity, and my research shows that this dating of Easter goes back to the complicated origins of this holiday and how it has evolved over the centuries.

Easter is quite similar to other major holidays like Christmas and Halloween, which have evolved over the last 200 years or so. In all of these holidays, Christian and nonChristian (pagan) elements have continued to blend together.

Easter as a rite of spring

Most major holidays have some connection to the changing of seasons. This is especially obvious in the case of Christmas.

The New Testament gives no information about what time of year Jesus was born. Many scholars believe, however, that the main reason Jesus’ birth came to be celebrated on December 25 is because that was the date of the winter solstice according to the Roman calendar.

Since the days following the winter solstice gradually become longer and less dark, it was ideal symbolism for the birth of “the light of the world” as stated in the New Testament’s Gospel of John.

Similar was the case with Easter, which falls in close proximity to another key point in the solar year: the vernal equinox (around March 20), when there are equal periods of light and darkness.

For those in northern latitudes, the coming of spring is often met with excitement, as it means an end to the cold days of winter.

Spring also means the coming back to life of plants and trees that have been dormant for winter, as well as the birth of new life in the animal world.

Given the symbolism of new life and rebirth, it was only natural to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus at this time of the year.

The naming of the celebration as “Easter” seems to go back to the name of a pre-Christian goddess in England, Eostre, who was celebrated at beginning of spring.

The only reference to this goddess comes from the writings of the Venerable Bede, a British monk who lived in the late 7th and early 8th century.

As religious studies scholar Bruce Forbes summarizes: “Bede wrote that the month in which English Christians were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus had been called Eosturmonath in Old English, referring to a goddess named Eostre. And even though Christians had begun affirming

“The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” fresco by Piero della Francesca (1463)

the Christian meaning of the celebration, they continued to use the name of the goddess to designate the season.”

Bede was so influential for later Christians that the name stuck, and hence Easter remains the name by which the English, Germans and Americans refer to the festival of Jesus’ resurrection.

The connection with Jewish Passover

It is important to point out that while the name “Easter” is used in the English-speaking world, many more cultures refer to it by terms best translated as “Passover” (for instance, “Pascha” in Greek)—a reference, indeed, to the Jewish festival of Passover.

In the Hebrew Bible, Passover is a festival that commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, as narrated in the Book of Exodus.

It was and continues to be the most important Jewish seasonal festival, celebrated on the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

At the time of Jesus, Passover had special significance, as the Jewish people were again under the dominance of foreign powers (namely, the Romans).

Jewish pilgrims streamed into Jerusalem every year in the hope that God’s chosen people (as they believed themselves to be) would soon be liberated once more.

On one Passover, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his disciples to celebrate the festival. He entered Jerusalem in a triumphal procession and created a disturbance in the Jerusalem Temple.

It seems that both of these actions attracted the attention of the Romans, and that as a result

Wikimedia Commons

Jesus was executed around the year A.D. 30.

Some of Jesus’ followers, however, believed that they saw Him alive after His death, experiences that gave birth to the Christian religion.

As Jesus died during the Passover festival and His followers believed He was resurrected from the dead three days later, it was logical to commemorate these events in close proximity.

Some early Christians chose to celebrate the resurrection of Christ on the same date as the Jewish Passover, which fell around day 14 of the month of Nisan, in March or April.

These Christians were known as Quartodecimans (the name means “Fourteeners”).

By choosing this date, they put the focus on when Jesus died and also emphasized continuity with the Judaism out of which Christianity emerged.

Some others instead preferred to hold the festival on a Sunday, since that was when Jesus’ tomb was believed to have been found.

In A.D. 325, the Emperor Constantine, who favored Christianity, convened a meeting of Christian leaders to resolve important disputes at the Council of Nicaea.

The most fateful of its decisions was about the status of Christ, whom the council recognized as “fully human and fully divine.”

This council also resolved that Easter should be fixed on a Sunday, not on day 14 of Nisan. As a result, Easter is now celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of the vernal equinox.

The Easter bunny and Easter eggs

In early America, the Easter festival was far more popular among Catholics than Protestants. For instance,

the New England Puritans regarded both Easter and Christmas as too tainted by non-Christian influences to be appropriate to celebrate. Such festivals also tended to be opportunities for heavy drinking and merrymaking.

The fortunes of both holidays changed in the 19th century, when they became occasions to be spent with one’s family. This was done partly out of a desire to make the celebration of these holidays less rowdy.

But Easter and Christmas also became reshaped as domestic holidays because understandings of children were changing. Prior to the 17th century, children were rarely the center of attention.

As historian Stephen Nissenbaum writes, “Children were lu mped toget her w it h ot her members of the lower orders in general, especially servants and apprentices—who, not coincidentally, were generally young people themselves.”

From the 17th century onward, there was an increasing recognition of childhood as as time of life that should be joyous, not simply as preparatory for adulthood.

This “discovery of childhood” and the doting upon children had profound effects on how Easter was celebrated.

It is at this point in the holiday’s development that Easter eggs and the Easter bunny become especially important. Decorated eggs had been part of the Easter festival at least since medieval times, given the obvious symbolism of new life.

A vast amount of folklore surrounds Easter eggs, and in a number of Eastern European countries, the process of decorating them is extremely elaborate.

Several Eastern European legends describe eggs turning red (a favorite color for Easter eggs) in connection with the events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Yet it was only in the 17th century that a German tradition of an “Easter hare” bringing eggs to good children came to be known.

Hares and rabbits had a long association with spring seasonal rituals because of their amazing powers of fertility.

When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought this tradition with them. The wild hare also became supplanted by the more docile and domestic rabbit, in another indication of how the focus moved toward children.

As Christians celebrate the festival this spring in commemoration of Jesus’ resurrection, the familiar sights of the Easter bunny and Easter eggs serve as a reminder of the holiday’s very ancient origins outside of the Christian tradition. Brent Landau, The University of Texas at Austin/The Conversation CC

3 Ukraine churches ponder on faith, hope and charity

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A woman reacts as she enters a damaged church following a Russian attack in the previous weeks in the town of Makaro, Kyiv region Ukraine, on April 10. At least 59 spiritual sites, mostly Orthodox churches, have been ruined or damaged since the war started, the Ukrainian authorities said. AP/Petros Giannakouris

ORODYANK A, Ukraine— I t ’s a l m o s t E a s t e r i n Ukraine, where a trio of churches on the far edges of the capital considered faith, hope and charity recently.

In Bucha, shocked into silence by atrocities that left bodies in the streets, about two dozen of the faithful gathered for the service while the exhumation of bodies continued from a mass grave in the churchyard.

In Makarov, a handful of members visited a badly damaged riverside church, at times moved to tears. Small golden crosses for rosaries lay scattered on the floor with the shattered glass.

A nd in Borodyanka, where Russian attacks ripped a blackened hole in a high-rise apartment building, volunteers and donations filled an almost untouched church a short walk away, while residents lined up at the door for food and other assistance.

Many were elderly people who stayed behind while others fled.

On the day when Pope Francis called for an Easter truce in Ukraine to make way for a negotiated peace, church visitors invoked God in recalling their survival.

“Each person who was leaving, from any place, Makarov, Bucha, Hostomel or from Andriivka, the

neighboring village which was destroyed to the ground; each one, even those who did not know the Lord’s Prayer, he was speaking to God with his own words,” said Alona Parkhomenko in Makarov, where the church exterior was speckled with bullet holes and the priest warned of falling glass.

The Russian retreat from the reg ion sur rounding Ky iv has enabled some of the millions of Ukrainians who f led over the border or to other parts of the country to return home.

Some are finding their places of worship damaged or destroyed.

Ukrainian authorities in late

March said at least 59 spiritual sites including churches, mosques and synagogues had been hit.

In Makarov, the priest, Bogdan Lisechenko, said the church beside the river is in critical condition with spring rains looming.

“Now we are taking out the icons, saving them because the water is coming,” he said. “For now, we will close the windows to prevent looting.”

For Easter, which in the Orthodox world is two weeks away, the priest said the blessing will be given in a church in another village that so far has escaped damage in the war. AP

A8 Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

Education BusinessMirror

Editor: Mike Policarpio

TESDA, USAID activate ‘Futures Thinking’ program

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NEW program will further equip key officials of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) with acumen and tools to help the agency better adapt to future uncertainties.

TESDA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on March 22 marked the start of the development of the agency’s first “Futures Thinking” framework, which will be crafted with the expertise of the Center for Engaged Foresight and the Education Development Center through USAID’s Opportunity 2.0 Program.

In the next five to six months, around 30 select TESDA leaders will participate in workshops and sessions to develop the framework that will arm them with strategic foresight skills and tools.

Futures Thinking is an approach to planning that helps organizations analyze their past and present more closely. It will help

them identify patterns, see emerging threats and opportunities, build potential scenarios, as well as apply labor market information in crafting policies. Through the discipline and lens of Futures Thinking, TESDA will be able to make changes now to prepare itself and its technical-vocational education and training (TVET) programs to adapt to future uncertainties.

“One way of ensuring TVET remains responsive to [potential] risks, opportunities and changes… is for actors to come together,” said USAID Philippines Acting Deputy Mission Director Jeff Goebel. “This is why [we are] also honored to be an instrumental player that kickstarts the develop-

UNIONBANK’S Jose Paulo R. Soliman (from left), TPB’s Ma. Anthonette V. Allones, and AEV’s Christopher M. Camba sign the MOA. Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc.

USAID Philippines Acting Deputy Mission Director Jeff Goebel (clockwise, from left), USAID Opportunity 2.0 Chief of Party Dr. Dave Hall and TESDA Director General Isidro S. Lapeña US EMBASSY

ment of TESDA’s Futures Thinking framework.”

“With the capacity of TESDA streng thened, the Philippine TVET sector becomes agile and future-ready to…dynamic changes in the education, industry, and employment sector,” added Goebel. “TVET policies and programs will be demand-driven, relevant, forward-looking, and will be able to create a positive impact on even more young people in the Philippines.”

USAID has been working with TESDA through its Opportunity

2.0 Program in transitioning more out-of-school youth to pursue further education, get jobs, or start their own businesses. At least 500 trainers from the agency have been trained to roll out this new content to more youth across the country. Through their collaborative initiative against the pandemic in 2020, TESDA and USAID have also enrolled hundreds of out-of-school youth into the former’s online program, many of whom have landed new jobs and started their own businesses.

FEU Communications’ docus focus spotlight on women

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AR Eastern University’s Department of Communication (FEU DepComm) recently placed the spotlight on its faculty members and their documentaries about women as part of its advocacy initiative and departmental project, in line with the recent celebration of National Women’s Month.

FEU DepComm showed acclaimed films such as DocWomentary: Women Behind the Lens by Jayneca Reyes, Lila by Chrissy Cruz Ustaris, and Maria Leonor

by Seymour Barros Sanchez, in a two-part exhibition and the “CineForum: Abante, Babae!” postscreening roundtable discussion.

In “DocWomentary…,” Reyes explores why Filipino women are at the forefront of documentary filmmaking in the country, while navigating the challenges they must confront in the industry.

Throughout the film, she discovers her own reflexivity as a filmmaker, but most importantly, as a woman.

Meanwhile, Ustaris chronicles her 20-year journey with her son

in Lila—a 10-minute film that presents shifts between glimpses of memories and reflections on the joys and challenges of being a mother to an individual with special needs.

Sanchez created Maria Leonor as an open letter to presidential candidate and Vice President Leni Robredo after she filed her certificate of candidacy for the nation’s top post. The documentary delves into the Filipino voter’s psyche as it trains its sight on a government office’s pandemic-response efforts.

FEU DepComm Chair Herwin Cabasal shared that CineForum, one of the department’s activities, focused on films produced and/ or directed by faculty members, students, as well as invited filmmakers and collectives.

The screenings were followed by

talks “aimed at sharing the filmmakers’ experiences and insights on their films, while engaging the public in a meaningful exchange with these creators…[with hopes] to shed light on social issues emerging from their films,” added Cabasal.

Reyes, Ustaris, and Sanchez are all part of the FEU DepComm faculty. Fellow member Ma. Rosa Bragais moderated the first open forum, with the first two as speakers. Their colleagues Camille Nadine Magsalin-Roquel, Kristine Camille Sulit and FEU Film Society president Lily Gomes served as reactors in the second post-screening discussion, with Sanchez as speaker and Ustaris as moderator.

CineForum falls under FEU SCREEN, which advances the relevance and role of communication as a field; specifically, Convergent Media and Digital Cinema tracks, as expressed in their relevance with and contribution to society, culture, research, education, entertainment, and nation captured in the acronym: SCREEN.

Learning Possibilities, Microsoft serve Disney-themed stories to Filipino kids in English-learning platform

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EARNING Possibilities Ltd., a global education-technology provider based in the United Kingdom, recently introduced Learning Islands—an innovative platform designed to help Filipino children develop critical English literacy and skills.

The Learning Islands app features 100 of Disney’s most-loved stories— with popular titles inspired by Frozen, The Lion King, Toy Story, Moana, and more.

“We are thrilled to [launch the app], which features Disney-themed stories. Our aim is to inspire all children to discover their love of reading [while] developing new English language and literacy skills through gameplay,” said Dr. Mehool Sanghrajka, founder and CEO of Learning Possibilities. “What better way to encourage [these] than with some of the world’s most loved stories from Disney! These timeless stories and

characters continue to resonate with people of all ages today, making children’s learning adventures engaging, entertaining and magical.”

Sanghrajka furthered: “We understand the importance of English reading and speaking…and how [they open] education and employment opportunities. With this app, we hope to inspire young children to develop those skills.”

According to him, the application is truly unique in the way it is purposefully built to encourage children to read and practice English through its interactive and creative content making learning engaging, rewarding, and fun.

Ambassador Laure Beaufils of the United Kingdom commented: “I am delighted that British company Learning Possibilities has partnered with Microsoft to develop an innovative [educational-technology (edtech)] solution for young English-language

learners in the Philippines. Learning Islands is a great tool. [By] harnessing Microsoft’s cloud technology and Disney-themed stories, it is making top-quality educational content accessible to all Filipino children.”

Beaufils added: “I am confident that it will contribute to enhancing English skills and literacy in the country.

I…hope this paves the way for more UK edtech innovations in the Philippines—the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can achieve together.”

The learning journey consists of five islands, where children will discover Disney-themed stor ies, play games, discover artifacts, and collect treasures. Each is supported by audio and follow-along words, making it suitable for children ages 3- to 10-years old. The reading and comprehension-focused games: Snap Matching, Drag-and-Drop Matching, and Multi-Matching give children a chance to practice what they have

“The project aims to promote media and information literacy that [boosts] critical thinking in both production and consumption; foster active engagement between experts in the fields of Digital Cinema and Convergent Media [who include media practitioners, filmmakers, communication scholars, faculty members], students, and the general public through the activities it organizes; and create various platforms that encourage cultural and social dialogue [as well as] discourse on… pressing issues anchored in the Department of Communication’s mantra: “May alam, may pakialam.”

[Socially aware and involved.],” Cabasal stressed.

Apart from CineForum, other activities or projects under FEU SCREEN include “Likhang Mulat,” “Beyond the Screen,” “Green Screen Exhibition,” “Comm Talk: Brown Bag Lectures,” “CommBack Home,” “Insights/Istorya,” “Project MILA (Media and Information Literacy Advocacy),” and other special undertakings. read, and award them with certificates once completed.

As players journey through the islands, game activity levels increase, thereby broadening their vocabulary and resulting in 2,000+ words practiced upon the games’ completion. In addition, the application has a “Grown Up Portal,” which allows adults to view and track their children’s learning progression. To make the application accessible, Learning Possibilities designed it to work on simple phones with basic connectivity, and in an offline mode.

Learning Possibilities is a social enterprise working with schools and governments across the UK, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Africa, leveraging technology to help the education sector deliver critical digital skills to learners. Learning Islands featuring Disney Pixar characters is powered

by Microsoft Azure. The app will be first launched in the Philippines, with other markets in the Asia-Pacific to follow shortly. Learning Islands is available to download through the iOS and Google App Stores. For more information, see www.LearningIslands.com.

Tripartite partnerships to provide tech-focused training sessions for tourism-based enterprises

By Roderick L. Abad

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USHING further its “TechUp Pi l ipinas” advocac y, Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) has tied up with Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc. (AEV) and Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) to enable micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) thrive in the tourism industry.

Their key officials recently signed a memorandum of understanding for the launch of the “Biyaheng Digiskarte: Angat Turismo” project.

Through the UnionBank GlobalLinker (UBGL) MSME platform, the collaboration with AEV will offer technology-focused training courses to MSMEs aligned with TPB’s Membership Program. Said courses are designed to provide learning opportunities that will enable capacity-building and address various gaps in digital competencies for small-scale tourism players.

“The country’s tourism sector was one of the hardest hit during this pandemic, that is why we want to offer additional training to help MSME owners in the sector hone their digital entrepreneurship skills,” said Jose Paulo Soliman, UnionBank’s vice president (VP) who also heads the bank’s SME and “micropreneurs” segment.

“With this, not only will it become easier for them to acclimate to the growing digital economy; it will also help revitalize the tourism sector in general, and somehow the country’s economy,” he added.

TPB Chief Operating Officer Ma. Anthonette V. Allones shared about the project’s relevance and

foreseen impact: “There is a need on our part, in the tourism sector, in terms of building capacities for our stakeholders: to come to terms with the reality that if we don’t go digital, we will be sidelined and get left behind.”

Allones noted that almost all bookings and channels are being availed by those who already have online platforms. The rest who have not transitioned to digitalization nor embraced the technologies, she said, have yet to leverage on these opportunities.

“We are grateful to Aboitiz and UnionBank for this timely, relevant and much-needed partnership,” Allones stated.

Meanwhile, AEV First VP for Cor porate External Relations Christopher Camba pointed out that public-private partnerships such as their initiative “make great impact and clear results:” “We are more than glad to share our expertise [with] the tourism industry MSMEs, because we believe that… to achieve economic recovery, stakeholders must collaborate. In this case, building digital competencies is the way to go.”

Part of the webinar series is “Biyaheng Digiskarte: Angat Turismo Serye,” which will be facilitated by experts in the field led by Eric Caeg, president and founder of the Retail Academy Phils.

This effort also forms part of “GoBeyond Communities,” the corporate social responsibility and employee-volunteering program of UnionBank, which encourages depositors to support their personal advocacies through active participation in select projects benefiting chosen communities.

Smart shoulders MisOcc student’s school fees

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28-y ear-old working student from Oroquieta, Misamis Occidental recently won one of the grand prizes of Smart’s Balik Tuition Promo 2.

Angel Apduhan brought home P100,000, which she says will greatly help pay for her school fees.

“I’ve never been lucky with raffles, but I took a chance and registered for the promo. I prayed for a laptop, which I need for my Information Technology course, but I have received a bigger blessing,” Apduhan said in Filipino.

Keeping herself in school was a challenge, as her parents’ incomes were barely enough for their everyday needs, she told the BusinessMirror.

Aside from the prize money, Apduhan also won 50 Smart Bro Pocket WiFi kits for her school, the University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines-Oroquieta. Smart has raffled off more than P2 million worth of prizes, including 20 smartphones, 10 laptops and 10 tablets for its “Balik Tuition Promo 2.”

The college sophomore juggled her studies and side hustle of selling clothes online: “Now, I no longer have to worry about drop-

ping out because of financial difficulties,” she added. “Thank you so much, Smart, for this big opportunity!”

Aside from getting a new laptop, Apduhan will also allot a portion of her cash prize for her parents’ maintenance medications. She’s also saving up for emergencies.

Her mother Theresita couldn’t express her gratitude enough: “God heeded our prayers, through Smart, to help my daughter fulfill her dreams.”

Smart’s improved connectivity and affordable data promos have been a huge help with Apduhan’s online schooling: “I’m thankful that with Smart’s All Data and Giga Video promos, I can attend my online classes. Smart’s faster Internet speed in our residence has also helped me finish my school activities on time.”

“Smart empowers [Gen Zs with unlimited ways of pursuing] their passions. Giga Power’s open-access data enables them to access…favorite apps and sites, so they can discover what they love, and live a more enjoyable, more fulfilling life,” said Antonette Orpilla, Smart’s head of Communities Marketing. Rizal Raoul S. Reyes

www.businessmirror.com.ph

OurTime BusinessMirror

Editor: Angel R. Calso • Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022

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501,418 senior citizens in Ilocos get Covid jabs

By Hilda Austria

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ALASIQUI, Pangasinan— A total of 501,418 senior citizens or 87 percent of the Ilocos Region’s elderly are now fully inoculated.

Based on the data of the Department of Health Center for Health Development Ilocos Region (DOHCHD-1) posted on Monday, the region has 3.5 million fully vaccinated residents or 80 percent of its 4.3 million target population. Some

685,557 individuals in the region have received their Covid-19 booster shots as of April 9.

Meanwhile, the region’s daily average of Covid-19 positivity rate has dropped to four cases. Covid-19 focal person Dr. Rheuel Bobis earlier attributed the decline to the high immunization coverage.

The non-intensive care unit bed utilization is at 11 percent or 170 being used out of the 1,532 beds, while the intensive care unit bed utilization rate is at 18 percent or

42 out of 236 ICU beds.

DOH-CHD-1 added that 39 patients are considered severe and critical or 18 percent of the total admissions.

“Let us continue to follow the minimum health standards such as wearing face masks to prevent a possible surge in Covid-19 cases,” Bobis said.

In another development, at least 334,969 senior citizens in the Caraga region have been vaccinated, representing 81.7 percent of the seniors

being targeted for vaccination.

In a report on Tuesday, the Department of Health in Caraga (DOH13) said it expects to see an increased vaccination rate among seniors as the vaccination drive against Covid-19 intensifies across the region.

“Of the total number of senior citizens inoculated, 169,344 are already fully vaccinated,” DOH-13 said.

The agency also reported the full vaccination of 354,043 individuals under the A4 category, or the frontline personnel or essential sectors,

Shanghai hospital pays the price for China’s Zero-Covid approach

By Huizhong Wu and Dake Kang The Associated Press

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EIJING—A series of deaths at a hospital for elderly patients in Shanghai is underscoring the dangerous consequences of China’s stubborn pursuit of a zero-Covid approach amid an escalating outbreak in the city of 26 million people.

Multiple patients have died at the Shanghai Donghai Elderly Care hospital, relatives of patients told The Associated Press. They say their loved ones weren’t properly cared for after caretakers who came into contact with the virus were taken away to be quarantined, in adherence to the strict pandemic regulations, depleting the hospital of staff.

Family members have taken to social media to plea for help and answers and are demanding to see surveillance video from inside the facility after getting little to no information from the hospital.

The conditions and deaths at the hospital are a sharp rebuke against China’s strategy of sticking to a zeroCovid policy as it deals with the outbreak in Shanghai in which most of the infected people don’t have symptoms. With a focus on forcing positive cases and close contacts into designated collective quarantine facilities, the costs of zero-Covid may be outweighing the risk of getting sick.

Shen Peiming, 71, was one such casualty. She died last Sunday at the hospital, without any relatives by her side. A family member said they have been calling the hospital nonstop to find out the circumstances of Shen’s death, but have not gotten a clear answer. “How many times have there been lockdowns since 2020? They still don’t have experience managing this?” the family member said.

All they know is her doctor and nurses had not been there to care for Shen, who was partially paralyzed after a stroke. Her last nursing assistant had been quarantined for being a close contact of a positive case, the relative said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. An unfamiliar worker called to inform them of her death.

Later, the hospital said it was due to a chest infection.

The hospital had a Covid-19 outbreak, the family heard from order-

lies, but Shen had tested negative as of last week.

Shanghai authorities have reported no deaths from this outbreak, but questions have been raised about the reliability of the data. A city health official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that the criteria for confirming cases and deaths are very strict and susceptible to political meddling.

It is unclear how many patients have died at the hospital, and whether any died of Covid-19. Families say they are talking with other families whose relatives have also died. An article from Chinese news outlet Caixin describing the deaths and infections was taken down shortly after it was published, apparently targeted by censors. Calls to the main office of Donghai Elderly Care went unanswered. The Shanghai government did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Most experts agree that China’s zero-Covid approach was highly successful in keeping deaths to a minimum when there were limited drugs or vaccines. But now that shots are widely available in China, and with the advent of the Omicron variant, many say the government should abandon the policy and focus medical resources on the elderly and vulnerable instead.

Instead, Shanghai has locked down its 26 million people and carried out repeated mass testing to tackle an outbreak driven by the highly contagious Omicron BA.2 variant. On Saturday, the city reported more than 23,000 new local cases, of which only 1,015 had symptoms.

“If you’re asymptomatic, what’s going to hurt you?” said Ray Yip, the founding director of the US Centers for Disease Control office in China, who maintains close ties with Chinese health officials. “The only people who get sick are those with diabetes, obesity, chronic disease, old people. Protect those people. You can protect them.”

A low vaccination rate among the elderly, though, remains a concern. Only 62 percent of Shanghai residents over 60 have been vaccinated, according to the latest data available. Some experts support the strict approach, saying China needs to raise that rate before it

can safely live with the virus.

The US guidelines for asymptomatic cases, as in the UK, are that individuals isolate at home for five days.

In Shanghai, workers are rushing to set up massive temporary facilities in exhibition halls and elsewhere to try to house everyone who tests positive.

The citywide lockdown has disrupted daily life and the economy.

Many residents, trapped in their apartment buildings, are scrambling to buy food through apps and place bulk orders with neighbors. Some in quarantine have posted videos showing chaotic scenes of people rushing to get food and a lack of clean toilets.

Others have posted pleas for relatives who need medicine urgently.

The US said Friday that it is allowing the voluntary departure of non-essential personnel and family members from its consulate in Shanghai because of the situation.

The government has trumpeted its success in curbing Covid-19, touting it as evidence of the superiority of China’s governing system—especially compared to Western democracies, where deaths have far exceeded China’s. That narrative, experts said, is making it difficult for Beijing to switch tactics.

“They bragged too hard to their own people about how wonderful they are, and now they’ve painted themselves into a corner,” said Yip. “The only way they can control Shanghai now is to repeat what they did in Wuhan.”

The 11 million residents of Wuhan were locked down for more than two months at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

Shanghai’s lockdown is an abrupt about-face from just a month ago, when some Chinese health experts publicly suggested softening pandemic control measures.

The city’s economic importance and advanced healthcare system left officials reluctant to impose strict measures and confident about combating any outbreaks. Further, Chinese leader Xi Jinping ordered that ongoing outbreaks in China be controlled at “minimum cost” in mid-March, emphasizing Beijing’s desire to protect the economy while curbing the virus.

Shanghai took targeted steps, locking down individual office buildings, shopping centers and neighbor-

hoods for 48 hours at a time but otherwise allowing life to go on as usual.

With the soft measures, the city’s case count rose. The outbreak spilled over to at least 71 other cities, according to a notice posted by Guangxi province in southern China, and pressure grew for harsher measures.

On March 28, the city started an eight-day lockdown in two phases, which has since evolved into a citywide one with no end in sight.

“There is no time to waste,” Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan said on a visit to the city last weekend, according to a government statement.

“We need to move forward faster and harder to provide strong support for the elimination of cases in society.”

The actions sent nurses and doctors into quarantine, causing conditions to worsen at Donghai Elderly Care.

Chen Jielei said the outbreak at the hospital infected her unvaccinated, partially paralyzed 81-yearold mother. Because staff members also fell ill, her mother wasn’t served meals on time and her sheets were unchanged for days. After a few days, a replacement worker started taking care of her.

A college professor who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was afraid of retribution, said his family wasn’t notified for more than a day after his 82-year-old father died on March 31. His last contact was on March 28 with a nursing assistant who called to warn there were positive cases and they could no longer take care of his father.

“In those three days, what happened to my father? What kind of mistreatment did he suffer?” he asked. His father’s condition had been stable on March 28 when he spoke with the nursing assistant.

Shen had lived on and off in the hospital for three years after her stroke. Family members visited every week. But visits were banned in early March as the Covid-19 outbreak spread through Shanghai, the relative said.

They were not worried initially because the hospital had always been very responsive and they were in contact with the nursing assistants who took care of Shen. But one orderly warned on March 26 there were positive cases and many of Donghai’s staff were being quarantined.

Pension hike not enough for Venezuelans to afford basic food

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A R AC A S , Ve n e z u e l a — W hen lunchtime comes, Maybel Sequera and Juan González share a plate of noodles and beans at their home in a lowincome neighborhood west of Venezuela’s capital. Their meager lunch was a gift from a nonprofit organization, as the couple cannot afford to feed themselves.

Sequera, 72, and González, 74, worked for years as a seamstress and driver to build their two houses and raise their four children. But now, after 50 years of marriage, they rely on donations for food, medicines and clothing.

The government raised their combined monthly pensions from about $4 to roughly $60 last month.

But it would have to be multiplied by six for them to be able to buy a basket of goods.

“Now that they have increased us to 130 (each), we are going to see how we manage with those 130 because it is not enough either,” Sequera said referring to the pension in bolívares, Venezuela’s official currency and in which pensions are paid.

In Venezuela, the pension is the amount paid monthly to workers who retire after reaching 750 weeks of Social Security contributions and turning 55, in the case of women, and 60 for men.

Since 1995—years before Hugo Chavez imposed in the South American country what he considered socialism—a pension is equal to the

monthly minimum wage. Workers contribute between 2% and 4% of their salary to Social Security while employers pay an additional 9% to 11 percent on behalf of workers.

The pensions of Sequera, González and millions of other similarly situated retirees went up last month because President Nicolás Maduro increased the monthly minimum wage from roughly $2 to about $30, an amount insufficient to pay basic goods, whose cost in February was estimated at $365, according to the Venezuelan Finance Observatory, an organization specializing in economic studies.

Venezuela has just over five million pensioners, according to official figures. Annual inflation, which

slowed last year but still reached 686.4 percent, has eaten up their pensions for years.

Although the country in the second half of the last decade experienced a severe shortage of food and hygiene items, prompting people to stand in long lines outside supermarkets to buy whatever they could, store shelves are now well stocked and display imported products. But high prices set in dollars make it impossible for much of the population to afford goods.

This dynamic leaves many older adults dependent on remittances from the more than six million Venezuelans who have migrated due to the economic, political and social crises of recent years. AP

and the 260,954 persons under the ROAP category (the rest of the adult population).

A total of 236,387 individuals under the rest of the pediatric population (12 to 17 years old); 20,122 children (5 to 11 years old); nine children with comorbidities (5 to 11 years old); and 2,282 children with comorbidities (12-17 years old).

The report also said that 214,218 individuals under the A5 or indigenous population and 211,809 under the A3 or persons with comorbidities

are already fully vaccinated.

A total of 54,780 frontline health workers in the region, as well as the 8,357 outbound overseas Filipino workers, have already received full vaccination as of April 10.

The rest of the fully vaccinated individuals reported by DOH-13 include 3,070 pregnant women.

As of April 10, a total of 1,535,375 individuals in the region are fully vaccinated, representing 67.7 percent of the total target population.

Alexander Lopez

America’s homeless ranks graying as more people retire on streets

KARLA FINOCCHIO, 55, tears up as she talks about being a homeless woman on the streets on January 24, 2022, in Phoenix. Finocchio is one face of America’s graying homeless population, a rapidly expanding group of destitute and desperate people 50 and older suddenly without a permanent home after a job loss, divorce, family death or health crisis during a pandemic. AP PHOTO/ROSS D. FRANKLIN

By Anita Snow

The Associated Press

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HOENIX—Karla Finocchio’s slide into homelessness began when she split with her partner of 18 years and temporarily moved in with a cousin.

The 55-year-old planned to use her $800-a-month disability check to get an apartment after back surgery. But she soon was sleeping in her old pickup protected by her German Shepherd mix Scrappy, unable to afford housing in Phoenix, where median monthly rents soared 33% during the coronavirus pandemic to over $1,220 for a one-bedroom, according to ApartmentList.com.

Finocchio is one face of America’s graying homeless population, a rapidly expanding group of destitute and desperate people 50 and older suddenly without a permanent home after a job loss, divorce, family death or health crisis during a pandemic.

“We’re seeing a huge boom in senior homelessness,” said Kendra Hendry, a caseworker at Arizona’s largest shelter, where older people make up about 30 percent of those staying there. “These are not necessarily people who have mental illness or substance abuse problems.

They are people being pushed into the streets by rising rents.”

Academics project their numbers will nearly triple over the next decade, challenging policy makers from Los Angeles to New York to imagine new ideas for sheltering the last of the baby boomers as they get older, sicker and less able to pay spiraling rents.

Advocates say much more housing is needed, especially for extremely low-income people.

Navigating sidewalks in wheelchairs and walkers, the aging homeless have medical ages greater than their years, with mobility, cognitive and chronic problems like diabetes. Many contracted Covid-19 or couldn’t work because of pandemic restrictions.

Cardelia Corley, 65, ended up on the streets of Los Angeles County after the hours at her telemarketing job were cut.

“I’d always worked, been successful, put my kid through college,” the single mother said. “And then all of a sudden things went downhill.”

Corley traveled all night aboard buses and rode commuter trains to catch a cat nap.

“And then I would go to Union Station downtown and wash up in the bathroom,” said Corley. She recently moved into a small East Hollywood apartment with help from The People Concern, a Los Angeles nonprofit.

A 2019 study of aging homeless people led by the University of Pennsylvania drew on 30 years of census data to project the U.S. population of people 65 and older experiencing homelessness will nearly triple from 40,000 to 106,000 by 2030, resulting in a public health crisis as their age-related medical problems multiply.

Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician who directs the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco, said her research in Oakland on how homelessness affects health has shown nearly half of the tens of thousands of older homeless people in the US are on the streets for the first time.

“We are seeing that retirement is no longer the golden dream,” said Kushel. “A lot of the working poor are destined to retire onto the streets.”

That’s especially true of younger baby boomers, now in their late 50s to late 60s, who don’t have pensions or 401(k) accounts. About half of both women and men ages 55 to 66 have no retirement savings, according to the census.

Born between 1946 and 1964, baby boomers now number over 70 million, the census shows. With the oldest boomers in their mid 70s, all will hit age 65 by 2030.

The aged homeless also tend to have smaller Social Security checks after years working off the books.

Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group National Coalition for the Homeless, said Black, Latino and Indigenous people who came of age in the 1980s amid recession and high unemployment rates are disproportionately represented among the homeless.

Many nearing retirement never got well-paying jobs and didn’t buy homes because of discriminatory real estate practices.

A10 Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022 • Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Tesla CEO Elon Musk won’t join Twitter’s board a�ter all

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AN FRANCISCO—Billionaire Elon Musk, one of Twitter’s biggest shareholders, is reversing course and will no longer join the company’s board of directors, less than a week after being awarded a seat.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the news, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting changes to Twitter, including making the site ad-free.

Nearly 90 percent of Twitter’s 2021 revenue came from ads.

“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective on 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he would not be joining the board,” Agrawal wrote in a reposted note originally sent to Twitter employees. “I believe this is for the best.”

Agrawal didn’t offer an explanation for Musk’s apparent decision. He said the board understood the risks of having Musk, who is now the company’s largest individual shareholder, as a member. But at the time it “believed having Elon as a fiduciary of the company, where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward,” he wrote.

It was just a week earlier that regulatory filings revealed Musk had swiftly amassed a slightly bigger than 9 percent stake in the social-media platform.

The mercurial billionaire had been buying shares in almost daily batches starting January 31. Only Vanguard Group’s suite of mutual funds and ETFs controls more Twitter shares.

Twitter quickly gave Musk a seat on the board on the condition that he not own more than 14.9 percent of the company’s outstanding stock, according to a regulatory filing.

Now that Musk has backed out of the deal, he’s free to build a bigger stake in Twitter, perhaps to try to take over the company or to push for a new slate of directors to change its direction.

“If you want to take over a company, you’re usually in a better position to not be on its board,” said Harry Kraemer, clinical professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

That’s because a board member’s responsibility is to get the best value for all the company’s shareholders.

“Going on a board has a very specific responsibility to make sure you’re not doing something in your own personal interest,” said Kraemer, also a former chairman and CEO of Baxter International.

In a regulatory filing Monday, Musk said he had “no preset plans or intentions” about how to use his influence on Twitter but that he may discuss with its board and management his thoughts on potential business combinations, strategy and other matters.

He added that he may express his views “through social media or other channels.”

If Musk had taken a board seat, it may have discouraged him from rocking the boat too much, said Chester Spatt, a finance professor at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief economist at the US

How cups and social media play a part in the elections

Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There’s an old cliché about keeping somebody inside the tent,” Spatt said. “There were advantages to having him constrained a bit.”

While Musk has been one of Twitter’s loudest critics, the sudden withdrawal from the board, which became official Saturday, could signal that relations between Musk and Twitter will become more acrimonious.

“At some point he could throw the directors out, he could replace the board,” Spatt said.

In a letter to employees announcing Musk’s departure, Agrawal wrote that “there will be distractions ahead, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged.”

Shares of Twitter Inc., which jumped nearly 30 percent after Musk’s stake became public last week, were 2.8 percent higher on Monday after swinging between gains and losses through the morning.

Musk’s 81 million Twitter followers make him one of the most popular figures on the platform, rivaling pop stars like Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. But his prolific tweeting has sometimes gotten him into trouble with the SEC and others.

Musk and Tesla in 2018 agreed to pay $40 million in civil fines and for Musk to have his tweets approved by a corporate lawyer after he tweeted about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share.

That didn’t happen but the tweet caused Tesla’s stock price to jump. Musk’s latest trouble with the SEC could be his delay in notifying regulators of his growing stake in Twitter.

Musk, before reversing course on the board seat, sent out a number of tweets over the weekend referencing potential changes at Twitter.

Many of them—such as his proposal for an ad-free Twitter or turning the social-media company’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter—have since been deleted.

Musk then posted a few cryptic tweets late Sunday, including one showing a meme saying, “In all fairness, your honor, my client was in goblin mode,” followed by one saying “Explains everything.” Another, later tweet was of an emoji with a hand over its mouth.

Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said he doesn’t think Twitter is living up to free speech principles—an opinion shared by followers of Donald Trump and a number of other right-wing political figures who’ve had their accounts suspended for violating Twitter content rules.

Twitter’s CEO and many of its board members had publicly praised Musk last week, suggesting they might take his ideas seriously. But the company had made clear that as a board member he could not make day-to-day decisions or change policies, such as overturning the Trump ban. AP

Businesses need CSMA for digital transformation

BY RIZAL RAOUL S. REYES THERE is an urgent need for businesses to leverage a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) for their digital acceleration initiatives, according to network security architecture service provider Fortinet Philippines.

“These point products work in silos and represent a center of focus and expertise. Without integrating these security tools, it can lead to security sprawl that makes management difficult, disrupts visibility, and impedes an organization’s ability to act effectively to cyber threats,” Louie Castañeda, country manager of Fortinet Philippines, told journalists in a recent webinar Research think tank Gartner defines cybersecurity mesh as “a modern conceptual approach to a security architecture that enables the distributed enterprise to deploy and extend security where it is most needed.”

Expounding on the mesh concept, Castañeda explained that “the CSMA is not a solution or a product to be integrated. It is an architectural approach that organizations can adopt. It tries to solve long-standing challenges of distinct security tools by integrating them so they can collaborate and dynamically respond to cyberattacks.”

CSMA has three characteristics: agility, distributed and collaborative. Being agile, CSMA provides a composable architectural approach to integrate security controls. It is distributed because it encourages and enables decentralized security controls to protect all attack surfaces while being collaborative, allowing for an environment to integrate composable security services and teams to interact and work with one another.

During this session, Castañeda said CSMA carries four layers to enable collaborative and agile cybersecurity for businesses. The first one is security analytics and intelligence, a layer that combines different security tools’ data and insight to deliver deep threat analyses and the correct response to cyberattacks. It has also a distributed identity fabric, a layer that provides critical identity services to manage increasing assets, devices, and identities.

Castañeda said the third is consolidated policy and posture management, a layer enabling organizations to translate central policies to the native configurations of security tools. Consolidated dashboards, a layer that provides a single-pane-ofglass security system, is the fourth character.

He said the pandemic has forced business organizations to craft a new working environment

and even cater to their consumers’ digital needs and at the same time accelerate their digital transformation. For instance, organizations began migrating the applications inside their on-premises data centers onto the cloud environment and so on.

According to Fortinet Philippines, the closures of most workplaces amid the pandemic catapulted employers to adopt a work-from-anywhere setup for their employees.

Furthermore, a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group and The Network showed that this model will continue to function and grow, as 89 percent of the 208,807 respondents across 190 countries prefer remote or hybrid work postpandemic.

On the downside, Castañeda said this broadens digital attack surfaces, increases sophisticated cyber threats, and provides a complex ecosystem for every organization. He said this leads to a gap in cybersecurity skills as one of the main concerns of businesses in today’s world.

Meanwhile, in a report published by Gartner, organizations will spend an estimated $170 billion on cybersecurity by 2022. However, Cybersecurity Ventures revealed that the costs of cybercrimes worldwide will reach $10.5 trillion every year by 2025.

A CHAIN of convenience stores has launched a fun campaign, called “7-Election,” where you can choose a cup of coffee or a drink based on the presidential candidate you’re voting for.

“7-Election aims to be a safe and fun space for everyone to show their support just by purchasing their favorite 7-Eleven drinks. Repeat votes are totally welcome. Unlike the official national elections, there’s no age and voting limit at 7-Election mock poll. 7-Eleven encourages responsible voting while still injecting fun amid the upcoming polls,” said convenience store chain 7-Eleven of their ongoing campaign #SpeakCup. With 7-Election, which 7-Eleven has extended until May 4, you can purchase GULP or City Cafe drinks in 7-Eleven branches nationwide. The drink or coffee will come in a candidate’s cup. You can also choose a cup that says undecided. One cup is equal to one barcode, which allows you to vote. The results can be viewed on www.7-election.com.ph.

As of April 12 in the 7-Election polls, 16 percent was undecided. Bongbong Marcos was leading by 45 percent, Vice President Leni Robredo was at 24 percent, Isko Moreno at 7 percent and Manny Pacquiao and Panfilo Lacson at 4 percent.

I viewed the breakdown and I was surprised to see how many people had already voted. The undecided votes totaled 524,637 as of April 12, while 1,444,855 voted for Marcos and 762,443 for Robredo.

These results are, of course, not in any way official and based on scientific methods. The convenience store chain, however, has claimed 7-Election has accurately predicted the winner of the 2010 and 2016 presidential election.

Now, if only the actual elections would be as fun and painless, and the results so easily accepted by all parties concerned.

Unfortunately, the election in the Philippines, whether it is local or national, is always a circus.

They’re like fiestas, complete with gossip and fights.

Since 2010, the Commission on Elections has used an automated election system in tabulating votes. Benigno Aquino III, the 15th President of the Philippines, was the first president elected under this system. According to Smartmatic, which specializes in cybersecurity technologies for elections and government systems, “in just one and a half hours after the polls closed, 40 percent of results had been transmitted and tallied” in 2010. The second president elected under the AES in 2016 was President Rodrigo Duterte.

No system is infallible, of course. But as a voter and citizen of this country, I believe that automated elections are way better than a manual count, which is more prone to errors. In 2019, the Random Manual Audit Committee of the Comelec reported a 99-percent accuracy rate using the Automated Elections System, the highest ever recorded in the last four nationwide automated polls in the country before 2022.

What has changed in the 2022 elections is the role being played by social media. According to Aries A. Arugay, professor of Political Science at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and a Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS—Yusof Ishak Institute, the campaign strategies of the candidates are expected to be highly reliant on social media largely due to strengthened use of social-media platforms and restrictions brought about by the pandemic.

“Election campaigns so far have also exhibited a more intense and varied use of social media to sow disinformation and fake news to either support or undermine certain candidates. Unfortunately, these concerns currently cannot be addressed, given the inadequate regulations and the absence of a specific law that regulates social-media use in electoral campaigns in the Philippines,” said Arugay in his paper, titled “2022/33 Stronger Social Media Influence in the 2022 Philippine Elections.”

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos

• Saturday-Sunday April 16-17, 2022 A11

When going ‘mini’ isn’t settling for less

STAY CONNECTED AND CELEBRATE EASTER FAMILY WEEKEND AS Filipinos mark Easter, Globe At Home goes back to celebrating family connections with GFiber, Globe’s fiber network which offers the strongest Internet connection families can count on for their connectivity needs.

Globe At Home has prepared an easy and fun Easter weekend activity to inspire families to level-up their bonding moments beyond video streaming and online gaming.

“Easter is a time to gather with family and celebrate beginnings. As we come out of the health crisis, families can bond better with more options for activities they can do together through strong and reliable connectivity,” said Barbie Dapul, Globe At Home vice president for marketing.

Here are some fun activities you can do with your family this Easter Strong Family Weekend: ■ GO ON A VIRTUAL EASTER EGG HUNT. Take part in a virtual egg hunt where parents and their kids can collect five Easter eggs with Globe At Home.

They can also test their artistic skills by designing an egg to claim their Easter weekend freebies.

■ TAKE FUN PHOTOS TOGETHER AT THE FAMILY STRONG PHOTO BOOTH. To make the day extra special, families can take fun photos together in the Family Strong photo booth. They can show their goofy side in front of the mirror, customize their photo, print it on the spot, or be sent a soft copy.

■ WIN PRIZES AT THE EASTER STRONG FAMILY WEEKEND BOOTH. Guests also get a chance to win treats at the Easter Strong Family Weekend booth and win freebies when they finish all the challenges or avail of the Globe At Home GFiber Unli Plan.

Join Globe At Home as they bring a stronger connection to the home so that families can experience a world of richer content and explore their horizons further.

Spot the Globe At Home booths nationwide and be part of the Easter Strong Family Weekend on April 17. More information is available at the Globe At Home Facebook page.

D

URING Holy Week last year, I remember Metro Manila and “NCR Plus” were again placed under strict enhanced community quarantine because of the rising cases of

Covid-19.

Thankfully, things are much better—except for what’s happening in Ukraine. As the world gradually opens up, we can finally travel again, immerse ourselves in foreign cultures, soak in mesmerizing landscapes—and more importantly share those #revengetravel moments. As that famous song goes, “Roam if you want to, roam around the world!”

Any seasoned traveler would tell you the importance of having a reliable data roaming service when traveling overseas as it will be your partner or guide throughout your trip. Having data can mean life or getting lost—especially if you are alone in a new country. If you are among those who are traveling abroad in the next few weeks, save yourself some hassle with Smart GigaRoam. The roaming service is available in 1GB, 3GB, 8GB, and 100GB, and provides open access data to all sites with validity periods ranging from 5 to 30 days. Smart has partnered with 80 telco partners so you could enjoy 5G service in 50 countries around the world including Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Guam, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and United States of America, among others.

There are also several options to choose from depending on your needs: RoamSurf is a convenient plan that auto-subscribes and renews a traveler to a data plan daily; Roam Facebook for the Facebookheavy user; and Roam Lite, a sachet setup for the budget-friendly traveler. To subscribe, just visit gigaroam.smart.com.ph and bookmark the roaming promo, or download GigaLife and look for the roaming tab.

For those of us that are still #TeamBahay, and still waiting for our turn to travel, well, you can use this time to do more research on your next destination and maybe do some “immersion” via those documentaries and shows you can stream online. If you are looking for an affordable entertainment device, the realme pad mini might just be the one you need.

As that famous quote says, “Good things come in small packages.”

While large screen tablets are great productivity machines, especially for designers and those working as creatives, they are also heavier, less portable, and their higher price tag also makes them less accessible.

Tablets that have 8-inch screens, on the other hand, are best for mobile use as you could easily slip them into your bags. This makes smaller tablets, like the realme pad mini, ideal for people who need

another device that has a bigger screen than their smartphones.

Released earlier this month, the realme pad mini distinguishes itself from other tablets with its metal chassis that makes it look more premium. The frame is flat on the sides with rounded edges measuring about 7.6mm in thickness and weighs about 372g.

It has an 8.7-inch IPS screen with a 1340 x 800 resolution that is clear and bright enough for most tasks. If you are planning to use it for long periods to surf the Internet to do some research, the eye comfort mode lowers blue light emission, reducing eye fatigue. In reading mode, the visual experience resembles the pages of a book. At night, turn on “Dark Mode” to activate a gentler, darker interface that helps you avoid harsh light, taking care of your eyes.

Complementing the display is a dual speaker setup that can get real loud for that immersive experience.

If you want a more private viewing experience you can simply plug your earphones in as it has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

To test the realme pad mini, I was supposed to watch those new releases on Netflix as I got a free subscription with my Smart Signature plan. Instead, I got hooked on the content I found on the GigaPlay app.

If you haven’t heard, GigaPlay will be free until July 15 for subscribers. All you have to do is download the GigaPlay app on the App Store or Google Play Store and connect your phone to Smart or TNT mobile data or PLDT Home WiFi while accessing the app.

If you are a K-drama fan, you’ll find exclusive blockbuster shows from Korea’s top drama network tvN, such as Jirisan, Military Prosecutor Doberman, and City Girls on the Climb. There are also original content featuring Korean stars Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin, Park Seo-jun, and Cha Eun-woo, as well as Thai superstars Mario Maurer, Nonkul Chanon, and Gulf Kanawut.

The first thing I watched was Ben&Ben’s Kuwaderno virtual concert. The dual stereo speakers of the realme pad mini did a fine job and the volume was impressively loud, although I’d keep it at 80 percent to avoid distortion. The vocals were quite clear but it clearly lacked bass. There are other concerts and awards shows to watch like the iHeart Radio Music Festival, Jingle Ball, American Music Awards, and the Mnet Asian Music Awards.

If you are a basketball fan, you definitely have to check out GigaPlay, as you can watch games from the PBA, NBL FIBA World Cup, and even the NBA Playoffs on NBA TV. For collegiate sports, the platform is also the official digital streaming partner of the ongoing UAAP basketball, volleyball, and cheer dance competition.

To help me sleep, I usually read books or comics, and since the realme pad mini is just about the same size as a comic book, it makes for the perfect bedside companion.

Keeping things running smoothly is the Unisoc T616 chipset with 4GB of RAM+ 64GB of storage expandable up to 1TB via its dedicated microSD slot.

Just make sure you don’t open a lot of apps to avoid lag. The 6,400mAh battery is enough to keep you entertained for an entire day with 18W fast charging support. The realme Pad mini runs on realme UI based on Android 11. There’s not much bloatware preinstalled but there is YouTube Kids and Kids Space, so it probably means that realme is also targeting younger kids for this tablet. I just hope they offer a

screen protector and some protective case soon.

Can you play games on the realme pad mini?

Generally, yes—I even tried Genshin Impact, and it’s playable as long as you keep the settings low. But this really isn’t a gaming tablet so expect some hiccups.

I suggest you stick to those casual puzzle games and those that aren’t too demanding. As for cameras, the realme pad mini packs a decent 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. Photos taken outdoors and well-lighted situations are usable and the front camera is good enough for video calls.

Overall, the realme Pad mini is a capable entertainment device for those looking for a compact tablet.

It looks and feels premium, great for streaming movies and just the right size for reading ebooks and comics, plus it even has 4G LTE connectivity if you want to use it as a phone. The 3GB + 32GB LTE version is priced at P9,990, but I suggest you wait for a sale event and go for the 4GB+64GB 4G LTE priced at P11,990 instead. ■

Elon Musk accused of breaking law while buying Twitter stock SAN FRANCISCO—Elon Musk’s huge Twitter investment took a new twist Tuesday with the filing of a lawsuit alleging that the colorful billionaire illegally delayed disclosing his stake in the social-media company so he could buy more shares at lower prices.

The complaint in New York federal court accuses Musk of violating a regulatory deadline to reveal he had accumulated a stake of at least 5 percent.

Instead, according to the complaint, Musk didn’t disclose his position in Twitter until he’d almost doubled his stake to more than 9 percent.

That strategy, the lawsuit alleges, hurt less wealthy investors who sold shares in the San Francisco company in the nearly two weeks before Musk acknowledged holding a major stake.

Musk’s regulatory filings show that he bought a little more than 620,000 shares at $36.83 apiece on January 31 and then continued to accumulate more

shares on nearly every single trading day through April 1. Musk, best known as CEO of the electric car maker Tesla, held 73.1 million Twitter shares as of the most recent count Monday. That represents a 9.1-percent stake in Twitter.

The lawsuit alleges that by March 14, Musk’s stake in Twitter had reached a 5 percent threshold that required him to publicly disclose his holdings under US securities law by March 24. Musk didn’t make the required disclosure until April 4.

That revelation caused Twitter’s stock to soar 27 percent from its April 1 close to nearly $50 by the end of April 4’s trading, depriving investors who sold shares before Musk’s improperly delayed disclosure the chance to realize significant gains, according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of an investor named Marc Bain Rasella.

Musk, meanwhile, was able to continue to buy

shares that traded in prices ranging from $37.69 to $40.96.

The lawsuit is seeking to be certified as a class action representing Twitter shareholders who sold shares between March 24 and April 4, a process that could take a year or more.

Musk spent about $2.6 billion on Twitter stock—a fraction of his estimated wealth of $265 billion, the largest individual fortune in the world. In a regulatory filing Monday, Musk disclosed he may increase his stake after backing out of an agreement reached last week to join Twitter’s board of directors.

Jacob Walker, one of the lawyers that filed the lawsuit against Musk, told The Associated Press that he hadn’t reached out to the Securities and Exchange Commission about Musk’s alleged violations about the disclosure of his Twitter stake. “I assume the SEC is well aware of what he did,” Walker said.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

The SEC and Musk have been wrangling in court since 2018 when Musk and Tesla agreed to pay a $40 million fine to settle allegations that he used his Twitter account to mislead investors about a potential buyout of the electric car company that never materialized.

As part of that deal, Musk was supposed to obtain legal approval for his tweets about information that could affect Tesla’s stock price—a provision that regulators contend he has occasionally violated and that he now argues unfairly muzzles him.

Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment posted on Twitter, where he often shares his opinion and thoughts. Alex Spiro, a New York lawyer representing Musk in his ongoing dispute with the SEC, also didn’t immediately respond to a query from The Associated Press. AP

Sports BusinessMirror

By Tim Reynolds The Associated Press

T

HE votes are in. Over the coming days and weeks, the National Basketball Association (NBA) will announce the various award-winners for this regular season. And while nobody knows with absolute certainty where any of the trophies are going yet, this much is known: The Most Valuable Player (MVP) is going to be an international player.

Again.

Prepare for history, because it’s coming. The consensus seems to be that this season’s MVP will be either Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid or Giannis Antetokounmpo. Jokic is from Serbia. Embiid from Cameroon.

G

| Saturday-Sunday, April 16-17, 2022 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

NBA MVP, AGAIN, FROM OVERSEAS

Antetokounmpo from Greece, with ties to Nigeria. When the winner is revealed, it’ll be the fourth consecutive season in which the MVP won’t have been born in the US— something that has never happened.

Nor has this: If Jokic, Embiid and Antetokounmpo finish 1-2-3 in the voting, in whatever order, it’ll mark the first time in NBA history that the top three MVP votegetters are foreign players.

Jokic is the reigning MVP and made a brilliant case this season. Averages of 27 points, 14 rebounds and just under eight assists per game are crazy numbers. Nobody has ever finished a season with those averages, which only further strengthens the arguments for Jokic to go back-to-back.

“I know I’m very biased.

I admit that wholeheartedly,” Denver coach Michael Malone said.

“The MVP isn’t even a competition. I mean, there’s other great players. I’m not saying they’re not great players.

But what Nikola Jokic has done this year, with this team, with everything we’ve had to go through, is incredible.

He was good last year. He’s even better this year.”

Embiid won the scoring title, averaging 30.6 points and almost 12 rebounds. Throw in the four assists per game, and Embiid finished with averages that nobody has had since Bob McAdoo in 1975-76.

“I don’t do a lot of campaigning,” Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers said. “Joel has campaigned enough with his play.”

Antetokounmpo’s final numbers in a season in which Milwaukee is defending the NBA championship were 29.9 points, 11.6 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game. The numbers are eerily similar—right down to his 55.3 percent field goal rate—to

Blatter, Platini trial set in June in Swiss court ENEVA—Former Fifa officials Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini will go on trial for fraud and other offenses in June, Switzerland’s federal criminal court said Tuesday.

The court set the trial to be heard before a panel of three judges on 11 days from June 8 to 22. Verdicts could be announced several weeks later by the court in Bellinzona.

The trial will begin more than six-and-a-half years after criminal proceedings were opened, first against Blatter, for a 2011 payment of 2 million Swiss francs (then $2 million) he authorized Fifa to make to Platini.

Platini sent a written request to Fifa in January 2011 to be paid backdated additional salary for working as a presidential adviser in Blatter’s first term, from 1998-2002.

The allegations revealed by Swiss federal prosecutors in September 2015 removed Blatter early from the Fifa presidency and ultimately ended Platini’s campaign to succeed him. Platini was also ousted as UEFA president after he was banned from soccer because of the payment.

Blatter has been charged with fraud, mismanagement, misappropriation of Fifa funds and forgery of a document. Platini has been charged with fraud, misappropriation, forgery and as an accomplice to Blatter’s alleged mismanagement.

Fraud and forgery charges can be punished in Switzerland with jail sentences of up to five years.

Blatter, who turned 86 last month, and Platini, who turns 67 on the scheduled 10th day of the trial in June, have denied wrongdoing. They

A12

have cited a verbal agreement more than 20 years ago for the money to be paid eventually.

When Blatter cleared the Fifa payment in 2011 he was preparing to campaign for re-election in a contest against Mohamed bin Hammam of Qatar, where Platini’s influence with European voters was seen as a key factor.

“The evidence gathered by the (attorney general’s office) has corroborated that this payment to Platini was made without a legal basis,” federal prosecutors said last year when the two men were indicted.

Fifa also paid the former France great almost 230,000 Swiss francs in social insurance, the court said Tuesday.

Blatter was under suspicion for five years before Platini was placed under formal investigation in 2020 when a different lead prosecutor was handling the case. Several months later, the more serious allegation of fraud was included against both men.

In 2015, the Fifa ethics committee suspended both men from soccer for six years. Platini’s ban was later reduced on appeal to four years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and he was cleared to return to soccer duty in October 2019.

Before Blatter’s sanction expired last year, Fifa banned him a second time for financial wrongdoing linked to management bonuses for successfully staging the World Cup. Blatter had a serious bout of ill health and was placed in an induced coma after undergoing heart surgery in December 2020, which delayed a final round of questioning by Swiss authorities. AP

Antetokounmpo’s MVP season two years ago. And in terms of per-game averages, nobody has averaged that many points, rebounds and assists since Wilt Chamberlain in 1965-66.

“He sets the tone for everything,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said.

The international flavor of the NBA isn’t so much of a flavor anymore. It’s not a sprinkle, not a garnish. It’s a very real—and highly talented—segment of the NBA player population, with the MVP leaders and Dallas’s Luka Doncic among those deservedly carrying the superstar banner into these playoffs that start with play-in games Tuesday and then in earnest with firstround games beginning Saturday.

Only Stephen Curry, who finished third last season, stopped the Jokic-Embiid-

Antetokounmpo 1-2-3 finish in the MVP race a year ago. This year, nobody figures to have a real chance to break up the trio. FanDuel Sportsbook says Jokic is the heavy favorite, with Embiid and Antetokounmpo the only others with a

realistic chance.

After that: the fourth choice is Devin Booker of the Phoenix Suns, at 100-1.

It wasn’t an easy choice. Most of the award choices weren’t this season. The panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters who cover the league and did the voting probably won’t be in unanimous agreement on anything. And serious arguments can be made in many cases, particularly defensive player of the year and the All-Defensive team, quite possibly the most subjective of all the categories.

Coach of the year has a slew of candidates. Rookie of the year got muddled toward the end of the season. The All-NBA team will be a circus, especially since Embiid and Jokic are both centers and one of them will either not make the first team or make the first team as a forward. Either way, that’s a travesty.

The NBA still insists on choosing an All-NBA team by position—two guards, two forwards, one center— in a league that has largely gone positionless.

But the MVP is the big one, obviously.

If the definition is player most valuable to his team, then it almost has to be Jokic. Without Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., the Nuggets still made the playoffs because their center can do just about everything and do it all better than just about everyone else.

If the definition is player that was most dominant, the argument shifts toward Embiid. When he was at his best this season, he couldn’t be guarded.

And if the definition is best player—which is what the award seems to have become—then it should be Antetokounmpo. He can get to the rim whenever he wants on offense, and he’s in the conversation again for best defensive player. The dominance at both ends can’t be understated. AP

THE consensus seems to be that this season’s Most Valuable Player will be either (from left) Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo or Joel Embiid. AP

Cuban boxers can go professional under deal with Mexican promoter

H

AVANA—Cuban boxers will be allowed to fight professionally for the first time since the 1960s under a deal with a Mexican promoter, officials said.

The scope of the deal announced Monday wasn’t immediately clear.

The Mexican promoter, Golden Ring, appears to operate primarily in Aguascalientes, a city of nearly 900,000 people in north-central Mexico.

It held an event last year with Cubans participating on an amateur basis. The first bouts under the new agreement are scheduled for May, according to Cuban officials.

Cuba has been a global power in boxing on the amateur level, focusing heavily on Olympic success. It won four gold medals at the past Tokyo Olympics.

But for decades, Cuban sporting officials shunned the professional

sport and lauded champions such as Teófilo Stevenson and Félix Savón never went pro.

“The moment has come. We have spent years studying this possibility,” said Ariel Sainz, vice president of the official Institute of Sport, appearing on state television Monday night.

“In professional boxing now there are opportunities for our athletes that we can perfectly well utilize.”

He also noted it would allow athletes to improve their incomes.

Many Cuban athletes from other sports have left the island in recent decades to seek a lucrative professional career not available at home under Cuba’s socialist system.

Under the deal, Cuban officials said the boxers would get 80 percent of the earnings while trainers, doctors and the federation would split the remaining 20 percent.

Alberto Puig, president of the

CUBA’S Julio Cesar La Cruz reacts after defeating Muslim Gadzhimagomedov of the Russian Olympic Committee at the Tokyo Olympics last August. AP

Cuban Federation of Boxing, said that professional boxing had “humanized” itself in recent years and argued there are now few differences in the rules.

RED FLAG FOR PROMOTER

SOME of the biggest figures in boxing have been urged to cut ties with a promoter who fronts an Irish organized crime gang targeted with sanctions by the American government on Tuesday.

The US ambassador to Ireland, Claire Cronin, said at a news conference in Dublin that the department of the treasury is offering a reward of $5 million for information that will lead to the “financial destruction” of the Kinahan crime gang or the arrest and conviction of its leaders.

One of the heads of the gang who was named was Daniel Kinahan, a founder of boxing management company MTK Global. Kinahan has been pictured with world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury and has attempted to organize fights for him, including a proposed all-British superfight against Anthony Joshua that never materialized.

Last month, Kinahan was pictured at a boxing event in Dubai—where he is now based—with World Boxing Council (WBC) president Mauricio Sulaiman.

Speaking at the news conference in Dublin, Irish police commissioner Drew Harris said: “What was implicit before, and what some individuals could choose to ignore, is absolutely explicit—if you deal with the individuals who are sanctioned as part of the Kinahan organized crime gang, you are dealing with criminals engaged in drug trafficking. And, indeed, as we have seen here very tragically in Ireland and also in Spain, murderous feuds who will resort to vicious actions up to and including murder.”

Asked specifically about Kinahan’s links to sports, the commissioner said: “If you deal with these individuals who have been sanctioned, or these entities who are being sanctioned, you are involved in a criminal network. AP “I’d ask them to look to their own business, at the probity of their own business and the relationship with their fans and, really, is this something they want to be involved with in terms of their legitimate business. I think the answer to that is a resounding no.” AP

Fifa puts up own streaming platform

L

ONDON—Fifa is getting into the streaming platform business with a soccer version of Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The service is free and largely featuring documentaries and some live games at the launch but it could eventually be a way for Fifa to broadcast World Cup matches itself at a cost.

While increasingly positioning itself as a rival to existing media companies, Fifa+ will also be used by the governing body to promote its sponsors.

“There is no plan to charge a subscription fee for the service, that doesn’t mean to say that we may not evolve over time should there be a value proposition that allows us to charge subscription if we step into premium rights or adopt other kind of models,” Fifa director of strategy Charlotte Burr said. “But there will always be a free experience on Fifa+.”

Geo-blocking can be used to limit matches broadcast on Fifa+ to specific territories. Fifa was less clear if the platform will be an accessible means of watching World Cup qualifiers that are often not available to view widely as each federation is able to sell the rights and some confederations bundle them together.

Fifa said the live matches would be from competitions previously lacking coverage, initially with 1,400 games streamed each month.

The launch could see Fifa shift content off YouTube that it has previously used to broadcast classic matches and sports politics events.

The recent Fifa Congress in Qatar was not streamed on the longstanding video sharing website unlike previously.

Fifa chief commercial officer Kay Madati said “we’re a bit more strategic about what goes where and when.” AP

BusinessMirror

April 16-17, 2022

‘Is It Cake?’ feeds viewers visual catharsis for uncertain times

2

BusinessMirror APRIL 16-17, 2022 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

RAISING AWARENESS

Agaw Agimat leads all performers in 420 ‘advofest’

P

By Stephanie Joy Ching

ROMOTED as an environmental “advofest” (advocacy festival), 420 Movement PH is the brainchild of socially-aware musicians, artists and advocates who seek to use their platform to raise awareness on environmental issues.

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

Group Creative Director : Eduardo A. Davad Graphic Designers Contributing Writers

Columnists

: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Darwin Fernandez, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez : Kaye Villagomez-

With performances by Agaw Agimat, The Chongkeys, Piranha, Orb of Blood, Slowdough, and many others, the festival is set to be a whole day affair this coming April 20 at El Zamba Beachfront, Sitio Liw-Liwliwa, San Felipe, Zambales.

“It’s a festival for arts and music, but mostly it’s a movement,” said Benjie Estanislao of the Chongkeys. “We are trying to put substance back into the festival so we can help out in spreading the information and educating the people.”

Though the main focus of the festival is for the awareness of the medical use of cannabis, 420 Movement PH also advocates for climate change awareness.

As the subculture of cannabis is inextricably intertwined with love of nature, simple living, and compassion, the organizers feel that it is right to also bring up these issues during the festival.

“We are pushing for medical

use of cannabis, but if you enter into the agriculture, hemp can actually help so much, kaya medyo nakikita namin na tama na ipagsabay yung dalawa,” said Estanislao.

As climate change is one of the most existential threats to mankind in contemporary history, the organizers feel that it is their duty to relay this message to their followers and uplift the lawmakers, activists, and NGOs who are fighting for this cause.

“Kami ay sumusuporta lang sa mga proponents ng advocacy,” commented Renmin Nadela of Agaw Agimat, “Sila yung talagang nandoon sa frontline, and kami, we just want to contribute through the festival, through music and the arts, and yun naman ang aming ambag,” Described by Estanislao as a “festival where you don’t just come to watch bands”, the festival also places emphasis on self-care and

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AGAW Agimat (Photo by Val Verzosa from the band's Facebook page)

environmental appreciation, as the daytime activities include a yoga session, volleyball match, dreadlocks session, and surfing lessons for all attendees. Attendees can also have the option to get creative with adorning their bodies with tattoo booths and face paint sessions. Merchants will also be selling their products throughout the event as a way to support local businesses. But most importantly, the festival will also have speakers from various advocacy groups, NGOs and lawmakers that will help educate festival participants on the many ways they can help the environment.

“We invited key personalities ng mga NGOs who have been pushing for this advocacy to share their knowledge, so may mga speakers kaming ininvite to give enlightenment to the audience kung ano yung ipinaglalaban namin,” concludes Nadela, “Sa madaling salita, this festival is geared towards enlightenment while enjoying great music and fun activities.”

The 420 Movement PH Festival is presented by Guerrilla Wear and Musikero (Musika - Sining at Kultura, para sa Reporma a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) organized by musicians for musicians.

Tickets for 420 PH are available for purchase on the 420 Movement PH website at www.420movementph.com.

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soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | APRIL 16-17, 2022

BUSINESS

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SoundSampler

EASTER CODA

by Tony M. Maghirang

Praise worship and other new OPM Singles

JANINE Danielle and EJ de Perio

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ANINE DANIELLE, “Why Do You Love Me? Up-and-coming artist Janine Danielle takes music to a more meaningful worship experience in ‘Why Do You Love Me,” an inspirational ballad written and composed specifically for her by Moira Dela Torre, and Moira’s husband, award-winning musician Jason Hernandez.

“The song is about God’s unconditional love,” says Danielle.

“It’s the kind of love that you could never earn no matter how good you are and a love that you could never lose no matter how messed up you are.”

The lyrics were inspired by the parallels in the life stories of Moira and Danielle who both grew up in a broken family and were both raised by strong single moms. It was when they encountered God’s love that they felt safe and secure.

EJ DE PERIO, “Buntong Hininga” EJ De Perio’s latest release is an ethereal sonic treat that provides an interesting take on a conversation between De Perio and God. Known as a promising singer-songwriter with mellow folk and pop sensibilities, EJ De Perio wrote ‘Buntong Hininga’

DWTA based on his own dream.

I have dreamt I was falling and falling down,” De Perio tells. “I was afraid of the dark and I couldn’t even move.. But then, I rested and surrendered to my dreams, and I saw stars and heard voices singing in harmony. I woke up crying and wrote everything I felt.

It’s like a conversation between God and me.”

DWTA, “Santigwar” FOLK-POP singer-songwriter dwta (formerly known as Jhasmine Villanueva) integrates Bicolano folklore with interpretive dancing on the music video of her new single “Santigwar,” Drawing inspiration from the indigenous healing ritual practiced commonly in some rural areas of the country, the video clip explores themes of mysticism in telling a story of two individuals fighting for love against all odds.

“As far as the concept for the MV, we wanted to really incorporate visually the traditional practice of Santigwar, in the middle of a blooming relationship between a girl and a boy,” the promising newcomer explains. “In most cases, our elders taught us that anything unexplainable can be cleansed or healed through a Santigwar. When

we get a reading from a Santigwar, the usual case is that an elemental may have played or got annoyed with us causing us to get sick.”

UE JAM SESSIONS, “Pinto” THE UE Jam Sessions are taking a stand for responsible voting.

Their rousing anthem titled “Pinto,” which encourages the youth to support candidates who advocate for progress and genuine reform, is re-released with a music video directed by Vivian Tricia Rabano, a 16-year-old UE student.

The visual treatment, according to a statement released by the music organization, portrays “true-to-life scenarios that should wake up the audience’s senses to vote wisely in the upcoming 2022 elections. It sends a strong message to all the voters coming from the young generation to vote for the good of their future. In their own little way, they want to make their voices heard and appeal to our fellow countrymen to elect propeople candidates with compelling track records.”

PARTY PACE, “Sensitive Sun” THE first release from Party Pace is funk soul number called “Sensitive Sun”. When the track plays, it

brings up surfers riding the waves into the sunset. Or biking in a field of grass in the afternoon with the wind blowing by.

Its sunny disposition can inspire you to get out and experience the outdoors, and it’s something that you can play while enjoying the moment as it comes wherever you are. While an instrumental track, its melodies can inspire the listener to come up with her own interpretation of the appropriate lyrics.

FERDINAND ARAGON, “Sulagma” INDIE folk singer-songwriter from Cebu City, Ferdinand Aragon releases “Sulagma,” a Vispop song that incorporates production that brings back the groovy vibe of 1980s. It’s sure to make the listener dance to the beat (or at least bop his heads to it). The song takes the listener way above the stratosphere into outer space and let him chill there for the length of its runtime.

“Sulagma” is a Cebuano word that means coincidence. The main theme of the song is “Di’ ko mutuo og sulagma” which translates to “I dont believe in coincidences.”

‘Is It Cake?’ feeds viewers visual catharsis for uncertain times

By Maggie Cao

equally fascinates, even if viewers have no fondant-focused aspirations.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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doubt that even Netflix expected Is It Cake? to be such a hit.

The premise, if you haven’t already binged the TV series, involves professional bakers trying to fool judges by creating cakes that don’t look like dessert but instead appear to be everyday commodities— purses, toys, fast food. But while most critics see this as just another iteration of mindless TV, I see Is It Cake? as deeply tied to a cultural moment in which deception— and learning how to recognize it—has become a part of everyday life.

A show like Is It Cake? offers a safe way for viewers to test their capacity to spot a fake. This may seem like a stretch; cake and conspiracy are hardly the same thing.

Yet as an art historian who researches the history of visual deception, I’ve noticed that throughout American history, moments of social anxiety around truth tend to be accompanied by similar “fool the eye” pop culture phenomena, from P.T. Barnum’s hoaxes to a painting technique called “trompe l’oeil.”

Guessing games In the last decades of the 19th century, while the art world was enamored with Van Gogh and Matisse, middle-class Americans became obsessed with trompe l’oeil paintings—hyperrealistic still lifes that featured life-size everyday objects. They looked so real that people reportedly tried to grab painted violins and dollar bills off the wall.

Even those prone to suspicion could fall

A sugary allegory

Host Mikey Day in the 2022 Netflix game-show cooking competition series Is it Cake?, described as a show where “skilled cake artists create mouthwatering replicas of handbags, sewing machines and more in a mind-bending baking contest inspired by a popular meme.” victim, because the paintings were exhibited without frames and in atypical settings like pubs, shop windows and hotel lobbies.

In these quintessential urban public spaces, the act of being fooled became a collective social experience, much as it is on Is It Cake?

Not only are viewers taking pleasure in the failure of the on-screen judges, but the judges themselves must also reach a collective verdict after 20 seconds of debate.

One particular 1890 painting of stamps is remarkably reminiscent of a bit called “Cash or Cake” that closes out each episode of Is It Cake? The painting, by Jefferson Chalfant, unassumingly features two Lincoln stamps side by side, one painted, the other real. Below them, a painted news clipping invites viewers to decide which is which.

On the show, the winning baker faces this exact predicament when offered the opportunity to win bonus prize money: Guess which of two containers overflowing with cash is actual money, and which is cake. The point of the confounding exercise is to show that even the most talented il-

lusionists can be made the fool.

Self-conscious humor was also central to trompe l’oeil. Rather than signing their names as artists are apt to do, trompe l’oeil painters often painted their own photographs or letters addressed to their studio into their still lifes as an inside joke.

In the past, what fascinated Americans about trompe l’oeil was not just that they could be tricked by talented artists, but the how and why of their deceptions. The Secret Service questioned one painter named William Harnett after he painted a wrinkled five-dollar bill. Another, John Haberle, had one of his paintings forensically examined by a panel of experts who observed it under a lens and even rubbed off some of the paint.

This investigative penchant explains the curious genealogy of Is It Cake? The show traces its roots to a series of viral Instagram videos from 2020 that featured illusionistic cakes at their moment of denouement.

Most viral videos don’t become television series, but this one has because the esoteric process of creating the illusion

Trompe l’oeil is an ancient art form, but it exploded in the United States, and nowhere else, in the 19th century because deception was a new and particularly American problem.

Cities and industries were growing more rapidly than ever before, and many Americans moving from rural areas faced urban anonymity for the first time. Cities were rife with crooked opportunists, from con artists to counterfeiters—the Anna Delveys and Tinder Swindlers of their day.

Trust was a tricky matter.

In this milieu, trompe l’oeil had a social function. It gave Americans an outlet for testing their discernment in a manageable and pleasurable way.

So it doesn’t surprise me that the gravitation toward a show like Is It Cake? is happening at a time when more ominous deceptions lurk in the media landscape. There are even moments when the show veers in darkly suggestive directions. In one episode, the bakers collectively try to educate host Mikey Day by teaching him the term “tiltscape,” which, they explain, has to do with the balance and weight distribution of baked goods. After Day uses the word in his appraisal of the contestants’ work, they later reveal that the term was a hoax all along–a sugary allegory for socially fueled misinformation.

At a time when we often don’t know if what we encounter on our screens can be trusted, it feels good to alleviate those anxieties with a show in which the only consequence of being fooled is cutting into a shoe that we assumed was a cake. The Conversation

For Easter, carrot cupcakes, cream cheese frosting

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here are lots of classic dishes for Easter dinner: rack or leg of lamb, baked ham, Easter Bread, asparagus sides.

But no one wants to miss dessert on a holiday, so make it a good one!

Carrots often make an appearance at Easter in some guise, often as a side dish. Maybe it’s a curtsy to the Easter bunny. Here, we take those carrots and turn them into a fairly traditional Easter dessert: carrot cake.

But we turn the carrot cake into cupcakes, with a creamy, tangy, chocolatey frosting, made with milk chocolate, sour cream and cream cheese. If you want to make your cupcakes look super Easter-y, pick up some cute Easter themed cupcake liners.

CARROT CUPCAKES WITH CHOCOLATE CREAM CHEESE FROSTING Makes 12 cupcakes For the cake: 1 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 cup finely shredded carrots 1/3 cup raisins (optional) 1/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional) 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup melted unsalted butter, cooled 2 large eggs 1/2 cup crushed pineapple in juice (not syrup), drained, or well-chopped fresh pineapple For the Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting: 6 ounces milk chocolate chips or chopped milk chocolate 1/2 cup sour cream 4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners, and spray them with nonstick spray.

2. In a medium bowl, stir together the

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flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Add the carrots and raisins and/or nuts, if using, and stir to combine well. In another large bowl, stir together the sugar, butter, eggs and pineapple until well blended. Add the flour in three batches, stirring after each addition just until combined.

3. Scoop the batter into the muffin liners, filling each a generous three-quarters full. Bake until a toothpick or wooden skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Cool in the muffin pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove the muffins from the pans and finish cooling on the wire racks.

4. While the cupcakes bake, make the frosting: Place a small saucepan inside a larger saucepan and add water to the larger pan so it comes up about ½ inch around the sides of the smaller pan. Add the chocolate chips to the small pan and heat over medium-high heat, whisking occasionally, until the water is

April 16-17, 2022

A carrot cupcake with cream cheese chocolate frosting AP gently simmering and the chips are melted.

Stir the sour cream and cream cheese into the chocolate, and continue whisking until the mixture is smooth and blended. Whisk in the vanilla. Allow to cool to room temperature (the frosting will thicken as it cools).

5. When the cupcakes have completely cooled, frost with the cooled frosting. AP