BusinessMirror August 30, 2020

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The DOT in 2018 launched an ambitious MICE Roadmap 2030 to raise the country’s MICE revenues to some P25 billion by 2030, from P4.6 billion in 2016. Covid-19 has derailed the roadmap, which was “based on the mechanisms of the conventional MICE that relies heavily on face-to-face encounter and gathering of business people.”

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

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Special to the BusinessMirror

N 2021, the Philippines will be hosting the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Global Summit, a prestigious event that attracts close to 1,000 participants, among them, the presidents and CEOs of the leading private travel companies in the world.

Although the Department of Tourism (DOT), which lobbied hard for the country to host the event, has declined to comment on it, the hosting was confirmed by Nigel David, WTTC’s regional director for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, in a recent web interview on travel aired over ANC. “We are actually going to be hosting a big event in the Philippines in Manila next year, 2021, it’s our Global Summit, where we bring the leaders of the travel and tourism sector together,” he said. (Due to the Covid-19 crisis, this year’s Global Summit slated in April in Cancun, where the formal announcement for the 2021 event should have been made, had been postponed to autumn, although no definite date has yet been set.)

As far as Meetings, Incentive tours, Conventions and Exhibitions (MICE) events go, landing the WTTC Global Summit 2021 is a feather in the cap of the Philippines. The event would give the DOT the chance to show off the country’s breathtaking tourist destinations, and allow local tourism stakeholders to listen to inspirational speakers on many pertinent global topics, as well as hobnob and share their views and insights with the world’s travel giants. (Last year, former US President Barack Obama was the headline speaker at the Global Summit in Seville, Spain.)

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AERIAL view of Busuanga Island, a recreational diving location due to the 12 World War II Japanese wrecks that were sunk by American navy bombings, on Coron Bay in Palawan. MIKHAIL DAVIDOVICH | DREAMSTIME.COM

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 48.6210

n JAPAN 0.4565 n UK 64.2283 n HK 6.2736 n CHINA 7.0520 n SINGAPORE 35.5807 n AUSTRALIA 35.2891 n EU 57.4846 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.9656

Source: BSP (August 28, 2020)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, August 30, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

LONG ROAD BACK Continued from A1

Roadmap to 2030

THE event will hopefully put the Philippines back on the radar of MICE organizers, and help the country reclaim its popularity as a world convention destination, which had its roots in its hosting of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund Annual Meeting in 1976. For that event, the Marcos administration had constructed the glamorous Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), still in use today.

By 1982, the Philippines ranked eighth worldwide and first in the Asian region in the annual listing of leading world convention destinations in 1982. By 2016, however, the country placed 48th out of the 116 countries worldwide, and 14th of 35 countries in the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East regions in terms of having the most number of meetings, according to the International Congress and Convention Association. In terms of exhibitions, data provided by the DOT showed that of the 334 exhibitions held in large-scale venues in the country in 2016, only 11 percent were international events.

Thus, the DOT in 2018 launched an ambitious MICE Roadmap 2030, which aims to raise the country’s MICE revenues to some P25 billion by 2030, from P4.6 billion in 2016. The DOT also targets to increase the total number of usable space for exhibitions to over 170,895 square meters by 2030, from some 71,000 sq m in 2017, as

well as an annual 3-percent rise in MICE arrivals.

“With this roadmap, we can reclaim our rightful place as a MICE powerhouse,” said DOT Undersecretary for Tourism Development Benito C. Bengzon Jr. during the roadmap’s launch.

The DOT estimates that MICE accounts for 8 percent of the country’s total foreign arrivals, or 660,800 of the 8.26 million total inbound tourists in 2019. Although this appears to be an overestimation, compare this with Singapore, which pegged its MICE arrivals at some 3 million in 2018.

Covid-19, of course, has derailed said roadmap, which was “based on the mechanisms of the conventional MICE that relies heavily on faceto-face encounter and gathering of business people,” Bengzon told the BusinessMirror in an e-mail. The roadmap’s targets will have to be “revisited in view of the current situation,” he added.

Losses from Covid-19

“WITH the travel restrictions in place, and with virtually no guests arriving in the country, MICE as an industry is suffering from enormous losses being out of business for the past seven months,” he noted.

A group of MICE organizers, the Philippine Association of Convention/Exhibition Organizers and Suppliers Inc. (Paceos), estimates revenue opportunity losses of P2.1 billion on canceled exhibitions and conferences to date, due to Covid-19 restrictions. And with this, said Paceos President Joel Pascual, at risk

are almost 9,000 jobs.

The organization spent a good part of the pandemic lockdown lobbying the government to “separate us from their general definition of mass gatherings because MICE is run under a controlled environment, and to craft our own hygiene and safety protocols to show government our efforts to mitigate the situation. Unfortunately, we have had no success on the separation from mass gathering definition, but at least the government has applied most of our recommended protocols and has given us official guidelines we can abide by once we are allowed to do MICE events,” he said. (The MICE guidelines are contained in Administrative Order 2020-006, which is available on DOT’s Facebook page.)

Aside from Covid-19, however, Pascual noted that among the challenges in the Philippines’s regaining its niche as a MICE location is its limited convention capacity. “With most venues fully booked, it is difficult to create new MICE events. Most venues are also privately owned. Unlike in other countries where most of the venues are owned by government with the realization of MICE’s contribution as catalysts to great economic activity, their governments continue to build convention centers.”

Among the large-scale convention centers, with leasable space of at least 3,000 sq m, are the Iloilo Convention Center; PICC in Pasay; SM Megatrade Hall in Megamall; the SMX Convention Centers in BGC, Bacolod, Davao and Manila;

and the World Trade Center in Pasay. An SMX Convention Center will also be completed at Clark, Pampanga, by 2021.

Virtual meetings

PERHAPS, the Covid-19 travel restrictions may just be the solution, albeit temporarily, to this backlog in convention space in the country.

The DOT is helping MICE organizers cope with the pandemic by issuing health and safety guidelines in the holding of events. “The pandemic has compelled us to rethink our strategies,” said Bengzon. “On the directive of [Tourism] Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, we will bank on technology to mount ‘hybrid’ MICE events. These events will maximize technology and will be deemed ‘safer’ as it will lessen physical interaction among participants.”

As such, many will be looking to the Philippine Travel Exchange (Phitex) on September 22-24, 2020, as a test case for a MICE event in the country, while Covid-19 rages.

According to Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) Chief Operating Officer Ma. Anthonette C. VelascoAllones, more than 100 Philippine sellers and 100 foreign buyers will gather in one online platform for business-to-business sessions and networking for the event, aptly themed, “Phitex Pivots: Business Unusual.”

“Amid the immense challenges for the tourism industry, TPB is leveraging on digital technology as a platform to sustain and explore new opportunities and markets,” she

explained. “With this e-conference setup, we endeavor to update our tourism market stakeholders from all over the world with the latest Philippine tourism offerings.”

What makes this year’s Phitex even more exciting, she said, is the hybrid aspect in which Philippine sellers will get a first-hand experience of travel in the new normal.

Panglao Island in Bohol will be the official venue of the sellers for the virtual networking with international buyers, where strict safety protocols are implemented to ensure participants’ well-being. This initiative will provide stakeholders new approaches to boost tourism.

“Only local sellers who agreed to stay in Panglao [24 confirmed out of 112], will be flown to Bohol for Phitex,” said Allones. “It is good that Bohol has its own RT-PCR lab ready for the swab upon arrival tests. But we are also coordinating with [Bohol] Gov. Arthur Yap on their protocols regarding swabbing of attendees,” she added. TPB is also coordinating with local carriers for the flights to Bohol.

Looking forward

THE DOT is eyeing Panglao, with its new airport and an array of natural and manmade attractions, as one of the first islands to reopen to international tourism once travel restrictions are lifted worldwide.

More known as a wedding destination, Bohol may yet show the way in which virtual MICE events can be held.

(See, “DOT eyes international ‘travel bubble’ with virus-free zones,” in the

BusinessMirror, June 10, 2020.)

Before Covid-19, the DOT singled out Metro Manila, Cebu, Iloilo and Davao as key MICE destinations for physical meetings.

Under the MICE roadmap, the DOT has also recommended the improvement of broadband service by “removing legal as well as economic barriers impeding fast and inexpensive Internet connection.”

With the reported approval of 1,502 out of 1,930 pending applications for telecommunications towers by local government units all over the country, major telcos assure better Internet connection— a must for virtual setups such as hybrid MICE events.

Moving forward, Pascual’s “optimistic forecast” is that the MICE industry can return to normal levels by the fourth quarter of 2021. “In the meantime, we are pivoting toward virtual events.

Though we are still strong believers that there is no replacement for the face-to-face meetings, we, nonetheless, have to explore the possibilities available under these new circumstances. There have been mixed results, but as they say, ‘Rome was not built in a day.’”

WTTC’s David also says changes might be in the offing for the group’s Global Summit next year in Manila, owing to Covid-19 concerns: “I’m sure there will be some changes to the format in order to adapt to the new changing normal, but we are committed to hosting this event in, with the Philippines next year.”

For now, virtual is all that matters.

Global ship orders may take a decade to mend as crisis builds

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By Krystal Chia & Annie Lee Bloomberg News

HERE’S hardly anyone buying new ships, with orders plunging to a 20-year low due to a potent combination of uncertainty over environmental regulations, the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and a lack of financing.

“The IMO has brought in significant, ambitious and important targets around emissions,” said Clarksons Research’s managing director Stephen Gordon.

It remains unclear what the exact policies and regulations might be

introduced and what technology will be adopted, he said. Ships are long-term investments, and buyers run the risk that their vessels will become obsolete.

The global shipping industry is in the midst of one of its big-

gest changes in a generation after stricter environmental rules kicked in at the start of the year.

Ship owners face paying more for cleaner fuel, retrofitting ships with pollution-reducing scrubbers, or even ordering new vessels. Compounding the uncertainty has been Covid-19, which has upended supply chains and stalled trade flows.

“Covid-19 has become the most immediate issue,” Gordon said. While challenges due to lockdown measures are easing, “the economic uncertainty, disruption to trade, and volatility in freight rates” caused by the virus are driving orders lower.

Demand growth for containers is expected to fall this year due to Covid-19, according to A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, which predicts a return to 2019 volumes in the early part of 2021. The world’s largest container line ordered only eight vessels in the second quarter, putting its order bookto-fleet ratio at 9.4 percent. Globally, the rate is about 8 percent, meaning orders for new ships are at a two-decade low, according to Clarksons’ Gordon.

“The virus is a further hit to demand that’s already barely even there,” said Rahul Kapoor, head of commodity analytics and research, maritime and trade at IHS Markit.

“With the pandemic’s hit to economic activity and supply chains, ordering new ships is now the lowest priority for companies.

They’re concentrating on just trying to maintain profit margins.”

The virus has also delayed the completion of shipbuilding projects, he said.

Finance crunch

SHIPOWNERS are also lacking the finances to make purchases, according to Ralph Leszczynski, head of research at shipbroker Banchero Costa & Co. “Most shipping markets are coming from a relatively poor decade, 2009 to 2019, in terms of earnings, so most shipowners do not have that much cash in their pockets,” he said. “External finance

is also in short supply as banks are now largely steering clear off shipping after the defaults they suffered after 2008.”

Still, fewer orders and slower fleet growth will likely bolster shipping rates. Lines are likely to continue to keep capacity in check into 2021 to minimize the impact from slowing global trade, said IHS Markit’s Kapoor.

That’s already translating to increasing costs for transporting goods by ocean liner, with one benchmark of trans-Pacific container rates more than doubling since late May to a record.

Bulk-carrier costs have also rebounded from a four-year low.

Maersk, which idled about 20 percent of its capacity in April before gradually reinstating it in subsequent months, saw earnings beat estimates in part due to improved freight rates.

Big ships, small ships

THE offshore sector has seen demand for oil rigs and supply vessels hammered as energy prices re-

main low and there’s little interest in new exploration investments, said Leszczynski. It’s a “gamble” to purchase an oil tanker amid uncertainty over demand, he said. While oil consumption has grown in the past two decades, climate-change mitigation efforts are spurring market expectations that appetite will decline.

While the coronavirus adds to short-term uncertainty, there’s a better medium-to-long term outlook. Qatar signed a deal in June worth around $19 billion with South Korean shipbuilders for more than 100 liquefied natural gas vessels, Maersk expects a progressive recovery in volumes and port operator DP World said it’s positive on fundamentals.

The shipbuilding sector is set to remain subdued for the next few years, with a revival possible eight to 10 years from now, said Leszczynski. Vessels built during the boom years of between 2007 and 2010 will require replacement, as most have a lifespan of about 20 to 25 years, he said.

THE hull of a Royal Canadian Navy vessel sits surrounded by scaffolding at the Point Hope Maritime shipyard in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, December 3, 2018.

JAMES MACDONALD/BLOOMBERG

“The virus is a further hit to demand that’s already barely even there. With the pandemic’s hit to economic activity and supply chains, ordering new ships is now the lowest priority for companies. They’re concentrating on just trying to maintain profit margins.”—Kapoor

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

The World BusinessMirror

Coronavirus tests spur political brawl over CDC shift, DOJ inquiry

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he Trump administration plunged deeper into a partisan divide over the federal Covid-19 response, stoking the debate over the role of politics in public health with a change to testing policy and an inquiry into deaths in states led

by Democrats.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people without symptoms don’t necessarily need a test, drawing a rebuke from health experts who said it would make it harder to track Covid19’s spread. And the Justice Department said it’s seeking information on why so many nursing home patients died in four states with Democratic governors, who quickly denounced the requests as politically motivated.

The moves, combined, could ar tificially lower the confirmed caseload and shift blame for deaths away from the administration—politically benefiting the president, whose polling numbers have fallen as cases rose. Public-health experts said they worry these actions, along with a debate over the role of politics in treatment and vaccine research, could impede the country’s ability to stem the new coronavirus.

“We politicize public health at the public’s peril,” said Howard Forman, director of the Yale School of Public Health’s health-care management program. No matter who is elected, “what’s happening now undermines our trust in our publichealth infrastructure and will doom our efforts to get maximum vaccine uptake.”

Brett Giroir, a top Trump administration official overseeing coronavirus testing, defended the CDC’s policy revision on a call with reporters on Wednesday. The new recommendations say testing may not be needed for asymptomatic close contacts and those who attended large, risky gatherings but lack symptoms. The change wasn’t influenced by the White House, he said, and is intended to clarify to the public the limitations of such screenings, not to reduce how many tests are conducted. He said health and science experts were involved, and the White House coronavirus task force signed off on it.

Giroir said that Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the administration’s most prominent

voices on the virus, was involved as well. However, Fauci was in surgery when the recommendations were presented to the task force on August 20, his press office said.

Fauci “was not present for the meeting where the changes to the guidelines were discussed in detail and ultimately adopted by the Task Force,” NIAID said in a statement. While he’d seen an earlier version, “without having the benefit of the discussion that took place on August 20 at the Task Force meeting where the guidelines were finalized,” Fauci now “has some concern” about how they’ll be interpreted.

Democrats quickly piled on. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called the move “indefensible.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom said, “I don’t agree with the new CDC guidance, period, full stop.”

A senior administration official said the White House didn’t exer t any pressure and that all task force members were involved in the testing guidance changes.

Ironically, the Food and Drug Administration moved late Wednesday to authorize a 15-minute, $5 rapid test by Abbott Laboratories for emergency use, potentially providing wider access to testing.

Shortly after Giroir’s press call, the Department of Justice announced that it’s seeking data from four Democrat-led states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan—for a potential investigation into virus deaths at nursing homes.

It said the states had required facilities to accept residents “often without adequate testing.”

In a press release, the agency compared Covid mortality rates in New Jersey and New York—the early epicenters of the pandemic in the US—unfavorably to those in Republican-led Texas and Florida, which became hot spots later on and benefited from advancements in treating patients and stopping the virus’s spread.

While New Jersey and New York still lead US states with the most deaths, Texas and Florida are now among the top 5 by fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The moves raised eyebrows further as the Republican National Convention is well under way.

Bloomberg News

Sunday, August 30, 2020

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Virus in vacant apartment implicates toilet in spread

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he discovery of coronavirus in the bathroom of an unoccupied apartment in Guangzhou, China, suggests the airborne pathogen may have wafted upward through drainpipes, an echo of a large SARS outbreak in Hong Kong 17 years ago.

Traces of SARS-CoV-2 were detected in February on the sink, faucet and shower handle of a long-vacant apartment, researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study published this month in Environment International. The contaminated bathroom was directly above the home of five people confirmed a week earlier to have Covid-19.

The scientists conducted “an onsite tracer simulation experiment” to see whether the virus could be spread through waste pipes via tiny airborne particles that can be created by the force of a toilet flush. They found such particles, called aerosols, in bathrooms 10 and 12 levels above the Covid-19 cases. Two cases were confirmed on each of those floors in early February, raising concern that SARS-CoV-2-laden particles from stool had drifted into their homes via plumbing.

The new report is reminiscent of a case at Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens private housing estate almost two decades ago, when 329 residents caught severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in part because of faulty sewage pipelines. Forty-two residents died, making it the most devastating community outbreak of SARS, which is also caused by a coronavirus.

“Although transmission via the shared elevator cannot be excluded, this event is consistent with the findings of the Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003,” Song Tang, a scientist with the China CDC Key Laboratory of Environment and Population Health, and colleagues wrote in the study, which cited unpublished data from the health agency.

Apartments in multistory buildings may be linked via a shared wastewater system, said Lidia Morawska, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Australia’s Queensland University of Technology. While solids and liquids descend the network, sewer gases— often detectable by their odor— sometimes rise through pipes in the absence of sufficient water, said Morawska, who wasn’t part of the research team.

“If there’s smell, it means that somehow air has been transported to where it shouldn’t go,” Morawska said in an interview.

Respiratory droplets

SARS-CoV-2 spreads mainly through respiratory droplets— spatters of saliva or discharge from the nose, according to the World Health Organization.

Since the first weeks of the pandemic, however, scientists in China have said infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus in the stool of Covid-19 patients may also play a role in transmission. A February study of 73 patients hospitalized with the coronavirus in Guangdong province found more than half tested positive for the virus in their stool.

Previous research has shown that toilet flushes can generate germ-laden aerosols from the excreta, the China

CDC scientists said. Those particles can remain in the air for long periods and be dispersed over distances of more than 1 meter (3 feet), particularly in confined, poorly ventilated spaces.

Fecal aerosolization occurred with SARS, and it’s possible that it may rarely occur with SARS-CoV-2, depending on sewage systems, said Malik Peiris, chair of virology at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health.

The China CDC study found traces of virus, “which is not the same thing as infectious virus,” he said. “But one has to keep the possibility in mind.”

Fecal plume

In the Amoy Gardens case, warm, moist air from the bathroom of a SARS patient excreting “extremely high concentrations” of virus in feces and urine established a plume in an air shaft that spread the airborne virus to other apartments, research showed.

Although toilets are a daily necessity, they “may promote fecal-derived aerosol transmission if used improperly, particularly in hospitals,” the China CDC researchers said. They cited a f luid-dynamics simulation that showed a “massive upward transport of virus aerosol particles” during flushing, leading to large-scale virus spread indoors.

“The study finds high plausibility for airborne transmission and outlines the evidence in great detail,” said Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who was part of an international team invited to collaborate with China CDC on the study.

A shared toilet was implicated in a SARS-CoV-2 infection that likely occurred on an evacuation flight from Milan to South Korea in late March, researchers said in a report in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.

Airplane toilet

A 28-year-old woman developed Covid-19 symptoms about a week after the flight, during which she wore an N95 respirator mask, except when she used a toilet. Other passengers, including one seated three rows away who was infected but had no symptoms, shared the toilet. Because of strict infection control procedures implemented immediately before and during the flight, the authors concluded that the most plausible explanation for the infection is that it was acquired via indirect contact with an asymptomatic passenger while using an onboard toilet.

Previous investigations confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 genetic material was found on toilets used by Covid-19 patients, in the air in hospital nurses’ stations, on air outlet vents, and multiple other sites. The extent to which fecal aerosol plumes are infecting people with the SARS-CoV-2 virus isn’t known, said Queensland’s Morawska.

“There are lots of situations where things happen and are pretty unusual,” said Morawska, who was part of a team that studied the Amoy Gardens contagion. Scientists should investigate the “unusual situations” because, by understanding them, they may find “they’re not that unusual.”

Bloomberg News

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The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Back to class: Despite Covid-19 surge, Europe reopens schools C

www.businessmirror.com.ph

China’s air travel recovery shows power of enormous home market

By Angela Charlton

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The Associated Press

ARIS—A mother and her three children scanned the school supplies in a Paris supermarket, plucking out multicolored fountain pens, crisp notebooks—and plenty of masks. Despite resurgent coronavirus infections, similar scenes are unfolding across Europe as a new school year dawns.

Virus or no virus, European authorities are determined to put children back into classrooms, to narrow the learning gaps between haves and have-nots that deepened during lockdowns—and to get their parents back to work.

Facing a jump in virus cases, authorities in France, Britain, Spain and elsewhere are imposing mask rules, hiring extra teachers and building new desks and classrooms.

While the US back-to-school saga has been politicized and chaotic, with a hodgepodge of fast-changing rules and a backlash against President Donald J. Trump’s insistence on reopening, European governments have faced less of an uproar.

And even though the virus has invaded classrooms in recent days from Berlin to Seoul, and some teachers and parents warn that their schools aren’t ready, European leaders from the political left, right and center are sending an unusually consistent message: Even in a pandemic, children are better off in class.

France’s prime minister promised on Wednesday to “do everything” to get people back to school and work. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called reopening schools a “moral duty,” and his government even threatened to fine parents who keep kids at home. Italy’s health minister abruptly shut down discos this month with one goal in mind—“to reopen schools in September in complete safety.”

As both a parent and a teacher, Mathieu Maillard has plenty to worry about before French schools reopen on Tuesday. The number of virus infections per 100,000 people has grown five-fold in France in the last month.

How will his 5-year-old daughter keep a safe distance from friends she’s so excited to see for

the first time in six months? How will he gain the trust of his highschool students, from one of Marseille’s roughest neighborhoods, if he has to police their mask use?

But overall, Maillard thinks it’s time to go back. School “has to start up again at some point,” he says. “The health risk exists, but the risk of not putting children in school is even bigger.”

Dur ing lockdow n, he said, some students never joined his online French literature classes.

Some had no place to work, or no computers, just telephones that they used to send blurry photos of handwritten work.

“Our students really, really need school,” he said. For those growing up in an environment plagued with violence and drugs, school “is a place where they can breathe.”

Unlike the US, many European schools reopened at the end of the last term, offering lessons for the fall.

A mong measures in place: hand-washing stations, one-way corridors, staggered starts and rolling lunch times. Some regions are giving out free laptops in case of new lockdowns. Many countries require masks in school, but rules vary on where to wear them and from what age.

In southeast London, father of three Mark Davis is looking forward to schools reopening in early September but is vexed about what will happen if there’s a new virus wave.

“Everyone is gunning for this [return to school], but it’s no good just hoping for the best,” he said.

“Plans need to be put in place.”

So far the government says schools will only close as a last resort. But parents say the government’s message has been unclear and inconsistent.

Most of the UK’s 11 million students haven’t seen a classroom since

In this August 3, 2020, file photo, teacher Francie Keller welcomes the pupils of class 3c of the Lankow primary school on their first school day after the summer holidays in Schwerin, Germany. Despite a spike in virus infections, European authorities are determined to send children back to school. Jens Buettner/DPA via AP

March, and reopening schools tops the political agenda. Britain has 41,515 virus-related deaths, the highest confirmed toll in Europe, and Johnson’s government has been strongly criticized for its handling of the pandemic.

Some European schools are planning or considering a hybrid academic year, with some physical classes and some online, but most are aiming for full in-person classes.

That’s in line with guidance by global organizations like Unicef, which said Thursday that at least a third of the world’s schoolchildren were unable to access remote learning during virus lockdowns.

It warned that “the repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades.”

Medical experts say the risk of opening schools depends on how widespread Covid-19 infections are in the community and what safety measures are taken.

Evidence suggests young children don’t spread the disease very easily, while kids aged 10 and up may transmit as easily as adults.

But experts say more conclusive proof is needed. And even though children appear less likely to get infected than adults, severe cases and deaths have occurred.

Amid an unexpected new wave of infections in hard-hit Spain, officials are scrambling to adapt plans to reopen schools on September 4. They include hiring 11,000 additiona l teachers, building makeshift classrooms in schoolyards to gain space, and creating “bubbles” of students who are allowed to mix with each other but not with outsiders.

But teachers’ unions decr y funding shortages and have called for strikes starting next week.

Italy, Europe’s first virus hot spot, is hiring 40,000 more temporary teachers and ordering extra desks, but some won’t be ready until October. And many parents and teachers remain in the dark about exactly how it will work when most schools reopen September 14. They wonder how overcrowded, rundown schools can ensure one-meter (three-foot) distances between students and smaller class sizes.

“They are in over their heads,’’ said Cristina Tedesco, a parent representative for a high-school class in Verona province.

Germany may serve as a cautionary tale, or an example, for its neighbors.

At least 41 of Berlin’s 825 schools reported virus cases as classes resumed this month, and thousands of students have been quarantined around the country.

But Germany is determined not to close schools anew, so they’re sending individual students or classes into quarantine instead.

Schools remained shut in most of Africa, Latin America and in some of the world’s most populated nations including India and Bangladesh. In the US, some school districts are planning a mix of in-person and online learning to help maintain social distancing. Other districts are starting classes online only.

Parents and teachers are not the only people demanding a voice i n s c ho ol re o p e n i n g s.

Denmark ’s second-largest city, A a rhus, sent a l l high-sc hool students home after a spike in virus cases but the teens pushed back, saying they don’t learn as much online.

Protesting Monday, they held signs reading: “I just want to go to school.”

hina’s biggest airlines could provide some much-needed encouragement for an aviation industry starved of good news.

While the coronavirus will still likely saddle Air China Ltd., China Eastern Airlines Corp. and China Southern Airlines Co. with losses for the latest quarter, financial statements from the so-called Big 3 may point to a nascent recovery in air travel thanks to demand in their vast domestic market.

July traffic figures were promising, with passenger numbers for the three airlines rising about 25 percent from June as travel within China picked up. The trio flew a total of 22 million passengers domestically last month, more than 500 times as many flown at all by Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., which has no home market to fall back on.

Travel analytics company ForwardKeys predicts air travel in China will fully recover by next month. Ticket bookings in the second week of August reached 98 percent of last year’s levels, it said, adding that the country’s aviation market bottomed in February and has climbed slowly ever since.

After being the first hit by Covid-19, which erupted in Wuhan in January, China is emerging from the crisis; it’s the only major economy on track to expand this year. Businesses have reopened and people are traveling again after the government eased restrictions on movement, including for inter-provincial group tours. The FTSE China A 600 Travel & Leisure Index has climbed more than 50 percent in three months.

Popular Chinese destinations include Jiuzhaigou, famous for its colorful lakes, and Yangshuo and cities such as Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing. Some places are receiving almost three times the number of visitors than last quarter, HSBC Holdings Plc analysts led by Parash Jain wrote in a note dated August 17, citing Trip. com data. Hotels have also become busier after the curbs were lifted.

Occupancy rates in Shanghai reached 65.8 percent in the August 9-15 week compared with just 6 percent in February, state-run China Daily reported on Monday, citing the local government.

“This should boost load factors further and allow airlines to improve yields, a key profit driver,” Jain said, noting that Chinese carriers generate most profit on domestic routes. “Domestic traffic has been consistently showing signs of a recovery, while international traffic has still to take off meaningfully due to hurdles from travel restrictions and quarantine requirements,” he said.

Some carriers including China Eastern and China Southern have offered ticket deals that allow unlimited flights, sacrificing some of

their bottom line to lure customers back. OAG Aviation Worldwide said scheduled capacity in Asia’s biggest economy reached 15.6 million seats this week, only around 8 percent lower than toward the end of January when the outbreak began. By contrast, US capacity is still down 43.1 percent from January at 11.8 million seats.

Olivier Ponti, vice president of insights at ForwardKeys, said the aggressive price promotions greatly stimulated demand. “The big question is whether heavy discounting will still be needed to maintain the recovery or whether the industry will return to profitability during the upcoming Golden Week holiday in October,” he said.

The recovery is a striking turnaround given how hard the virus hit. The damage has been so grave globally that the International Air Transport Association doesn’t expect the world’s airlines to recover to pre-pandemic levels before 2024.

While the July traffic reports from the Big 3 showed an improvement at home, their international passenger traffic was still down 96 percent or more from a year earlier.

The carriers also took a beating in the first quarter with a combined loss of 14 billion yuan ($2 billion) and, according to HSBC’s Jain, they’re headed for a full-year loss of 24.2 billion yuan.

Cheap jet fuel

Second-quarter figures should show an improvement from January-March thanks to higher passenger traffic and the yuan’s resilience against the dollar, Jain said.

Lower oil prices could also help numb some of the pain. Jet fuel fell to less than $20 a barrel in May and is likely to average $45 in 2020, according to Paul Yong, a Singapore-based aviation analyst at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. “With revenue from domestic routes making up about twothirds of total revenue for China’s Big 3 and with relatively low jet fuel prices, this should help them outperform their Asian peers that have higher international route exposure,” Yong said.

Yong has buy ratings on the Hong Kong-listed shares of all three carriers, as well as the mainland-listed stock of Air China and China Eastern. He has a hold recommendation on China Southern’s Shanghailisted shares. The Big 3 are overwhelmingly rated buy or equivalent by analysts tracked by Bloomberg.

Shanghai-based Spring Airlines Co. has also had a strong run on the stock market, outperforming all others on a gauge of carriers in the Asia-Pacific region with a gain of 19 percent so far this quarter. The budget airline is also due to report earnings at the end of this week.

Bloomberg News

Dot-com survivors give verdict on current technology boom P

lenty of folks on Wall Street can tell tales of the dot-com bubble. Not many of them launched a $150-million tech-focused asset management firm about three months before it burst.

Ryan Jacob had a sensational track record when he started the Jacob Internet Fund in December 1999 at the age of 30. He had ridden the boom, then he endured the crash and incredibly kept his firm alive to this day.

All of which makes him as qualified as anyone to judge the current tech rally.

“The only people who say, ‘Yes, it’s like the 1990s’ are hedge-fund managers who are net short and annoyed,” Jacob said by phone from Los Angeles.

“To say it’s like the late 1990s— they have no idea.”

For anyone without his experience, perhaps it’s forgivable.

The Nasdaq 100 Index is at a record while retail trading is booming. The priciest stocks—mostly technology companies— are at the steepest premium ever versus cheap shares, by some measures. Tesla Inc. is trading at more than 800-times earnings while an

electric-truck peer, which made just $36,000 last quarter by installing solar panels for its founder, is valued at $16 billion.

This may not be the dot-com bubble, as Jacob says.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s no bubble at all.

Adrenaline stocks

Scott Barbee started the opposite kind of fund to Jacob in 1998. Barbee is a value investor, a group that’s arguably most likely to invoke the dot-com bubble when warning about the current state of markets.

“You have very high valuations on certain adrenaline-type stocks where fundamentals certainly look questionable,”said Barbee, president and founder of Aegis Financial Corp. in McLean, Virginia.

The big fear of bears is that this remarkable stock rally is occurring during a pandemic, which has spurred the worst economic slump since the Great Depression.

The consensus is that the virus has fueled the dominance of big tech companies, and Barbee doesn’t disagree—his mother is among the new converts to

online grocery shopping, after all. His worry is that much of this growth has already been priced into the likes of Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. For Paul Quinsee, the key to understanding how companies like this can be worth in the region of $2 trillion—a figure Apple topped this week—is their profits.

The global head of equities at JPMorgan Asset Management has been with the firm since 1992, and recalls the dot-com era as a period when investors bet on hoped-for earnings, in contrast to the current environment.

“Today, at least for the big companies, the long-term profits have arrived,” said New York-based Quinsee. “I would be surprised if there was a similarly spectacular decline. But the market’s leadership could change.”

Size matters

The market of 2020 is a very different place than it was two decades ago.

The number of domestic US stocks has nearly

halved from its 1998 peak to about 3,700 today, with much of the decline driven by disappearing micro-caps.

In the nine years through 1998, there were 3,614 initial public offerings, compared to just 2,093 in the same period through 2019.

At the height of the dot-com bubble, the median age of a firm going public was five years old. It’s been double that for most of the past decade, according to data compiled by Jay Ritter at the University of Florida.

That suggests the kind of fledgling tech companies that imploded in the dot-com era now tend to stay private for longer, and the ones that do go public are usually more mature.

“The VCs could stay in longer and didn’t have to share any of the growth of the steepest part of the curve with the public,” said Lise Buyer, who now advises tech firms on IPOs but was analyzing them at Credit Suisse First Boston during the dot-com boom.

“Does it also mean companies are more stable? The answer is generally yes.”

As the modern equivalent of dot-coms learned to

stay private, growth stocks in the market began to look very different. The Russell 3000 Growth Index currently has a net debt to earnings ratio of just slightly above 1. It was about 2.3 at the end of 1999.

And back then, debt was a bigger burden. Around the time firms found themselves hurriedly removing “dot-com” from their names, the Federal Reserve was raising rates. Now, borrowing costs are nearly zero and look likely to stay there for a while.

Cheap money usually favors tech stocks, since it forces investors to seek returns by chasing longterm growth.

No envy for analysts

Cheaper debt and less of it, healthy profits, and a virus-based boost to business. But not everything is different about technology shares in 2020.

Predicting the outlook for companies when traditional valuation models do not necessarily apply was a huge challenge during the dot-com bubble, and remains so today. If anything, putting a price on

intangible assets like research prowess has become more critical as firms splurge ever-greater sums on hard-to-quantify investments.

“All these interesting new companies, but again how do you value them?”Buyer said. She recalls getting hate mail for not being enthusiastic enough about shares in the bubble, and then getting sued for her lofty forecasts when everything collapsed.

“I don’t envy the sell-side analyst,” she said.

Even Jacob, who currently oversees about $100 million, worries that many of the large-cap tech stocks have run their course. He has shifted more of his fund toward small- and mid-caps.

It has seen milder swings in recent years, which most would consider a good thing. But Jacob can’t help feeling his job has become just a little duller.

“As a public company investor in today’s environment, it’s a bit frustrating,” he said. “You’re not going to replicate what happened in the late 1990s, it was basically the dawning of the Internet.”

Bloomberg News

Science

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

BusinessMirror

Sunday

Sunday, August 30, 2020 A5

Amid quarantine protocols prohibiting face-to-face meeting in schools.

Pisay to use KHub online platform

T

Communication allowance

By Lyn Resurreccion

he current quarantine protocols required by the government to prevent the spread of the fatal coronavirus pandemic ruled against the gathering of big crowds, including in schools.

Thus, the Department of Education (DepEd) ordered the blended teaching, including online, in lieu of face-to-face meeting of students and teachers under the new normal for schoolyear 2020-2021.

At the Philippine Science High School (PSHS or Pisay), which classes will open on September 1, the Knowledge Hub (KHub) online platform will be used in its 16 campuses all over the country.

PSHS Executive Director Lilia habacon proudly told the BusinessMirror in an online interview that the KHub is a learning management system that was “locally developed.”

It will serve as a “one-stop shop” for the academic needs of the teachers and students of PSHS, Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña said at a recent webinar of “DOST Reports.”

Francis Joseph Serina, information technology officer II of PSHS, explained that the KHub platform was developed for the “online classroom” for a more efficient use of both students and teachers.

Serina explained on the same webinar that before KHub’s use, Pisay teachers were using the currently globally available virtual learning platforms Google classroom, Edmodo and Schoology.

Easier operations He said the students requested to use a single platform, thus, KHub was developed.

The online platform aims to make the operations of the school’s more than 9,300 students and teachers easier, Serina explained in Filipino, as he added that similar to a traditional classroom, the students and teachers could communicate with each other through KHub. “The teachers could post their [lessons] and the exams. The students access and download the [lessons] to be able to study and solve the exercises,” he said.

“It is the hub of the students for their academic needs.”

Only the employees of PSHS, students and teachers could access the hub with the use of PSHS official e-mail, he said.

Serina further explained that each of the 16 campuses of PSHS will have its own KHub. Meanwhile, the Office of the Executive Director (OED) will have its own hub that could be accessed only by its employees, including the teachers from different campuses.

The OED KHub, he added, could carry materials for each subject that could aid teachers, and other resources for the administration.

Students, teachers ‘face’ each other on KHub ‘rooms’ The students and teachers”face” each other in the KHub, where the subjects have their “own rooms,” and which only the students enrolled in the specific sub-

A screenshot of the “DOST Report” webinar with (from top, left) Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña; Onin Miranda, Dost Report moderator; Francis Joseph Serina, PSHS information technology officer II; and Joel T. Bautista, PSHS Special Science Teacher V. Webinar screenshot/Lyn Resurreccion

jects could have access.

KHub also features “badges” that reward students who passed the exercises, after which the next activity or lesson would be unlocked.

“Through this the assessment of the students could be hastened and could ensure their mastery of the subject,” Serina said in Filipino.

“Although KHub is fully online, we ask the students to download the learning guides so they could study when there is no Internet connection or in offline mode,” he said.

Asked on other features of KHub, Serina said once the students have accessed the campus KHub, they could only see the subjects they have enrolled in, the learning guide for which will be provided by the teacher.

When the teachers have logged in on the hub, they could see the subjects assigned to them, including the learning guides for each subject.

“The teachers could use many resources in teaching,” Serina said. There are guides in the webinar prepared by the Research, Policies and Academic Division

of PSHS, which could be uploaded in the KHub easy access by teachers.

Since KHub is a teaching and learning repository, resource materials could also be accessed from the DOST-STII, Department of Agriculture and other sources.

With peer assessment currently popularly used, he added that students could easily assess their peers’ work through the KHub platform.

Changes in curriculum.

When by asked by the BusinessMirror if the high quality of education of Pisay will suffer with the online mode, de la Peña said “there will be changes.”

Since the learning set-up was changed, “there were identified competencies that should be attained,” and some were “removed,” explained Joel T. Bautista, PSHS Special Science Teacher V. De la Peña added that some activities could not be implemented if the students and teachers are not in the school.

He said the laboratories they built could not be used if there is no face-toface learning.

Exec: Innovative IQOS sits at the top of PMI’s sustainability efforts I

ts innovative smoke-free product IQOS highlights Philip Morris International’s transformation and sustainability initiatives, according to a top communications executive of PMI. Tommaso Di Giovanni, PMI vice president for international communications, said that for the company, sustainability means taking care of tobacco-farming communities; protecting the health, safety and wellbeing of employees; investing in novel technologies; and reducing waste and carbon emissions, among others.

“These are the important key elements of sustainability, and we take them very seriously,” Di Giovanni said during the webinar, “Sustainability: The New Norm of Innovation and Sustainability,” organized by South China Morning Post (SCMP) on August 24.

“It is equally clear to all of us that our biggest positive impact, the biggest contribution to society is to address the core issue—that our traditional products, cigarettes, cause diseases. And this objective sits at the top of all our sustainability priorities,” he said.

Di Giovanni was among the four executives who spoke during the online conference moderated by Clark Hill and Winnie Chung of SCMP. Di Giovanni said PMI is now moving toward a new set of products that

are better alternatives to cigarettes.

“We know that combustion is what generates the vast majority of toxic compounds found in cigarettes.

Twenty years ago, we didn’t have the technology, the science, the innovation that are needed to address that issue. Today, we can,” he said.

“Science sits at the core of sustainability. We are moving toward a world where we hope cigarettes are replaced with products that are based on science. But we cannot get there alone; others need to play their part. We are definitely moving in that direction. So that is our sustainability,” Di Giovanni said.

He said such sustainability initiatives started 20 years ago, but it was only in 2016, after successfully launching the first smoke-free products in Italy, that PMI CEO André Calantzopoulos publicly announced plans to replace cigarettes with better alternatives based on science.

“What this entails is a huge change in the company,” said Di Giovanni.

“We’re moving from a relatively simple product—cigarettes that have been sold almost in the same shape and form for one 150 years—to an innovative product based on technology and deeply rooted in science.”

He said the company was moving from one that is very stable and consistent to a company that needs to be agile.

“That requires a big cultural change in the company, a big transformation that to my knowledge, no company has done proactively and voluntarily,” he said.

Di Giovanni said PMI continuously invests in research and development to develop more innovative products.

“Since 2008, we have invested more than $7.2 billion into the science and research of developing smoke-free products, and we employ more than 400 world-class scientists, engineers and technicians to help us,” he said.

The are currently 11 million smokers are already using smoke-free IQOS product which is already available in 57 countries, he said.

Di Giovanni noted that the US Food and Drug Administration has recently authorized the marketing of IQOS as “modified risk tobacco products” with reduced exposure claims in the US. He said the current coronavirus pandemic has further highlighted the need to continue the company’s transformation path.

“I think it has strengthened us in our belief that we are going in the right direction. It strengthened us because the pandemic highlighted the importance of health and health protection. Obviously, that’s what is in everyone’s mind everywhere. Doing something to improve the health of your consumers is the way to go.

It also strengthened our belief that

science is the key,” he said.

He said it is an important part of PMI’s four pillars of sustainability initiatives—health, science, dialogue and information.

The pandemic has strengthened the importance of information for everyone, he said. Adult smokers, for instance, should have information on new alternatives to cigarettes.

“About 600,000 smokers in Hong Kong, for example, deserve to have access to information to better alternatives. Those are really the four considerations that we made out of the pandemic,” he said.

One of the panelists, Donald Low, director of HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies, said other companies should follow the lead of PMI in allowing disruption to take root in their business for the sake of sustainability.

“I really like PMI’s story of how they are willing to disrupt, in fact, cannibalize themselves and the industry that has been left unchanged for the last 150 years,” Low said.

It is extremely difficult for a company like PMI to disrupt itself to diversify its business from a single product to experiments with different ways of delivering safer tobacco products.

“But if a company like PMI can do that, I think most other companies could be able to find alternative or diverse business models,” Low said.

The students and teachers will be provided with communication allowance for the remote teaching and learning, Serina said.

Access-wise, entry to KHub could be a breeze with the use of smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptops as long as one has a web browser and reliable Internet connectivity, preferably a broadband with bandwidth of a minimum of 4mb per second download speed, he assured.

He added that the PSHS had an experience on the use of a remote learning system. It was used during the bridging program when the enhanced community quarantine was declared in March, when no face-to-face school classes were allowed.

The online mode was used in order to fill the gap during the fourth quarter of the grading period for the past school year.

He said the first week of school year will begin with an orientation on the use of KHub, together with the policies on its use; on different socio-emotional skills enhancement program; how to take examinations; importance of integrity; and others. The lesson proper will being on September 8.

“This will be the main preparation of Pisay on how to go about with teaching and learning in the new normal environment,” Serina said.

Qualifications and requirements for Pisay scholarship The privileges of a Pisay scholar are free tuition, free loan of textbooks; monthly stipend; uniform, transportation and living allowances for low-income groups; and dormitory accommodation.

To those who want to apply for scholarship at Pisay, Bautista enumerated the qualifications at the same webinar.

The pupil should be in Grade 6 from a DepEd duly-recognized school, and has a final grade of 85 percent or higher in Science and Mathematics as shown in

the Grade 5 report card.

If the grades in Science and Math are below 85 percent, the pupil must belong to the upper 10 percent of his batch. The pupil must also be a Filipino citizen with no application as immigrant to any foreign country, and born on or before August 1, 2006.

The pupil must also have a satisfactory rating in his or her character in the report card, of good health, and has not taken the PSHS National Competitive Examination (NCE) previously.

For requirements, the pupil should submit two copies of accomplished NCE application form, together with documents needed.

The application form can be downloaded on PSHS web site pshs.edu.ph or could be obtained from the nearest PSHS regional campus, DOST regional offices or from the provincial science and technology offices.

Online application For the coming next schoolyear, Bautista said the school system has launched an online application for NCE. The deadline for the submission of application is on December 11, while the examination is on February 6, 2021.

All they need is to go to the PSHS web site, accomplish the application form and upload a 1-by-1 ID picture, and submit the scanned Grade 5 report and scanned documents and certification that the student is a scholar.

What are the benefits of a Pisay scholar? Bautista said that besides having a globally-competitive education that is specialized in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, a Pisay scholar is given a chance to engage in real-word settings in science and technology institutions and industries, in the country and abroad.

They could also engage in non-stem fields, such as in national at international event or competitions to express their globally-competitive skills.

DLSU HS student tops 2020 NOI.PH finals D

e La Salle University Senior High School’s Dan Alden Baterisna backed up his top-ranked status when he scored 609 points to place first in the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI. PH) held online on August 8 and 9.

Baterisna’s win came back-to-back with his bagging the bronze medal at the 31st International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in Baku, Azerbaijan, last year.

His NOI.PH win received a gold medal and P6,000 cash prize.

Coming in second was Steven Chua of British School Manila, who scored an impressive 574.54 points. He secured silver and P3,000.

With the finish, they automatically clinched two of the four spots for the Philippine team in the IOI. The NOI.PH finals was participated in by the top 31 finishers out of 148 during the national eliminations held in January.

The finalists each solved five challenging programming tasks in each day’s five-hour session.

Contestants used their programming and analytical skills to create data structures and algorithms to solve each task using a program.

Also securing places in the top 10 were: third place, Steven Reyes of Saint Jude Catholic School (565.74 points); fourth place, Dion Stephan Ong of the Ateneo de Manila Senior High School (503 points); fifth place, Frederick Ivan Michael Tan of Philippine Science High School-Main (493 points); sixth place, Rapahael Dylan Dalida of PSHS Main (468.08 points); 7th place, Ron Mikhael Surara of PSHS Bicol (449.68 points); 8th place, Enruco Rolando Martinez of PSHS Main (273.96 points); 9th place, Harvey Shawn Chua of PSHS Main (271.9 points); and 10th place—Marc Joshua Ayalde of PSHS Soccsksargen (268.11 points).

The remaining two slots in the national team will be filled after a training session among the top finalists.

NOI.PH President Marte Soliza congratulated the winners and urged the finalists to do their best in the training session.

“The organizing committee would like to thank

Dan Alden Baterisna of De La Salle University Senior High School scored 609 points to place first in the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI.PH). the Department of Science and Technology-Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI) for their generous support for the event,” Soliza said.

He also thanked their volunteers from Ateneo de Manila University’s (ADMU) Computer Society of Ateneo (CompSAt) and the University of the Philippines’ Association for Computing Machinery (UP ACM) and testers and illustrators.

“We hope for your continued support as we move to the selection of our delegation to the International Olympiad in Informatics 2020,” Soliza said.

Likewise, DOST-SEI’s Director, Dr. Josette Biyo, congratulated NOI.PH for a successful full-online national finals.

“Informatics as a field is something exciting for young Filipinos and we are very glad that the NOI.PH leads in developing the innate analytical and computing talents of our students. We congratulate the winners and look forward to their journeys, not just in the IOI, but in their other endeavors,” Biyo said.

The IOI 2020, which was originally set in July in Singapore, was moved to September 21 and 22 and will be held online.

Faith A6 Sunday, August 30, 2020

Sunday

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

Pope backs project to ‘free’ Mary Archbishop Oscar Cruz passes away at 85 from mafia exploitation in Italy L ingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz passed away at the age of 85.

In a Twitter post, the official news Web site of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said Cruz died early morning on Wednesday due to a lingering illness.

“Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz of LingayenDagupan died today at 6:45 a.m. at the Cardinal Santos Hospital due to a lingering illness. He was 85,” it said.

Cruz, a former president of the CBCP, retired in 2009.

He was replaced by Bishop Socrates Villegas who was from the Diocese of Balanga.

Born on November 17, 1934, in Balanga, Bataan, Cruz received his seminary training at the University of Santo Tomas Central Seminary.

He was ordained as priest on February 8, 1962, and his episcopal consecration was on May 3, 1976.

He served as a judicial vicar of the CBCP National

V

ATICAN—Pope Francis has praised a new initiative aimed at countering the abuse of Marian devotions by mafia organizations, who use her figure to wield power and exert control.

“Freeing Mary from the mafia and from criminal powers” is an ad hoc department of the Pontifical International Marian Academy (PIMA).

The academy’s president, Fr. Stefano Cecchin, OFM, recently told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that the Blessed Virgin Mary does not teach submission to evil, but freedom from it.

Cecchin explained that the terminology used in the history of the Church to explain Mary’s “submission” to the will of God had become distorted to imply not servanthood, but “slavery” characterized by “absolute obedience to superiors.”

“In the mafia framework, this is what the figure of Mary has become,” he said, “the figure of a human being who must be submissive, therefore a slave, accepting the will of God, the will of the bosses, the will of the mafia leader.”

It becomes “a way the population, the people are subjected to this domination,” he said.

He told CNA that the working group, which will officially start in October, includes around 40 Church and civil leaders, including Italian judges, for “study, research and teaching” to “restore the purity of

the image of Jesus and Mary which comes from the Gospels.”

It is a laity-driven initiative, he stressed, and while it will begin in Italy, he said that participants hope in the future to address other manifestations of this Marian exploitation, such as by drug lords in South America.

Pope Francis, in his August 15 letter to Cecchin, said he “learned with pleasure” of the project and wished “to express my appreciation for the important initiative.”

“Marian devotion is a religiouscultural heritage to be safeguarded in its original purity, freeing it from superstructures, powers or conditioning that do not meet the evangelical criteria of justice, freedom, honesty and solidarity,” the pope wrote.

Cecchin explained that another common way Marian devotion is abused by criminal organizations is through inchini, which means “bows.”

During Marian processions in some towns and villages in southern Italy, an image of the Virgin Mary will be stopped at the houses of mafia bosses and made to “greet” the boss with a “bow.”

“This is a way of saying to the population, and in a symbolism which uses the religion of the peo-

Pope Francis before the icon of Mary, “Salus Populi Romani.” VATICAN MEDIA

ple, that this mafia boss is blessed

by God—in fact, directed by the Mother of God, who stops to recognize that he is the leader, and, therefore, we all must obey him, as if [he has] a divine mandate,” Cecchin said.

Mary is an image of God’s beauty, the priest and former exorcist explained.

“We know that the evil one, evil, wants to ruin the beauty God has created. In Mary, for us, is the image of absolutely the enemy of evil. With her, by her birth, the head of the serpent is crushed,” he explained.

“Therefore, evil also uses the figure of Mary to go against God,” he noted. “So, we must rediscover the beauty of the religious cultural heritage of every people and, furthermore, safeguard it in its original purity.”

The new working group of PIMA wants to use formation to teach children and families a true theology of Mary, Cecchin said.

In an interview with CNA’s Italian partner agency, ACI Stampa,

Cecchin acknowledged that the project was “ambitious,” but said it was “a duty given the times.”

He said the supporters of the project were motivated by the common good: “For us it represents a challenge that we have courageously accepted.”

In his letter, Pope Francis said “it is necessary that the style of Marian displays conform to the message of the Gospel and the teachings of the Church.”

“May the Lord speak again to humanity in need of rediscovering the path of peace and fraternity through the message of faith and spiritual consolation that emanates from the various Marian initiatives, which characterize the territories of many parts of the world,” he continued.

“And may the numerous devotees of the Virgin assume attitudes that exclude a misguided religiosity and respond instead to a religiosity correctly understood and lived,” the pope said.

Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

Papal charity group, bishop decry deadly Jolo bombings

A

papal charity organization has joined in condemning the August 24 deadly twin bombings that rocked the southern Philippine island of Jolo.

At the same time, newly installed Apostolic Vicariate of Jolo Bishop Charlie Inzon earlier appealed for an end to the violence as the bombings believed to be perpetrated by a suicide bomber rocked the island municipality anew.

“Covid is already a terrible burden we carry daily. Spare us from yet another tragedy. God help us. Answer our prayers,” said Inzon exclusively to PressONE.ph.

He urged the public to pray, and to remain calm and be vigilant.

“Because of what happened here today, we appeal for your prayers for such incident not to happen again. Let us pray for all the victims and people should stay calm,” the Catholic prelate said in an interview over Church-run Radio Veritas.

Inzon assumed his post as Apostolic Vicar of Jolo on July 16, feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, patroness of the vicariate.

The Philippine office of Aid to the Church

Two powerful explosions ripped through Jolo, Sulu, on August 24. PHOTO FROM AFP WESTERN MINDANAO COMMAND in Need (ACN) said “no reason can justify such violence” that occurred near a Catholic cathedral that was targeted in a suicide bombing last year.

“Those responsible for these atrocities are cruel and ruthless, devoid of any ounce of humanity or respect for life and property,” the ACN said.

“This crime is even rendered more unconscionable because of the hardships our people are going through during the Covid-19 pandemic,” it said.

Fourteen people were killed and dozens were wounded in the double blasts, including a suicide bomber.

Authorities said the fatalities include seven soldiers, one policeman and six civilians.

The ACN has expressed its sympathies to the families of the victims killed and wounded in the attack.

The organization also demanded justice for the victims “and fully supports the investigating agencies involved.”

“ACN prays that justice be swift and unrelenting for the guilty...a solace for the victims,” it said.

Since 1947, the organization has been serving various countries around the world, especially in areas where Christians are a small minority.

In January 2019, a suicide bombing at the nearby Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel left 23 people dead and more than 100 were injured as worshippers were gathering for Sunday Mass.

Jolo is located in the province of Sulu, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State and is notorious for bombings and kidnapping.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the 2019 attacks, saying two suicide bombers carried out the attack. CBCP News and PNA

Laoag’s San Nicolas Church to be declared a diocesan shrine

A

centuries-old parish Church in the Diocese of Laoag will be elevated to a “diocesan shrine” status next month.

Bishop Renato Mayugba will preside over a Mass to declare the San Nicolas de Tolentino Church in San Nicolas town as a shrine on September10.

It will be the second diocesan shrine in Laoag, after the La Virgen Milagrosa de Badoc Church, which is now a minor basilica.

The ceremony will also coincide with the feast of the town’s patron saint.

Bishop Mayugba approved the petition initiated by the town’s Mayor Alfredo Valdez Jr. on July 21.

In his petition, Valdez discussed the historical, cultural and architectural significance of the Church and the parish’s desire to turn it into a pilgrimage site.

Augustinian missionaries The mayor also cited in his petition the spiritual and cultural contributions of the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA) to the pueblo and its people.

San Nicolas Church was constructed in 1584, the same year the town was founded by the Spanish Augustinian friars. The town was then known as Caluntian, a visita of Laoag.

In 1617, it became independent and the friars placed the town under the patronage of San Nicolas, the first canonized member of the Augustinian Order.

The Church that has a baroque façade also bears the Spanish coat of arms. Its current structure was built in 1811 and completed in 1830.

Relics of St. Nicholas and St. Augustine In his August 6 letter to Rome-based Augustinian

Postulator General Fr. Josef Sciberras, Bishop Mayugba thanked the congregation “for the evangelization of our region.”

In line with the upcoming fifth centenary of the country’s Christianization, the prelate also requested for the first-class relics of Saint Nicholas and Saint Augustine of Hippo.

He said the sacred relics will be enshrined in their Churches dedicated to Saint Nicholas and in the Church of Saint Augustine in Paoay town.

Plenary indulgence Catholics who will attend the Mass for the solemn declaration of San Nicolas Church as diocesan shrine can receive a plenary indulgence, the Vatican said.

The announcement was made in a decree of the Apostolic Penitentiary issued on August

18 and signed by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the Penitentiary Major.

An indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment a person is due for sins that have been forgiven.

The conditions for receiving a plenary indulgence include having recently gone to confession, receiving the Eucharist and offering prayers for the intentions of the Pope.

The plenary indulgence will also be extended to those who may not be able to join the Mass but follow it live through various forms of communication.

The Vatican also added a concession of plenary indulgence to all those who will participate in the fiesta Masses of San Nicolas at the same church, every September 10 in the next seven years. CBCP News

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz. Courtesy of CBCP Tribunal of Appeals and was appointed Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan on July 15, 1991.

Cruz was an antigambling advocate. PNA

How the sound of religion changed in the pandemic

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h i n g s sound different in a lockdown.

The silence of usually bustling streets, the two-tone whirr of ambulance sirens and the sudden awareness of birdsong—all formed an aural backdrop to the coronavirus pandemic.

Nowhere has the change in sound been more noticeable than at houses of worship. The voices of congregants praying, chanting and singing has been quietened in churches, mosques and temples.

Instead, congregants have had to work in new acoustic settings, both in person and online.

In shor t, religion, too, sounds different during the pandemic. We know this, because we have been documenting the sounds of religious life in America.

Over the last six years, our teams of faculty and student researchers at Michigan State University and The Ohio State University have cataloged hundreds of audio recordings, tuning in to what religion sounds like across a wide variety of spaces and traditions.

Sound and space

It might seem unusual to think about religion through sounds. Scholars are more inclined to define religions in terms of beliefs and doctrine, or focus on visual iconography and sacred architecture.

But there are good reasons why it is useful to turn to sound to understand religious diversity in the United States.

Listening for religion directs our attention to the things that religious people and communities do, not just what they believe.

It brings us into formal spaces and times of religious life, as well as into more mundane moments of everyday practice, such as people chatting while preparing food for a religious festival or the sounds of removing shoes before entering a worship space.

Paying attention to religious sounds can serve as a reminder that religious practice is subjective, often spontaneous and shaped by participants—it takes place in particular moments and spaces.

Listening for religion

The religious sounds and silences being made during this pandemic provide ex traordinar y examples of the power of listening to understand the diversity of religious practices in the United States today.

Prior to the lockdown, we visited sites that might seem obviously religious, like churches, synagogues and mosques. But we also went to places that might seem ostensibly secular—a race track, rodeo, political rally or college football game.

We adopted a broad approach to thinking about what counts as a religious sound or space.

By gathering these recordings together and curating them on a custom-built digital platform, we hoped to inspire new ways of thinking about religion in the United States.

Sonic Zoom?

When the coronavirus hit, we realized that we, too, would have to change the ways that we conducted our research.

In March 2020, we announced a public call for sounds and invited anyone with a smartphone or other recording device to submit audio recordings documenting how their practices were shifting.

We were overwhelmed by the public response.

Since March, we have received over 120 audio files from across the US. And key patterns are starting to emerge from our collection.

We have noted a strong desire to maintain continuity of religious practices with the help of technology.

For example, after the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, closed, its regular public worship transitioned to virtual prayer sessions via Zoom for hundreds of attendees from around the world.

Performing rituals online also opened up opportunities for religious tourism and hearing religious sounds in new places.

Some of our submissions are live-streamed services recorded by practitioners who always wanted to visit a particular worship space in their own tradition, such as an Episcopalian attending Easter ser vices at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Others are recorded by people who wished to visit a new religious community, as in the case

of non-Muslim contributors who “visited” online mosques during the month of Ramadan.

Along with this continuity of religious practice, there is acknowledgment that the circumstances of the pandemic require transforming rituals to align with the moment.

We heard the sounds of a hospital chaplain in Quincy, Illinois, who replaced the Christian Maundy Thursday feet washing ritual with a ritual washing of hands in a health-care context.

Another key theme emerging is the sounds of religious practices alongside sounds specific to the pandemic.

For example, a New York Buddhist practitioner recorded herself chanting with an online community and captured the background sounds of neighbors clapping during the nightly 7 p.m. celebration for first responders.

An Easter Sunday service in a parking lot in Walnut Grove, Missouri, recorded parishioners honking their horns to shout “Amen!”

Shelter-in-place orders opened up domestic spaces as primary locations for religious practice.

We have heard from practitioners performing religious rituals at home. These spaces have created new worship sounds.

Many of our recordings include pets vocalizing, phones beeping, babies cr ying and private conversations amplified that would generally not be heard in a formal worship setting.

This ambient noise is part of the sound of religion during the pandemic.

Sometimes these new contex ts produce innovative blending of religious and secular practices.

A viral Tweet submitted to our archive of an Orthodox Jewish father chanting the children’s book Goodnight Moon to the tune of traditional Torah reading brought together the sounds of formal ritual practice with the increased demands of child care during this crisis.

The domestic worship spaces have also provided opportunities for new religious agency and authority.

Lay practitioners are deciding how they will participate in services and, in some cases, performing rituals that ordinarily are reserved for clergy, as in a recording of Christian parents administering “Communion” to their children.

As religious communities navigate worship services via Zoom, the etiquette and practice around “muting” raises important questions about who should be heard and who has the authority to speak. It also presents challenges for communal singing and chanting.

In our archive we have multiple recordings of a Wiccan Coven in Westerville, Ohio, participating in a Cone of Power ritual, a practice to raise energy for magical purposes.

In the pre-pandemic version, participants stood together in a circle with linked hands and wove their voices together like a beautiful tapestry.

In the recording produced during the pandemic, the group attempted to recreate this ritual via Zoom, but the overlapping sounds became too cacophonous. All the participants, except the priests, ended up muting their microphones, which produced a strikingly different sonic experience.

Inclusion and innovation

Our collection also includes voices that might not otherwise be heard—or welcomed—in formal religious settings.

One of the submitted recordings is of a family participating in a Protestant worship service via Zoom. The audio includes the loud vocalizations of their autistic son. In this case, at least, online offerings made religious rituals more accessible and more inclusive.

The recordings in our crowdsourced archive are helping us document in real time the numerous ways that Covid-19 is transforming American religious life. The sounds that we are hearing make audible how, even during a time of physical and social distancing, individuals are striving to worship together.

The pandemic is inspiring new, innovative ways of imagining what it means to be a community and who is included as part of that community.

As houses of worship begin to reopen, we are interested in tracking which of these changes may endure and which may prove more fleeting.

Amy Derogatis/The Conversation

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

‘Monkey business’ in the Philippines

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

the report said.

“Majority of the 74 live individuals exported legally from the Philippines were likely sourced illegally from the wild and declared fraudulently as captive-bred by exporters to obtain CITES permits,” the report added.

CITES stands for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

In response to this, the DENRBMB is batting for continuous registration of threatened, non-threatened and exotic wildlife to prevent illegal wildlife trade, including wildlife laundering that makes use of dubious wildlife permits and other documents.

are currently duly authorized to engage in the commercial breeding of long-tailed macaque.

The two monkey farms keep a little over 2,000 monkeys, with only the progenies allowed to be traded as mandated by law.

Wildlife farms in the Philippines are authorized to breed and sell progenies upon the issuance of a Wildlife Farm Permit by the concerned DENR Regional Office, in accordance with Section 5 of the DENR Administrative Order 2004-55, or Streamlining/ Procedural Guidelines pursuant to the Joint DENR-DA-PCSD Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 9147.

Act, and RA 11038, or the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (Enipas), came the increase in population of certain wildlife species.

He cited the case of monkeys, which he said come in harems or multi-male troops that cause human-wildlife conflict.

“To balance the population, wildlife services balance this through culls or harvest by legal hunting,” he explained. But because there’s the Wildlife Act, such practices are not allowed.

“So harvesting for farming would be a suitable alternative to reduce humanmacaque conflict,” he said.

Non-threatened list

Wildlife ‘laundering’

Careful evaluation; breeding for trade

On top of RA 9147, the Philippines applies strict domestic measures in the trade in specimens of CITES-listed species, such as monkeys.

As stated in the CITES Notification 2010/038, the export of wild-caught specimens for commercial purposes is prohibited, Tenazas said.

“Only the specimens bred in captivity by breeders authorized and registered by the DENR may be exported,” she pointed out.

She explained that this restriction has been in effect since February 15, 1994.

Tenazas provided the BusinessMirror with copies of the notification, including the RA 9147 and its implementing rules and regulations.

The Philippines used to export monkeys in the past, but due to the coronavirus scare and pressures from animal-rights groups, it stopped.

“In the past years, the exportation of live monkeys were stopped due to the clamor of animal groups against the use of laboratory specimens,” Tenazas told the BusinessMirror via e-mail on August 16.

Based on the CITES trade database, the first shipment of monkeys was in 1977. There was no clear record on when the export of monkeys by authorized farms has stopped.

It was only in 2019 that the monkey-breeding facility was able to export about 700 head of long-tailed macaque, she said.

Will the rush in research for vaccines and medicines against Covid-19 and other zoonotic diseases help revive the monkey business in the country? It remains to be seen.

he coronavirus pandemic and the need for a vaccine against it have revived the interest in monkey farming because of the expected increase in demand for live monkeys for use in medical research.

The interest in the revival of monkey farms in the Philippines began as early as March last year when the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB) received an application appealing to renew a wildlife collector’s permit for the gathering or harvesting of monkeys in the wild.

Harvesting in the wild for parentbreeders is allowed by the DENR-BMB, although on a case-to-case basis, commonly for the purpose of commercial breeding and trading of progenies.

Data from the DENR-BMB further revealed that, guided by international wildlife treaties, the Philippines resumed trading monkeys with the export of a total of 700 captive-bred monkeys last year.

Being controversial, the plan to allow harvesting for breeding and, eventually, export of the primate for scientific research was strongly opposed by animal rights groups.

DENR Assistant Secretary Ricardo L. Calderon explained that monkeys are often used for scientific research, particularly in the production of lifesaving drugs or vaccines, inevitably creating a market demand for live monkey specimens.

Monkeys are being used to test drugs or vaccines for clinical trials before they are tested in humans.

In defense of monkeys

Last April, the Action for Primates (AP), an international not-for-profit organization that has started a campaign on behalf of nonhuman primates, expressed concern that the DENR is considering allowing the capture of wild long-tailed macaques for research purposes as a way of addressing human-primate conflict.

The appeal was later echoed by the Philippine Animal Welfare Society.

Through veterinary doctor Nedim C. Buyukmihci, Emeritus professor of Veterinary Medicine at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California-Davis, AP appealed to the DENR to refuse any application to use macaques for research.

“The capture and removal of wild primates from their native habitats and social and family groups is, by its very nature, extremely cruel and inflicts great suffering and distress on the animals, as well as resulting in injuries and even death,” Buyukmihci said in his April 7 letter addressed to Calderon, who is also the concurrent director of DENR-BMB. Buyukmihci argued that there is very little likelihood that free-living monkeys could transmit any disease to human beings.

On the contrary, he explained that monkeys would likely become ill from contact with human beings, rather than humans from the monkeys.

The group reiterated its appeal to the DENR in another letter on May 21.

In July, the group, in a statement, again urged the DENR to deny the application for harvesting of monkeys from the wild.

It cited the upgrading of the conservation status of the long-tailed macaque from “near threatened” to “vulnerable” on the Red List of threatened species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to the global decline of the primate in the wild.

Conservation strategy

The DENR-BMB considers wildlife farming as a conservation strategy.

By allowing wildlife farms to operate, it believes it does not only save

A long-tailed macaque is a common site at the Raja Sikatuna Protected Landscape in Bohol province. DENR-CIS

the species from extinction through captive-breeding, but it also reduces the demand for animals caught from the wild.

By allowing wildlife farms to operate, poaching of commercially viable species in the wild is hoped to be reduced because there will now be a legal source of wildlife products and byproducts.

Hence, buyers will no longer choose to buy from illegal sources to avoid trouble with the law.

Calderon is expecting that the business on farming of monkeys will thrive with the market created by the Covid-19 pandemic for their use in scientific research.

Among other animals, the Philippines has been allowing the operation of crocodile farms for their skin and meat and other byproducts.

Likewise, several ostrich farms currently exist in the country. Ostrich farming for meat, egg, oil and other products is starting to gain traction because of its profitability.

Suitable alternative

The DENR-BMB is not alone in justifying the harvesting of animals for captive-breeding although doubts are cast on how wildlife farming is being done or regulated to prevent “wildlife laundering.”

Sought for reaction, Juan Carlos T. Gonzalez, a member of the board of trustees of the Mindoro Biodiversity Conservation Foundation Inc., explained via Messenger on August 18 that with the various environmental laws in place in the country, such as Republic Act (RA) 9147, or the Wildlife

Emerson Y. Sy, a consultant at the international nongovernment organization Traffic, said wildlife farming will only work if regulations are properly implemented.

He told the BusinessMirror on August 18 via Messenger that such is not the case in the Philippines.

“Many wildlife farms here are using their legal status to acquire additional smuggled wildlife and engage in wildlife laundering,” he said.

He cited a study he co-authored and was published in Philippine Journal of Systematic Biology. The report was titled “Endangered by Trade: Seizure analysis of the critically endangered Philippine Forest Turtle Siebenrockiella leytensis from 2004-2018.”

“Based on an online survey, we estimated that an additional 1,200 Philippine forest turtles were smuggled and illegally sold in China in 2015,”

As far as the DENR is concerned, however, the population of the country’s native monkeys remain stable and the species is on the “non-threatened” list.

“Perhaps the population of macaque are on the decline in other parts of the world, but not here in the Philippines. You can even see them sometimes in troops on the roadside,” Calderon said.

He said harvesting in the wild is allowed as a way of addressing humananimal conflict, assuring that harvesting is done in the most humane manner possible.

Nevertheless, Calderon said that applications for harvesting monkeys or any animal from the wild are “carefully evaluated and assessed.”

He said the application to harvest monkeys filed last year is still under evaluation with the DENR’s scientific body, the Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, being consulted every step of the way.

It is now under evaluation by the National Wildlife Management Committee as required under RA 9147.

Harvesting is allowed only for the purpose of breeding. Only the offsprings of these wild-caught animals in the duly authorized breeding facilities are allowed to be traded under the Wildlife Act.

Monkey farming

According to Theresa Tenazas, OIC of the Wildlife Bureau at the DENR-BMB, two wildlife facilities

Export policy

Rescued PHL eagle ‘Makilala-Hiraya’ finds its new home D espite the gloom brought by Covid-19 pandemic, a bright spot in wildlife biodiversity shone last June when a young Philippine eagle was rescued and released back into the wild a month later.

The majestic Philippine eagle, an apex predator, rarely settles for less when hunting for prey.

The same goes in finding a suitable territory where it will reign supreme.

Finding a home

Such was the consideration in finding a new home for the three- to fouryear-old female Philippine eagle that was rescued in Barangay Kisante in Makilala, North Cotabato, near the Mount Apo Natural Park.

A suitable home was found, courtesy of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) together with the local government of Makilala. It brought renewed hope for the eagle’s survival.

Named Makilala-Hiraya, the eagle’s first name was given by its rescuers, after the town where it was found, while the second name, which means “the fruit of one’s hopes, dreams and aspirations,” was from the employees of Energy Development Corp. (EDC).

Having recovered from its injuries and ready to brave the wild once more, Makilala-Hiraya was released last month in her new home in the

Mount Apo Geothermal Reservation in North Cotabato under the protection of the EDC. The energy company accepted PEF’s proposal to release MakilalaHiraya at a site within its geothermal reservation.

Protecting ‘the eagle’

Committed to protect MakilalaHiraya, EDC, together with PEF, has trained 20 forest rangers who will monitor the eagle in her new home in Mount Apo Geothermal Reservation.

EDC will help monitor the young female eagle in the next six months, to make sure that she is able to survive.

A survivor

The young eagle was being mobbed by a flock of crows when it was found and rescued by DENR-Kidapawan personnel who took temporary custody of the injured bird of prey before turning it was over to the PEF for rehabilitation.

According to PEF, it is necessary to secure the bird’s release and ensure its continued safety in the wild so that it can find a mate, nest and contribute to the continued survival of the critically endangered Philippine eagle.

“Releasing this reduced eagle is important in keeping the wild population thriving. Protecting the existing wild population is as significant as breeding the eagle in captivity to add new birds

Philippine eagle ‘Makilala-Hiraya’ Photo from Philippine Eagle Foundation

to our forests. There is also an opportunity to discover the other Philippine eagles in the area by monitoring this eagle after its release.” said Dr. Jayson Ibanez, PEF director for Research and Conservation, in statement.

A continuous commitment

EDC ’s commitment to monitor Makilala-Hiraya is a continuous commitment not only to environmental conservation but also to going beyond sustainability, having been a partner of PEF for nearly two decades now, said Atty. Allan Barcena, EDC’s head of corporate social responsibility and public relations.

Sought for comment via e-mail,

Barcena added that “adopting” Makilala-Hiraya, in a way, brings pride for men and women of EDC, as the Philippine eagle remains in the brink of extinction.

It is listed as a critically endangered species, as there are approximately only around 400 pairs of this monkeyeating eagle left in the wild.

For the EDC helping save a Philippine eagle is like saving the species one eagle at a time.

“This opportunity to save our national bird doesn’t only bring pride for us in EDC,” Barcena said. “It likewise brings us closer to our mission of achieving a regenerative future, a path that we and the rest of the Lopez group have chosen because it is the only way to create lasting value for our stakeholders and for our planet,” he added.

Adopt-an-eagle program

EDC has earlier adopted another Philippine eagle named “Geothermica” in 2012 through PEF’s Adopt-an-Eagle program.

Geothermica is one of two pairs sent by the government to Singapore as part of its conservation and protection efforts.

The protection of the bird remains a priority for the company’s biodiversity conservation and monitoring program (BCMP).

“EDC fully supports the protection and conservation of the Philippine

eagle. We continue to work with the [PEF] and our local governments toward protecting them and their natural habitat by increasing and maintaining forest cover,” he said.

Lush forest

The 701-hectare protected geothermal reservation surrounding EDC’s 108-megawatt Mount Apo Geothermal Project (MAGP) is an ideal home for the Philippine eagle.

It is well-maintained, with lush forest that is home to 39 species of mammals and 165 species of birds, enough for a pair of Philippine eagle to thrive in.

Fortunately, the territory is a geothermal reservation that is protected against destructive human activities, including mining, quarrying, logging, poaching or hunting.

High hopes

DENR Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon, in a recent BusinessMirror interview, said conservation efforts of the Philippine eagle is paying off.

He attributed this to the strong partnership between the DENR, the PEF and various private institutions.

“Lately, there are more reported sightings of the Philippine eagle. Just last month, we released [into the wild] a rescued Philippine eagle. These are good signs,” Calderon said.

More importantly, Calderon said

the partnership with various institutions, including the private sector, paved the way for the expansion of forest cover in the Philippines, and the strong protection of biodiversity that includes prey for apex predators like the Philippine eagle.

“We can say that because of our expanding forest, there are more areas where the Philippine eagle can thrive,” he said.

Sustainable development

EDC is one of the world’s largest geothermal producers and the country’s leading renewable-energy company.

For over 40 years, it has been implementing comprehensive environmental management programs that help enhance the ecosystem and corporate social responsibility programs that ensure inclusive growth for its partner communities.

It is a subsidiary of First Gen Corp., the country’s largest clean-energy company, with a portfolio that included natural gas, geothermal, solar, wind and hydro.

EDC’s 1,499MW total installed capacity generates 42 percent of the country’s total renewable energy, with its 1,204MW geothermal portfolio accounting for 62 percent of the country’s total installed geothermal capacity, and putting the country on the map as the world’s third-largest geothermal producer. Jonathan L. Mayuga

Sports

AMAZING BRYAN TWINS RETIRE

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EW YORK—American twins Bob and Mike Bryan announced their retirement after a record-breaking doubles career Thursday, making official what seemed clear when they did not enter the US Open.

The 42-year-old brothers collected 16 Grand Slam championships together, 119 tourlevel titles and a 2012 Olympic gold medal.

They finished 10 seasons atop the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) doubles rankings and helped the United States win the Davis Cup in 2007.

Along the way, they became as famous a doubles team as there was, known for leaping to bump chests at the end of victories.

The Bryans, who were born in California, already had said 2020 would be their last year on tour.

“We feel it’s the right time to walk away,” Mike said.

They were not on the entry list released last week for doubles at the US Open, where play begins Monday without spectators amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bryans won five championships as a pairing in New York, most recently in 2014.

“We’re most proud of the way we devoted ourselves completely to the game and gave our full effort every day,” Bob said. “Our loyalty toward each other never wavered and we are leaving professional tennis with zero regrets. We’ll miss the competition and camaraderie amongst the players. We’ll also miss the excitement of gearing up for a big match and playing for the roar of the fans.”

He had hip surgery in 2018. While he was off the tour, Mike won two additional Grand Slam titles with Jack Sock as his partner.

The brothers are the most successful doubles team in Davis Cup history, winning 25 matches across 15 years.

In March, just before tennis shut down because of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Bryans clinched a Davis Cup best-of-five series by giving the US a 3-0 lead against Uzbekistan in Hawaii.

Under new rules instituted in 2018, the twins are the first ATP players whose credentials qualify them for automatic listing on the ballot for the International Tennis Hall of Fame, bypassing the usual nomination process.

They’ll be eligible for the Class of 2025. AP

BusinessMirror

unday, August 30, 2020 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

AWKWARD ACTIVISM I

BOB (left) and Mike Bryan kiss the men’s doubles championship trophy at the 2014 US Open in New York.

A8 | S

OAKLAND Athletics’ Tony Kemp wears a Black Lives Matter shirt as he stands with his team during the playing of the national anthem before their game against the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas, recently. AP

By David Brandt The Associated Press

N a typically awkward way, Major League Baseball (MLB) has been pulled into America’s discussion about racial injustice.

Some teams are playing. Some aren’t.

Two teams walked off the field after the national anthem.

But across the sport, one theme became clear: Baseball shouldn’t avoid potentially difficult conversations and decisions regarding social issues. Though the process may be imperfect, there was agreement that coaches, players and teams should speak their mind.

“This is at the forefront now,” said Oakland infielder Tony Kemp, who is Black. “By sitting out tonight’s game, I feel like it’s just a small building block of what we want to see. These couple days are historic times in sports. One day our kids are

going to look back and ask us what was going on and what did we do to help bring awareness to these issues in the world and we’re going to say, ‘One game we just decided not to play.’”

Oakland’s game at Texas was among seven that were postponed by Thursday evening, along with Philadelphia at Washington, Baltimore at Tampa Bay, Minnesota at Detroit, Colorado at Arizona and Boston at the Blue Jays in Buffalo, New York. Some games were played as scheduled.

The New York Mets and Miami Marlins jointly walked off the field after a moment of silence, draping a Black Lives Matter t-shirt across home plate as they chose not to start their scheduled game Thursday night.

The national anthem was played and all players and coaches stood.

Mets outfielder Dominic Smith—a Black man who wept Wednesday night while discussing the shooting by police of a Black man in Wisconsin over the weekend—then led New York onto the field. Players took their positions, then reserves and coaches filed out of both dugouts and stood silently for 42 seconds. The game was then postponed.

Without much apparent guidance from MLB, teams were left to make decisions for themselves. Some games were officially postponed a few hours before the scheduled start time. Others, like ColoradoArizona, appeared to be on schedule until a few minutes before first pitch.

St. Louis Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty was frustrated there wasn’t a more unified response. Baseball has sometimes lagged behind its pro sports counterparts in addressing social issues.

“It’s tough because yesterday would

have been the day for league-wide action, and it wasn’t able to happen league-wide yesterday,” Flaherty said. “Hopefully it could happen today, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be able to happen today.”

The decisions not to play Thursday night came a day after three MLB games were postponed in response to the shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake.

The Phillies met Thursday about five-anda-half hours ahead of the scheduled start of the game at Nationals Park. After 30 to 40 minutes of discussion, the players decided to not play.

Phillies Manager Joe Girardi passed that along in a phone call to Nationals counterpart Dave Martinez, who said the Nationals would join their opponents in sitting out.

“We’re in this together—this fight for equality and social justice,” Girardi said. “In this world, I’ve always believed, there’s two things you can’t live without. It has nothing to do with food and water. It’s love and hope. And I don’t think we’re doing a good job in our country giving that to everyone and I think that needs to be the focus here.”

A statement from The Players Alliance, which consists of more than 100 current and former Black players, said current players will donate their salaries from Thursday and Friday in “supporting our efforts to combat racial inequality and aid the Black families and communities deeply affected in the wake of recent events.”

Baseball has dealt with a slow decline in the number of Black players for decades. In recent seasons, the percentage of Black players has hovered around 8 percent. For a sport that proudly recognizes Jackie Robinson—who

broke MLB’s color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers—the decline has been frustrating for some.

Baseball will celebrate Jackie Robinson Day on Friday. It’s normally on April 15 but was moved because of the Covid-19-altered schedule to August 28, which is the anniversary of the March on Washington in 1963 and also the day in 1945 when Dodgers GM Branch Rickey met with Robinson to discuss breaking the color barrier.

“I think he would be amazed at the lack of progress in his eyes,” said Milwaukee’s Lorenzo Cain, who is Black. “I don’t know personally what he went through but I know the stories. I know for a fact it wasn’t easy for him to be in the situation he was in. He paved the way for guys like me to go out and play this game and be in this position today. I’ll always thank him for that.

“The fact we’re talking about this in 2020, I don’t see the progress in that. It’s almost like we’re going backwards.”

The three games postponed Wednesday— the Cincinnati Reds and Brewers in Milwaukee, Seattle Mariners and Padres in San Diego and the Los Angeles Dodgers and Giants in San Francisco—were being made up as part of doubleheaders Thursday.

Those baseball postponements came after the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Milwaukee Bucks didn’t come out on the floor for Game Five of their first-round playoff series with the Orlando Magic on Wednesday.

NBA officials later announced that all three of the day’s scheduled playoff games had been postponed, and games scheduled Thursday also weren’t played.

MLS and WNBA games have also been postponed.

Messi’s Argentine hometown dreams of return

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UENOS AIRES, Argentina—A mural of a young Lionel Messi in a Newell’s Old Boys jersey, tiny and barefoot with a soccer ball in front of him, inspires hundreds of young people at the Argentine club’s youth school to dream of succeeding like their hometown hero.

Messi’s surprise decision to leave European club Barcelona earlier this week has sparked unlikely dreams in residents of Rosario, the city 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Buenos Aires where he was born, that he would return to play with the local team, Newell’s Old Boys.

Hundreds of Newell’s fans formed a noisy and colorful caravan of vehicles Thursday that went from Rosario’s “Marcelo Bielsa” stadium to its Flag Monument, the symbol of this city on the banks of the Paraná River. Many participants donned red-and-black Newell’s jerseys and waved club flags, honking horns and setting off flares.

“All of Argentina wants to see you smile,”

read a poster on the window of one car.

Newell’s fans know they don’t have the millions to offer the 33-year-old superstar that the owners of European clubs Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain or Inter Milan do. Those clubs are seen as Messi’s most likely destinations.

Their strategy is to touch the heart of one of world soccer’s top stars and help him settle a pending issue in his career: playing professional soccer in Argentina, something he hasn’t done because he went to Europe at the young age of 13.

“Our competition with the other clubs is not economic or sporting, what we offer Messi is a chance to reencounter with the amateur roots of his training and let him do it in his home city,” said fan Roberto Mensi, speaking to The Associated Press at the Malvinas complex, Newell’s youth soccer school.

The now famous footage of a tiny Messi

eluding much-bigger opponents in 7-on-7 matches in Argentina’s so-called baby soccer category was filmed on grounds here surrounded by red-and-black painted walls.

The Argentine team didn’t want to pay for growth hormone treatment for Messi so his father took Messi to Barcelona as a young teen.

Although he has spent more than half his life in Catalonia, Messi returns every year to Rosario for Christmas and in the past he has publicly said he would like to play for Newell’s.

This has led residents to ask: Why not now?

“The news [of Messi’s decision to leave Barcelona] generated illusions in us,” Mensi acknowledged. “We know this may not be the moment for this to happen, but we want to show that the door is open for Leo to come back whenever he wants. People have a lot of affection for him.” AP

Roberto Mensi, the leader of the Autoconvocados Newells fans group, poses next to a mural depicting a young Lionel Messi at a soccer field used by the Newell’s Old Boys youth teams in Rosario, Argentina. AP

Hope in the midst

of a pandemic

How education empowers children to dream

2

BusinessMirror AUGUST 30, 2020 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

FORTUITOUS CIRCUMSTANCES The Itchyworms’ new album was recorded under less than ideal conditions—and fans love it

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By Stephanie Joy Ching

IX months into the lockdown, the Itchyworms surprised everyone with their latest release, Waiting for the End to Start. Dubbed as their “quarantine album”, Jazz Nicolas, Jugs Jugueta, Kelvin Yu and Chino Singson originally conceptualized it as a single track but quickly developed into a full-length project after they managed to write and record eight more songs.

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

Because Metro Manila where all four members are based is still pretty much in lockdown, Waiting for the End to Start was largely recorded within the confines of their respective homes. Naturally, it was not without its share of technical challenges.

“When the ECQ started, Jazz had terrible internet connection, and the three of us didn’t have professional recording equipment.

Delivery services were also not operational at that time, so we used whatever equipment we had at home,” Jugs recalled.

Despite these and many more limitations, the quarantine also provided them with more creative freedom than they bargained for.

“You can repeat your guitar parts without thinking; ‘it’s late,

my bandmates need to go home,’” said Jugeta, “So you can play guitar until 4AM, by yourself, and no one will complain,” “If there was anything good that came out of this quarantine, it’s that we were able to be productive in our own homes,” added lead guitarist Chino Singson.

There was also plenty of time for them to experiment even as they were also able to be hooked on new hobbies such as video editing and gardening. Binge-ing on Netflix which lasted for two weeks also provided the band with a lot of visual inspiration which Jugs said greatly enhanced their songwriting.

“You watch a lot of things, and all of them have soundtracks. So all of those things entered our minds. We were not just inspired by music, but also by movies and web series,” he further explained.

The title track, for starters, was in part a homage to James Bond, which was the result of Jugs binge-ing on 007 movies while in quarantine. The song’s title even feels like a James Bond film.

Speaking of being in quarantine, the album also managed to express the fear and monotony of isolated, as demonstrated in “The Silence,” which incidentally was also accompanied by by a music video that shows how eerily silent the world has become under this

: Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

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The Itchyworms: Jazz Nicholas, Kelvin Yu, Jugs Jugeta and Chino Singson

ongoing pandemic.

And then, there’s “Same Day,” a song that wonders aloud when days start and end. “You don’t know if you already took your vitamins today because today looks the same as yesterday,” Jazz mused.

The rest of the album is a collection of diverse songs that capture the wide range of feelings as a result of the current unfortunate circumstances. From a repurposed 2005 track to a slow jazz number, Waiting for the End to Start is full of pleasant little surprises.

“Like any collection of music, it is a record of its time, a snapshot of the artist’s reaction to his or her circumstances,” Chino concludes.

Waiting for the End to Start is now available on all major streaming platforms.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | AUGUST 30, 2020

BUSINESS

3

RHYTHM & RHYME

by Kaye Villagomez-Losorata

Film themes that are better than their big screen counterparts

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HERE are great movies made even better with notable soundtracks. And there are theme songs that totally eclipsed the films that supposedly gave birth to them.

These are songs that out-rank, outclass, and outrun the movies they were supposed to play supporting roles for. We may not even remember the movies the following songs were once tied to, but we have time to recall some of them below.

“Turn Back Time” from the movie Sliding Doors

Sliding what? Yes, that Gwyneth Paltrow-starrer was forgettable as the actor that starred as her leading man in the movie. It was John Hannah, by the way.

Sliding Doors was a romanticcomedy released in 1998 where Gwyneth’s character lives two plots: The first one happens when she was able to board the train and the second when she missed the ride and taxied her way home.

Not bad for a premise. The film just lacked chemistry and was just forgettable. What you will remember is Aqua’s “Turn Back Time” and that official music video where lead singer Lene Nystrom holds her own parallel plot against Gwyneth’s in scenes off the movie.

“Give me time to reason/Give me time to think it through…If only I could turn back time” and while you’re at it, ask yourself if this was really the same band that gave the world “Barbie Girl” and “Doctor Jones.” “If only I could turn back time/If only I had said what I still hide” just moods you right into the what-ifs of your past.

“Pure Shores” from movie The Beach

the

In 2000, Leonardo DiCaprio starred in The Beach opposite Virginie Ledoyen with Tilda Swinton and Robert Carlyle in the mix. I saw this film on the big screen and remembered snoring over it.

It holds a 20 percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes, so there.

But All Saints’ “Pure Shores” was a totally different beach. Here’s a song that gives justice to the electronica

with dream pop plus ambient music genre every time you listen to it.

These days when everyone is posting “take me [back] to the beach” on social media, Pure Shores already crystalized this yearning back in 2000 when the song talked about longing to find “a piece of something to call mine.”

“Live and Let Die” from the James Bond movie of the same name

Ranked as one of the best James Bond themes in any given countdown, we have Sir Paul McCartney in one of his best postBeatles outputs. Released in 1973 when Roger Moore was 007, “Live and Let Die” was nominated for an Oscar Best Original Song but lost to another classic, “The Way We Were.”

“Live and Let Die” was so good that Guns N’ Roses was able to make money out of it when the band revived the song in 1991.

There’s just no escaping the way it opened with: “When you’re young and your heart was an open book/ You used to say live and let live/But if this ever changing world in which we’re living/Makes you give in and cry/ Live and let die.”

Because the people behind the James Bond franchise is known to mind every theme song, we have two more that are easily classics.

Here are two more that are harder to forget than the movie plot they represented back in the day: “Nobody Does It Better” from The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only from the Bond film of the same name.

“Against All Odds” from the movie Against All Odds

This 1984 Rachel Ward-Jeff Bridges-film might be forgotten but boy did we take a look at that song!

Against All Odds by Phil Collins was the power ballad that did not just demand attention “cause there’s just an empty space.” It occupied quite a lot of space in

music countdowns at the time and helped secure Collins’ solo career.

When Collins’ shouted “Take a look at me now,” we did. We stopped whatever it was the hell we’re doing and listened. We still do, earplugs and all. Even Mariah Carey capitalized on this classic and made a hit out of belting the song even more.

“Cruisin’” from Duets

Gwyneth is back and she did score a hit in “Cruisin’” (originally a hit for Smokey Robinson) from the movie Duets. The 2000 road trip flick was all over the place that it averaged only 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes but it allowed Paltrow to cruise for a “slash” claim: actress/singer.

She would move on to have even more singing assignments, guest star on Glee where she performed a lot while “Cruisin’” remains to be a go-to duet in videokes because it’s quite easy to nail even when you’re drunk.

“Lose Yourself” from the movie 8 Mile

Speaking of artists in movie roles, Eminem snagged an Oscar for the rap anthem “Lose Yourself,” the main

theme from his own starrer, 8 Mile.

The movie was just ok but Lose Yourself was exceptional. You get underdog goosebumps just by listening to it. “You better lose yourself in the music/The moment, you own it, you better never it go/You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow/This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.”

“Time of my Life” from the movie Dirty Dancing

This movie has classic chick flick written all over it, but really, watch it again. It’s corny. However, the soundtrack was just spot-on and “Time of My Life” is the main reason why.

The song was so effective, it boosted that lifting scene and was even recreated in later movies such as It’s Complicated where Ryan Gosling’s character confessed to Emma Stone’s that he used this Dirty Dancing stunt to ace his conquests.

The author is a former entertainment reporter and editor before shifting to corporate PR. Follow @kayevillagomez on Instagram and Twitter for more updates.

Hope in the midst

of a pandemic How education empowers children to dream

T

he adverse impact of the pandemic across all sectors continues to worsen by the day. Among the affected is the education of countless children worldwide.

“From school closures, to isolation, to a persistent sense of fear and anxiety, the effects of this pandemic are impacting childhoods worldwide,” Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore said.

“We need to come together and explore every avenue to keep children learning and help them through this difficult time.”

Despite the difficult situation, Filipino learners like Haley and Claire still want to continue their education as they brave the changing world that grapples with the effects of Covid-19.

A child’s perspective

For Haley, a 10-year-old student from Doña Juana Actub Lluch Memorial Central School, Iligan City, education is something to be treasured.

“Sabi ng aking mga magulang, edukasyon ang tanging kayamanan na maiiwan sa amin na walang sino mang makakapagnakaw at hindi kaya bilhin ng kahit anong salapi,” she said. Like national hero Jose Rizal, Haley believes that today’s children are the hope of the country.

Meanwhile, Claire, an incoming Grade 12 student of Granada-NHS Ballesteros Extension, Iloilo City, is passionate about education and how it can change lives. She said that for every day that a child spends without learning is an opportunity missed to know more about the world.

“Education means learning good values, creating good character, and learning how

Haley from Lanao del Norte (left) and Claire from Iloilo know the value of learning. to respect everyone’s differences,” Claire said. “Education is very important not only to me, but to every student who is living for their dreams—that someday they will free themselves from poverty.”

New normal in education Even if Haley and Claire want to pursue education, they are aware of the reality of the new school setup and the challenges it presents.

“Masaya ako para sa paparating na school year, pero dapat mag-ingat parin tayong lahat dahil may virus parin tayo na kailangan talunin,” Haley said. “Dapat gawin natin ang social distancing, magsuot ng mask kung lalabas ng bahay, at maghugas ng kamay for 20 seconds.”

Haley will be using modular distance learning for the upcoming year, allowing her to study in the safety of her home.

With face-to-face learning prohibited due to the pandemic, the Department of Education (DepEd) is preparing to implement different learning delivery modalities, including modular, TV, radio, and online, depending on the situation of the locality and the availability of resources.

“Here on our island, modular learning

lang talaga ang sa tingin ko ay pabor sa lahat ng mag-aaral, that’s why we prefer that learning modality,” Claire shared.

Hopes and prayers

Haley and Claire have concerns regarding the safety of everyone. They know that a lot of changes and preparations have to be done for the upcoming school year, which was rescheduled from August 24 to October 5. But both students remain hopeful.

Ultimately, Haley expressed gratitude toward her teachers and the frontliners who are working tirelessly to fight the pandemic. Meanwhile, Claire said she constantly prays for everyone’s recovery from the disease, and for education to push through this year.

The two young girls recognize the power of education. It is because of learners like them that DepEd perseveres in finding ways to deliver safe, quality basic education without compromising the health of the academic community.

Haley and Claire serve as proof that children truly are the hope of the future, and that a nation united will help them make their dreams for the future a reality.

Young Filipino executive to speak at global leadership forum

A

29-year-old Filipino organization development (OD) expert and business organization chief executive is slated to speak at an online global leadership forum next month.

Louie Evans Sala, corporate services director of Philippine SGC Corporation subsidiary Haus Motors, a major motorcycle dealer and distributor, will be a resource person at the online forum, titled “Shared Leadership: A New Way to Lead,” an event of Leadership in Motion (LIM) Global on September 8. LIM is a US consulting firm that focuses on leadership and team development, helping companies develop their own team coaches to ensure internal teams work well and drive business results. Together with Sala

as resource persons, or “storytellers,” are other millennials from the US, India, Bangladesh, Israel, Hong Kong, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland.

“Organizations become more efficient, innovative, and resilient when everyone contributes and are valued,” Sala said. “This is what we always hope to accomplish as we lobby for shared leadership and accountability.”

He added: “Shared leadership is about the paradigm shift from being the central source of vision, information, and direction to creating a safe space for people to speakup and hence become 100 percent responsible for the entire team’s success. ” Sala is the incoming president of the Iconic chapter of

4 BusinessMirror

Business Network International (BNI), a global, US-based business referral organization. He also serves as Support and Growth Ambassador of the BNI Taguig region, of which the Iconic chapter is part. BNI Philippines recorded more than P3 billion in closed business transactions since 2018, while the BNI organization worldwide accounted for an excess of $16 billion in business referred and closed since the start of 2019.

“I challenge my fellow youth to take up that space intended for us in this world,” he said. “Become that best version of yourself, inspire others, and be successful.

That way, you will have that opportunity to make others’ dreams come true.”

August 30, 2020

Virtual learning sites sprout up to help working parents

By Heather Hollingsworth & Freida Frisaro The Associated Press

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ISSION, Kansas—A dance studio in Florida. A martial arts center in Missouri.

Libraries in San Francisco. These and other places are taking on a somewhat unlikely new role this fall—welcoming children for supervised distance learning while their parents go to work.

With many schools still closed by the coronavirus pandemic, public and private alternatives are sprouting up across the nation to watch over children as they study.

The sites provide a lifeline for families that struggled through virtual learning last spring, but organizers acknowledge they are a poor substitute for schools with professional educators. And by inviting students to congregate in new spaces, experts say, the programs risk subjecting caregivers to the same virus dangers that closed schools.

“It’s creating the same situation as we would for having the children in school,” said Florida International University epidemiologist Dr. Aileen Marty. “So the only way that that works is if you know everybody in that group, a very small group, and everyone is tested and tested negative.”

When schools in Broward County, Florida, announced plans to begin the new year with remote learning, dance studio owner Katie Goughan recognized immediately the challenges for working parents.

Her Dance Explosion Co. in Hollywood, Florida, has hired a substitute teacher who is on site from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. to keep students on task. The studio is charging $150 a week, or a daily rate of $35.

“I thought to myself, ‘What would my parents have done with me?’”

Goughan said. “I wanted to alleviate any stress that parents might be under right now trying to find somewhere for their kids to do their schoolwork.”

The studio, which has capacity for 30 students, currently has 10 children during the day, all of them wearing masks, along with temperature checks and lots of hand sanitizer.

Jennifer Quisenberry, 37, a nurse practitioner, is sending her 6-yearold daughter, Audra, to a “distance learning camp” at Premier Martial Arts in Wildwood, Missouri. Her daughter’s district is beginning the year virtually, and she and her husband, who works for a car dealership, have struggled with child care since schools closed. With no family available to help, she had trouble sleeping before finding the martial arts center, which is owned by a former high-school teacher.

“We can’t not come to work,” she said. “My partners said I could bring Audra to work. But a hospital is not an ideal setting for a 6-year-old in the middle of a pandemic.”