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Davao Region treads warily in restart of tourism industry in time of Covid-19

DAHICAN Beach

MATI INFORMATION OFFICE

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By Manuel T. Cayon

AVAO CITY—Local tourism councils and bodies in this southeastern Mindanao region have adopted diverse postures: some are bold and aggressive but many are cautious, in reviving, or jolting back to life, their banner income-generating sector—the tourism industry.

Davao City, for instance, despite enjoying the preference of convention-goers and visitors hoping to see, or shake the hand of, the first and lone president from Mindanao, has opted to take only nimble steps to spring back to life its target to continue being a topnotch MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, events) destination.

Yet, the coastal Mati City, the capital of coconut country Davao Oriental, was bolder, announcing as early as last month the opening of its famed seven-kilometer white-sand Dahican Beach, and three scenic bays on the list of the

world’s famous bays.

Davao de Oro province, formerly Compostela Valley, also took a cautious posture in reviewing the status of its famous ecological tourism sites, and the Island Garden City of Samal has taken inspiration from Mati City, announcing last month the opening of its resort establishments.

All of these moves have been attached to a tight assurance that health protocols are observed, including an equally loud and grim warning that all resort-goers and visitors must subject themselves to multilayer health screenings.

President’s turf

TOURISM has been a global generator of income for many countries and was seen as a vital lifesaver for economies. With the global spread of Covid-19 infection, tourism took a sharp blow when it was the first to bow down to succeeding lockdowns and bans on travel.

Thus, it is only expected that economies heavily dependent on tourism receipts are already raring to turn on their tourism lifeblood to recoup losses, or at least catch a break-even bottom line.

Carlo John Tria, president of the Davao City Chamber of Com-

merce and Industry, said the city enjoyed previously “a varied terrain” of attractions, that include beaches, cultural attractions and commercial districts to sites and places such as the farms and attractions, like the Philippine Eagle Center. This center, some 30 kilometers northwest of downtown, has achieved success in breeding the endemic endangered eagle to become one of the global gems in the preservation and propagation of birds of prey.

“I think the variety of nature, culture and food choices are the Continued on A2

Aid from top donors drops even as need soars

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By Cara Anna | The Associated Press

dozen health centers, more than 40 feeding centers and a safe house in one of the world’s most fragile countries following civil war.

In Somalia, a mother of twin baby boys told Amnesty International she had to give birth in her makeshift home in a camp for displaced people because no local health clinic was open. Aid workers told Amnesty researcher Abdullahi Hassan the newly reduced services were due to lack of funding.

“You can imagine how risky this is,” he told the AP.

OHANNESBURG—A new snapshot of the frantic global response to the coronavirus pandemic shows some of the world’s largest government donors of humanitarian aid are buckling under the strain: Funding commitments, for the virus and otherwise, have dropped by a third from the same period last year.

The analysis by the UK-based Development Initiatives, obtained in advance by The Associated Press, offers a rare real-time look at the notoriously difficult to track world of aid.

At a time when billions of people are struggling with the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse—on top of longrunning disasters like famine, drought or unrest—more, not less, money is urgently needed.

New virus protection equipment must be bought for almost everything, from maternity wards in African villages to women’s shelters in Syrian refugee camps.

“We have not seen substantial funding for Covid, yet the situation is going to get worse,” Rosalind Crowther, South Sudan country director for the aid group CARE, told the AP in May, saying “some donors have backtracked on earlier commitments.” The group runs two

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 49.4110

Steep cuts

IN this June 9, 2020, file photo, Covid-19 patients lie on beds in a field hospital built inside a gym in Santo Andre, on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil.

A new snapshot of the frantic global response to the coronavirus pandemic shows some of the world’s largest government donors of humanitarian assistance are buckling under the strain and overall aid commitments have dropped by a third from the same period last year. AP

DURING the first five months of this year, overall aid commitments from the largest government donors were $16.9 billion, down from $23.9 billion in the same period last year, according to the new analysis, which drew on data from the United States, the United Kingdom, European Union institutions, Germany, France, Canada and others.

Many of these donors—notably the UK, whose aid commitments Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4626 n UK 62.9546 n HK 6.3749 n CHINA 7.0547 n SINGAPORE 35.6475 n AUSTRALIA 35.0522 n EU 57.3019 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.1780

Source: BSP (July 24, 2020)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, July 26, 2020

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ON A WING AND A PRAYER

Recoup losses

DAVAO de Oro Province, which has nature trek and mining activities to its advantage, said it was adhering to the Department of Tourism’s Memorandum Circular 2020-002 “Health and Safety Guidelines Governing the Accommodation Establishments Under the New Normal” and Administrative Order 2020-002 “Guidelines on the Operations of Hotels and Other Accommodation Establishments Under a Community Quarantine.”

“We conducted the inspection to ensure the compliance of their observance to minimum health protocols like sanitation, social-distancing measures, disinfection mechanism, and contact-tracing efforts,” said Christine Dompor, senior tourism operations officer of the province.

The inspection covered six establishments in Pantukan town on their provisional accreditation and Certificate of Authority to Operate (CAO), and 13 non-accredited, or without provisional permit establishments, and eight establishments in Mabini town.

As early as the first week of June, when Mati City was in the category of low-risk area for Covid-19 infection, this provincial capital announced it was opening its world-famed Dahican Beach and three other destinations to the public and tourists but under strict physical distancing and hygiene, as it celebrates its cityhood and its annual bay festival later this month.

In its internet posting, the city said, “No amount of Covid-19 can stop our celebration of our 13th Mati Cityhood Day and 17th Pujada Bay Festival come June 19.”

“Though we have to do away with activities that may cause mass gathering of people, some of them will continue,” the city information office said.

The celebration that time was beamed online only through the official Facebook page.

Along with Dahican Beach, the Pujada Bay, Mayo Bay and Balete

MATI INFORMATION OFFICE

biggest draws of the region. You can relax and enjoy in many of its places,” he said.

“We will need to patronize local restaurants and buy local products to strengthen our local economy in the face of many disruptions both now and in the future. We are working to bring various sectors of the city together to broaden a buylocal consciousness so that more citizens will exercise the preference for local products and services. These will protect jobs and livelihoods,” Tria added.

The city’s built-in strength however, is the location of the airport, one of four most used airports in the country, automatically bringing in to the city visitors and locals going to places outside of Davao City.

Tria said the actual loss by the city and the region to the downturn of global travel and tourism amid the pandemic could not be immediately measured until the end of the year.

Just a glimpse of the city’s benefit to tourism: In 2018 visitors arriving at the Davao International Airport reached 2.3 million, with estimated average spending of P4,093 per tourist for a stay of three days. The city earned P2.6 billion from accrued taxes from accredited tourism establishments.

Councilor Myrna Dalodo-Ortiz of the City Council committee on tourism said tourism may likely start with intra-regional activities, as lockdowns were still tight and strict between regions but more relaxed within each region.

This was being compounded by the lack of interisland travel to and from regions where interregional boundaries are still almost impassable for travel to places across Mindanao.

She said the provinces and cities within the Davao Region were into an assessment of their tourist destinations, and reviving travel and tours would come from local residents.

It would not be difficult, though, with data indicating that a huge portion of tourism before the quarantine era pointed at the main contribution from local tourists.

In 2018 some 92 percent of visitors were domestic, or those coming from other provinces.

Foreigners were still unlikely to come given the limited air travel. Besides, two countries of origin of top five foreign visitors in the city, the US and China, are still reeling heavily from the coronavirus pandemic.

Health protocols

MATI INFORMATION OFFICE

Continued from A1

Bay were opened much later. These three destinations have been included on the list of “Most Beautiful Bays in the World (MBBW)” by the MBBW Association.

In a statement headlined “Dahican Beach, along with all other tourist attractions in the City of Mati, is now open to the public,” the city disclosed that the Department of Tourism, “through the City Tourism Office, has released 30 certificates to operate for resorts and hotels oper-

ating within the City of Mati.”

Mati Tourism Officer Dashiel Indelible Jr. said, however, that not all the establishments will open simultaneously, “as some establishments are still to comply with the implementation of the minimum health and safety requirements mandated by the DOT.”

The move also hopes to recover income loss, estimated at P114 million, when the city locked down its borders to tourists and visitors for the past months. The amount cov-

ered the months of March, April and May. Before the pandemic, the city recorded an average of 25,438 tourist arrivals per month, with an estimated expenditures per tourist per day of P1,500.

“This excludes the negative effect of the cancellation of the Pujada Bay Festival and Cityhood Day activities this month,” it added.

Indelible said the opening of tourist destinations will rev up the local tourism industry.

THE province has installed a multilayered health screening along its borders that allowed it to begin to gradually open its borders even on weekends.

“All visitors and travelers who plan to visit Mati City should, however, expect strict health screening in provincial and city borders before entering for the safety and security of the community,” it said.

Nearer Davao City, and often the most visited, is the Island Garden City of Samal, which also announced last month that it has set the opening of its beach resorts on July 18, but accreditation would be granted only by the DOT and visitors to oblige by the requirement to obtain individual QR-coded identification cards.

Tria said everyone has to abide by the requirements of the new normal state of things.

The submission of a negative RT-PCR for Davao-bound passengers is one such rule. This move was prompted by data from the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit showing that from July 5 to 13, the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Davao City were travelers from Manila.

“It’s now everybody’s responsibility to adhere to the safety protocols set by the authorities as Covid-19 still lurks in places or individuals we never know,” Councilor Ortiz said.

Aid from top donors drops even as need soars Continued from A1

have dropped by nearly 50 percent from last year, according to the analysis—are struggling as their economies contract. The sheer magnitude of the crisis is another challenge as every part of the world needs help—and now.

The UK on Wednesday signaled more trouble, announcing it had identified $3.6 billion in cuts to planned overseas aid spending “so that we can react to the potential shrinkage in our economy.”

The reality on the ground could be even worse than the new analysis indicates: Crucially, it only shows promises of aid. Just how much of the billions of dollars pledged have reached those in need is not yet clear.

’Devastating’

IN some cases, the response to the

pandemic has been alarmingly slow. In June, more than two dozen international aid groups wrote to the US about its pledged coronavirus aid, saying that “little to no US humanitarian assistance has reached those on the front lines” and calling the uncharacteristic delays “devastating.”

Their letter came as the US promoted global leadership on the Covid-19 response with more than $1 billion committed. Aid groups are now waiting to see whether the US will deliver millions of dollars this month as indicated.

This new analysis, like any measure of aid, is imperfect—it looks at data published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which is voluntary but widely used. It is also more current than other measures: The data was downloaded on July 10.

The drop in funding is keenly

felt by aid groups on the ground.

Underfunded

A SURVEY in May of 92 members of Bond, the UK network for nongovernmental organizations working in international development, found just 16 percent had received any new funding from the UK’s Department for International Development while fighting the pandemic in developing countries, and 41 percent were responding without any extra funding at all.

Some aid groups are warning the window to prevent the pandemic’s worst effects is narrowing, while the global humanitarian response “remains woefully underfunded,” as Refugees International said last week.

Meanwhile, “we are concerned that we are seeing a repurposing of existing funds...rather than a release of new funding,” Selena Vic-

tor, Mercy Corps’ senior director for policy and advocacy, has said of the EU’s response.

An UN-run emergency delivery service that has kept tons of humanitarian aid flowing to scores of countries hurt by travel restrictions could shut down in the coming weeks because “there has been no significant funding” from donor countries, the World Food Program said. Just 19 percent of the $965-million request has come in.

While individual governments struggle, the largest so-called multilateral organizations including the World Bank and the Global Fund have stepped up, perhaps not yet affected by budget constraints.

Their commitments this year are $48.8 billion, or 70 percent greater than the same period last year, according to the analysis.

That’s a positive sign but “must be sustainable to tackle the whole cri-

sis,” according to the analysis.

The challenges remain vast as various streams of assistance, including remittances, falter. “All resources...are set to fall,” according to a separate new Development Initiatives report.

That drop could continue for months. Official development assistance—government aid for developing countries’ economic development and welfare—could shrink by almost $20 billion worldwide between last year and 2021 under a worst-case scenario that envisages an extended pandemic.

The cuts could continue “as governments assess domestic priorities,” that report says.

Looming funding vacuum

COVID-19 arrived in a world already facing a growing number of humanitarian crises, from Yemen to Myanmar to West Africa’s Sahel.

Now the pandemic “threatens to create a funding vacuum,” the report says.

As of the end of June, it says, UN-coordinated calls for aid for this year were up 25 percent from last year because of additional needs created by the pandemic, reaching more than $37 billion.

Last week, the United Nations again increased its request for the pandemic response alone to $10.3 billion—the largest appeal in its history.

Only $1.7 billion has been received. Up to $40 billion might be needed.

“The response of wealthy nations so far has been grossly inadequate and dangerously short-sighted,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said. “Failure to act now will leave the virus free to circle ’round the globe.”

The World BusinessMirror

Editor: Angel R. Calso

Xi’s campaign to stay in power pits China against the world

L

ess than four months before the US election, President Donald Trump has made his tough China policy a centerpiece of his campaign to stay in power.

Over in Beijing, President Xi Jinping is similarly preparing for China’s own leadership contest in 2022.

While the country’s 1.4 billion citizens don’t get a vote, public sentiment still matters when it comes to how much support Xi can muster from senior Communist Party leaders for his indefinite rule.

A crucial pillar of that support has been Xi’s personification of standing “tall and firm” in the world, an image he’s brandished by strongly asserting claims in the South China Sea, spending billions to upgrade military hardware and tightening Beijing’s grip over Hong Kong. While that’s generated nationalism that has buoyed his support, helping make Xi the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, it’s also set China on a collision course with the rest of the world.

China has “almost created a dynamic where it has to be externally assertive in order for the party to maintain control domestically, so there’s almost a kind of impulse of clashing with the interests, values and sensitivities of other countries,” said Rory Medcalf, a professor at the Australian National University who wrote “Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the Contest for the World’s Pivotal Region.”

“It’s almost as if the way Xi Jinping has rewired the Chinese system, it can’t help it—it can’t help itself,” he added. “That is obviously very damaging for China’s interests in the long run. It’s actually very damaging for all of us.”

‘Real resistance’

The deterioration of US-China ties—the closure of the Houston consulate was the latest in a long string of tit-for-tat action—is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent months, more countries have spoken out against Chinese actions in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

And China’s diplomats, eager to please party leaders, have sparred with countries ranging from the UK and Australia to India and Kazakhstan.

A new purge with the Communist Party ranks may explain why officials are so eager to demonstrate their loyalty. Quishi Journal , the party’s official magazine, published excerpts from Xi’s speeches this month saying the party leadership should be embodied in “every aspect and every link” of society. An accompanying editorial called Xi the “ultimate arbiter.”

“His campaign to remain in power at the 20th Party Congress has definitely started,” said Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. “There is very likely some real resistance under the surface in the system, and 2022 will be very interesting.

I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.”

The biggest question looming over Chinese politics is when Xi, 67, will step aside after breaking with succession practices set up after Mao’s fraught tenure. He has pledged to transform China into a leading global power by 2050, with a thriving middle class, strong military and clean environment.

In recent weeks, Xi has sought to weed out dissent among China’s security forces. The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the party body that oversees the country’s police, prosecutors and courts, announced an “education and rectification” campaign to “thoroughly remove tumors” from the justice system. Its top official compared the campaign—set to last through 2022, when Xi’s term as party leader expires—with a political purge that consolidated Mao’s paramount position more than 75 years ago.

Xi also placed the People’s Liberation Army reserve forces under direct control of the central government and Central Military Commission, changing a rule whereby they reported to both the PLA and local government. And he took steps to silence critics of his government’s response

to the pandemic while attaching top priority to “safeguarding the regime’s security.”

Perfect storm

While China’s citizens aren’t going to rebel against Xi, a “perfect storm” scenario in which a Covid-19 upsurge forces another lockdown, Chinese stocks crash and countries pressure companies to withdraw investments could lead to splits in the leadership, according to Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. That’s dangerous for Xi, he said, because of the precedent he set by jailing former security chief Zhou Yongkang after he retired from the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful body.

“He knows that he’s got a lot of enemies, and the enemies are not dissidents,”Tsang said. “The enemies are within the top echelon in the Communist Party.”

Right now there’s no reason to think Xi is facing any imminent threats. While his government’s initial handling of the pandemic generated widespread dissatisfaction, Xi’s subsequent ability to reduce cases and restart economic activity helped mitigate the damage—and compared positively with the responses of countries like the US, where the virus is still running rampant.

China’s economy has also continued to expand, even if growth rates weren’t as impressive as during his predecessor’s watch. Economic data released in July suggest the country is back on the path to recovery, even though the figures showed worrying trends such as a decline in retail sales and a drop in investment by private companies. Xi this week urged companies to innovate and pledged to further open the economy, saying China will “stand on the correct side of history.”

“His position is much more secure than any time before largely because of his success, from the Chinese perspective, in containing coronavirus,” said Cheng Li, director of the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center. “We should not underestimate his capacity and his popularity.”

Disputes surging

Although gauging public opinion in China is always difficult due to strict censorship, a Harvard University study released this month showed that satisfaction rates among Chinese citizens in 2016 had increased markedly across all levels of government compared with 2003, with officials seen as “as more capable and effective than ever before.”

It found that citizens respond positively and negatively to measurable changes in their well-being, which could be a “double-edged sword.”

“While the CCP is seemingly under no imminent threat of popular upheaval, it cannot take the support of its people for granted,” it said.

Without democratic elections, the Communist Party’s roughly 200-member Central Committee nominally elects the party leader and lawmakers pick the president—titles both held by Xi. In reality, leadership positions are hashed out behind the scenes among various factions, a process that starts several years before the Party Congress and remains largely a black box to outsiders.

Whereas a decade ago it was possible to see the government as a separate entity, under Xi the party has become paramount, said Rana Mitter, director of the University of Oxford China Center.

That has contributed to a surge in border disputes flaring up at the same time, he said, as promoting nationalism has become more important than creating new diplomatic links.

“In a way that would be less necessary in more prosperous times,” Mitter said.

Xi’s consolidation of power has made him at once more secure and more vulnerable, with any missteps like the initial response to Covid-19 providing an opening for any rivals to pounce, said Tsang from SOAS University of London. On the world stage, he said, Xi’s administration is “picking fights with everybody.”

“When you’re running it as a strongman, you really cannot afford to show any signs of weakness,”Tsang said.

“And this is what we have with Xi Jinping.”

Bloomberg News

Sunday, July 26, 2020

A3

Forced closure of China consulate shows US hardliners now in charge

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onald J. Trump spent the first three years of his presidency balancing the demands of hardliners who wanted a crackdown on China against his own desire to pursue a trade deal and cultivate a stronger relationship with Xi Jinping.

The unexpected order on Wednesday to close the Chinese consulate in Houston made one thing clear: the hawks are now in charge.

Eager to blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic and fed up with what US officials call a history of espionage and intellectual-property theft, Trump has allowed a small group of advisers led by Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to push US policy toward its most antagonistic in decades. The result is a series of sanctions, restrictions and condemnations that culminated in the Houston decision.

“Despite the overall message that the administration was tough on China we saw very much the opposite until we had a pandemic to contend with,” said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. “They actually pursued a very narrow China policy up until spring.”

The battle has now been opened on a range of fronts: China’s tightening grip over Hong Kong, its treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, its infiltration of technology and the theft of intellectual property. In nearly every policy realm, the US is pushing back harder.

It’s banning Chinese academics and expelling Chinese journalists and warning that the US needs to cut its dependence on Chinese goods.

Pompeo’s team, along with Deputy National Security Adviser Matt

Pottinger, are the key architects of the change. They’re finding a more willing audience in the W hite House for their argument that the US needs to strike back after what they see as decades spent ignoring China’s behav ior, criticizing both Republican and Democratic administrations for being naive.

According to one person familiar with internal discussions, Pompeo and his advisers have come to conclude that a capitalist, democratic US and a Communist, unelected leadership in China are fundamentally at odds and cannot coexist.

“America is engaging in a response to Chinese Communist Party and aggression in a way that America has not done for the past 20 years,” Pompeo said on June 19. “We responded to their military, use of military force, by moving back. We responded to their use of diplomatic coercion via retreating. Donald Trump is not going to permit that, and we made that clear.”

With the Oval Office offering little restraint, Pompeo’s team has orchestrated an unprecedented rollout of attacks on Beijing, calling on every senior official in the executive branch to join the fray. That has included speeches by National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Bill Barr, who lambasted Hollywood and companies

such as Apple Inc. for succumbing to China’s will. Pompeo has even given more latitude to his spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, to call out China in unusually harsh terms, as she did last year in referring to the country’s “thuggish regime.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington urged the US to show restraint on Wednesday, comparing the administration to a car going the wrong way down the road. “It’s time to step on the brakes and return to the right direction!” the embassy said in a tweet.

Pompeo has taken the campaign on the road, with trips to the UK and Denmark this week aimed at coalescing a global coalition to oppose China. On Thursday, he’ll visit the presidential library of Richard Nixon—who was responsible for the reopening with China in 1972—for a speech that’s expected to cast the US-China fight as the ultimate clash of civilizations.

Fueling the new hawkishness is a group of advisers around Pompeo who have laid out a China approach in far more aggressive and confrontational terms. They include Assistant Secretary David Stilwell and two Chinaborn American scholars pulled from the world of academia: Miles Yu and Mung Chiang.

Yu is a history professor who has focused on China’s military at the US Naval Academy and has long flagged concerns about Beijing’s efforts to expand its capabilities and influence.

Chiang is on leave from his post as the dean of the college of engineering at Purdue University.

Both men bring skepticism about previous efforts to engage China in order to get it to embrace Western values. They’re joined by a key outside adviser, Michael Pillsbury, who wrote a 2015 book, titled The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.

The group isn’t winning all its arguments: a proposal that emerged at the State Department to undermine Hong Kong’s dollar peg got little traction. A recommendation that the US pursue a

free trade agreement with Taiwan—a move that would infuriate Beijing— has gone nowhere. Trump also hasn’t given his sign-off to another idea to bar entry to the US to members of China’s Communist Party.

Yet the days of Trump heaping praise on Xi, even as Covid-19 began to spread, are gone, replaced by an atmosphere of unrelenting negativity. According to numerous people familiar with the conversations, even moderate voices are ignored in administration meetings. Vice President Mike Pence vetoed the idea of serving as a back channel to China, wary of getting in the middle of an unstable and bifurcated policy, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The newly hawkish tone, while shared in Congress, has sparked concern from Democrats and Republicans outside the government who argue that it’s largely a fiction given the revelations of John Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened.

Bolton, who left the White House last year, argues that Trump only saw China through the lens of his own electoral chances, never cared about human rights in China and didn’t mind if Xi locked up Uighurs.

“This is partly electioneering,” Max Baucus, a former US ambassador to China and ex-Democratic senator from Montana, told Bloomberg Television.

“Clearly China creates a lot of problems for the United States, but this is the wrong way to handle it. If Pompeo thinks he is going to change Chinese behavior, he is gravely mistaken. Statements like his and others very much weaken the hands of reformers in China and very much strengthen the hands of hardline hawks in China.”

Several former diplomats, as well as more centrist Republicans and Democrats argue that the US needs to cooperate with China to get things done on all sorts of matters, including counterterrorism, climate change and nuclear non-proliferation. They also worry the new tougher strategy will just cause Chinese officials to dig in their heels even further. Bloomberg News

AND CHINA RETALIATES: U.S. CONSULATE IN CHENGDU SHUTTERED

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EIJING—China ordered the United States on Friday to close its consulate in the western city of Chengdu, ratcheting up a diplomatic conflict at a time when relations have sunk to their lowest level in decades.

The move was a response to the Trump administration’s order this week for Beijing to close its consulate in Houston after Washington accused Chinese agents of trying to steal medical and other research in Texas.

The Chinese foreign ministry appealed to Washington to reverse its “wrong decision.”

Chinese-US relations have soured amid a mounting array of conflicts including trade, the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, technology, spying accusations, Hong Kong and allegations of abuses against Chinese Muslims.

“The measure taken by China is a legitimate and necessary response to the unjustified act by the United States,” said a foreign ministry statement.

“The current situation in Chinese-US relations is not what China desires to see. The United States is

responsible for all this,” the ministry said. “We once again urge the United States to immediately retract its wrong decision and create necessary conditions for bringing the bilateral relationship back on track.”

On Tuesday, the Trump administration ordered the Houston consulate closed within 72 hours. It alleged Chinese agents tried to steal data from facilities including the Texas A&M medical system.

The ministry on Thursday rejected the allegations as “malicious slander” and warned the Houston consulate’s closure was “breaking down the bridge of friendship” between the two countries.

The United States has an embassy in Beijing and consulates in five other mainland cities—Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenyang and Wuhan. It also has a consulate in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory.

The consulate in Chengdu is responsible for monitoring Tibet and other areas in the southwest inhabited by non-ethnic Chinese minorities that are considered especially sensitive by Beijing.

Asian stock markets, already uneasy about the uncertain pace of recovery from the coronavirus pan-

demic, fell Friday on the news of the closure. China’s market benchmark, the Shanghai Composite Index lost 3.1%. Hong Kong’s main index declined 2.4%.

“Alongside the eviction of the Houston Chinese Consulate, the risk of the US-China conflict escalating into a ‘Cold War’ is worrying,” said Hayaki Narita of Mizuho Bank in a report.

The consulate in Chengdu was in the news in 2012 when Wang Lijun, the police chief of the major city of Chongqing, visited and told American officials his concerns about the death of a British business associate of the wife of Chongqing’s Communist Party secretary, Bo Xilai.

That prompted the British Embassy to ask for a new investigation, which led to the arrest and conviction of Bo’s wife. Bo was later dismissed and sentenced to prison.

The consulate was surrounded by police while Wang was inside. He later emerged and was arrested and sentenced to 15 years on charges of corruption and defection. The US government has refused to confirm whether Wang asked for asylum.

Also Thursday, the US Justice Department said it believes the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco is harboring a Chinese researcher, Tang Juan, who is accused of lying about her background in the Communist Party’s military wing on a visa application.

The department announced criminal charges of visa fraud against Tang and three other Chinese researchers.

US authorities this week announced criminal charges against two Chinese computer hackers who are accused of targeting companies that are working on vaccines for the coronavirus.

The Justice Department said Tang lied on a visa application last October as she made plans to work at the University of California, Davis, and again during an FBI interview months later.

US officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have stepped up accusations of technology theft. In a speech Thursday, Pompeo said some Chinese students and others “come here to steal our intellectual property and to take this back to their country.” AP

Brexit talks head to the brink as EU, UK make slow progress

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he latest round of talks between Britain and the European Union over their future relationship ended with both sides saying they are still far from a deal.

In private, officials are making progress toward agreements in key areas.

After discussions in London, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, told reporters on Thursday that “big differences” remain between the two parties and that a deal is “unlikely” if the UK refuses to back down on its red lines. His British counterpart, David Frost, said negotiators have to face the possibility an agreement won’t be reached.

B e y o nd t he p u b l i c r he t o r i c , though, there were indications that

both sides used this week to signal their willingness to compromise in what have been controversial areas: how any accord will be structured, what role the European Court of Justice will have in policing a deal, and just how far Britain will be required to apply the EU’s state aid rules.

The wire The talks are now on course to run down to the wire, with discussions set to continue into September as officials seek a deal before European leaders meet in mid-October, just weeks before the UK finally leaves the EU single market and customs union at the end of the year. If Britain and the EU fail to reach an agree-

ment by then, businesses will face the imposition of tariffs and quotas where none exist today.

The negotiations are balanced between breakdown and breakthrough, a senior UK official with knowledge of the negotiations told reporters on Thursday.

Disagreements over what rights EU boats will have to fish in British waters and what “ level playing field ” rules the UK will have to apply to ensure fair competition between businesses remain the biggest stumbling blocks. In these areas, officials say neither side looks willing to blink first, and little progress has been made.

But after the week ’s talks, the UK

signaled that it had backed down in its opposition to the EU’s demand that the agreement come in the form of one over-arching deal. British leader Boris Johnson had originally rejected this approach, wanting a series of mini-agreements so that a disagreement in one area couldn’t lead to retaliation on other unrelated issues.

For the EU’s part, Barnier indicated the bloc is willing to compromise on its plan for the European Court of Justice to oversee the deal— something euro-skeptic members of Johnson’s Conservative party are vehemently opposed to—and on its insistence that it retains control over the UK’s state aid policy in future.

State aid

The EU had initially demanded that the UK must stick to the bloc’s state aid rules, even if they changed over time. On Thursday, Barnier only said: “We need consistency, or some kind of equivalence.”

Nevertheless, it’s clear that both sides believe that more progress should have been made by now. Officials had hoped this week would see significant advances after last month’s call between Johnson and the EU’s leadership appeared to inject fresh impetus into negotiations.

While the UK has been pressing for an outline agreement by the summer, the EU has considered the deadline to be the summit of EU leaders in Oc-

tober. Any deal would then go to all the EU governments for ratification.

Both sides’ chief negotiators say they will continue negotiations and that they are still willing to reach an agreement. “I want to reaffirm the EU’s willingness to reach an ambitious partnership agreement,” Barnier said.

“Despite all the difficulties, on the basis of the work we have done in July, my assessment is that agreement can still be reached in September,” Frost said. “We should continue to negotiate with this aim in mind.”

The two men will hold informal talks next week before a formal round of negotiations start on August 17.

Bloomberg News

A4

The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Unsung immune cells take over when Covid-19 antibodies wane

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ntibodies have become a familiar word in the pandemic era, perhaps suggesting they’re the best hope for keeping the deadly coronavirus at bay. But when crucial vaccine data was released this week, the spotlight panned to an unsung immune player: T cells.

AstraZeneca Plc, Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech SE, as well as China’s CanSino Biologics Inc. all hailed the presence of these white blood cells in vaccine recipients as a sign their experimental shots show promise.

Thrust into focus by recent studies, T cells are a reminder that the body’s defenses rely on more than one weapon, and that much of the immune response to Covid-19 is still a mystery—especially after researchers revealed that the more lauded antibodies lack staying power.

“Antibodies are only a very small part of the picture,” said Paul Griffin, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, who is leading clinical studies in Australia of two potential Covid-19

vaccines. But “we’re really not there yet in terms of fully understanding” people’s immunity to the new coronavirus.

As the pandemic took the world by storm, scientists first focused on antibodies—proteins that stick to and disable foreign invaders— because eliciting them is the basis for most successful vaccines. The immune proteins are also easier to measure than T cells and can be used to gauge prior infection.

The study showing they wane quickly in patients with mild disease dealt a blow to hopes that antibodies will provide some lasting form of immunity.

Unsung warriors

T cells, by contrast, are able to kill virus-infected cells, remember past diseases for decades,

and rouse fresh antibody soldiers long after the first have left the battlefield. People infected with another coronavirus that was responsible for the SARS epidemic in 2003, for example, still have a T-cell response to the disease 17 years later.

T hat sug gests T cel ls may still, at least hy pothetically, be ready to protect SARS survivors against the infection a lmost two decades later, and might bolster their defense against Covid-19, Griffin said. “ They might have a slightly milder or shorter duration in terms of the course of their illness, but I certainly wouldn’t think that that would be protective, unfortunately,” he said.

One study found that some patients with no symptoms of Covid-19 had T cells that recognized the virus—even when they had no detectable antibodies. Another pointed to a level of immunity in people who never encountered the pathogen, possibly because of exposure to one or more of the coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

Balancing act

More research is needed to determine whether pre-existing T cells that cross-react with the SARSCoV-2 virus may explain why some Covid patients are barely affected

while others get very sick and even die. What’s clear is that a balance of both antibodies and T cells is necessary for optimal defense, according to Griffin.

Corey Smith, head of translational and human immunology at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, says the findings about antibodies’ short duration don’t mean immunity wanes completely, precisely because of T cells.

So-called helper T cells, as well as memory T and B cells are able to prime antibodies to respond to a subsequent infection before it causes severe symptoms, said Smith, who is studying the immune response to the SARSCoV-2 virus.

The virus, like other coronaviruses that cause the common cold, may have a way of evading antibodies, leading to reinfection, Smith said. “But there’s enough cel lular immunit y to put a dampener on any severe symptoms.”

If could be that T cells are what ultimately subdue and blunt the pandemic virus that’s killed more than 600,000 people in less than seven months.

“If we can’t eradicate it, does it end up as a kind of a circulating virus, another cold virus?”

Smith said. “I’m not sure, but it’s interesting.” Bloomberg News

www.businessmirror.com.ph

2 Mideast countries, world’s top Covid-19 rates per population

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UBAI, United Arab Emirates—The small, neighboring sheikhdoms of Bahrain and Qatar have the world’s highest per capita rates of coronavirus infections. In the two Mideast countries, Covid-19 epidemics initially swept undetected through camps housing healthy and young foreign laborers, studies now show.

In Qatar, a new study found that nearly 60 percent of those testing positive showed no symptoms at all, calling into question the usefulness of mass temperature checks meant to stop the infected from mingling with others. In Bahrain, authorities put the asymptomatic figure even higher, at 68 percent.

These results reflect both the wider problems faced by Gulf Arab countries reliant on cheap foreign labor and their relative success in tracking their Coovid-19 epidemics, given their oil wealth and authoritarian governments.

Aggressive testing boosted the number of confirmed cases as health officials in Bahrain and Qatar targeted vulnerable labor camps and neighborhoods, where migrant workers from Asia sleep, eat and live up to dozen people per room.

“This is why globally we failed to control, I think, the infection because simply the response has been focused on trying to find cases and isolate them and quarantine their contacts,” said Laith Abu-Raddad, a disease researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. “Now, if most people getting the infection are actually spreading the infection without even knowing it, this really does not actually work.”

The island kingdom of Bahrain and the energyrich peninsular nation of Qatar have been locked in a yearslong political dispute that’s ended travel and trade between two countries only kilometers (miles) apart. Yet similarities abound in these USallied nations—Bahrain hosts the US Navy’s 5th Fleet while Qatar hosts the forward headquarters of the US military’s Central Command at its sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base.

Both rely heavily on foreign labor, whether white-collar workers in banks or blue-collar laborers scaling scaffolding on construction sites. Qatar in particular embarked on a massive construction boom ahead of hosting the 2022 Fifa World Cup.

The virus found a home in the cramped quarters that foreign laborers live in while trying to save money to send back home.

In Qatar, nearly 30 percent of those found infected were from India, while 18 percent were Nepalis and 14 percent were Bangladeshis, according to a study by Abu-Raddad and others.

Of the over 6,000 contac t trace cases that Bahrain published, more than 2,600 involved Indian nationals, while 1,310 were Bahrainis and 1,260 were Bangladeshi. More than 400 came from Pakistan, with a similar number from Nepal.

Those figures in Bahrain and Qatar likely track across the wider Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional bloc that also includes Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all of which rely on a vast foreign labor pool already sickened and trapped by the virus.

Though other GCC nations haven’t broken down coronavirus cases by nationalities, a recently published article in the Oman Medical Journal said that of the sultanate’s first 1,304 cases of the virus, 29 percent of patients were Indian, 20 percent were Bangladeshi and 10 percent were Pakistani.

Their living conditions likely make them more at risk of contracting the virus, as Bahrainis and Qataris usually live in single-family homes. The spread mirrors the contagion seen in boarding schools and other places where people live together in communal spaces.

Qatar, with a population of 2.8 million people, has reported more than 107,000 cases of the coronavirus and 163 deaths. Bahrain, with a population of 1.6 million, has reported more than 37,000 cases and 130 deaths.

Strikingly, the mortality rate in the two countries remains low, with Qatar at 0.15 percent and Bahrain at 0.34 percent. The US mortality rate is around 3.6 percent.

Both Abu-Raddad and Ghina Mumtaz, a disease researcher at the American University of Beirut, attribute that in part to the younger population of the laborers in both Bahrain and Qatar.

“If you look at the infection-fatality rate, you will realize that it’s not as scary as if you look only at the figure of the number of cases per capita,” Mumtaz said. AP

Afraid you will get laid off? Here’s how you can prepare

By Suzanne Woolley & Jack Pitcher

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This image made available by the European Southern Observatory in July 2020 shows the star TYC 8998-760-1, upper left, and two giant exoplanets. The image was captured by blocking the light from the young, Sun-like star, allowing for the fainter planets to be detected. The system is about 300 light-years away from Earth. Bohn et al./ESO via AP

Telescope snaps family portrait of two planets around baby sun

By Marcia Dunn

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Ap Aerospace Writer

APE CANAVERAL, Florida— For the first time, a telescope has captured a family portrait of another solar system with not just one, but two planets posing directly for the cameras while orbiting a star like our sun.

This baby sun and its two giant gas planets are fairly close by galactic standards at 300 light-years away.

The snapshot—released on Wednesday—was taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

What makes this group shot so appealing is it’s a “very young version of our own sun,” said Alexander Bohn of the Netherlands’s Leiden University, who led the study.

Bohn said he was “extremely excited” about the discovery. “This is the first time astronomers were able to capture such a shot,” he said in an e-mail.

The observations can help scientists better understand the evolution of our own solar system.

Astronomers typically confirm worlds around other stars by observing brief but periodic dimming of the starlight, indicating an orbiting planet. Such indirect observations have identified thousands planets in our Milky Way galaxy.

It’s much harder and less common for a

telescope to directly observe these so-called exoplanets. To directly spot two of them around the same star is even rarer. Only two multi-planet solar systems have been spotted using the direct method, both with stars quite different than our sun, according to the observatory.

Of the 4,183 exoplanets confirmed to date, only 48 of them have been directly imaged—just 1 percent, according to Nasa statistics.

Direct imaging provides humanity’s best chance to detect life outside our solar system, if it exists, Bohn said. By observing light from the planets themselves, the atmospheres can be analyzed for molecules and elements that might suggest life.

Th e w o r k p u b l i s h e d i n We d n e s d a y ’s Astrophysical Journal Letters reveals “a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our solar system, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution,” Bohn said.

The star—officially known as TYC 8998760-1 and located in the Musca, or the Fly, constellation—is barely 17 million years old. By contrast, our sun is 4.5 billion years old.

The two newly discovered gas giants around this young star orbit at a much greater distance than Jupiter and Saturn do our sun—requiring a few thousand years to complete one revolution, or calendar year. They also weigh in with greater masses than our own outer planets. AP

Bloomberg News

ct surprised, even if you aren’t. And make them feel awful. That’s the first thing you should do if your boss says you’re being laid off, said Roy Cohen, who spent 14 years as an in-house career coach at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and now runs his own career consulting business.

“Always convey utter, absolute shock,” he said. “The goal is to make them feel bad. That way, if you do want to try and negotiate a better package, there is some potential they may feel guilted in some way.”

An avalanche of layoffs has been moving across the global corporate landscape, in almost every industry, as businesses assess their long-term strategy in a post-pandemic world. Last week, American Airlines Group Inc. said it might let go of 25,000 employees, or 29 percent of its US work force.

On Monday, UK retailer Marks & Spencer Group Plc announced 950 job cuts, and on Wednesday Bloomberg reported that Germany’s Daimler AG might cut about 20,000 jobs.

Prepping yourself to play head games is one strategy to try if you worry your job might be next. But there are many more practical steps to take. Being laid off will still suck, but it will hurt less if you’ve put plans into motion. Here are some ways to do that, and some pitfalls to avoid.

Resist the preemptive strike.

The stress of uncertainty may prompt fantasies about beating your company to the punch and quitting. Don’t do it! And don’t accept a company’s offer to let you resign rather than be let go.

“A lot of people think that if they resign, it looks like they’ve been in the driver’s seat,” Cohen said. “But in this market, where getting fired is the norm, explaining to future employers that you chose to resign will sound very odd

and quite frankly raise questions about your credibility.”

That said, “if you have a gut feeling that you might lose your job, trust that instinct and plan for it,” said Lindsey Pollak, author of The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace.

“A lot of people are feeling somewhat paralyzed right now in fear.

An important goal is to get out of that paralysis and move into a place of action.”

K now your unemploy ment benefits. In the US, with many state unemployment-insurance plans swamped with claims, it pays to know in advance what information you’ll need in order to apply for benefits so you can file as quickly as possible. A lot of state-specific unemploymentrelated groups have been created on Facebook and Reddit, where people ask questions and share tips on hacking through government bureaucracies.

Copy your contacts. Among many workers’ most valuable assets are the contacts they’ve built up over the years. If you don’t already have current information for business contacts stored in a file on your phone or personal computer, start the process. Copy any samples of work a future employer might want to see, while being careful not to run afoul of noncompete clauses and company policies governing proprietary data.

Sniff out severance. Try to find your company’s termination and severance policy. Dig up your letter of employment or contract to see if it mentions severance. If it doesn’t, quietly ask around and look on a site like Glassdoor.com to see if it’s mentioned in company reviews. In the US, for firms that offer severance, the norm is one or two weeks of pay for each year of employment, maxing out at about six months, though executives may get a year. If you work at a large company, check if there’s a group for former employees on Facebook.

You may be able to message members for intel.

Your company may not budge, but try to negotiate. “Ask for everything and more,” Cohen said.

“More money. Your bonus. The ability to exercise stock options or receive differed compensation.

Access to your work phone during the severance period. The worst they can do is say no.”

Raise your profile. Yes, this means updating your resume and LinkedIn profile. Highlight your success in working remotely. But before polishing a LinkedIn profile, go into privacy settings and turn off automatic notifications to your network if you want to keep changes low-profile. (If you don’t want someone at work to see profile updates, you can block specific people.) If you think a layoff is coming and want to look for a new job discreetly, a feature LinkedIn added this year lets you adjust your status to “#OpentoWork” and to specify who can see that: only recruiters, or everyone. (LinkedIn itself announced layoffs of about 960 people on Tuesday.)

Build up savings, pay down debt. Having a few months of expenses saved can avoid the need to take on expensive credit-card debt, or skipping payments and hurting your credit score. Sometimes costs can come out of left field: Consider the $3,000 or so that returning expatriates to New Zealand may be asked to pay for their required two weeks of hotel quarantine.

Aim to save six months or more of living expenses. That sounds high, but remember, that’s not necessarily six full paychecks. You want enough to cover essentials: housing, car payments, utilities, Internet, mobile phones, health care. While employed, an easy way to get started is to set up automatic direct deposits from your paycheck into a savings account, so you don’t even think about spending the money.

Stay flexible. While employed, get in touch with former colleagues who have moved to consulting or project work, and if you’re let go, consider going that route, which

could eventually lead to a full-time job. One bright spot is that with remote work more common, more employers are willing to look further afield for candidates. To spark ideas for new directions, check out the site 50 Ways to Get A Job. Be a creative networker. Finding groups on Facebook and LinkedIn is the first step, but look into what’s offered by your university’s career office, professional groups you belong to and ask around for private Facebook communities connected to your industry that you may be able to join.

Perfect your video presence.

Practice using Zoom, Sk y pe, Google Hangouts or whatever video conferencing program an interviewer might choose. Record yourself in a mock interview with a friend. Use a neutral background, wear solid colors, and remember to silence your phone and computer pop-ups.

Beware of being called back early from work abroad. T he typical industry practice is that employees working abroad are repatriated before they know that they will be terminated, said Katrin Razzano, a vice president at relocation firm Graebel Companies. That way, the person can be fired on home turf and a company won’t run afoul of a foreign country’s rules around laying people off.

Search out bright spots. There are always growing areas, even in dire economic situations. In Singapore, for example, gross domestic product plunged an annualized 41.2 percent from the first quarter of the year to the second, led by contractions in travel-related industries. But the Singaporean fintech sector has been growing quickly, even in the pandemic, and an expansion by global private banks in Singapore has intensified rivalry for talent, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts.

As well, interest from Hong Kongbased companies in exploring a move to Singapore has increased.

Bloomberg News

Science

BusinessMirror

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

Sunday

Sunday, July 26, 2020 A5

With innovations, inventions do incentives follow?

By Edwin P. Galvez

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@EdwinGalvez

overnment programs extending financial, technical and other forms of assistance for the country’s innovative ecosystem are already in place, and all that innovators must do is submit a proposal to avail of between P50,000 and P12.5 million as grant or loan.

“There is value to every invention based on the program to which it qualifies,” said Director Edgar I. Garcia of the Technology Application and Promotion Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-TAPI). Garcia discussed funding and other forms of assistance for innovators in the weekly “DOST Report” webinar aired recently on DOSTv. Innovators include inventors, researchers, scientists, industrial designers, entrepreneurs, faculty and even students.

“We encourage our inventors to commercialize their inventions so these can help our economy,” Garcia said.

T he DOST-TA PI a lso g ives cash awards of up to P25,000 and P300,000 to regional and national invention contests’ winners, respectively, as outstanding innovations and researches are recognized at the biennial National Invention Contest and Exhibits (NICE).

Garcia said that TAPI, a service institute responsible for commercializing technologies developed by the DOST and the institutions it has helped, is mandated to implement programs that “maximize the capability and productivity of inventors through incentives and other forms of assistance and support” under Republic Act 7459, or the Inventors and Invention Incentives Act of the Philippines.

“The law has many programs to help our inventors, but each program has its limit of financial assistance depending on the need of inventors,” he said.

The funds given to inventors may cover the cost of filing intellectual property (IP) rights application, prototype production, fabrication or purchase of major equipment needed by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), pilot production and commercialization of products, among other innovation-related activities.

The DOST-TAPI, which also markets the services of other science agencies, spends about onethird of its annual budget to assist local inventors. This is on top of the financial support it receives from the DOST central office through other programs.

Garcia said at least P10 million is allocated to various programs to fund researches and inventions that provide solutions to some of the country’s pressing needs and consequently spur the growth of the economy by their commer-

cialization.

The DOST-TAPI’s continuous funding and other forms of assistance—from the research and development phase to pre-commercialization and commercialization stages—have proven to be crucial, particularly during this time of pandemic Such was the case with Manila HealthTek Inc., or MTek Inc., which developed the only Philippnemade rapid test kit, the GenAmplify Coronavirus 2019 real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) Detection Kit with the help of DOST.

Venture financing

Under its Venture Financing Program (VFP), TAPI helps MSMEs adopt or acquire new and emerging technologies developed by the science and technology community to accelerate their initial commercialization and productivity, or improve overall operations and for inventors to commercialize their inventions.

TAPI offers between P2 million and P5 million in financial assistance, covering mainly the cost of acquisition or fabrication of critical production equipment.

In supporting MTek, DOSTPhilippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOSTPCHRD) helped develop the technology for the Biotek-M Dengue Aqua Kit developed by Dr. Raul Destura, while funds from DOST’s Technology Innovation for Commercialization (Technicom) fasttracked its commercialization by ramping up the production of its vials and acquiring a robot for its liquid dispensing machine.

This technology was the precursor of the technology that was innovated and used for the Covid-19 test kit by the team led by Destura.

TAPI also issued international certifications for MTek as a developer and manufacturer of molecular biology products for it to qualify in the foreign market.

Concept prototyping

TAPI supports inventors by funding the development of a working prototype of their inventions with their “application and adaption to existing industry practices.”

Garcia said the inventions should have gone through studies by experts and have existing IP protection Inventors may receive a grant of up to P200,000 for raw materials and up to P1 million for

The DOST-PCHRD helped develop the technology and the commercialization through funding of Biotek-M Dengue Aqua Kit, a dengue diagnostic kit of Manila HealthTek Inc. headed by microbiologist and infectious disease specialist Dr. Raul R. Destura. Photos by Edwin P. Galvez

Biotek-M Dengue Aqua Kit developed

by Dr. Raul R. Destura.

The Fluidized Bed Drying System, a rapiddrying machine for rice grain that cuts the drying process from 12 hours to two hours, is this year’s outstanding invention winner at the National Invention Contest and Exhibits organized by DOST-TAPI.

The DOST supports technology entrepreneurs like Benjamin Mendoza, whose Mosquito Trap, a chemical-free container that attracts, traps and kills egg-laying adult mosquitoes.

fabrication.

Garcia cited the funding for the fabrication of the prototype of “Stove Using Agricultural Waste” by the Tarlac Agricultural University, which benefitted from the Industry-Based Invention Development (IBID) program for prototype development.

The IBID program provides technical and financial assistance, including a grant of up to P350,000 for the fabrication of the commercial prototype model of the invention. Projects requiring more than P350,000 will be subject to repayment in three years with no interest.

Commercializing patented inventions

TAPI supports inventors who need funding to commercialize their patented invention products, or raise capital to meet a growing market demand for their products through the Invention and Innovation Technology (I-TECH)-lending program.

In partnership with the Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank), TAPI facilitates loan assistance of up to P12.5 million.

This is broken down into: TAPI’s interest-free 40-percent share (maximum of P5 million) through its Invention Guarantee Fund; 45 percent (maximum of P5.625 million) from LandBank; and 15 percent (maximum of P1.375 million) for the borrower’s equity or share of the inventor.

Inventor Lyle Christian R .

Herbosa of MYKL Trading Inc. received P10.625 million for the “upscale commercialization” of his mosquito larvicide called MYKL Kiti-kitiX, making it directly available to consumers.

Garcia reminded inventors that only owners may commercialize their inventions under RA 7459 and avail themselves of I-TECH loan by submitting an application letter, valid IP certificates, among other documents.

Securing IP protection

Under the IP Rights Assistance

Outstanding creative researches in both professional and student categories took P30,000, P50,000 and P100,000 for third, second and first prize, respectively.

Laboratory testing and analysis

Tarlac Agricultural University received funding from DOST for the fabrication of the prototype of its “Stove Using Agricultural Waste.”

program, TAPI helps secure the IP of an invention by paying for the cost of filing claims through patent agents with the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines.

TAPI may cover registration expenses of up to P50,000, depending on the contracted amount awarded to patent agents.

Garcia said that all TAPI’s commercialization programs require inventions to have IP certificates, but the agency can also give financial support to anyone who wishes to apply for IP rights assistance, including students and faculty.

Building a business enterprise

Garcia said there are two stages or components to TAPI’s Invention-Based Enterprise Development (IBED) program supporting inventors who want to develop or grow their technology-based business enterprises.

The first component provides funds for the pilot production and market testing of inventions, making them available to consumers.

The second component covers the production cost of an invention in a commercial scale to “satisfy an unmet market demand.”

TAPI gives a grant of up to P350,000 for the first component and extends loan assistance of up to P1 million for the second

component.

Under IBED-I, MYKL Kiti-kitiX received funding for the “acquisition of packaging and raw materials for the production of 175 bags” in 2017.

Among the inventors TAPI assisted for IBED-II were Roberto D. Osido’s Herbal Massage Oil, which “soothes, relaxes and moisturizes the skin.” The same with Benjamin F. Mendoza’s Mosquito Trap, a chemical-free container that attracts, traps and kills egg-laying adult mosquitoes.

Promoting technologies and inventions

Showcasing the Filipino’s “innovative creativity,” TAPI holds the National Invention Contest and Exhibits to recognize outst a nd i ng i nvent ions ( Tu k l a s award), utility models, industrial designs and creative research (Likha award for professionals and Sibol award for college and highschool students).

This year, outstanding inventions won P100,000, P200,000 and P300,000 for third, second and first prizes, respectively.

Outstanding utility models and industrial designs received P50,000, P100,000 and P200,000 for third, second and first prizes, respectively.

Garcia said they also accommodate requests for laboratory testing of products before they are allowed in places like supermarkets.

Under the Laboratory Testing and Analyses Assistance program, technologists, inventors and researchers can avail themselves of up to P100,000 to cover the cost of using laboratories and facilities of DOST’s Research and Development Institutes (RDI) to “test, verify and evaluate the overall functionality” of their inventions.

RDI laboratory services include failure analysis, materials characterization, proficiency testing, nutrigenomics, wood and wood products test, calibration and metrology and metallurgical analysis, among others.

Tax exemptions and other forms of support

Garcia also said that under RA 7459 inventors may avail of tax and customs duty exemptions for inventions that are “new, original and produced on a commercial scale.”

“DOST evaluates their applications and issues them clearance from the screening committee, a certificate required by the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Department of Finance, to prove the commercialization of their inventions,” said Garcia.

As the government promotes a culture of innovation, Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña, in his closing message during the broadcast, encouraged parents to “support and nurture the creativity and inventiveness” of their children, requested teachers to “create exercises and activities” that promote the value of being matuklasin (discoverer or creative), and exhorted local government units to support their resident inventors.

Laguna LGU inks MOA with DOST-FPRDI to mass-produce bamboo-framed face shield

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Posing after the MOA signing on June 30 are DOST-FPRDI’s Technology Innovation Division Chief Rico J. Cabangon: Cabuyao City Mayor Rommel A. Gecolea; DOST-FPRDI Director Romulo T. Aggangan; and Cabuyao City Legal Officer Aldrin Panopio. DOST-FPRDI photo

he Forest Products Research and Development Institute of the Department of Scieince and Technology (DOST-FPRDI) and the local government of Cabuyao City recently signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) on the mass production of bamboo-framed face shields.

Under the MOA, the DOST-FPRDI will provide the design, specifications and other requirements needed to produce the face shields.

It will also give technical assistance on steam bending, the process wherein the bamboo strips for the frame are subjected to heat to flex

them to the desired form.

“Locally producing the face shields will not only save us money as we don’t need to buy commercially, it will also create jobs in our city. It will be a much needed source of income for the people who will be hired in this project,” said Cabuyao City Mayor Rommel A. Gecolea.

Production will be supervised by the City Cooperative and Livelihood Development Office, in partnership with the City Agricultural Office.

According to Gecolea, they also intend to tap DOST-FPRDI in their project that aims to grow bamboo

along river banks.

The bamboo-framed face shield is one of DOST-FPRDI’s initiatives to help protect the public against Covid-19 infection.

To date, the institute has donated at least 2,000 face shields to local government units, rural health units, public and private hospitals, restaurants, banks and funeral establishments in Laguna, nongovernment organizations and government offices in Nueva Vizcaya, Occidental Mindoro and Palawan.

The DOST-FPRDI has also donated to Bureau of Jail Management

and Penology in Victoria, Laguna, the Public Attorney’s Office in San Pablo City, DOST-Technology Application and Promotion Institute, Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, Department of Environment and Natural Resources- Ecosystems Research and Development Bureau, and University of the Philippines Los Baños.

For those interested in adopting DOST-FPRDI technologies, you may contact Grecelda A. Eusebio, chief of Technology Licensing and Promotion Section, at (049) 536-2377 and fprdi@dost.gov.ph.

Faith

Sunday

A6 Sunday, July 26, 2020

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

Vatican: Lay faithful can lead marriage rite in rare cases

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ATICAN CITY—The Vatican said recently that in very exceptional circumstances and with special permission, lay Catholics can be allowed to perform marriage rites.

In a document issued by the Holy See office for clergy, the Vatican said that could only happen if there are no priests or deacons available, the nation’s bishops sign off on the exception and the Holy See OKs it too.

The same document stresses

that lay faithful can preach at liturgy services, but never can give homilies at Masses.

The Vatican document said that the local bishop, using his “prudent judgment,” may entrust to lay faithful in “except ion a l c i rc u m st a nces”— suc h

dut ies i nc lud i ng ce lebrat i ng f u nera l r ites, ad m i n i ster i ng baptism, assisting at marriages—with the Holy See’s permission—and preaching in a Church in case of need.

It noted that “where there is a lack of priests and deacons, the diocesan bishop can delegate lay persons to assist at marriages” after the nation’s bishops conference signs off on the decision and the Vatican gives its permission, too.

“Under no circumstances, however, may lay people give the homily during the celebration of the Eucharist,” said the Congregation for the Clergy.

The document is aimed at encouraging parishes to be more

dy namic in car r y ing out the Church’s evangelizing mission and less focused on themselves, as desired by Pope Francis.

It also offered advice on the often sensitive situation where faithful give money to the local Church or priest.

In some places, including after a funeral or marriage, or when Mass is said in memory of a deceased parishioner, faithful offer money.

The Congregation for the Clergy recommended: “one might think of receiving offerings in an anonymous way, so that everyone feels free to donate what they can, or what they think is just, without feeling an obligation to respond to an expectation or a price.” AP

Vatican issues new guidelines for parishes

T

he Congregation for the Clergy recently published new guidelines for the world’s parishes, which aim to encourage parishes to think of themselves as missionary communities of evangelization.

The guidelines do not provide new norms or policies for parish life, but encourage Catholics to think prayerfully about what their parishes are, and what they’re for.

The parish is mission

The guidelines offer parishes “a call to go out of themselves, offering instruments for reform, even structural, in a spirit of communion and collaboration, of encounter and closeness, of mercy and solicitude for the proclamation of the Gospel.”

“Since its inception, the parish is envisioned as a response to a precise pastoral need, namely that of bringing the gospel to the people through the proclamation of the faith and the celebration of the sacraments,” the document says.

To meet its mission, “a renewed vitality is required that favors the rediscovery of the vocation of the baptized as a disciple of Jesus Christ and a missionary of the gospel.”

Especially in parts of the world where many people do not know or practice the faith, the document encourages parishes to discern how to think of themselves as missionary communities, and how to focus on proclaiming the gospel to all who will hear.

The Eucharist and the poor should be central to parish life

“The celebration of the Eucharistic mystery is ‘the source and summit of the whole Christian life’ and accordingly, the essential moment for building up the Parish community,” the guidelines instruct.

The Mass should be the center of parish life, the document says, and the place from which the parish receives its mission.

In the Mass, the parish “welcomes the living presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord, receiving the announcement of the entire mystery of salvation.”

And, the document said, the poor should be invited to the heart of parish life.

“A ‘sanctuary’ open to all, the parish, called to reach out to everyone, without exception, should remember that the poor and excluded must always

The statue of Hans Egede is a prominent monument in Nuuk, Greenland. It commemorates the DanoNorwegian Lutheran missionary. Wikimedia Commons

have a privileged place in the heart of the Church,” the document says.

“The parish community evangelizes and is evangelized by the poor, discovering anew the call to preach the Word in all settings, while recalling the ‘supreme law’ of charity, by which we shall all be judged.”

Territoriality matters, but can’t be a limit

Most parishes are defined by territory, the document said. With few exceptions, a parish is, properly speaking, the communion of the baptized within the limits of a certain territory, which is defined by the bishop.

In the West, that concept has mostly been forgotten, Catholics tend to go to Mass at the parish where they feel most welcomed or fed, and despite encouragement from some bishops, many Sunday Mass goers don’t know about parish boundaries.

The Congregation for the Clergy’s guidelines recognize that reality.

“Increased mobility and the digital culture have expanded the confines of existence,” the guidelines state, “people are less associated today with a definite and immutable geographical context, and “digital culture has inevitably altered the concept of space, together with people’s language and behavior, especially in younger generations.”

But the document insists that territoriality matters. That “interpersonal relationships risk being dissolved into a virtual world without any commitment or responsibility towards one’s neighbor.”

The parish is not a self-selected or self-defined community, but a set of people with obligations to each other, and the guidelines warn against losing that sense.

Because the parish is intended to encourage in neighbors a sense of Christian responsibility for one another, the document is clear that parishes building plans for evangelization and missionary work must take into account “those who actually live within the territory.”

“Every plan must be situated within the lived experience of a community and implanted in it without causing harm, with a necessary phase of prior consultation, and of progressive implementation and verification,” it adds.

Still, the guidelines say, a parish’s mission doesn’t end at its territorial boundaries. In light of a changing world, “any pastoral action that is limited to the territory of the parish is outdated.”

In short, the guidelines urge Catholics to think of their parishes as a community, with obligations of neighbors to one another, who share a mission to proclaim the Gospel, together, beyond the limits of their own community.

Structures are for mission, but bureaucracy kills

The guidelines emphasize that while the parish needs policies, programs, and structures to fulfill its mission, it must “avoid the risk of falling into an excessive and bureaucratic organization of events and an offering of services that do not express the dynamic of evangelization.”

To overcome a tendency toward bureaucratization and formalization of the Church’s sacramental and catechetical life “conversion of structures, which the Church must undertake, requires a significant change in mentality and an interior renewal, especially among those entrusted with the responsibility of pastoral leadership.”

The guidelines also urge dioceses to consider developing new structures and roles that can coordinate activity between parishes, especially those in close geographic proximity to each other.

Responsibility for the parish mission belongs to everyone, but each has a role to play

The document emphasizes the co-responsibility of clergy, religious and laity for the mission of the parish in the world. But the document also points out that each person work for the Kingdom in the role to which he is called by baptism and vocation.

The guidelines emphasizes that the parish pastor is entrusted with the full “care of souls” in the parish, a role unique to priests.

The document acknowledges a canonical provision that allows lay people to be entrusted with pastoral care in a parish because of a shortage of priests, but emphasized that such a situation should be rare, and “a temporary and not a permanent measure,” that can only be used when there is a

Greenland voted to keep vandalized statue of Danish Lutheran missionary

G

reenlanders voted to keep a statue that has become the center of a dispute over the Arctic island’s former colonial ties to Denmark.

The capital Nuuk gave citizens the chance to vote on whether they want the bronze effigy of 18thcentury Danish missionary Hans Egede to stay in place. It’s one of the city’s most famous monuments, but was recently the target of vandalism.

According to Greenland’s state broadcaster KNR, 921 people voted to keep the statue and 600 voted against.

The city will make its final decision in September.

Greenland, which has about 56,000 inhabitants, is still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has extensive home rule.

Last month, as the island celebrated its national day, the statue was sprayed with red paint and its base had the word “decolonize” painted on it.

A Lutheran, Egede established a colony in Greenland in 1721 with the aim of converting the island to his faith.

His statue has been vandalized several times over the years. Bloomberg News

true lack of priests.

“We are dealing here with an extraordinary form of entrusting pastoral care, due to the impossibility of appointing a parish priest or a parish administrator, which is not to be confused with the ordinary active cooperation of the lay faithful in assuming their responsibilities,” the guidelines say.

“Furthermore, it would be preferable to appoint one or more deacons over consecrated men and women or laypersons for directing this kind of pastoral care,” the guidelines suggest.

The document takes care to urge against the “clericalization of the laity” so frequently warned about by Pope Francis, in which laity are urged to take up roles more typically occupied by priests.

At the same, the document says that laity are called to give their lives to the mission of the gospel and the work of the Church.

Laity are called “to make a generous commitment to the service of the mission of evangelization, first of all through the general witness of their daily lives, lived in conformity with the gospel, in whatever environment they are in and at every level of responsibility; in a particular way, they are called to place themselves at the service of the Parish community.”

The guidelines also encourage a vision of deacons as ministers of service, rather than as assistants to parish priests, and of religious men and women as contributors to the evangelizing mission of a parish through the witness of their religious consecration.

‘Outgoing dynamism’

The guidelines conclude with a call for “outgoing dynamism” that directs parishes toward an evangelizing mission, the task of the entire People of God, that walks through history as the “family of God” and that, in the synergy of its diverse members, labors for the growth of the entire ecclesial body.

It urges that “the parish might rediscover itself as a fundamental place of evangelical proclamation, of the celebration of the Eucharist, a place of fraternity and charity, from which Christian witness can shine for the world.”

JD Flynn/Catholic News Agency

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan. CBCPNews

CBCP refutes claims it is meddling in state affairs

C

atholic bishops recently refuted claims of meddling in state affairs or pressuring the high court to rule against the controversial antiterrorism law.

Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, the acting president of the bishops’ hierarchy, said the Church doesn’t meddle in politics, but speak out when the common good is being threatened.

“We do not have political influence over the country’s judiciary, nor do we interfere in the operations of government,” David said.

“Our only influence is on conscience, because it is our duty to form consciences, and we are accountable to God for this,” he said.

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo on Sunday accused the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) of pressuring the Supreme Court to vote against the anti-terror law.

He was reacting to a CBCP pastoral letter issued over the weekend that condemned the Duterte administration’s “pattern of intimidation”.

Panelo said the CBCP’s letter “appears to have violated” the constitutional provision on the separation of the Church and State.

Bishop David said the CBCP respects the SC, which is supposed to function independently of the other branches of government, “if we are to continue to function as a democracy.”

“What we hope and pray for is that both our legislature and judiciary remain truly independent, and continue to function as designed by our Constitution,” he said.

Bishop Broderick Pabillo, the administrator of the Manila archdiocese, dared Malacañang to charge them if they indeed violated the law.

“I challenge them! They can sue us if we really violated [the Constitution],” he said in an online press conference.

He denied the bishops are meddling in political affairs, but speak out in support of social

justice, which is the teaching of the Church.

“Precisely, we are doing that in order to awaken the consciousness of the people,” Pabillo said.

Bacolod bishop: PHL’s democracy in peril

Four years into the Duterte administration, the country’s democracy is running into serious trouble, a Church official claimed.

Bishop Patricio Buzon of Bacolod said the government’s attacks on critics are indicative of Duterte’s intolerance for views that question its policies and actuations.

The prelate particularly condemned the recent shutdown of media giant ABS-CBN, whose broadcast franchise was not renewed by Congress.

He said it was just another “insidious” move by the Duterte administration and its allies in Congress to “quash dissent.”

“With these attempts, the diocese is convinced that our democracy is being imperiled,” Bishop Buzon said in a statement.

“Democracy thrives in plurality of views where opposing views are not stifled and independent voices not silenced. To uphold, respect and protect this plurality is the common good,” he said.

He warned that if these actions are left unchallenged, “our country can retrogress to tyrannical rule.”

According to him, the Church must “rise to the occasion as prophets.”

“We heed the call of the times and speak up. We condemn that which undermines the common good. We condemn that which disregards established rights,” he said.

Bishop Buzon also called for vigilance against Duterte’s new anti-terrorism law, which he described as a threat to basic human rights.

“We have been through the dark, cruel days of tyranny. If we stand and speak up now, our children do not have to go through it,” he said. CBCP News

Campaign brewing to get Hindu god Brahma off popular beer

A

n interfaith coalition is pressing the world’s largest brewer to remove the name of a Hindu god from a popular beer that dates to the late 1800s—a dispute the beermaker insists is a case of mistaken identity.

The group, which includes representatives of the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain religions, is calling on Belgium-based brewing giant Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV to rename its Brahma line, a favorite in Brazil.

Brahma was first produced in 1888 by Companhia Cervejaria Brahma, a Brazilian brewery now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, whose massive lineup of 500 brands includes Budweiser, Bud Light, Corona and Stella Artois.

Beers sold under the Brahma name include a lager, a double malt, a wheat beer and a chocolate stout.

“It is the right time to fix an old wrong— the trivializing of the faith of our Hindu brothers and sisters for about 132 years,” coalition spokesman Rajan Zed told The Associated Press.

Lord Brahma, the god of creation in Hinduism, is a highly revered figure who should be worshiped in temples or home shrines, “not

misused as a ‘toasting tool,’” Zed said.

He said the coalition also objects to what it calls “raunchy” marketing of the brand by using the image of a scantily clad woman to promote the beers.

“Anheuser-Busch InBev should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege and ridiculing entire communities,” the coalition said in a statement, calling on the company to “prove that it cares about communities by renaming its Brahma beer.”

But Lucas Rossi, head of communications for Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Latin America subsidiary, said Tuesday the beers were named in tribute to Joseph Bramah—an Englishman who invented the draft pump valve—and not for the Hindu deity.

The spelling was changed, he said, to make the name work better in the Portuguese language.

“We deeply respect all religions, faiths and their histories,” Rossi said in a telephone interview.

Hindus are a tiny minority in Brazil, where the Brahma brand is “very important to the

culture of the country,” he added.

The name offends regardless of its origins, Zed said.

“The stated history behind the name does not reduce the pain of the Hindu devotees when they see their creator god on alcohol cans,” he said.

Zed, who is based in Nevada and is the president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, has campaigned against what he considers the misuse of Eastern religious imagery for commercial purposes for several years.

In 2019, he extracted an apology from a Virginia brewery that brewed a beer named for another Hindu deity, saying that associating Lord Hanuman with alcohol was disrespectful.

Last month, the interfaith coalition launched a separate campaign aimed at pressuring Foundation Room and House of Blues nightclubs in Boston and other cities to stop using sacred Buddhist and Hindu imagery as decor.

The upscale watering holes are managed

by Beverly Hills, California-based Live Nation Entertainment, which apologized and said it was removing some statues from the clubs. AP

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, July 26, 2020

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

‘Gaps in ecosystems services valuation in Asean countries need to be addressed’ B

iodi v er se areas produce ecosystem services that are indispensable to economic and social development. Assessing them informs decision-makers better about the value and priorities for conserving natural capital.

Newly released policy briefs of the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), in collaboration with the European Union under the Biodiversity Conservation and Management of Protected Areas in Asean (BCAMP) project, underscore the need to address knowledge and research gaps in ecosystems services valuation in Asean member-states, ACB said in a news release.

The “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Assessment and Economic Analysis for Management, Policy and Innovative Financing Applications [Besa++]” policy briefs present the results of national and site-level stocktaking activities conducted in five Asean member-states, namely, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, as part of the interventions of the BCAMP project.

The activities assessed the existing knowledge and awareness of protected area managers and policy-makers and managers on Besa and other economic analysis applications in biodiversity conservation.

“Knowing the full and true economic value of ecosystem services will help decision-makers arrive at win-win solutions both for the economy and the environment. This knowledge provides a deeper understanding of what a nation stands to lose from activities that alter, if not destroy, natural ecosystems,” ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim said.

Consultation workshops on the results of the stocktaking activities in the five Asean countries were held from July to September 2019 to gather inputs from the government, academic institutions, and nongovernment organizations.

‘Wealth of research data’ In Thailand, data and information have

been used to support studies addressing specific policy issues, the Besa++ brief said.

A 2019 mangrove study, for example, looked into the changes in land use and mangrove coverage using the baseline data of Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR).

“Opportunity costs of conserving mangroves,” or the costs incurred when mangroves are not conserved, were also analysed based on the land price data from Thailand’s Department of Treasury.

Results of the study helped determine the effectiveness of preventing the conversion of mangroves to alternative uses, the news release said.

While there is a wealth of data and studies, the policy brief noted that researchers and protected area managers and policy-makers must closely collaborate to maximize the uptake of existing research.

“Research results can be used to inform more realistic conservation, sustainable development planning and target setting,” the brief said.

Thailand has a combined 107,290.35 square kilometers of protected areas, equivalent to 21 percent of the total land area of the country.

Role in establishing protected areas Meanwhile, in Malaysia, valuation studies have been used to support the establishment of new state parks, such as the Selangor State Park, which is the third largest in Southeast Asian country, covering 108,000 hectares, ACB said.

Established as a state park in 2007 under the National Forestry Act Enactment 2005 of Selangor, and managed by the Forestry Department of Selangor, this natural forested area protects some of Malaysia’s west coast state’s most vital resources.

Prior to the park’s establishment, various uses of the forest areas were valued, and a trade-off analysis

Natural Resources. The rest are under different types of authority and management.

Knowledge, capacity gaps

This photo was an entry to the Zooming in on Biodiversity Photo Contest, an Asean-wide photo competition held by Asean Centre for Biodiversity, with support from the European Union.

Aung Ko Oo

between protective forest reserve, par ticu larly as water catchment functions, versus production forest reserve options, was undertaken.

While there are many studies on value estimates of ecosystem services in protected areas, a few of them have led to substantial increases in the rates for the enjoyment of these services, or the sharing of excess profits among natural resource-based producers, the government and communities.

For instance, despite consumers’ willingness to pay higher rates, prescribed entrance fees in protected areas have not increased. Other factors, however, come into play, such as the approval process for raising fees in forest recreational areas at the state government level.

Malaysia has established networks of both terrestrial and marine protected areas with a total size of 5.87 million hectares to conserve nationally and globally significant biodiversity.

Wider scope of assessment The policy brief on the Philippines noted that ecosystem services assessments held in the country are narrow

in breadth, and indicate a limited capacity at the protected area level, the news release said.

Based on the review of 768 publications in the Philippines, studies were found to be disposed toward resource use assessment and recreation services.

T he published studies mostly considered a few ecosystem services instead of the ideal system-wide approach of looking into multiple uses and assessing their trade-offs.

“Recent development of tools for ecosystem services accounting should now provide the basis for protected area managers to start accounting for these various ecosystem services,” it said.

According to the policy brief, capacity building in the use of these tools should be undertaken in collaboration with academic institutions, which are in a better position to invest in training their constituents and establish information systems.

The Philippines has 526 identified protected areas, of which 240 covering 7.15 million hectares are managed by the Department of Environment and

Assessments in the five Asean countries showed key actors working to improve the management and financing of protected areas have limited knowledge on ecosystem services valuation, economic analysis, and innovative financing mechanisms.

In the Philippines, an online survey for protected area managers, researchers, government officers and faculty and staff of academic institutions, yielded a low response rate due to the “lack of knowledge on the topics presented,” the news release said.

Of the 317 potential respondents, 37 participated in the survey. The overall knowledge and skill on ecosystems valuation was found to be below that of a “novice.”

Similarly, results of a survey conducted in Cambodia showed most of the respondents are either novices (35 percent to 46 percent) or have no knowledge (31 percent to 36 percent) on ecosystem services measurement and accounting.

More than 50 percent of the government officers in the survey expressed the need to understand how to account for and value cultural, provisioning and supporting services of ecosystems.

Gover nment of f icers a lso expressed the need for training on conservation financing, especially on regulatory instruments of financing and fiscal financing.

The researcher respondents, on the other hand, said that greater knowledge on the standardized methodologies and approaches is required.

Cambodia has a large remaining expanse of tropical forests, and its system of protected areas and corridors covers 42 percent of the country.

According to the Lao PDR policy brief, on the other hand, insufficient

knowledge and skills on assessing economic values of biodiversity and ecosystem services were “one of the most important factors accounting for the loss of forestry resources and biodiversity.”

Lao PDR has rich forest resources and biodiversity, with one of the highest proportions of forest cover in Southeast Asia.

In a similar survey, most Lao PDR respondents indicated that they have limited knowledge and skills on Besa, including baseline inventory and species-specific, change, indicator and resource assessment.

Lao respondents have some knowledge and skills in provisioning services and the estimation of their market price, but “little” on regulating, cultural, and habitat services.

They also said they possess some knowledge and skills in conservation financing. However, most lack experience in developing financing mechanisms.

Commenting on the Besa++ briefs, Enrico Strampelli, head of Cooperation for the EU delegation in the Philippines, said: “The true value of biodiversity and ecosystem services to the wealth of a nation and to the well-being of future generations is often overlooked by decision-makers, or underestimated against immediate economic interests.”

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, “we know, now more than ever, what could be the final price to pay for forest degradation and wildlife trafficking.”

Lim said the ACB will consider the recommendations from the Besa++ policy briefs in its future policy actions with Asean member-states.

“What is common in the reports is the need to improve the competency and skills in valuing biodiversity and ecosystem services, and effective communication of data and information to policy-makers and stakeholders,” Lim said.

BULACAN AEROTROPOLIS PROJECT: GOODBYE BIRDS, HELLO BIG METAL BIRDS

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

W

ith the proposed construction of the P735.6-billion New Manila International Airport (NMIA), people in the municipality of Bulakan and nearby towns in the province of Bulacan will soon be seeing more airplanes flying in the sky.

The project, secured through an unsolicited proposal by the Ramon Ang-led conglomerate San Miguel Corp. (SMC), hopes to ease air and land traffic congestion in Pasay City, where the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) is situated.

To be constructed in a 2,500-hectare coastal fishpond in Bulakan, Bulacan, that is about 35 kilometers north of Manila, the aerotropolis will stretch from Taliptip River Stream in Barangay Taliptip, Bulakan, to Sitio Baluarte in Obando town.

The project will include a modern passenger terminal building with airside and landside facilities, as well as an airport toll road and railway.

Needless to say, the national government is bent on pursuing the project, with the economic benefits of a new airport in mind— investors coming in, setting up shops triggering construction boom and generating more jobs and livelihood opportunities.

Recovery effort contribution

Despite the enormous challenge posed by the current coronavirus pandemic, SMC is committed to pursuing the ambitious project to help the government in its economic recovery efforts.

This was disclosed during the company’s stockholders’ meeting early this month.

Quoted in news reports, SMC Chief Finance Officer Ferdinand K. Constantino said part of the company’s recovery plan is continuing with expansion plans as previously laid out, which include the plan to build the airport.

Constantino remains optimistic that while the company faces challenges because of the pandemic,

it remains in good shape.

In a statement in July 2019, SMC said the NMIA project, “will be our largest contribution to the Philippine economy thus far. It’s a project that will benefit not just us today, but many future generations of Filipinos.”

“It will generate about a million jobs and jumpstart economic growth in Bulacan and neighboring provinces. Apart from improving tourism and addressing congestion problems, it will boost small local industries, manufacturing, exports and possibly give rise to new ones. We are committed to helping the government deliver on our nation’s goals and helping the local communities thrive and improve their quality of life,” SMC said.

fish source in Luzon.

Many areas along Manila Bay, he added, are susceptible to liquefaction and sea-level rise.

Land reclamation, he said, will only aggravate flooding in Manila, Pasay and Parañaque, and other low-lying areas near the bay, hence, underscoring the need to educate the people about such lifethreatening issues.

Organized by the People’s Network for the Integrity of Coastal Habitats and Ecosystems (People’s NICHE), Bulacan Enumenical Forum, Akap Ka Manila Bay and Center for Environmental Concerns, Philippines, the forum aims to highlight the threats of the project to people and the environment.

Opposition

Project lacking ECC

Like any other environmentally critical project, the Bulacan Aerotropolis is facing stiff opposition from various sectors. Environmentalists, fishermen and conservation advocates included.

While many fishpond owners in Barangay Taliptip have already sold their properties, and most of farm tenants have already agreed to selfdemolish their homes as part of an agreement with the project proponents, still, some residents are up in arms, and they are getting help from various environmental groups and conservation advocates.

Oceana Philippines, an ocean conservation advocacy nongovernment organization, has expressed alarm on the stories of fisherfolk residents in Barangay Taliptip as they suffer even more during the pandemic.

Importance of Manila Bay

During the launch of the Save Manila Bay web site on June 27 which coincided with the forum dubbed “Habang May Dagat, May Buhay: Dissecting the Impacts of the Proposed Bulacan Airport,” retired Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio underscored the importance of Manila Bay. Carpio believes that the airport project in Bulakan, Bulacan, will require massive land reclamation, which will further cause the deterioration of Manila Bay and destroy a major

In an e-mailed message to the B usiness M irror on July 22, Gloria Estenzo Ramos, Oceana vice president, said SMC legal issues hound the Bulacan Aerotropolis project.

Ramos, an environmental lawyer, said SMC still has no Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) for the airport construction, which, she said, was duly certified to by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as of September 19, 2019.

She explained that an ECC for the same area was issued to Silvertides Holdings but only for the construction of access road and administration building, and not for a huge project like an international airport.

Environmentally critical project

The construction of an airport with mixed development, including reclamation, which impacts fisheries, wild birds, livelihoods and mangroves, are considered environmentally critical project and in an environmentally critical area at that.

“This requires full adherence to the requirements of the Environmental Impact Assessment System Act, the Fisheries Code, as amended, among other laws, which means full disclosure of the project, programmatic impact

assessment of the project as an airport and public participation,” she explained.

Ramos said it is not even clear if Silvertides was able to secure an ECC for their extraction of the reported 205 million cubic meters of filling materials to be used for the project.

Worse, Ramos said the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB)-Region III of the DENR refused to issue a copy of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) to affected residents and to Oceana, which is an important document for the stakeholders to understand the full environmental impacts of the project.

“The stakeholders, including nongovernment organizations [NGOs] and peoples organizations have the right to participate in decision-making in addition to the people’s rights to a balanced and healthful ecology protected by the State,” Ramos said.

Crucial requirement

Environment Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon said in an interview on July 11 that an EIA is crucial in every environmentally critical project.

Internally, Calderon, concurrent director of Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) of the DENR, said a harmonization initiative by the BMB with the EMB made some headway.

EMB is DENR’s main unit that issues ECCs other than the the department’s regional offices.

“Right now, as much as possible, we see to it that the BMB is part of the [EIA] review process,” he told the B usiness M irror.

In the EIA review process, he said the biodiversity lens will not be overlooked.

“It covers mitigation measures that are needed for ECCs issued by responsible offices,” Calderon said.

While saying that he is not privy to the Bulacan Aerotropolis Project EIA Review Process, or ECC issuance, he said an EIA report should integrate biodiversity consideration.

He said experts from the BMB should take part in the project scoping in order to determine the classification of the land where the project will

be constructed, or the conservation status of the species that will be affected.

Important bird area

Cristina Cinco, a bird enthusiast, meanwhile, expressed her concern over the plight of critically endangered bird species whose natural habitats are shrinking because of destruction.

“Manila Bay was [classified] an Internationally Important Waterbird Site” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Wetlands International, she said.

Cinco, who is doing a study on birds and wetlands that was commissioned by Wetlands International, is the current vice president of Wild Birds Club of the Philippines.

She said the Philippines has 709 species of bird, 241 of which are endemic, or can only be found in the Philippines, making the country the third in the world in bird endemism.

Equally important is the Philippines’ being part of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), one of nine major flyways across the globe. As such, it is a signatory to international treaties for the protection of migratory species and their habitats.

The EAAF stretches from Russian Far East and Alaska, southwards through East Asia and Southeast Asia, to Australia and New Zealand.

It encompasses 22 countries, including the Philippines.

D e c l a re d a s a n I m p o r t a nt B i rd a n d Biodiversity area by BirdLife International, the northern Manila Bay, which covers the area from Navotas City in Metro Manila, to Bulacan and Pampanga provinces, has been identified as a waterbird congregation area.

Rare sightings

On January 11, a rare sighting of 24 individuals of black-faced spoonbills was recorded in Sitio Dapdap, Barangay Taliptip, Bulakan, Bulacan, the exact area where the airport will be constructed.

The birds came from breeding grounds in China and North Korea, flying all the way to the Philippines during the migration season.

Previous recorded sightings of the species in the Philippines were in Palawan; Olango Island, Cebu province; Bicol Estuary; and in Batanes province.

Another previous sighting in 2019 in Manila Bay area was in Sasmuan, Pampanga province.

But prior to 2019, it was last sighted in Obando, Bulacan, 100 years ago.

This species is closely monitored by the International Black-faced Spoonbill Working Group of the EAAF Partnership and the Taiwan-based Black-faced Spoonbill Association The species’s population dropped to 200 and only about 22 individuals in 1980. However, its population as of 2016 is 3,356.

But Cinco noted that it still remains in the IUCN Red List of endangered species.

Environmental disruption

Sought for reaction, Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE), a convener of People’s NICHE told the B u s i n e s s M i r ro r that the presence of the bird populations are bioindicators of good ecological health.

“This is of crucial importance in these times when there are multiple epidemiological risks from pandemics, socioeconomic loss, and climate emergency all emerging from the disrupted environment,” Dulce said via Messenger on July 6.

“Massive land-reclamation ac tivities in Manila Bay threatens the last remaining wetlands where migratory birds roost. The Bulacan Aerotropolis is one of the biggest threats that will destroy 2,500 hectares of mangroves and fisheries. It is outrageous that transportation mega infrastructure is being touted for economic recovery when global transportation is expected to remain disrupted until 2021,” he added.

“It is too pyrrhic a price to pay when the cost is the loss of our coastal greenbelts that serve as bird and other biodiversity sanctuaries, fisheries havens, and defense lines against disasters,” Dulce said.

With the government’s backing the project, should we say goodbye birds, and hello to big metal birds?

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | S

unday, July 26, 2020 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

By Tamana Sarwary

K

The Associated Press

ABUL, Afghanistan—A year and a half ago, Liqa Esazada for the first time stepped into a martial arts club for women in Kabul, something of a rarity in this still deeply conservative Muslim society.

At the time, she had just accompanied her older sister but was immediately intrigued.

The 22-year-old is now one of two dozen Afghan women who find inspiration and empowerment in Japanese jiujitsu, a martial arts form that dates back centuries.

They love the sport and dare to dream big, hoping someday to compete on the international level.

In war-torn Afghanistan, where gender discrimination has deep cultural and historical roots and where many women suffer from domestic violence, jiujitsu seems an ideal sport for women. It teaches self-defense against a stronger and heavier opponent by using certain holds and principles of leverage.

Esazada said she wants to show a more positive

side of Afghanistan—and “become famous and win the world jiujitsu championship medal.”

Sayed Jawad Hussiani, a jiujitsu instructor at the Nero club where Esazada trains, said this martial arts form with roots in feudal Japan was first brought to Afghanistan in 2005 but has since become popular among boys and girls alike.

The women in Hussiani’s group find strength in their team spirit. They braid each other’s hair before training sessions, spar against one another, take turns on the even bars. In winter, they practice their wrestle holds on snowcovered hilltops above Kabul.

Today, about two-thirds of Afghanistan’s population is 25 or younger and Esazada said she has no memory of the Taliban regime, which hosted al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and ruled Afghanistan before the 2001 US invasion.

But since the United States and the Taliban earlier this year signed a deal on ending America’s longest war—an accord that also envisages peace talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government—women in Afghanistan have become increasingly worried about losing some of the rights and freedoms they have gained over the past two decades.

AFGHAN WOMEN FIND STRENGTH Jiujitsu Coach Sayed Jawad Hussaini demonstrates technique during a training session in Kabul. AP

Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to go to school, work outside the home or leave their house without a male escort. And though they still face many challenges, Afghan women are increasingly stepping into their own power in this male-dominated society, finding a voice even in sports.

Esazada said she is not afraid of the Taliban, and if they come back, she would simply “continue my training to reach my dreams.”

She looks to Afghan women athletes who have made their mark on the world stage. Female athletes from Afghanistan have won more than 100 medals at regional and

C

Jones, 51, won titles in the middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight before moving up to win the heavyweight title in 2003, becoming the first former middleweight champion to do so in 106 years.

The event will air on pay-per-view and the social-media music platform Triller.

Further matches on the card and musical entertainment will be announced in the coming weeks.

British boxer Billy Joe Saunders, meanwhile, has had his suspension lifted and been fined £15,000 ($19,000) for appearing to condone domestic violence.

Saunders posted on social media in March

a video of himself using a punching bag to advise men how to hit their female partners if they argue during the coronavirus lockdown.

The World Boxing Organization super middleweight champion admitted at the time he made “a silly mistake” and his promoter Eddie Hearn described the clip as “idiotic” and “unacceptable.” He was also heavily criticized by domestic abuse charities.

His license was suspended by the British Boxing Board of Control which, after a hearing on Wednesday, found Saunders guilty of misconduct and ordered his fine to be donated to charities.

However, he was cleared to fight, the

medals at pan-Asian games held in Kazakhstan.

Esazada’s fellow jiujitsu student at the Nero club, Rana Rasuli, 21, said she worries about her future if the Taliban manage to retake all of Afghanistan.

For now, Rasuli said she is happiest when she can come out of her home and exercise with the other girls at the club.

10 tennis tournaments in China canceled

Tyson, 54, fights Jones Jr., 51, in eight-round exhibition duel ARSON, California—Mike Tyson is coming back to boxing at age 54.

The former heavyweight champion will meet four-division champion Roy Jones Jr. in an eight-round exhibition match on September 12 at Dignity Health Sports Park.

Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion in history when he won the title in 1986 at age 20 and for a time was the most feared fighter in boxing. But his career became littered with distractions and he hasn’t boxed since 2005 after losing his second straight fight.

He has occasionally teased a return with workout videos and it’s finally scheduled to happen.

international tournaments.

Tahmina Kohistani, Afghanistan’s first female Olympic athlete, competed in the 100-meter run at the 2012 London Olympics. In 2010, the Afghan female soccer team defeated Pakistan 4-0 at the South Asian Football Championship. In 2011, Afghan female powerlifters won three gold and two bronze

E

Tyson

jones

BBBofC said in a brief statement on Thursday.

Following the backlash from his video, Saunders announced he would donate 25,000 pounds to a domestic abuse charity.

Saunders, who is unbeaten in 29 fights, was close to agreeing to fight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in Las Vegas in May before the Covid-19 outbreak.

This week’s hearing was Saunders’s latest scrape with the BBBofC, which fined him 100,000 pounds in September 2018 after another social-media video where Saunders encouraged a woman to perform a sex act in exchange for 150 pounds worth of drugs. AP

LEVEN men’s and women’s tennis tournaments planned for China in October and November—including the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Finals—were canceled Thursday amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Rather than try to move or reschedule any of those events, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) and WTA tours announced they were scrapping all of them after China’s General Administration of Sport said that country would not host any international sporting events the rest of this year because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

“We are extremely disappointed that our world-class events in China will not take place this year,” WTA Chairman Steve Simon said.

“We do, however, respect the decision that has been made,” Simon said, “and are eager to return to China as soon as possible next season.”

His group called off seven women’s tournaments; the ATP wiped four men’s events, including its only Masters 1000 tournament in Asia.

“Our approach throughout this pandemic

has been to always follow local guidance when staging events. We respect the Chinese government’s decision to do what’s best for the country in response to the unprecedented global situation,” ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said. “It’s with a heavy heart that we announce ATP tournaments will not be played in China this year.”

The men’s tour said it will continue to try to work on arranging a tour calendar for the latter stages of this year, including the ATP Finals scheduled for November.

All sanctioned tennis has been on hold since March because of the pandemic, and both tours are tentatively planning to resume in August. This week, though, the ATP canceled its tournament that was slated for Washington, with qualifying to begin on August 13.

The WTA still intends to return to action in Palermo, Italy, on August 3.

The next Grand Slam tournament as of now is the US Open, which is supposed to start in New York on August 31. The French Open has been postponed from May to late September. AP

NO OPENING, CLOSING CEREMONY AT PARIS 1900

THIS 1900 file photo shows the eastern part of a busy boulevard in Paris. AP

W

ITH the Tokyo Olympics postponed for a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, The Associated Press is looking back at the history of Summer Games. Here are some of the highlights of the 1900 Olympics in Paris.

No opening ceremony. No closing ceremony. And many of the athletes at the 1900 Paris Games had no idea they even competed at the Olympics.

Still, the second edition of the Olympics had something the first didn’t—female athletes.

Charlotte Cooper of Britain is believed to be the first female champion, winning the tennis tournament at Cercle de Puteaux in western Paris—on the other side of the Bois de Boulogne from present-day Roland Garros. She defeated Helene Prevost of France, 6-4, 6-2, to win the title.

Cooper’s victory wasn’t exactly a surprise, even though the Olympic tournament was played on clay. She was already a three-time Wimbledon champion on grass and played in eight straight finals at the oldest of the Grand Slam tournaments. She went on to win two more titles at the All England Club over the next eight years.

And according to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, Cooper won her Olympic title despite being completely deaf.

“In a sport where the sound of a ball coming off the strings [is] such an integral

part of playing, Cooper captured all but one of her [Wimbledon] titles without the benefit of sound, paramount in recognizing the pace of an opponent shot,” the Hall of Fame says on its web site.

The Paris Games began on May 14 and finally ended on October 28. They were held as part of the Paris World’s Fair—a decision that cost Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron and the father of the Modern Olympics, much of the control of the games, according to Olympic historian David Wallechinsky.

The overlap and affiliation with the World’s Fair, also known as the Exposition Universelle, and the extended duration of the games were key factors in diminishing their significance.

“The organizers spread the competitions over five months and under-promoted their Olympic status to such an extent that many athletes never knew they had actually participated in the Olympic Games,” the International Olympic Committee (IOC) web site says in its section on the 1900 Paris Games.

Only 22 of the 997 athletes at the games were women, but there was still an overall increase of 756 competitors from the inaugural 1896 Athens Games. They competed in 95 events and represented 24 nations—10 more than the previous games.

AMERICAN STARS

AMERICAN teammates Ray Ewry and Alvin Kraenzlein were two of the biggest stars

of the games. Ewry won three titles in one day, all of them in standing jump events. All three disciplines—the standing high jump, the standing long jump and the standing triple jump—have been discontinued.

Kraenzlein won four events in three days: the 60 meters, the 110 hurdles, the 200 hurdles and the long jump. The 60 meters and 200 hurdles have been discontinued, but Kraenzlein remains the only track and field athlete to win four individual events at one Olympics.

IN SEINE

THE swimming events were held in the Seine river. That contributed to some fast times because the competitors swam with the current.

GOLDEN CHILD

THE youngest Olympic champion may have competed in the rowing event at the Paris Games, but no one is really sure. A Dutch team in the coxed pairs event chose a young French boy to be their coxswain and then won their race. But the boy disappeared after the victory ceremony and historians have been unable to find out his age.

RIVAL TEAMMATES

FIVE sports allowed athletes from different countries to compete on the same team— soccer, polo, rowing, tennis and tug of war. AP

Millennials and boomers: Pandemic pain, by the generation

2

BusinessMirror JULY 26, 2020 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

THIS PAGE TELLS A STORY

By Ces Rodriguez

THE ACCIDENTAL VISIONARY Gilbert Guillermo staked his family’s future on something that did not exist. He found himself at the helm of a trailblazing music magazine.

J

ingle was bakya and burgis in equal measure, to use the patois of the era. Or, in today’s speak, a mood. It was born in 1970, a decade that began with students storming the ramparts of the re-elected president’s administration and culminating two years later in a clampdown of freedoms that would last for the next 14 years.

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

: Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores : Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Darwin Fernandez, Mony Romana, Leony Garcia, Stephanie Joy Ching Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez

Columnists

: Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

Clips of articles and artwork from the pages of Jingle magazine from the collections of Allen Mercado and Ariel Escasa.

The chordbook-magazine, a necessary hyphenate, was the first publication of its kind in the Philippines.

It was also independently published and relied for the better part of its existence on newsstand sales for revenue. The magazine, which was initially published every two months, ran without ads.

At the peak of its readership, it printed 100,000 copies – a feat then, as it is now.

Founder Gilbert Guillermo, who died on Tuesday at age 74, got the magazine off the ground by convincing his family to sell a lot they owned and stake their future on something that was yet to exist. The Guillermos were middling middle-classers who believed in trad investments like land. It wasn’t in their market profile to gamble on an inky publication that would teach kids how to play the guitar.

Gilbert may have said that he named the magazine Jingle because it was happy and musical and meant pissing at the same time. Which is exactly how the first issue turned out to be. I always like to point out that it featured both Nora Aunor, for whom the term “bakya” was coined, and Blind Faith, a supergroup made up of rock demigods who were

so painfully hip they broke up after two seconds. This culture clash/meld was the magazine right there.

Even when Martial Law forced Gilbert to temporarily rename the magazine Twinkle and manually crop out the long hair from photos of rock stars because long hair symbolized the pasaways of the day, he gleefully considered it the highest honor to have the military peeps say to his face that Jingle was shuttered because it was “a bad influence on the youth.”

While Gilbert kowtowed publicly, the pissing angel, which was the magazine’s icon and mascot, grinned on. Jokes, comics, articles, record reviews, poems, one-page stories, a gossipy column called the Duhat Vine (a botanical invention because the real fruit grew on trees) bristled with fun and subtext obvious to readers but opaque to the military minds that patrolled the media.

Thus, Jingle became a kind of freedom wall, to use another dated term, a place to say what the hell you wanted to say if in metaphor, and explore nascent talent. Thus, Jingle was the medium in which the best and the brightest found their voice, among them ribald poet and later celebrated folk artist Joey Ayala,

poet-filmmaker Lav Diaz and cartoonistfilmmaker Rox Lee, advertising man David Guerrero and avant garde artistwriter Cesare Syjuco, to name just a few.

Gilbert was the daddy of ‘em all, and JINGLE, the playground on which their earliest mud pies – imperfect and magical – were first created.

Ces Rodriguez was the longtime managing editor of Jingle who helped preside over the celebrated chordbookmagazine’s most creative period during the Martial Law years.

Gilbert Guillermo (From an old family photo as used in the film, Jingle Lang ang Pahina)

Y2Z & SOUNDSTRIP are published and distributed free every Sunday by the Philippine Business Daily Mirror Publishing Inc. as a project of the

The Philippine Business Mirror Publishing, Inc., with offices on the 3rd Floor of Dominga Building III 2113 Chino Roces Avenue corner Dela Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines.

Tel. Nos. (Editorial) 817-9467; 813-0725.

Fax line: 813-7025 Advertising Sales: 893-2019;

817-1351,817-2807.

Circulation: 893-1662; 814-0134 to 36. www.businessmirror.com.ph

Cesar The Asar cartoon strip by Rox Lee

1980 issue of Jingle magazine from the Pinterest pinboard of Eduardo de Leon

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | JULY 26, 2020

BUSINESS

3

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

REMEMBERING GILBERT

Four more writers salute the Jingle icon with their ultimate reviews

I

first met Gilbert Guillermo in the late ‘70s a few months after I started contributing music-related articles to the now defunct Jingle Chordbook magazine. I remember it was a merienda cena at his office to welcome new writers and production staff of Jingle publication.

A year later, I was called to his office on some matter regarding new assignments and stuff.

Gilbert first asked me about my day job as I was then a technical staff in a government agency. He then inquired how I was doing writing for Jingle magazine and I told him I was getting the hang of it. He eventually offered if I could continue writing for the radio industry column in the Chordbook to which I agreed.

In the ensuing years, we would bump into each other along the tight corridor of Jingle publication and greet each other with a curt “Musta na?” Those were the times I now think that the Jingle patriarch was a mere presence who built a magazine that influenced the careers of a generation of musicians as well as writers.

Like many of those who wrote for Jingle, I began as a fan. When I started writing for the magazine, I had a day job as technical writer in a government agency, and writing for Jingle allowed me to adopt an informal style of writing about music, particularly about rock and roll. I felt to write about anything but I owe to my editors to make my articles look much better than their original drafts.

It was a style that I first read in the reviews and articles of my contemporaries like celebrated poets Juaniyo Arcellana and Ricky de Ungria. The opportunity to be in their company became a personal achievement for me and it’s something I cherish to this day.

I owe to Gilbert and his Jingle magazine my initial break into writing and the name I established with Jingle has given me the chance to meet new friends in unlikely places. Writing’s not a financially rewarding career, being a contractual contributing writer may not even be a career to speak of, but I got high seeing my pieces published and still do now that I am still writing regularly about music for this mainstream publication.

Manny Espinola

Although I joined Jingle’s Chordbook Magazine late in its Third Act, I still consider it, to this day, the best and the most fun job I ever had, and I’ve had over thirty. Any employment in my case needs to last at least two years, to be counted officially as a “job.”

Come to think of it, my employment with Jingle was even the lowest-paying job I ever had, but I’m getting ahead of the story. Before Jingle I worked

in the PR department of a huge pharmaceutical company. And by PR, I mean puffery pieces about big shot executives I never met as well as about products and services I didn’t need, well, except maybe on what class of drugs took you to what kind of trips.

Perfect segue to a magazine that gave you guitar chords to favorite hits old and new, PLUS cool essays on pop culture and the regular hipster finger-flipping at the ruling dictatorship at that time. From a drug company that occupied an entire gated block in Pasig, I got accepted as Associate Editor for a magazine housed in a dinky apartmentturned-printing press on P. Tuazon in Cubao. That was the year after Ninoy Aquino was assassinated.

At right about the same time, George Orwell’s ‘1984’ was on window displays of bookstores again.

Bert Sulat, Jr.

Appreciation is the common denominator to my mind in the wake of the passing of Mr. Gilbert A. Guillermo, the founder-publisher-pioneer editor of Jingle Chordbook. Everything that can be said of the man and his publication that was a staple among music-loving Pinoys across two decades all boils down to some degree of gratitude.

In my case, this formally dates back to 1984, when friends and I were perusing someone’s copy, inside our high school library, of the issue with Simon Le Bon as cover boy and “masturbation” as part of the cover story’s title. Beholding that barefaced daring, of seeing the salacious word in a highly accessible publication, was a gratifying, twin treat—of how bold the magazine was per se and of how the move may have been a subtle upyours to the Marcoses.

Three years since the Le Bon cover, or 17 summers since my birth, Jingle officially birthed the freelance writer in me. Alvin, a new waver college friend, wielded an edition bearing an ad for new recruits. At the mag’s Cubao office, the managing editor on duty, Pocholo Concepcion, possibly finding my on-the-spot essay passable, instructed that I come up with some music reviews based on stuff I own but which the magazine had not yet featured. It so happened that my younger brother Ike had a US-based friend who had sent him two double-cassette compendiums: New Order’s Substance and The Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs.

Manny Espinola

Bert Sulat, Jr.

This inadvertently kicked off Jingle’s spate of reviews of locally unreleased albums but, moreover, began my concrete means of expressing appreciation for the work of musicians, local or foreign—and further appreciation for the written word, for the company and camaraderie of fellow creative (even if elder) spirits turned idols or lifelong friends, for editorial and printing labors, for reader feedback, for work that is hardly a wallet stuffer but a joy for the soul.

All this because of Gilbert Guillermo who, for the most part, was hardly visible—a Charlie to this “angel.” He can be likened to Lorne Michaels, who is not as prominent to the world as his creation, Saturday Night Live, and the numerous comedians and writers who owe a debt to SNL. As such, Sir Gilbert’s legacy and impact—borne out of the quiet, patient overseeing of a magazine (for a while, one of several) nearly month by month— is as immense and immeasurable as the world’s oceans.

Edwin P. Sallan

For many baby boomers, Martial Law babies and even Gen X'ers, Jingle was the definitive source of lyrics and guitar chords. If only for that and that alone, Gilbert’s legacy was already secure.

But there was a lot more to Jingle than just lyrics and chords. Through his magazine, Gilbert also nurtured several generations of writers and artists and in the process, either defined music journalism in this country or at the very least set the edgy tone for it.

Edwin P. Sallan

Tony Maghirang

I was still in college when I began my threeyear stint in Jingle as contributing writer and later as contributing editor from 1983 to 1986. Since I did not own a typewriter, I initially wrote my pieces in longhand and had them typed in Recto. When I was allowed to work in the Jingle office, I learned to type “tuldok system style” and took forever to write my articles. I also didn’t have a music player and reviewed my cassettes by playing them at my neighbor’s place until a family friend gifted me with a small radio cassette player.

During my time at Jingle, I had the pleasure of meeting Gilbert only once. But like many of those who wrote, illustrated or worked at Jingle in any capacity, I feel like I owe him a debt of gratitude.

As a reader and fan of the magazine he started, Gilbert changed the way I listened to music and for better or for worse, the way I viewed many other things in life. As a writer, Gilbert's magazine started me on my eventual chosen path. He opened many doors not only for me but also for many others.

What he ultimately gave us was a gift that in more ways than one, never really stopped giving.

Photos courtesy of Chuck Escasa from the film.

Jingle Lang ang Pahina and Bert Sulat, Jr.

Millennials and boomers: Pandemic pain, by the generation

By Dan Sewell

C

The Associated Press

INCINNATI—Millennials, you’re taking a big hit— again. And you’re not OK, either, boomers.

Sometimes at odds, America’s two largest generations now have something to agree on: The coronavirus pandemic has smacked many of them at a pivotal time in their lives.

For baby boomers, named for the post-World War II surge of births, that means those who are retired or are nearing retirement are seeing their 401(k) accounts and IRAs looking unreliable while their health is at high risk.

Millennials, who became young adults in this century, are getting socked again just as they were beginning to recover after what a Census researcher found were the Great Recession’s hardest hits to jobs and pay.

“The long-lasting effects of the Great Recession on millennials, that was kind of scarring,” said Gray Kimbrough, a millennial and an economist at American University in Washington. “And now when the economy had finally clawed back to where we were before the Great Recession, then this hit at a particularly bad time as well for millennials in particular.”

Another factor: Millennials had been the most diverse generation, and the pandemic has hurt Black people and Latinos disproportionately both in health and financially.

“The pandemic has shined a spotlight on massive inequality by race, ethnicity and gender,” said Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

‘When generations divide...’

This year has highlighted America’s generation gaps, especially between the two largest generations. Both have been stereotyped as being self-absorbed—millennials as selfie-obsessed avocado toast addicts, boomers for their oversized “mcmansions” and self-indulgence. And both are feeling pandemic pain, though in different ways.

“When the generations divide, youth will know only youth; the aged will know only the aged,” Landon Jones wrote in Great Expectations: America & the Baby Boom Generation, his 1980 book that coined the term boomer. “And as always, the boom generation will know only itself.”

The boomers were mostly born to “the Greatest Generation,” Americans who

Buck Newsome, left, a baby boomer, and his son, Chris Newsome, of the millennial generation, pose for a photo while having lunch together in Newtown, Ohio. America’s two largest generations can agree on something: the coronavirus pandemic has hit them both hard. AP survived the Great Depression as children and rallied together to win World War II. But while birth rates slowed down during the ensuing “Generation X,” the millennial generation expanded, fueled in part by immigration.

Millennials became the best-educated generation and more open to social change, only to find that the boomers’ helped elect Republican Donald Trump as president by outvoting them in 2016.

Hence the dismissive “OK, boomer!”

And boomers aren’t amused.

The virus has killed older Americans more than others. It left many isolated at home for safety—and with a sense they are considered expendable in efforts to reopen the economy.

“We’ve become a throwaway generation,” said Norm Wernet, 74, an advocate for retiree causes in Ohio. “It infuriates us.”

It’s upsetting to see so many younger people going maskless around older people, Wernet said, even as federal disease experts say wearing masks helps protect vulnerable people. Boomers, he said, aren’t getting to enjoy the golden years they worked decades to reach.

Meanwhile, a string of newspaper and magazine stories have dubbed millennials “the unluckiest generation.”

Richard Fry, a senior researcher for the Washington-based Pew Research Center, says early studies of pandemic attitudes have shown that older people see it more as a health crisis, while young adults worry more about economic impact. But researchers are finding older Americans have been hit harder by job loss, too, in this recession.

Having lunch together on a restaurant deck in suburban Cincinnati, a father and son recently discussed differences in generational views of 2020.

“I’ve had friends that have been laid off. I’ve been partially furloughed along the way. I’m not accustomed to that,” said Chris Newsome, 36, a millennial

4 BusinessMirror

who went to college under the G.I. Bill after serving two tours of Army duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. That helped his finances through the Great Recession, but he’s “certainly feeling the sting” of this downturn.

“We haven’t seen something exactly like this before,” Newsome said. “We don’t really know what we’re walking into.... It’s complicated everybody’s personal and professional lives.”

Newsome, who works in job placement, said some businesses he worked

“

hears from many peers who got so “clobbered” in 2008 and 2009 that they have sold off.

“Emotion comes into play,” he said.

“They say, ‘I can’t take that kind of hit again.’”

US Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, 64, had been raising alarms about insufficient retirement savings among older Americans before the current downturn.

He and Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, have pushed legislation aimed at the one-fifth of Americans nearing retirement who have little or no savings.

“A lot of people are low in terms of retirement savings, particularly baby boomers,” Portman said, with recent pay cuts and layoffs aggravating that.

Congress’ first Covid-19 relief package allowed people to withdraw money from their 401(k)’s without the usual penalties, but that has further drained retirement savings.

Tough position

Brian Bascom, 30, said fellow millennials—already dealing with a sluggish economy—weren’t positioned to weather job loss or furloughs. Many are carrying college debt; some had been wary about the stock market after seeing parents’ and grandparents’ savings hammered during the Great Recession.

This year has highlighted America’s generation gaps, especially between the two largest generations.

Both have been stereotyped as being self-absorbed— millennials as selfie-obsessed avocado toast addicts, boomers for their oversized ‘mcmansions’ and selfindulgence. And both are feeling pandemic pain, though in different ways.” with stopped hiring or shut down. His family and peers had to suddenly work from home, leaving many to manage day care and schooling. Gbenga Ajilore, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress, said the pandemic has forced one parent in some two-income families to drop out of the work force.

Chris’s father, Buck Newsome, 64, president of Cambridge Financial Group, said he felt the Great Recession was “more visceral for me and my peers.”

Many boomers were in peak earning years, “sailing along” toward retirement, when underlying problems with the economy highlighted by the housing bubble finally popped. But the current recession was self-inflicted, caused by shutdowns and quarantines for public health, he said.

He thinks the underpinnings remain to get the economy moving again, though that’s clouded by uncertainty. Newsome

July 26, 2020

“This may have shaped their ideals and perspectives about the investing marketplace,” said Bascom, a financial adviser with Morgan Stanley in Cincinnati. He said it’s important for his generation to trim unnecessary expenses—cutting Starbucks runs, frequent restaurant dinners or that extra streaming service.

Adding to uncertainty have been the widespread protests sparked by deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police. Ajilore sees “the same line of unequal treatment” running through the nation’s Covid-19 response. “These protests may actually benefit and give an impetus to create a more inclusive recovery,” Ajilore said.

“We’re a resilient country, and right now we’re pretty divided,” said Buck Newsome, boomer. “But if history is any indication, we’ll somehow pull this together.”

He added, laughing: “I hope I’ll be around to see it.”