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A GIRL rides a bicycle in front of a fountain and Cosmos pavilion with a Soviet-era Vostok rocket, at the VDNKh, the All-Russia Exhibition of National Economy, during rain in Moscow, Russia, June 10, 2020. AP/ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO

‘VELOCIPEDE CRAZE’ Pandemic leads to a bicycle boom, and shortage, around the world P

By David Sharp & Kelvin Chan The Associated Press

ORTLAND, Maine—Fitness junkies locked out of gyms, commuters fearful of public transit, and families going stir crazy inside their homes during the coronavirus pandemic have created a boom in bicycle sales unseen in decades.

In the United States, bicycle aisles at mass merchandisers like Walmart and Target have been swept clean, and independent shops are doing a brisk business and are selling out of affordable “family” bikes.

Bicycle sales over the past two months saw their biggest spike in the US since the oil crisis of the 1970s, said Jay Townley, who analyzes cycling industry trends at Human Powered Solutions.

“People quite frankly have panicked, and they’re buying bikes like toilet paper,” Townley said, referring to the rush to buy essentials like toilet paper and hand sanitizer

that stores saw at the beginning of the pandemic.

The trend is mirrored around the globe, as cities better known for car-clogged streets, like Manila and Rome, install bike lanes to accommodate surging interest in cycling while public transport remains curtailed. In London, municipal authorities plan to go further by banning cars from some central thoroughfares.

Bike demand spike in PHL

BIKE shop owners in the Philippine capital say demand is stronger than at Christmas. Financial incentives are boosting sales in

Italy, where the government’s postlockdown stimulus last month included a €500 ($575) “bici bonus” rebate for up to 60 percent of the cost of a bike.

But that’s if you can get your hands on one. The craze has led to shortages that will take some weeks, maybe months, to resolve, particularly in the US, which relies on China for about 90 percent of its bicycles, Townley said. Production there was largely shut down due to the coronavirus and is just resuming.

The bicycle rush kicked off in mid-March around the time countries were shutting their borders, businesses were closing, and

stay-at-home orders were being imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus that has infected millions of people and killed more than 450,000.

Sales of adult leisure bikes tripled in April while overall US bike sales, including kids’ and electricassist bicycles, doubled from the year before, according to market research firm NPD Group, which tracks retail bike sales.

It’s a far cry from what was anticipated in the US. The $6-billion industry had projected lower sales based on lower volume in 2019 in which punitive tariffs Continued on A2

The war for Tripoli is over, but new battles loom

By Mohammed Abdusamee

Z

Victory?

Bloomberg News

AHRA AL-FITURI wandered silently through her old home on Tripoli’s front line, picking up fallen objects and stepping over dust-covered clothes. A year after fleeing, the teacher found the house ransacked but in better shape than neighboring properties that were virtually destroyed as the streets were overrun by fighters loyal to eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar.

She opened windows to let in the light and let out the foul smell of food still rotting in the freezer, months after the power went out in the southern suburbs.

“The looters unearthed all sorts of things I hadn’t seen in

years, including this,” the mother of three said, her eyes filling as she looked through a stack of old family photographs. “Coming back won’t be easy. We’ll need a while to get the place back to what it was, for life to return.”

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.0380

A MAN inspects his neighbor’s ruined house in the Khalla area of southern Tripoli. To his right, a sign on the wall says: “Danger: Shell.” MOHAMMED ABDUSAMEE/BLOOMBERG

THE battle for Tripoli has been won, bolstering the internationally recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, as Haftar abandoned his 430-day campaign to capture the capital. But Libya’s war is far from over, and concern is mounting that the OPEC producer could go the way of Syria, prompting new waves of migration and militancy on Europe’s doorstep.

The Ministry of Local Government estimates that about 125,000 homes have been damaged in southern Tripoli, where Haftar’s forces were holed up for months.

The fighting forced roughly 85,000 families, or nearly half a million people, to flee.

It also dragged in foreign powers, with Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt backing Haftar’s march from his eastern stronghold of Benghazi, and Turkey intervening on behalf of the Tripoli government 1,000 km to Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4681 n UK 62.1972 n HK 6.4562 n CHINA 7.0593 n SINGAPORE 35.8953 n AUSTRALIA 34.2660 n EU 56.0826 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.3406

Source: BSP (June 19, 2020)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

‘VELOCIPEDE CRAZE’

A2 Sunday, June 21, 2020

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Continued from A1

on bicycles produced in China reached 25 percent.

There are multiple reasons for the pandemic bicycle boom.

Alternative transport mode

AROUND the world, many workers were looking for an alternative to buses and subways. People unable to go to their gyms looked for another way to exercise. And shutin families scrambled to find a way to keep kids active during stay-athome orders.

“Kids are looking for something to do. They’ve probably reached the end of the internet by now, so you’ve got to get out and do something,” said Dave Palese at Gorham Bike and Ski, a Maine shop where there are slim pickings for family-oriented, leisure bikes.

Bar Harbor restaurateur Brian Smith bought a new bike for one of his daughters, a competitive swimmer, who was unable to get into the pool. On a recent day, he was heading back to his local bike shop to outfit his youngest daughter, who’d just learned how to ride.

His three daughters use their bikes every day, and the entire family goes for rides a couple of times a week. The fact that they’re getting exercise and enjoying fresh air is a bonus.

BICYCLISTS wear masks while riding in Portland, Maine, April 8, 2020. AP PHOTO/ROBERT F. BUKATY

A MAN wearing a protective mask rides past a mural at Barangay Pinagbuhatan in Pasig City. The city’s transportation department has declared biking as an essential mode of transportation, and is now constructing more bike lanes and sidewalk extensions to make the streets safer for the riding public. NONIE REYES

BICYCLE display racks are empty at a Target in Milford, Massachusetts, June 11, 2020. AP/ROBERT F. BUKATY

“It’s fun. Maybe that’s the bottom line. It’s really fun to ride bikes,” Smith said as he and his seven-year-old daughter, Ellery, pedaled to the bicycle shop.

The pandemic is also driving a boom in electric-assist bikes, called e-bikes, which were a niche part of the overall market until now. Most e-bikes require a cyclist to pedal, but electric motors provide extra oomph.

Unli demand

VANMOOF, a Dutch e-bike maker, is seeing “unlimited demand” since the pandemic began, resulting in a 10-week order backlog for its commuter electric bikes, compared with typical one-day delivery time, said co-founder Taco Carlier.

The company’s sales surged 138 percent in the US and rocketed 184 percent in Britain in the February-April period over last year, with big gains in other European countries. The company is scrambling to ramp up production as fast as it can, but it will take two to three months to meet the demand, Carlier said.

“We did have some issues with

BIKE display racks are empty at a Walmart in Falmouth, Maine, June 9, 2020. AP/DAVID SHARP

A MAN rides a bicycle through usually crowded shopping arcade near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo, June 12, 2020. AP/EUGENE HOSHIKO

our supply chain back in January, February when the crisis hit first in Asia,” said Carlier. But “the issue is now with demand, not supply.”

Sales at Cowboy, a Belgian ebike maker, tripled in the JanuaryApril period from last year. Notably, they spiked in Britain and France at around the same time in May that those countries started easing lockdown restrictions, said Chief Marketing Officer Benoit Simeray.

E-bike option

“IT’S now becoming very obvious for most of us living in and around

cities that we don’t want to go back into public transportation,” said Simeray. But people may still need to buy groceries, or commute to the office one or two days a week, so “then they’re starting to really, really think about electric bikes as the only solution they’ve got.”

In Maine, Kate Worcester, a physician’s assistant, bought e-bikes for herself and her 12-year-old son so they could have fun at a time when she couldn’t travel far from the hospital where she worked.

Every night, she and her son ride 30 or 50 kilometers around

Acadia National Park.

“It’s by far the best fun I’ve had with him,” she said. “That’s been the biggest silver lining in this terrible pandemic—to be able to leave work and still do an activity and talk and enjoy each other.”

Joe Minutolo, co-owner of Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop, said he hopes the sales surge translates into longterm change.

“People are having a chance to rethink things,” he said. “Maybe we’ll all learn something out of this, and something really good will happen.”

The war for Tripoli is over, but new battles loom Continued from A1

the west. Both sides deployed Syrian and other mercenaries, entangling local grievances with regional rivalries and potentially complicating efforts to establish lasting peace. The US and European powers are pushing for peace talks but have struggled to impose a UN arms embargo on a country that’s home to the world’s largest uncontrolled munitions stockpile.

Unresolved dispute

LIBYA’S crude exports have fallen by more than a million barrels a day since Haftar shut down the biggest oil ports in January to pressure the Sarraj government. Proceeds normally go through the National Oil Corp. (NOC) to the Tripoli-based central bank, but Haftar wants the regulator to allocate more funds to the east—an unresolved dispute at the heart of Libya’s divisions.

While Haftar’s efforts to export crude independently of the NOC have been thwarted, repeated disruptions have roiled global oil markets and deprived the economy of its main source of dollars. That’s

again hitting the currency. A year ago, the US dollar was worth roughly 4.5 dinars on the black market. Now, it’s closer to 5.5 dinars.

For Libyans such as Fituri, who’ve witnessed repeated bouts of fighting since the 2011 Natobacked rebellion ended Moammar Qaddafi’s 42-year rule, the future remains uncertain.

“The most dangerous risk for Libya is that it could quickly find itself facing expanded conflict,” wrote analysts Emaddedin Badi and Ranj Alaaldin in a paper published by the Washington-based Brookings Institution on June 15.

“If international actors remain involved, Libya could resemble Syria’s landscape, with years of substantial arms influxes and a rapid proliferation of disparate external mercenaries. If international support for Libyan actors wanes or disappears, local grievances will take center stage, violently.”

Talal al-Naili, who fled last summer to the nearby city of Zawiya, came back to find the contents of his car workshop in Mashrou alHadaba looted. “Nothing was left but the remnants of the bullets on

the door locks,” he said.

Naili would need a loan to reopen his business but sees no point taking on such risk unless residents, now renting smaller apartments, or staying with relatives in central Tripoli or elsewhere, return.

Shops and businesses were forced to close across stretches of southern Tripoli, but so did bank branches, schools and offices. As the front lines shifted, the damage spread, encircling the seaside city with destruction.

Since Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) withdrew late last month, residents have returned to see what remains of their homes, clambering over rubble and losing their way in streets rendered unrecognizable by shelling, airstrikes and street combat.

Close call

WITH the support of Russian mercenaries, Haftar came close to seizing Tripoli late last year after sweeping through Libya’s sparsely populated south and capturing its largest oil fields; he was already in control of the main crude export terminals in the north. Turkey’s

intervention turned the tide, forcing him back to the central city of Sirte, gateway to the oil crescent and the likely backdrop to the next chapter in Libya’s conflict.

Having scorned past peace efforts and under pressure from his international backers, Haftar acquiesced to an Egyptian-mediated truce offer. This time, it’s the Tripoli government that’s ignored it, signaling that, with Turkish backing, it seeks to push Haftar back further.

For now, the halt to hostilities looks unlikely to herald a resumption of oil exports. That means efforts to rebuild devastated infrastructure will be slow, with the latest damage adding to festering destruction from earlier convulsions of violence.

Ayad al-Qunaidi, head of a committee tasked with rehabilitating the power grid in affected areas, said the infrastructure in parts of southern Tripoli was “completely destroyed.”

The damage adds to a lengthy list of problems. Even before Haftar’s assault, daily blackouts stretched from eight to 10 hours, and teachers, doctors and civil

servants went for months without pay. Water supplies are regularly disrupted by armed groups.

Qunaidi said work has begun on repairing the network in some areas.

In others, an additional remnant of war has been hampering progress.

Mines, booby traps

AROUND noon on a recent Thursday, Rabih al-Jawish, head of programs at Free Fields Foundation, a Libyan mine action group, wove his way around sandbag roadblocks into Salaheddin, among the most heavily hit areas. Soon after he arrived, Jawish received a call from a civilian who’d found an unidentified object in his home.

“Don’t touch it, and move away,” he told the man. “Our team will come to you.” On the way, another man stopped Jawish to say he’d also found a mine inside his house.

Jawish tried unsuccessfully to defuse it before promising to return with an ambulance on standby.

In a nearby room, the blood hadn’t dried. The owner said two people were wounded half an hour earlier by what, after a brief inspection, Jawish identified as a

modified hand-grenade—one of potentially thousands of explosive devices planted in residential areas by the LNA and allied Russian mercenaries as they left. Amnesty International says they include Russian and Soviet-era anti-personnel mines banned by international law due to their indiscriminate nature.

Mines and unexploded ordnance have, so far, killed 39 people and wounded 71. Clearance efforts have been hampered by civilians swarming the areas in defiance of warnings.

On the way out of Salaheddin, Jawish pointed to a dirt road no more than 300 meters long and said: “We’ve cleared 107 mines from that street.”

Nearby, a removals truck piled high with furniture prepared to leave. From the passenger seat, Ali al-Maryami said he was salvaging what he could from the house his family fled during the fighting, until such time as they could return.

“I can’t afford to rent an apartment at 3,000 dinars a month forever,” he said. But “the area is frightening now. There’s no one here at night.”

The World BusinessMirror

Editor: Angel R. Calso

Sunday, June 21, 2020

A3

Wall Street rewrites market playbooks with second wave of infections looming

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s the world braces for a second wave of infections from the coronavirus, stocks are priced for a booming global economy, bonds point to a protracted downturn and currency volatility is rising.

Investors are increasingly uneasy with these conflicting signals among asset classes, but they are also resigned to them, and have adjusted their playbooks accordingly.

Tried-and-tested strategies that directed buyers into stocks in good times and bonds in bad times began to unravel in the face of unconventiona l monetary policy a decade ago. They are being dropped now as central banks ramp up their response to the virus and governments pledge more than $8 trillion of fiscal stimulus to combat the fallout from the pandemic.

“It’s a hard shift in markets and at the heart of all of this—undoubtedly—is the Federal Reserve’s efforts to revive the economy,” said Shyam

Devani, chief strategist at SAV Markets in Singapore. “There are glimmers of 2008 financial crisis investing, but this time, from equities to bonds to currencies, there is a sense that stakes could be higher.”

MSCI Inc.’s broadest measure of international stocks shows member-companies trading at more than 19 times next year’s earnings. These kinds of levels haven’t been seen since the dot-com bubble burst in 2002. And what’s worrying is they come as millions of people are cast into unemployment by what the United Nations has called the most challenging crisis since World War II. “The fact that the central bank of the world’s reserve currency is buying everything from government

bonds to corporate debt is floating all boats,” said Devani. “The tipping point will be when there’s enough clarity on what the long-term impact of the virus is.”

Eye-watering equities

That point hasn’t arrived and some stock investors expect eye-watering valuations for at least the remainder of 2020.

“Money pumped by central banks and governments will keep the PEs higher and we will have to work with that,” said Nader Naeimi, head of dynamic markets at AMP Capital in Sydney. “PEs correlate with excess liquidity.”

Optimists suggest earnings may rebound to support the valuations but others are unconvinced.

Covenant Capital Pte. fund manager Edward Lim has downgraded his view of stocks to neutral and is on guard for more black-swan events.

“Finding tail-risk hedging strategies and uncorrelated returns have become even more urgent for us,” said Singapore-based Lim.

Steeper treasuries

Nowhere is the Fed’s influence more pervasive than in the world’s

biggest debt market. Its pledge to spend at least $120 billion a month on asset purchases, and a possible return to the 1940s-era policy of yield-curve control, are anchoring interest rates on short-dated Treasuries near record lows.

At the same time, expectations for the economy to normalize has led to bets for 10- to 30-year yields to rise, leading strategists from Bank of America Corp. to Morgan Stanley to recommend so-called steepener trades.

Mark Nash, the head of fixed income at Merian Global Investors in London, is taking this as a cue to look at the strategy, which profits as yields for long-end bonds climb faster than those with shorter maturities.

“We’re nervous long bonds at these levels,” said Nash. “When things look better, when the macro data picks up and you can rely on it not being hit by another wave of the virus, then you start to sell Treasury bonds again.”

Asia hot spots

Playbooks are also getting reinvented in emerging markets— where asset prices are shrugging off a severe contraction in many

Prime Minister Trudeau puts brave face on ‘embarrassing’ loss for Canada at U.N. P

rime Minister Justin Trudeau and his top diplomat sought to put a brave face on their failure to secure a spot on the United Nations Security Council in one of the Canadian leader’s biggest defeats yet on the world stage.

Trudeau waged a four-year campaign for a council seat in what he hoped would represent a vindication of his foreign policy—a staunch defense of pluralism and multilateralism at a time of global upheaval. But his brand of progressive politics sometimes fell flat and he’s been criticized as being preachy on liberal values.

“We listened and learned from other countries, which opened new doors for cooperation to address global challenges, and we created new partnerships that increased Canada’s place in the world,” Trudeau said in a statement on Wednesday after the vote.

Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said at a press conference the country’s campaign allowed Canada to renew and strengthen bilateral connections across the world.

The latest setback is just one of many recent struggles for Trudeau globally, including a deterioration of relations with China and Saudi Arabia and a disastrous state visit to India.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Bloomberg

Not back

But none, perhaps, are as big a personal setback for the prime minister as Wednesday’s defeat. The government had seen a return to the Security Council as a fulfillment of the Canadian leader’s promise—the day after he took power in 2015—to bring the country “back” on the world stage.

“Many of you have worried that Canada has lost its compassionate and constructive voice in the world over the past 10 years,” Trudeau said at the time. “Well, I have a simple message for you: on behalf of 35 million Canadians, we’re back.”

Canada received the suppor t of 108 countries of a total 192 that voted on Wednesday afternoon at UN Headquarters in New York. Norway and Ireland, Canada’s two rivals, received 130 and 128 votes, passing the required two-thirds majority of 128 ballots.

“It’s really the biggest embarrassment he will suffer in his prime ministership in Canada, particularly on international affairs,” said Shuvaloy Majumdar, a senior fellow at the MacDonald Laurier Institute and former adviser on foreign policy in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s conservative government.

Canada has now been overlooked for the second time in the past decade to become a non-permanent member on the agency’s decision-making body.

Celine Dion

Trudeau pulled out all the stops to woo the international community, including a concert by Canadian singer Celine Dion in New York before the pandemic. Champagne

said his boss spoke to more than 50 leaders in recent weeks to make the case, while he had spoken to 130 counterparts.

Nor did Covid-19 slow down Canada’s campaigning. Trudeau cohosted a virtual UN conference to raise funds for developing countries to fight the pandemic.

“Canada was always coming from behind in this race after starting late. To get over 100 votes despite this handicap is a pretty impressive feat,” said Richard Gowan, UN director at International Crisis Group, via e-mail. Trudeau and his diplomats “have done pretty much all they could.”

Canada last vied for a spot in 2010 when it lost to Portugal and Germany. It has held a rotating seat six times since the UN was founded in 1945, with the last time being in 1999-2000.

The United Nations General Assembly elects 10 countries to the rotating non-permanent seats every two years. Voting was done by secret ballot and voted one-by-one to respect social distancing measures, according to a tweet from US Ambassador Kelly Craft.

The Security Council is made up of 15 members, including five permanent members— the US, China, Russia, France and the UK—which hold veto power. Bloomberg News

Kim Jong Un leaves S. Korean leader’s peace legacy in ruins

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hen North and South Korea opened their first liaison office less than two years ago, President Moon Jae-in in Seoul declared a “new era has dawned.”This week, Kim Jong Un showed him how little had changed when he reduced the $15-million building to rubble.

The shocking act of destruction, which a Moon spokesman denounced as “reckless,” appeared to be part of a calculated gamble to try to force the South Korean president to break with the US and support sanctions relief for North Korea. The result was to literally blow up the most concrete achievement of Moon’s decades-long drive to establish a lasting peace with his country’s greatest foe.

Kim wasn’t finished. On Wednesday, the North Korean military announced plans to reoccupy sensitive border areas, undermining an historic flurry of agreements in 2018 that fueled talk of a Nobel Peace Prize. A North Korea official dismissed the deals as “scrap paper,” describing Moon as the “chief culprit” for their failure.

“This is just a beginning,”North Korea’s biggest newspaper said in a commentary on Thursday.

The Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party daily, added “it will be followed by uninterrupted explosions for defending justice and they might far exceed the imagination.”

While North Korea has a long history of diplomatic reversals, few have been as extreme as Kim’s union and breakup with Moon. The relationship’s collapse brings back the specter of military conflict on the Korean Peninsula and leaves the South Korean president just two more years in office to put the Cold War rivals back on a path toward peace.

The dispute underscores a fundamental dilemma facing all South Korean leaders: how to reconcile their policies toward Pyongyang with the geopolitical interests of their allies in Washington. Despite his own trade and security frictions with President Donald J. Trump, Moon has so far chosen to preserve the alliance with the US at the expense of his ties with Kim. “He does not want to get in trouble with the United States and he does not want to get in trouble with North Korea,” Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University who is a specialist on North Korea, told Bloomberg Television.“But trouble with the United States is a far greater problem for him.”

The political cost for Moon, 67, was unclear.

Global praise for South Korea’s coronavirus response helped propel Moon’s left-leaning Democratic Party to a historic majority in parliamentary elections in April and lift his approval rating to a record high. Some 62 percent

approved of his performance before the latest North Korea crisis began, according to a Gallup tracking poll.

South Korea’s top nuclear envoy, Lee Do-hoon, arrived in Washington on Wednesday for talks with US officials about North Korea’s latest provocations, Yonhap News Agency reported.

Some opposition members argue that Moon’s accommodation efforts with North Korea backfired. Hong Moon-pyo, a senior lawmaker with the conservative United Future Party, urged Moon to overhaul his North Korea policy, saying it had led to provocations such as the regime’s tests of new missiles designed to strike all of South Korea.

“Seoul appeared weak, and gave Pyongyang a waiver,” Hong said. “The response was simply just not strong enough.”

Moon, the son of North Korean refugees who settled in South Korea during the 19501953 Korean War, had spent much of his career working toward peace on the peninsula. He was among a group of acolytes determined to preserve late President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” toward Pyongyang and served as President Roh Moo-hyun’s chief of staff during an inter-Korean summit in 2007.

After sailing into office in 2017 in the wake of conservative President Park Geun-hye’s ouster,

Moon pledged to forge a deal that could one day unify the peninsula. It was an optimistic message as Kim carried out an escalating series of missile tests and Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against the Pyongyang.

In less than a year, Moon was shaking hands with Kim and bounding across their heavily fortified border in the first of several summits with the North Korean leader. Moon was hailed as the man who helped pull Trump and Kim back from the brink of a conflict that could devastate Seoul and draw the US and China into war.

Things began to unravel early in 2019 after Trump walked out of a summit with Kim in Hanoi, rejecting his offer to give up the aging Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for sanctions relief. It was a framework that Moon had endorsed after meeting Kim in Pyongyang.Weeks after the Hanoi debacle, Kim dismissed Moon as an “officious mediator.”

After that, Moon saw his overtures to Kim repeatedly rejected as the South Korean military tracked a resurgence in weapons tests north of the border. More recently, North Korea started threatening to roll back Moon’s signature achievements including building the liaison office, removing frontline guard posts and enforcing a ban on military exercises near the border.

Bloomberg News

economies. Again, that’s due to the role central banks are playing.

This trend is well under way in Indonesia where 10-year bonds have erased most of their losses from the coronavirus crisis. In India, the rally is even more pronounced with yields hovering near the lowest in more than a decade as the central bank scoops up bonds in the secondary market.

Both countries are projecting the worst economic growth in years, while also f looding debt markets with issuances to fund stimulus spending.

“Asia is again becoming a preferred destination amongst EM investors due to better fundamentals compared to other EM regions,” said Edward Ng, a portfolio manager at Nikko Asset Management Asia Ltd. in Singapore.

Currency volatility

Meanwhile, sw ings in foreign exchange are picking up again—another sign that investors can’t decide between fear over a second wave of infections and optimism that economies are starting to mend.

Nowhere has this been more

evident than the Australian dollar, which plunged to an 18-year low in March then rebounded 28 percent in the space of three months.

This is not the way currencies of developed economies typically move, said Jane Foley, a currency strategist at Rabobank in London.

“By the end of the year there is still significant risk of a nasty turn lower,” said Foley, cautioning that the Australian dollar could re-test 60 US cents if investors recalibrate their expectations for global growth.

Old normal?

That recalibration may be when markets return to a more normal state of affairs, and consensus forms over how to price assets in a world that has lived through the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus.

T h at m ay not come u nt i l 2022, going by Fed projections over when it could start raising policy rates again.

“At the moment everybody is getting some sort of uplift,” said Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Robert Mead. “As we move through this phase, there will be a lot more differentiation between the winners and losers.” Bloomberg News

Lighthizer: U.S. pulled out of global digital tax talks

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reasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin withdrew the US from international talks over a digital tax deal after failing to reach an agreement with countries looking to place levies on the revenue of American tech companies, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said.

“We were making no headway and the secretary made the decision that rather than have them go off on their own he would just say we’re no longer involved in the negotiations,” Lighthizer said on Wednesday during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

Treasury Department spokesman Monica Crowley said in a statement that the US is suggesting “a pause in the talks” so that governments can focus on responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and reopening their economies.

Th e d e c i s i o n s u s p e n d s t h e Tru m p administration’s previous approach to find a global deal and could increase the likelihood that technology giants Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. could face a wave of foreign taxes.

“We have a situation where a variety of countries have decided that the easiest way to raise revenue is to tax somebody else’s companies and they happen to be ours,” Lighthizer said. “The United States will not let that happen.”

The Financial Times reported earlier that Mnuchin notified European colleagues of the US decision in a June 12 letter.

A spokesman for France’s Finance Ministry said in an e-mail that France had received the letter and that the government is working on a response with other EU countries.

Lighthizer didn’t rule out a possible settlement that avoids an escalation that could involve US tariffs.

“The answer is that we need an international regime that not only focuses on certain size and certain industries but where we generally agree as to how we’re going to tax people internationally,” he said. “So I think there is clearly room for a negotiated settlement.”

OECD solution

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is trying to find agreement among almost 140 countries on a global tax overhaul to address how multinationals— particularly big tech companies—are taxed in the nations where they have users or consumers. An international deal would prevent dozens of countries implementing their own versions of digital taxes that would likely mean companies would pay more. The OECD declined to comment.

Several European countries—including Austria, France, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and the UK—have already announced plans for a digital services tax. Many others, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Norway and Slovenia, have discussed implementing one. India in April expanded a digital tax that’s been in place since 2016, making it much broader than those in Europe.

The US has sought to use tariffs to repeal or delay proposed digital levies. Lighthizer announced a series of new tariffs on French goods last year in response to France’s digital tax. The two countries reached a truce this year to delay collection of both levies until the end of 2020 to give the global talks more time.

The US also announced investigations into Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, the EU, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK this month that could also lead to more tariffs.

Finger-pointing

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has said the US has been the lone holdout in reaching a deal, but still thinks it’s possible to have an agreement this year.

“The last state that is blocking an agreement on digital taxation at the OECD is the United States,” Le Maire said at a French Senate’s finance committee meeting last week.

The plan under discussion includes two key pillars. The first portion would give countries the right to tax profits based on sales within their borders. The second would implement a global minimum tax to prevent countries from lowering tax rates to compete for companies.

OECD officials are pushing to stick to an original deadline to reach an agreement this year, despite setbacks from the coronavirus pandemic, however, some officials have already acknowledged the project could spill into 2021.

The US’s involvement in the international negotiations had been a rare area of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Wyden, the Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, both had expressed support for finding a global solution. Grassley said at a hearing of the panel that an OECD agreement is the best way to resolve the digital tax issues.

“But those negotiations should not be rushed, especially during the current health and economic situation,” Grassley said. “It’s better to take time to get a fair and equitable solution, so I support Treasury continuing to negotiate on these important global tax issues.”

Bloomberg News

Journey

»life on the go

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Editor: Tet Andolong

Save a prayer at Sigiriya rock, Sri Lanka

I hiked with dozens of students on an educational field trip

View of Sigiriya’s ancient garden from the top

Final push to the top

Some of the ruins atop Sigiriya

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Story & photos by Marky Ramone Go

espite missing out on Duran Duran’s peak of popularity, their music videos still left a valuable mark in my consciousness.

One of it was their song “Save a Prayer,” shot on location in Sri Lanka, it features intoxicating scenes of temples, golden beaches and ancient ruins. One particular part of the video stood out for me; it’s the scene where Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes are performing the song on top of a massive boulder surrounded by what look like a set of ancient ruins.

Postcards, magazine covers and travel narratives keep reminding me of Sigiriya until the day came; when I finally able to pencil a date for a trip to this fascinating teardrop-shaped nation.

A few days before I fly out to Sri Lanka, I made a rough itinerary that left room for episodes of spontaneous detours. The only places I listed are Colombo—my inbound and outbound city—and Sigiriya.

Anything else in between to fill my 2-week solo backpacking trip are open to sudden wanderlust whims.

I ended up circling the Unesco World Heritage loop covering Galle, Polonnaruwa, Kandy, Dambulla and Sigiriya—missing out only on Anuradhapura.

The Lion Rock

Right from the onset of planting my first step, I feel my pulse racing with excitement at the thought of setting foot at the ruins of on olden Ceylon civilization atop a 600-feet massive rock column. It certainly is a dream about to happen. Sigiriya was chosen as the capital of King Kashyapa’s kingdom during his reign from 477 to 495 CE. The place

which they call as Sīnhāgiri or the “Lion Rock” (an etymology likened to Sinhapura or the Lion City—the Sanskrit name of Singapore) represented the peak of his rule both literally and figuratively.

Abandoned after his death, it became a Buddhist monastery until the 14th century. Evidence of the ruins found on Sigiriya suggests the Buddhist Monks occupied this as early as the 3,000 BC. Historians had a hard time tracing the origins of Sigiriya. According to the Palm Leaf Book of Ravana Watha (which detailed the story of Ravana—the great king of Lanka), Sigiriya was built more than 50 centuries ago upon the order of King Visthavasa (father of Ravana) and was designed by Maya Davana (an ancient king known for his architecture brilliance).

The passing time have hidden the grandeur and historical significance of Sigiriya Rock until in 1831, when members of the 78th Highlanders of the British Army led by Major Jonathan Forbes stumbled over a “bush covered summit.” Since then, the renaissance of Sigiriya came to light to the world, as antiquarians and archaeologists converged on top of the Lion Rock to conduct extensive research.

Ancient graffiti, frescoes and water gardens

Reaching the halfway point of my climb, I reached the Mirror Wall, which at the time of King Kassapa appears almost like a look-

Finally reached the top

There are said to be over 500 ladies depicted by the Sigiriya frescoes painting

The Sigiriya rock

ing glass due to its smooth texture made of extremely polished white plaster and masonry brick wall.

Fading as centuries passed, the wall today appears bare but upon closer look, one could see some of the oldest graffiti known in the world, as scribbled poems dating back to as early as the eighth century can be read.

A renowned Sri Lankan archaeologist Dr. Senerat Paranavitana interpreted a total of 685 verses believed to have been written between the eighth and 10th century

CE on the mirror wall. One of the verses, apparently inscribed by a lovelorn soul, reads (as translated from Sinhala): “The girl with the golden skin enticed the mind and eyes. Ladies like you make men pour out their hearts. And you also have thrilled the body. Making it stiffen with desire.”

As I negotiated the spiral staircase, I came inside a small cave housing impressive fresco art works. Known as “The Maidens of the Cloud,” the impressive paintings of 21 women partaking in

various religious rituals left me in astonished state with its smooth color tones and the retention of its fine rich details after the passing of many centuries.

Heaving a torrid series of deep breaths I drank the last portion of my bottled water and made my way to the ruins of the lion’s mouth, where two gigantic lion paws sandwich the last stairway leading up to the summit.

A few more dozen paces and I find myself rising slowly at the top summoning the unearthly views of

the Sigiriya gardens from below.

Spinning my neck I see the rest of a palatial ruin forever lost in the passage of time.

As I sat and took a much-needed rest, I savored the sense of grandeur associated with this Unesco World Heritage Site. Trudging my right feet over a mound of soil on the very same ground where Buddhist worshipers stomped theirs as early as the third century BCE, left me with a deep historical awareness. That moment, elation filled my mind. I dare not wish to be somewhere else.

Science

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

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Sunday

Sunday, June 21, 2020 A5

DOST: Innovations help communities, enterprises cope with the pandemic

By Edwin P. Galvez

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rust the “diskarte,” or innate creativity, of Filipinos to come up with innovations to help solve community problems or boost productivity and increase revenues at their workplaces, especially in these challenging times of pandemic.

These products of malikhaing pag-iisip, or creative thinking, were evident during the past months of quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, reported the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in its weekly virtual news conference on DOSTv. The DOST recognized a number of shop-floor and grassroots innovations from enterprises and communities it assists under two of the agency’s flagship programs, the Small Enterprise Technology Upgrading Program (SETUP) and the Community Empowerment through Science and Technology (CEST).

Science Undersecretary for Regional Operations Brenda L. Nazareth-Manzano said that these programs have encouraged Filipinos to innovate using DOST’s “technology interventions such as modern machineries and technical trainings and consultancy.”

There is also the Grassroots Innovation for Inclusive Development (GRIND) program, she added, that “documents, institutionalizes and promotes grassroots innovations [GIs] in the marginalized communities.”

Nazareth-Manzano said that while these shop-floor and grassroots innovations “do not undergo the usual research and development [R&D] processes, these have significantly contributed to the growth of our country’s industries” and provided creative solutions to pressing community challenges.

Innovate to build an agile community

“This pandemic has taught us many lessons, particularly the importance of science, technology and education,” said Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña in Filipino during the same DOSTv broadcast.

He said innovative firms faced less difficulty repurposing or adjusting to the situation.

“Instead of closing or stopping

operations, these firms developed new products to augment their revenues,” added de la Peña.

To promote and stimulate the creation of innovations among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), de la Peña announced that the agency will sustain the implementation of SETUP with its Version 2.0, saying that “innovation is needed to have an agile community.”

“The enhanced version will not only offer intervention at the firm level, but also in their sector in the industry, guided by a roadmap we are formulating for each industry,” he said.

De la Peña said the DOST will push for the use of its programs under the Advanced Mechatronics, Robotics and Industrial Automation Laboratory.

One of its objectives is to establish a technology laboratory, where experts from different industries, academe and business can practice the automation of their production processes.

The Science department will provide interventions to “guide and help them create more shop-floor innovations” to help the enterprises become more competitive.

Nazareth-Manzano added that, for the communities, the agency will “institutionalize the GRIND program and continue implementing the CEST program.”

Shop-floor innovations during the pandemic

She explained that while shop-floor innovations are “discovered not in the laboratories or research facilities but at the actual production floor of factories” to improve production processes, there were innovations made by SETUP beneficiaries that address critical needs in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

She cited Baguio City-based TG Signage that makes signage, plaques and trophies before the pandemic. It is now helping reduce the shortage of personal protective equipment.

The shop “repurposed its equipment to produce aerobox, face shields, eva rubber frame goggles with acrylic lens and mask hookers or ear savers.”

It also recently created a specimen collection cubicle prototype for the Baguio City government.

more than 100 coconut farmers in Quezon province and 30 farmers in Marinduque by buying their coconuts.”

The company’s increase in VCO production comes at an opportune time when it is becoming more popular because of its possible anti-Covid-19 effect that is currently being tested.

Grassroots innovations aid marginalized communities

Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña visits the Villa Conzoilo farm in Jaro, Leyte, which was awarded the best CEST community in 2019. Henri de Leon/S&T Media Service

Nazareth-Manzano said that TG Signage improved the box-type design of commercially available aerobox—the barrier between doctor and patient during manual laryngoscopy—by making the upper part dome-shaped for its Covid-19 AeroBox. The innovation solved the visual atrophy and head bumps experienced by doctors in the box-type aerobox, making it more convenient for their use during intubation.

Reducing the use of acrylic by 50 percent also makes the AeroBox lighter and less costly to produce.

Meanwhile, Nazareth-Manzano reported that Mana Shameyn Enterprises, based in the National Capital Region which previously engaged in hospital bed repair and modification services, has ventured into manufacturing when it saw the demand for hospital beds.

Using its own designs, the company is also making examination tables, bedside cabinet, emergency cart, intravenous stand, and medicine and instrument cabinets, growing its annual sales of P7 million to P21 million in gross sales in 2019.

SETUP beneficiaries give back

De la Peña cited a SETUP beneficiary in Region I, ModulHaus Inc., maker of modular cabinets, tables, windows, doors, and other office features, that “repurposed to extend help” with the present situation.

T he f u r n it u re m a k e r bu i lt nine units of specimen collection booths (SCBs), each worth between P70,000 and P80,000, at no cost to the government.

DOST donated these SCBs to the Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center in San Fernando City, La Union, and other medical institutions and health facilities in the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur and Pangasinan.

VCO production

Another innovative firm assisted by the SETUP is the GreenLife Coconut Products Philippines Inc. in Tayabas City, Quezon province.

Nazareth-Manzano said GreenLife is a top manufacturer and exporter of virgin coconut oil (VCO), which, in April, supplied the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine with its VCO products for the agency’s trials on the use of VCO against Covid-19.

“It operates with almost zerowaste by creating high-value products like jam, vinegar, coconut sap aminos, sugar, nectar syrup, and coconut oil from other coconut parts,” Nazareth-Manzano said.

It also developed a new business model, an innovation by itself, added de la Peña.

GreenLife established a VCO processing village model where they taught coconut farmers how to make VCO using the cold process method, making them earn more from their produce.

Their produce passes through a centrifuge machine to standardize the quality of the products from the small-scale farmer-producers.

Nazareth-Manzano said that GreenLife, which now supplies 33 companies and five traders for the export market, is “ helping

They may not have finished formal schooling, but members of the informal sector imbued with creative thinking can also develop grassroots innovations (GIs) to help solve the problems in their respective communities, NazarethManzano explained.

The DOST stimulates the creation of these innovations through the implementation of the CEST program, wherein marginalized “communities are given a package of science and technology interventions to empower and develop them.”

Nazareth-Manzano cited Villa Conzoilo in Jaro, Leyte, which was awarded the best CEST community in 2019.

The farming community used to propagate tomatoes by planting the seeds bought for P600 to P1,000, and waiting for 80 to 90 days to harvest them.

When the farmers cut the plants to grow them near the ground to avoid getting destroyed during typhoons, they discovered that the cuttings they later planted bore fruits after only one month.

The community uses natural fertilizers from poultry waste and vermicast for better growth.

legitimizing is focused on developing polic y recommendations.

Piloting in the Davao region, the DOST identified some of its grassroots innovations that “mainly address issues on food security, health and immunity, health hazards and safety, and sustainable livelihood.”

One project, the foot-operated handwashing kiosk invented by Edmund Jacalan, a fabricator in Nabunturan, Davao de Oro, is used in CEST communities.

A “no-contact means to handwashing,” the kiosk is fitted with a liquid dispenser and a water tap that are connected to two different pedals.

Breadfruit, or “Mirakolo” health tea made by Askedwell Inc. of CEST Montevista serves as a food supplement that indigenous peoples in the area consider helpful in improving the immune system and antibodies of consumers.

Likewise, honey with pollen, a food supplement with immuneboosting properties, was discovered

by Maricel D. Ferrando of the municipality of Baganga.

Helping SETUP beneficiaries recover from the pandemic

Aiming to capture the GIs for the communities is the GRIND program.

Launched last year, it is a framework plan with four components, or the four Ls: learning, leveraging, linking, and legitimizing Na zareth-Manzano said that lear ning refers to the prof i ling and identif y ing the GIs; leverag ing g ives assistance on how to commercia l i ze t he GIs a nd “ f ind ing the science behind the innovations”; linking is developing and streng thening the network of advocates and ex per ts of the marg ina lized sector; and

Assisting thousands of MSMEs through the SETUP, DOST extended in April the moratorium of refund payments for up to five months or until July 2020 to give enterprises more time to recover their losses during the quarantine period.

De la Peña said the agency is also conducting webinars to give these firms some push, discussing such topics as “how to repurpose given the new environment,” selling and delivery, and food safety.

He said less than 30 percent of the SETUP beneficiaries are closing shop as the firms anticipate recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In an online survey the DOST held in March to know the status of SETUP-assisted firms, out of 2,318 surveyed, 68.8 percent or 1,594 companies had closed during the enhanced community quarantine period due to low sales.

Nazareth-Manzano encourages the SETUP beneficiaries to continue availing themselves of the various services of the department through virtual or online consultancies.

Dr. Maria Cecilia Gastardo-Conaco

Dr. Marieta Bañez Sumagsay

study will come up with policy recommendations that may aid the government, through the Department of Health and other leading health care providers, in addressing the gaps in Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Services practices and/or services, as well as in improving the delivery of programs and services for MHPSS.

adoption of WFH as a necessary human-resource employment choice in government as a new normal work scheme, and a paper presentation on gender-sensitive WFH scheme in post-ECQ.

GRIND program

Experts study the social dimensions of Covid-19

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he new respiratory-related illness that originated in China in December 2019 became a major pandemic early this year that adversely hit the whole world, and currently challenges government capabilities, overwhelms health systems, disrupts economies and completely affects social life.

Governments became busy, especially the health and medical sectors, to respond quickly to the crisis. All else followed—the food, transportation, labor, tourism, education and religious sectors—had to be subjected to different levels of quarantine in order to flatten the Covid-19 curve, the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP) said in a news release.

Can we now adjust to the new normal? Can we even go back to our day-to-day lives after the pandemic? Are the information we get accurate?

Do we have the finances and sociological support to hold us up until the crisis is over?

These are just a few questions that have led to anxiety and distress amid the Covid-19 crisis. There are questions for every sector, every economic status and every Filipino, the NRCP said.

The Covid-19 pandemic is, to some extent, a reality check and is testing everyone, especially the government, in dealing with it. But more than this are everyone’s emotions, feelings and behavior toward other people, and the government, NRCP said.

Further, are the issues on the effectivity and public acceptance of government policies and pronouncements, including how gender-sensitive the Philippines is to the pandemic.

The Department of Science and Technology’s NRCP is conducting five research projects that look into the issues, focusing on the behaviors, feelings, cognition, gender issues and even an analysis of the work-from-home (WFH) mode during the pandemic Intended to be completed this month, the outputs of the projects are directed to the government, particularly the policy-makers and agencies that are in the forefront of the coronavirus crisis, in order to serve as research-based guidance in future policies and pronouncements, the NRCP said.

Emotions, feelings and behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic

This project is investigating people’s feelings and response to Covid-19 and through the various government actions, including how they get their information (i.e., sources), how they feel, respond, process and react to these various information and their sources.

The team from University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, led by Director Dr. Maria Cecilia Gastardo-Conaco, DOST-NRCP member of Division VIII-Social Sciences, see the experience of Filipinos in this period of uncertainty and disruption.

Besides the description of how people feel and respond to the pandemic, the UP team is expected to come up with policy recommendations on how government and media could communicate information and directives on more productive outcomes, such as more toned down negative affect and a greater willingness to engage productive action.

The study will also identify the implications for health promotion.

Content analysis of government policies and issuances

This project intends to assess the level of implementation, monitoring, evaluation and impact of political instrumentalities from national down to local governmental entities. This include the subsequent roles of other stakeholders of Covid-19, such as the private, philanthropic and nongovernmental organizations.

Project Leader Laufred I. Hernandez, also a DOST-NRCP member of Division VIII-Social Sciences and from UP Manila, will lead the identification and establishment of the gaps in policy directions and implementations, such as security, resources vis-à-vis preparedness, community awareness, strategies for prevention, and control and social containment.

With the results of the project, DOST-NRCP will recommend strategies to strengthen the policy issuances on Covid-19. It is observed that

more comprehensive and detailed issuances will create unity and obedience from the people.

Gender-specific insights

Gender is one of the neglected social dimensions during the pandemic.

The health, social and economic risks brought about by the disease have associated gender-specific aspec ts, such as the role of gender in the healthcare system, sex-dependent health vulnerabilities of individuals, and gender-related occupational hazards.

Dr. Jomar F. Rabajante, DOST-NRCP member of Division II-Mathematical Sciences and Project Leader from UP Los Banos, will provide gender-specific insights.

Rabajante and his team will use the available epidemiological and socio-economic data to produce an interactive dashboard showing gender-specific insights related to Covid-19 that can be used for academic or policy-making.

An online interactive dashboard showing gender-specific insights related to Covid-19 that can be used for academic or policy-making purposes will be developed in the project.

Scoping on mental health and psychosocial support services

Led by Dr. Elizabeth P. de Castro, a retired professor of UP Department of Psychology, the

Defining a gender-responsive WFH scheme in post-ECQ scenario

The in-house study, led by NRCP Executive Director Dr. Marieta Baňez Sumagaysay, will come up with policy recommendations for enhancing men’s and women’s work productivity during WFH. The team will also draft a statement for the

What’s next?

Upon completion of the projects this month, the DOST-NRCP, as a government agency and a policy advisory body, will push the use of the outputs of the researches by different government instrumentalities through policy recommendations.

DOST is at the forefront in helping the government for a better, wise and sound decision-making based on research.

Research and development make change happen, in all areas including governance, society and the people as a whole, NRCP said.

Faith A6 Sunday, June 21, 2020

Sunday

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

Pope: Catholics cannot ignore the poverty caused by pandemic

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ATICAN—Pope Francis said last week that the coronavirus pandemic has revealed poverty that Catholics cannot ignore.

“The word of God allows for no complacency; it constantly impels us to acts of love,” Pope Francis wrote in his message for the 2020 World Day of the Poor.

“This pandemic arrived suddenly and caught us unprepared, sparking a powerful sense of bewilderment and helplessness,” the pope said. “This has made us all the more aware of the presence of the poor in our midst and their need for help.”

Pope Francis said that “time devoted to prayer can never become an alibi for neglecting our neighbor in need.”

“Prayer to God and solidarity with the poor and suffering are inseparable,” he said.

In his message published on June 13, the pope wrote that “generosity that supports the weak, consoles the afflicted, relieves suffering and restores dignity to those stripped of it, is a condition for a fully human life.”

He stressed that the time given in support of the poor cannot be put second to one’s personal interests.

“The decision to care for the poor, for their many different needs, cannot be conditioned by the time available or by private interests, or by impersonal pastoral or social projects,” he said.

“The power of God’s grace cannot be restrained by the selfish

tendency to put ourselves always first,” he added.

The pope recognized that the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic has left many people feeling “poorer and less self-sufficient.”

“The present experience has challenged many of our assumptions,” he said. “The loss of employment, and of opportunities to be close to our loved ones and our regular acquaintances, suddenly opened our eyes to horizons that we had long since taken for granted. Our spiritual and material resources were called into question and we found ourselves experiencing fear.”

Francis pointed to the wisdom found in the Old Testament Book of Sirach. “In page after page, we discover a precious compendium of advice on how to act in the light of a close relationship with God, Creator and Lover of creation, just and provident toward all His children,” he said.

Quoting Sirach Chapter 2, the pope said: “‘Do not be alarmed when disaster comes. Cling to Him and do not leave Him, so that you may be honored at the end of your days. Whatever happens to you, accept it, and in the uncertainties of your humble state, be patient, since gold is tested in the fire, and chosen men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust Him and He will uphold you, follow a

H

Pope Francis holds a monstrance as he celebrates a Corpus Domini Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on June 14. Tiziana Fabi/Pool Photo via AP

straight path and hope in Him. You, who fear the Lord, wait for His mercy; do not turn aside in case you fall.’”

Pope Francis said: “The Church certainly has no comprehensive solutions to propose, but by the grace of Christ she can offer her witness and her gestures of charity.”

“She likewise feels compelled to speak out on behalf of those who lack life’s basic necessities. For the Christian people, to remind everyone of the great value of the common good is a vital commitment, expressed in the effort to ensure that no one whose human dignity is violated in its basic needs will be forgotten,” he added.

The theme for this year’s World Day of the Poor comes from a line in chapter six of the Book of Sirach: “Stretch forth your hand to the poor.”

“This year’s theme is thus a summons to responsibility and commitment as men and women who are part of our one human

family. It encourages us to bear the burdens of the weakest, in accord with the words of Saint Paul: Through love serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’” he said.

Pope Francis established the World Day of the Poor at the end of the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016. It is celebrated each year on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, one week before the Feast of Christ the King. The 2020 World Day of the Poor will take place on November 15.

“Each year, on the World Day of the Poor, I reiterate this basic truth in the life of the Church, for the poor are and always will be with us to help us welcome Christ’s presence into our daily lives,” the pope said.

“The ‘end’ of all our actions can only be love. This is the ultimate goal of our journey, and nothing should distract us from it.” Courtney Mares/Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

A person in personal protective suit puts a garland on the body of his relative who died of Covid-19, at a crematorium in New Delhi, India, on June 5. Like elsewhere in the world, the virus has made honoring the dead in New Delhi a hurried affair, largely devoid of the rituals that give it meaning for mourners. AP/Manish Swarup

Ritual readiness

Placating the goddesses through blood sacrifice, decorative offerings and self mortification, was— and in some places, still is—a way of preparing for a pandemic in parts of India.

Sometimes, painful piercings, hook swinging and self-flagellation were offered when patients recovered from illnesses, both mental and physical.

Or in a sanitized version of blood sacrifice, small silver images of the patient were offered as a prophylactic against illness.

Rituals have often involved variolation. A devotee would be inoculated with infected pus and the goddess invoked through possession to save them. The aim was to trigger a milder form of the illness and gain immunity.

High caste Hindus and those who mirror highcaste practices often ignored and shunned the contagion goddesses, fearful of the blood rites, possession and the tantric rituals, which they associated with low caste worship.

But these local contagion goddesses merged over time with the Divine Mother Shakti, the feminine personification of the energy behind creation. This domesticated the goddesses, making them more acceptable to bourgeois Hindus.

The goddesses’ post-pox lives

With the widespread use of modern antibiotics, retrovirals and vaccines in the mid 20th century, traditional Hindu healing rituals became less relevant.

Contagion goddesses were beginning to be forgotten and ignored. But a handful of them developed rich post-pox lives, reinventing themselves for modern afflictions. Some goddesses moved on from focusing on disease alone.

In Bangalore, a city plagued by traffic fatalities, the goddess Mariamman transformed from a cholera goddess into the protector of drivers.

Now known as “Traffic Circle Amman,” the goddess’s temple sees cars and trucks line up everyday for blessings, before drivers face the deadly maelstrom of city traffic.

Other goddesses came into being to fight new illnesses. On December 1, 1997, World AIDS day, a new goddess named AIDS Amma was created by a science schoolteacher, H.N. Girish, not to cure AIDS but to teach worshipers the prophylactic measures necessary to prevent the disease.

Covid-19 conscripts

During the Covid-19 crisis all the contagion goddesses have been re-conscripted.

The Indian government’s quick action in instituting a stay-at-home lockdown that lasted two months prevented widespread contagion, but it also meant that people weren’t allowed to go to temples to worship the goddesses and ask for intervention.

So priests offered special decorations, including garlands of acidic lemons believed to placate the goddesses.

For many black religious leaders in the United States, civil-rights and social justice are central to their spiritual calling. Informed by their respective faith traditions, it places religion within the black American experience while also being informed by African culture and the traumatic experience of the Transatlantic trade of African people.

We see this in Malcolm X’s 1964 exhortation that black Americans should form bonds with African nations and “migrate to Africa culturally, philosophically and spiritually.”

Malcolm X’s desire to internationalize the struggle in the US after his 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca also speaks to the role he saw Islam having in the civil-rights movement.

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem,” he wrote in a letter during his visit to Saudi Arabia. The struggle of black Americans informed Malcolm X’s reading of the Quran.

Similarly, the interaction between religious text and real-world struggle informed earlier black civil-rights and anti-slavery leaders. Slave revolt leader Nat Turner, for example, saw rebellion as the work of God, and drew upon biblical texts to inspire his actions.

As the historian and Turner biographer Patrick Breen noted in an article for Smithsonian Magazine , “Turner readily placed his revolt in a biblical context, comparing himself at some times to the Old Testament prophets, at another point to Jesus Christ.”

In his “Confessions,” dictated to a white lawyer after his 1831 arrest, Turner quoted the Gospel of Luke and alluded to numerous other passages from the Bible .

Turner had visions he interpreted as signs from God encouraging him to revolt.

The goddesses have also been recalled in posters

by Indian artists that circulate through Facebook.

Ar tist Sandhya Kumari’s rendering of “Coronavirus Mardini”—a hygienically masked Mother India attacking the coronavirus with a trident—recalled Shakti’s killing of evil, a familiar image to all Hindus.

A nationalistic caption was added during reposting—“Mother India will end the Coronavirus, but it is every Indians duty to stay at home and take care of loved ones. Jai India!”

In Kumari’s rendering, the goddess’s iconography is updated for the pandemic. The goddesses’ many gloved hands grasp sanitizer, masks, vaccination needles and other medical equipment. The coronavirus is held in chains, immovable and shorn of its virulence.

While controversies over temples reopening dominates the news, a new deity, crafted from polystyrene and called “Corona Devi” has been installed in a temple dedicated to the pox goddess.

Anilan, the priest and single devotee, says he will offer worship for “Corona Warriors”— health- care workers, firefighters and other frontline personnel. Here science and faith are not seen as inimical to one another, but as working together, hand-in-glove.

Covid-19 has undoubtedly increased the goddesses’ workload. And with no known cure and no viable vaccine, the contagion goddesses may well have their hands full for some time.

Tulasi Srinivas/The Conversation

Visions

Such prophetic visions were not uncommon to early antislavery leaders—Sojourner Truth and Jarena Lee were both spurred to action after God revealed Himself to them.

Lee’s antislavery preaching is also an early example of the important role that black religious female leaders would have in the civil-rights struggle.

In arguing for her right to spread God’s message, Lee asked: “If the man may preach, because the Saviour died for him, why not the woman? Seeing He died for her also. Is He not a whole Saviour, instead of a half one?”

These early antislavery activists rejected the “otherworld” theology taught to enslaved Africans by their white captors, which sought to deflect attention away from their condition in “this world” with promises of a better afterlife.

Instead, they affirmed God’s intention for freedom and liberation in both this world and the next, identifying strongly with biblical stories of freedom, such as the exodus of the Hebrew community from Egyptian enslavement and Jesus’ proclamation to “set the oppressed free.”

Incorporating religion into the black anti-slavery movement sowed the seeds for faith being central to the struggle for racial justice to come. As the church historian James Washington observed, the “very disorientation of their slavery and the persistent impact of systemic racism and other forms of oppression provided the opportunity—indeed the necessity—of a new religious synthesis.”

At heart, a preacher

The synthesis continued into the 20th century, with religious civil-rights leaders who clearly felt compelled to make the struggle for justice central part of the role of a spiritual leader.

“In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in a 1965 article for Ebony magazine.

Racial justice remains integral to black Christian leadership in the 21st century. In an interview earlier this year, Barber said: “There is not some separation between Jesus and justice; to be Christian is to be concerned with what’s going on in the world.”

Recognizing the rich legacy of black religious leadership in the struggle of racial justice in the United States in no way diminishes the role of historic and contemporary secular leadership.

From W.E.B. DuBois to A. Philip Randolph, who helped organize 1963’s March on Washington, and up to the current day, the civil-rights movement has also benefited from those who would classify themselves as freethinkers or atheists.

But given the history of religion in the black protest movement, it should be no surprise that the killing of George Floyd has unleashed an outpouring of activism from black religious leaders—backed by supporters from different faith traditions.

Lawrence Burnley/The Conversation

What Buddhism and science teach about the universe during pandemic

T

Blowing hot and cold

One of the first images of a contagion goddess recorded is of the demon-turned- goddess Hariti, carved and worshipped during the deadly Justinian plague of Rome that came to India via trade routes, killing between 25 million to 100 million people globally.

In the late 19th century, my hometown of Bangalore suffered an epidemic of bubonic plague, which required the services of a contagion goddess.

British colonial documents record the repeated waves of illness that stalked the city, and the desperate pleas to a goddess named “Plague Amma.”

In south India, the premier contagion goddess is Mariamman—from the word “Mari” meaning both pox and transformation.

In the north of India, she is known as the goddess Sheetala, meaning “the cold one”—a nod to her ability to cool fevers.

The goddesses’ iconography emphasizes their therapeutic healing powers. Sheetala carries a pot of healing water, a broom to sweep away dirt, a branch of the indigenous Neem tree—said to cure skin and breathing disorders—and a jar of ambrosia for eternal life.

Mariamman, on the other hand, carries a scimitar with which to smite and decapitate the demons of virulence and illness.

Contagion goddesses are not angelic and gentle, as one might expect caregivers to be. They are hottempered, demanding and fiery.

They are deemed wilderness goddesses— highly local and traditionally worshiped primarily by lower caste, Dalit, tribal and rural folk. Some are associated with tantric practices and dark magic.

W

hen the Rev. Al Sharpton implored white America to “get your knee off our necks” at the memorial of George Floyd, his words were carried by news outlets across the globe.

Meanwhile in the US, the Rev. William J. Barber II has been an ever-present voice in the protests, prompting some to place him as the successor to past civil-rights greats.

That people of the cloth are at the forefront of the current protests over police brutality should not be a surprise.

From the earliest times of the United States’ history, religious leaders have led the struggle for liberation and racial justice for black Americans.

As an ordained minister and a historian, I see it as a common thread running through the history of the United States, from black resistance in the earliest periods of slavery in the antebellum South, through the civil-rights movement of the 1960s and up to the Black Lives Matter movement today.

As Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters, says: “The fight to save your life is a spiritual fight.”

Spiritual calling

India’s goddesses of contagion give protection during pandemic indus in India have had a helping hand— several in fact—when it comes to fighting deadly contagions like Covid-19: multiarmed goddesses co-opted to help contain and kill pestilence.

Collectively known as “Amman,” or the Divine Mother, the goddesses of contagion—and its always goddesses, not gods—have been called on for their services before.

They have been deployed in many of the deadly pandemics India has experienced from ancient times until the the modern age.

In conducting my fieldwork as a cultural anthropologist who studies religion, I have seen small shrines all over India dedicated to these goddesses of contagion, often in rural, forested areas outside village and town limits.

The goddesses act as “celestial epidemiologists” curing illness. But if angered they can also inflict disease, such as poxes, plagues, sores, fevers, tuberculosis and malaria. They are both poison and cure.

Black religious leaders are up front in U.S. protests–as they have been for 200 years

hese are trying times. A global recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, and widespread civil unrest, have created a combustible mix of angst—stressors that heighten the risk for long-term health woes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued guidelines to cope with this anxiety. Among them is meditation.

Buddhists have been familiar with this strategy for thousands of years. And as the CDC example shows, scientists increasingly believe they can learn from Buddhism.

Momentum for dialogue between Buddhism and science comes from the top. When Tenzin Gyatso—now serving as the 14th Dalai Lama—was a child in rural Tibet, he saw the moon through a telescope and marveled at its craters and mountains.

His tutor told him that, according to Buddhist texts, the moon emitted its own light. But Gyatso had his doubts. He discovered what Galileo saw 400 years earlier, and he became convinced that dogma should bend to observation.

As the Dalai Lama, Gyatso has engaged in dialog with scientists ever since. “If science proved some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change,” he has said.

These are striking words from the leader of a major world religion.

Most Americans believe science and religion clash. But Buddhists accept evolution as the source of human origins more than any other religious group.

As a professor of astronomy who has been teaching Tibetan monks and nuns for over a decade, I’ve found them to be highly receptive to science as a way of understanding the natural world.

The program I teach started in response to the Dalai Lama’s desire to inject science into the training of Buddhist monastics. In our spartan classroom—the windows are open to catch a breeze in the monsoon heat and monkeys chatter in the pine trees outside—we talk cosmology.

The monks and nuns eagerly absorb the latest research I present—dark energy, the multiverse, the big bang as a quantum event.

Their questions are simple but profound. They approach learning with joy and humility. Outside class, I see them applying critical thinking to decisions in their daily lives.

Yes, the Buddhist monastic tradition has been rebooted with a dose of 21st-century science. But how has Buddhism influenced science?

Buddhists as skeptics

Scientists are increasingly using Buddhist wisdom for insight into several research topics and to illuminate the human condition.

When psychologists use Buddhist concepts in their work, for example, they find their patients are less inclined to exhibit prejudice against people outside their social and religious group.

And scientists have used the harmonic principles built into Buddhist “singing” bowls to design more efficient solar panels.

Both disciplines share an empirical approach.

Buddhists are trained to be skeptics, and to only accept a proposition after examining evidence.

The following words are attributed to the Buddha: “Just as a goldsmith would test his gold by burning, cutting, and rubbing it, so must you examine my words and accept them, not merely out of reverence for me.”

Numerous studies show that meditation has a positive effect on health and well-being.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) tests to measure monks’ brain waves provide proof.

Monks and other expert meditators produce high levels of gamma brain waves, which have a series of benefits to cognitive functioning.

Meditation also benefits the immune system. And it’s been shown to reduce mind wandering, which increases happiness and reduces depression.

Meditation can even slow the rate of brain atrophy. In one remarkable case, meditation may have shaved eight years off a Buddhist monk’s brain.

Western scientists and Buddhist scholars have also collaborated on one of the profound mysteries of the human experience: consciousness.

Researchers have used neuroscience to support the idea of an ever-changing self. Neuroscientists have modeled the sense of self in terms of shifting networks and circuits in the brain. Your sense of a stable and rooted “you” is an illusion, they concluded.

Christof Koch is a leading expert on consciousness.

Koch and his colleague Giulio Tononi have come up with an audacious theory of consciousness. They argue that it’s not localized and cannot be identified in any part of the brain.

They also write that plants, animals and microbes can be conscious. Their theory “treats consciousness [as] an intrinsic, fundamental property of reality.”

Wait. The self is nowhere and consciousness is everywhere? This sounds like Zen sophistry rather than scientific analysis. But I see it as a sign of the fruitful convergence of Western science and Eastern philosophy.

It’s early to determine what this ambitious research will deliver. But it shows that input from Buddhist thought is forcing scientists to question their methods, assumptions and logical constructs. Chris Impey/The Conversation

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

Flight of the Philippine cockatoo Can these amazing creatures talk, sing, dance and fly their way away from extinction?

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

natural resources, such as fishing and gathering wood for charcoal, gathering food from nature, doing slash-and-burn agriculture, establishing mono-crop plantations, massive conversion of forest for residential, commercial and industrial use—all leading to habitat loss and, eventually, species extinction.

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ith a once-thriving population over the Philippine archipelago, the population of the red-vented cockatoo has drastically decreased in the 1990s due to persistent poaching and the massive destruction of their habitats.

With slightly over 1,200 cockatoo individuals left in the wild, they remain on top of the list of endemic species threatened with extinction.

Roughly around 70 percent of the remaining population of the red-vented cockatoo, or the Philippine cockatoo, is in Palawan province. The rest are spread out in small concentrations on Polillo Island, in Quezon province, and in Sulu and possibly, in Tawi-Tawi in Mindanao.

Known for their ability to mimic humans, the Philippine cockatoo can talk, sing and even dance, making these amazing parrots a prized possession among pet lovers.

Sadly, poaching, coupled with habitat loss, are driving the species to the brink of extinction.

Can they talk, sing and dance or more aptly fly their way away from extinction?

Vanishing species

There are 21 known parrot species in the world, including one that is known to exist only in the Philippines, the nation’s pride, the Philippine cockatoo, which is vanishing from the face of the Earth.

Known as katala, agay, kalabukay or abukay, the Philippine cockatoo continues to face grave threats from poaching, habitat loss and other destructive human activities that have likewise compromised other iconic species like the Philippine tamaraw, or the dwarf buffalo of Mindoro, and the monkeyeating Philippine eagle.

Saving the ‘katala’

Fortunately, the katala’s population remains stable in some areas where adequate protection is provided by the people in the community.

In 1998, a group of conservation advocates under the Katala Foundation started a program to help save this rare species from extinction.

At that time, its population has already gone down drastically due to poaching and massive habitat loss.

“There were only 25 to 30 of them left on Rasa [Island] when we started the program,” said Indira Lacerna-Widmann, executive director of Katala Foundation.

Caring for common home

A red-vented cockatoo at the Wildlife Rescue Center in Quezon City. Gaudencio de la Cruz/DENR-SCIS

Cockatoo stronghold Speaking during a series of webinar, dubbed “Imagining a Just and Green Recovery: An Online Conversation,” on June 2, Lacerna-Widmann said roughly 1,230 cockatoos are left in the wild, with viable populations in four to six municipalities in the province of Palawan, considered as the country’s last ecological frontier and the stronghold of the Philippine cockatoo.

Palawan remains as the stronghold of the Philippine cockatoo, where the campaign to save the species from being extinct remain strong.

In fact, every June 14 to 18, the people of Dumaran celebrate the “Kalabukay Festival” to promote the conservation of the forests and the last remaining populations of the kalabukay, or katala.

Conservation program

Lacerna-Widmann’s presentation highlighted the community-based approach to environmental protection and conservation with special focus on the Philippine Cockatoo Conservation Program.

Assistant Secretary Ricardo Calderon, concurrent director of the Biodiversity Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources said the Philippine Cockatoo Conservation Program is an institutional partnership between the DENR and the Katala Foundation, which he credited for its successful conservation program.

“We have an existing memorandum of agreement with the Katala Foundation,” Calderon said in a telephone interview on June 9.

Strong partnership

He said the strength of the partnership is anchored on the Katala Foundation’s implementation of the program.

A coastal forest near the Malampaya Sound Protected Landscape and Seascape in the northwestern part of the Palawan. Coastal forests are known habitats of the Philippine red-vented cockatoo. Gregg Yan The foundation, he said, is also based in Palawan, and therefore, has a better understanding of the problems and solutions needed to be learned in saving the species from extinction.

“The conservation program is good, and they are in place as far as the communities are concerned. They also have a lot of institutional partners focusing on Philippine cockatoo. They have international [partners] that help provide expertise on conservation,” he said.

Talented bird

According to Calderon, the dramatic decline in the population of katala may be attributed to the rampant poaching of unique birds which are highly in demand in the pet market.

“Birds like the talking mynah or common hill mynah, which, like the katala, are very talented. They can mimic humans. They can talk, they can sing and dance. That is why they are in demand in the black market before,” Calderon said.

He shared that when he was assigned in Palawan in the 1990s he witnessed how the smuggling of native birds out of the island became a serious concern for the DENR.

Performers not by choice

Calderon cautioned, however, that the unique birds might as well be singing and dancing in the wild, rather than in birdcage “because they belong in the wild.”

“Talking, singing and dancing are for people. These birds are better appreciated when they are out there in their natural habitat, where they are free,” he explained.

In 1994, Calderon recalled that the DENR learned how even the locals use their indigenous knowledge to smuggle

the bird out of the island-province, perhaps to some foreign lands, where they are highly in demand.

“These birds are being put to sleep when being smuggled. They [smugglers] dose them [the birds] with water, so the birds would sleep before putting them to a container. That way, they won’t make any noise, allowing the smuggling unchecked,” he said.

Sadly, like most wild animals, the katalas lose their instinct and ability to fend for themselves once they become accustomed around humans.

Thus, even when rescued, rehabilitation no longer works for them to be able to learn how to feed themselves and avoid predators, so they could be release back into the wild.

Seed disperser

Calderon said the katala, like most birds, have important ecosystem functions. Nature’s farmers, birds help disperse seeds that allow forest vegetation to flourish.

As a seed disperser, a lowland forest specialist as Lacerna-Widmann described them, Calderon said the katala is special because of its ability to crack fruits and seeds open with its powerful beak, allowing them to disperse the fruits’ seeds faster and more efficiently.

“If you notice their beak, they can crack the seed open, thereby allowing the seed to germinate faster, so they are a good seed disperser,” Calderon, also a forestry expert, explained.

Feeding, breeding areas

Lacerna-Widmann said at the webinar that the biggest threat to the existence of the katala in Palawan remains the same—but with added weight to the destructive human ac-

tivities in coastal areas and lowland forests—where the birds feed, play, and more importantly, breed.

They feed on at least 60 fruit-bearing trees, including the famous malunggay, or moringa, Lacerna-Widmann said.

“They nest in cavities of high trees.

In most cases, trees like apitong and manggis are highly valued timber species that are also threatened,” Lacerna Widmann said.

From January to June or July, depending on the weather, the katala start to breed.

“In each nest, there are two to four eggs, but a pair can only have two hatchling survivors. If we see four chicks in a nest, we are very happy already,” she said. This explains why it takes so many years to see the bird’s number grow in a particular habitat.

Working with communities

Katala Foundation have four project sites—Rasa Island in Narra, Palawan, the pilot site of the program; Dumaran and Rizal also in Palawan; Polillo Island in Quezon; and in Pandanan in Balabac, also in Palawan, where the foundation work with communities to protect and conserve not only the species but their habitats as well.

The strategies for conservation include protection, identification, and management of conservation sites, habitat restoration, conservation education, community involvement, rescue, translocation, conservation breeding and, eventually, reintroduction to the wild.

During the breeding season, the katala are thriving in coastal or mangrove and beach forests.

Sadly, these areas, along with lowland forests, are also the areas where humans do the most damage—exploiting

ACB’s Lim: Conserving biodiversity means good biz

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ore businesses are under taking efforts that support biodiversity conservation as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, but are these enough?

In her presentation in a webinar hosted by cement maker Holcim Philippines Inc. on June 15, Asean Centre for Biodiversity Executive Director Theresa Mundita Lim called on businesses to embrace nature considerations and sustainable management, and the use of biodiversity in their corporate strategy and practices.

This, she said, will ensure the business’ long-term survival and prevent pandemics and outbreaks of infectious diseases.

“We hope we can dive deeper into biodiversity conservation and consider this not just as part of the CSR. We hope it will be embedded in your plans because conserving and protecting biodiversity is good for business,” Lim said.

She commended Holcim’s sustainability initiatives and encouraged other companies to follow suit.

Under the theme, “Building a Healthier World Together,” the webinar was organized

by Holcim Philippines for its employees in celebration of Environment Month in June.

Holcim Philippines Environment Manager Stephanie Anne Frogoso shared the company’s commitment to strengthen sustainability

initiatives and demonstrate leadership by connec ting the dots bet ween this unprecedented health crisis and the need for sustainable recovery.

“Our company takes part in addressing e n v i ro n m e n t a l i s s u e s a n d e n s u r i n g sustainability of operations. We reiterate our commitment to improving our environmental and social contributions and support calls to aligned Covid-19 recovery programs with the efforts to address sustainability challenges,” Frogoso said.

As a member of the Lafarge Holcim Group, Holcim Philippines will continue to support the achievement of targets on climate and energy, circular economy, environment, and communities aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, Frogoso added.

Lim, a wildlife management exper t, explained the connection between the loss of biodiversity and the rise of infectious diseases originating from wildlife.

“The Covid-19 pandemic may not be the last. Scientists have extrapolated that there may be around 1.7 million unidentified viruses that still exist in mammals and water birds and can potentially cause pandemics,” Lim said.

She explained how viruses get amplified through biodiversity loss. Shrinking wildlife populations could weaken genetic diversity

and reduce the capacity of species to stave off the spillover of viruses, which are dormant and inactive in wildlife, to domestic animals and humans.

Among the drivers of biodiversity decline that she cited are poaching and wildlife trade and habitat loss, which all increase opportunities for human interactions with wildlife.

“This is an opportunity for the business sector to do something more, especially to prevent future pandemics and transition to the new normal,” she said.

Lim said businesses are encouraged to help in the baselining and assessment of species and ecosystems that are unique in their business locations.

“Before identifying your locations, it is important to do baselining and assessment of the area because that will help you eventually in restoring the ecosystems to its approximate natural state,” Lim said.

The ACB executive director also suggested increased investments for green infrastructure and sustainability-driven innovation.

Holcim Philippines President and CEO John Stull said: “We are determined to help where we can to ensure that new ways of doing business supports the overall efforts to preserve gains in improving the quality of life for people all over the world and build resilience against similar global challenges.”

Viggo is one of the 31 Philippine eagles nested in the Philippine Eagle Center, a breeding and rehabilitation facility set up by the Philippine Eagle Foundation. Viggo turned 10 years old on March 7, having been hatched and bred within the conservation facilities of the PEC.

‘Viggo’ assured of sustained flight through biz-NGO partnership

‘V

iggo,” a Philippine eagle, is assured of continued care and support as Eagle Cement Corp. (Eagle Cement) strengthened its par tnership with the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF) during recent Philippine Eagle Week.

The company pledged its support to Viggo, its adopted Philippine eagle within the PEF’s conservation program.

Viggo is an official ambassador for the

conservation of the species. Since becoming sexually mature recently, he has successfully established a bond with his caretaker as his “human surrogate mate” through sexual imprinting. This enables PEF to collect sperm samples from Viggo for its artificial insemination breeding program.

As such, Viggo plays a significant role in safeguarding the species from extinction as he is one of the PEC’s potential semen donors.

In working with communities to conserve the katala and their habitats, Lacerna-Widmann cited paragraph 137 of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si, or “The care of our common home” or “Integral ecology.”

“Everything is interrelated and today’s problems call for a unison capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis—one which clearly respects its human and social dimensions,” she read.

Hence, she said the strategy is anchored on the “ecosystemic and participatory approach.”

“When you take care of the cockatoo, you also care for the forest. You are also assured of water supply all year round. You also have the mangrove, the nesting and feeding ground of cockatoo. There are various ecosystem services provided by mangroves.

River ecosystem, where precious lives depend on, and agriculture.

“These are a clear, very successful tool, developed together with the communities to simply explain to make the people aware of the bigger connections of protecting the Philippine cockatoo,” she said.

Economic benefit

More importantly, while it is not evident, protecting the cockatoo and its habitat, she said, makes good economic sense She cited a study on the added value to the ecosystem services due to conservation on Rasa Island over a 30-year period.

For coastal forest, $5,161,434.78; mangroves $10,903,043.48; fisheries $494,239.13 and others: $379,610.87.

Besides, the katala has brought a sense of pride to Palawan as the stronghold of the famous parrot that can mimic humans.

But with the continuing threat to their existence in Palawan, supposedly the country’s last ecological frontier, can this amazing creature eventually, talk, sing, and dance their way far away from extinction?

Hopefully, the current and future generations will see the katala fly not only on Palawan but on every island and islets known.

Furthermore, Viggo is the first captivebred Philippine eagle trained to perch on a gloved fist. He continues his flight training to be one of the featured eagles in the flight demonstrations at the PEC. Eagle Cement has been providing essential benefits, such as food, enclosure maintenance, and veterinarian and keeper care annually for Viggo since 2017. The company will continue to do so until 2022.

Eagle Cement’s partnership with the PEF is among a series of initiatives that the company is taking to advocate the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Promoting biodiversity (SDG 15) and leveraging the power of partnerships to g e n e rate s u s t a i n a b l e d e ve l o p m e nt (SDG 17) are two pillars of Eagle Cement’s commitment to protect the delicate balance of our ecosystem.

“We join the PEF in calling on corporations, large and small, and regular Filipinos to support the conservation of Philippine Eagles, especially as they are still considered endangered today.

As our national bird, they embody the health of our forests, the state of our natural resources, and the proud national heritage of our people.

In these disruptive times, the Philippine eagle, like the people it represents, should not only be celebrated but also protected,” said John Paul L. Ang, Eagle Cement’s president and CEO. Support and donations to the PEF amid Covid-19, may be coursed to the foundation through https://www.philippineeaglefoundation.org/donate .

A8 Sunday, June 21, 2020

A

N International Olympic Committee (IOC) survey found that 50 percent of athletes struggled to stay motivated during the coronavirus pandemic.

Carried out in May, the survey was conducted among more than 4,000 athletes and entourage members from 135 countries. At the time, the majority of athletes were living under restrictive measures put in place to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

It was found that 56 percent of athletes were finding it hard to train effectively, while 50 percent could not stay motivated. Of the entourage members, 63 percent revealed they also found it hard to keep their athletes motivated.

Thirty-two percent of athletes were struggling to manage their mental health and manage their sporting careers, while 30 percent were concerned about managing nutrition and diet.

“It is very hard to train due to many of the restrictions. Training adds structure to my life, and I feel that the lack of structure without training is negatively affecting my mental health,” an elite athlete from South Africa said. “Everything I’m struggling with is linked together. They can’t be viewed as separate.”

Reports had already emerged of sports stars struggling in lockdown, with symptoms of depression and anxiety increasing among athletes. This was worsened for some by the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games to 2021.

The IOC is holding a series of webinars to support athletes during the pandemic, with one this week, led by IOC mental health working group member Claudia Reardon, specifically dedicated to mental health.

Other webinars opened the floor directly to athletes for them to share the lessons learned and explain how they managed to overcome the issues they were confronted with during lockdown.

Following on from the creation of a mental health toolkit for athletes, additional resources on how to stay positive during isolation were made available for athletes on the Athlete365 platforms.

Many athletes around the world also featured in the IOC’s #StayStrong, #StayActive and #StayHealthy digital campaign, which from March 2020 highlighted athletes’ efforts to stay active during lockdown.

Organizers of the 2022 European Championships, meanwhile, added four sports to the program for the games in Munich.

The nine-sport lineup now includes the Olympic events of beach volleyball, canoe sprint, sport climbing and table tennis.

Swimming remains absent from what organizers said is a finalized program despite talks involving broadcasters to integrate it.

The European aquatics body will hold its own championships in Rome on the same dates—August 11 to 21—as Munich also hosts track and field, cycling, gymnastics, rowing and triathlon.

The Olympic Park in Munich will be the focus of the multisport European Championships, which will involve 4,400 athletes from 50 countries. Insidethegames

Sports BusinessMirror

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph / Editor: Jun Lomibao

ATHLETES STRUGGLE DURING PANDEMIC

SYMPTOMS of depression and anxiety increasing among athletes.

Spanish league: M Audiences up by nearly 50 percent after break

ADRID—International viewership for Spanish soccer games increased by nearly 50 percent after they returned from the break caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the league said Thursday.

Figures for the first set of matches following the break were 48 percent higher than the average for the other 27 rounds played before the suspension in mid-March.

The league said the increase in Africa reached more than 70 percent, and was 56 percent in Europe. There was a rise of 210 percent in South Africa alone, and 130 percent in Belgium. In India, where the league is broadcast on Facebook, the rise was of 72 percent.

The league said in a statement that the numbers were compiled by consultant Nielsen Sports.

“We’re very pleased with the exponential growth in the figures for LaLiga’s international audience,” said Oscar Mayo, the league’s director of business, marketing and

international development. “We knew that fans around the world were keen to enjoy the excitement and entertainment we offer.

Achieving a rise of almost 50 percent in our international audience is a reflection of the hard work put in by our international broadcasters, the clubs and the competition itself over these last few months.”

The league said viewership numbers in Spain increased 12 percent for the first matches after the break.

“We feel privileged to be able to take to the field again, and we’re very happy to have the opportunity to offer live sports entertainment at a time when there are few events like this around the world,” Spanish league President Javier Tebas said. “We’re grateful to all of the fans who’ve followed LaLiga now at the restart, because we’ve all worked hard to offer them entertainment again.”

The league resumed on June 11 with the Seville derby. It is scheduled to finish on July 19. AP

FC Barcelona’s Antoine Griezmann (second from left) celebrates after scoring his side’s second goal during their recent Spanish La Liga match against Leganes at the Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona. AP

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OSCOW—Russia edged closer to a new fight with World Athletics after the sports ministry said its leading athletes must be allowed to compete internationally even if a $5-million fine isn’t paid.

The Russian Athletics Federation, known as RusAF, was fined $10 million, with half of that sum suspended, in March by World Athletics after accepting a charge that fake documents were used under the previous management to give an athlete an alibi for missing a doping test.

It has to pay $5 million by July 1 for World Athletics to restart its “authorized neutral athlete” scheme allowing Russians to compete overseas while the country’s longrunning doping saga is resolved.

Russians won six medals last year under a neutral flag at the world championships and include several gold medal contenders for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

“The Russian Sports Ministry considers it necessary to recall the unacceptable

FEWER LINE JUDGES, BALL PEOPLE, EVENTS AT 2020 U.S. OPEN

E

lectronic line-calling will be used instead of line judges for US Open matches at all courts except the two largest arenas, while singles qualifying and mixed doubles, junior and wheelchair competition are being eliminated entirely.

There also will be three ball people instead of six at courts other than Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium.

Those are among the changes announced Wednesday by the US Tennis Association (USTA) as it outlined plans for running a scaled-down, no-spectators version of its Grand Slam tournament in New York City amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Without question, this is a journey.

Things are evolving,” new tournament Director Stacey Allaster said during a videoconference.

“We have the plan today. We’re in daily contact with both tours.”

At a minimum, there will be testing for Covid-19 via nasal swabs upon arrival at what Allaster termed “US Open world,” and then once weekly thereafter. If there is the possibility that the tournament “bubble” has been breached by the virus, there could be testing every other day.

It is unlikely players would be asked to sign waivers absolving the USTA of responsibility should they get sick.

The tournament received the go-ahead from the New York state government Tuesday to be held in its usual location in Flushing Meadows, Queens, from August 31 to September 13. In an unusual arrangement, the hard-court tune-up tournament normally held in Cincinnati will be held right before the US Open—and at the Open’s site.

There are still lingering questions about which top players will participate, but one made her intentions clear Wednesday: 23-time major champion Serena Williams said she is planning to play at the US Open.

Williams said in a video message that she “cannot wait to return” to the major championship she has won six times. She was the runner-up there each of the past two years.

Among the other changes: Men’s and women’s doubles will be reduced from 64 teams each to 32, with players who are entered in the singles fields not allowed to enter doubles.

With qualifying cut, each of the 128-player fields for men’s and women’s singles will include 120 players who get in via their ranking and eight who receive wild-card invitations.

Players will be allowed up to three guests and up to two rooms—one paid for by the player, one by the USTA—at a pair of designated hotels. There also will be the option for players to rent a house outside of Manhattan.

The USTA has not decided exactly how many entourage members will be allowed on-site.

Also Wednesday, the women’s and men’s professional tours issued what they called “provisional” calendars to resume sanctioned competition in August after being suspended since early March because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) said its first event would be the Palermo Ladies Open in Italy the week of August 3.

The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) said its players would return to action at the Citi Open in Washington beginning August 14. That is normally a combined tournament for men and women, but WTA CEO Steve Simon said discussions about his tour’s participation was ongoing.

And after that, the ATP-WTA tournament usually held in Cincinnati will be played in Flushing Meadows.

Two tournaments now dropped from the August schedule: the Rogers Cup in Canada and the Winston-Salem Open.

After the hard-court “doubleheader” in New York, the tours will shift to European red clay for tournaments in Madrid and Rome, before the French Open’s main draw new start date of September 27. AP

Russia wants athletes to compete even without paying $5-million fine nature of restricting the rights of clean athletes to take part in competitions,” the ministry said on Thursday.

Suspending the neutral athlete status would be “a wrongful imposition of collective responsibility, which contradicts the spirit and principles of international law in the area of human rights.”

World Athletics said on Wednesday it will set up a new neutral athlete system for the coronavirus-shortened 2020 season “as soon as the fine has been paid.”

RusAF declined to comment when asked on Thursday whether it will pay the fine and if it has the money to do so. The board issued a statement last week calling on World Athletics to restore the neutral status system regardless of whether the fine is paid.

RusAF President Yevgeny Yurchenko did not dispute the conditions when World Athletics announced them in March, and said then that “maximum effort” would be made to pay the fine on time. The federation has often struggled for funding in recent years.

The Russian Olympic Committee said last week it will not put up money to pay the fine.

The dispute is a setback to Russia’s hopes of ending the suspension imposed on RusAF in 2015 over widespread doping.

Last year, World Athletics appeared to be moving closer to reinstating Russia fully. That was before the Athletics Integrity Unit charged RusAF and seven Russians, including the then-federation president and an athlete with neutral status, over their alleged involvement in the fake documents case. AP

Internships get canceled or go virtual because of

pandemic

2

BusinessMirror JUNE 21, 2020 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

CLEAN AND GREEN

Celebs, musicians and green citizens celebrate World Environment Month

Nyoy Volante

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

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

FROM LIVE TO VIRTUAL, THE CHALLENGE For 19 years now, the Earthday Jam Foundation has successfully staged the longest running, biggest Earthday tribute in the history of the world. This annual music event continues to influence Filipinos through music and education to becoming responsible in caring more for the planet Earth’s well-being. This year however, celebrating its 20th year, it will be a totally different celebration.

The unexpected outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has changed everything. But faced with the disaster, people are more so united believing that music has the power to encourage, to sooth and to unite. So as a special treat to our Facebook strong following and our citizenry– we have invited big stars, bands, artists and musicians and celebrities to join us to celebrate the WORLD ENVIRONMENT MONTH with “EARTH JAM SESSIONS”.

This will be on June 27, Saturday, 8:30PM Live on the strong Facebook Page of the Earthday Jam Foundation.

MORE JAM SESSIONS The Online Special will have LIVE acoustic Performances from some of our top Filipino artists In alphabetical order: AUTOTELIC, GLOC-9, ICE SEGUERRA, JAYA, KARYLLE, KIARA (OF IMAGO), LIRAH, LOU BONNEVIE, NYOY VOLANTE, ROUGE, SANDWICH, THE ITCHYWORMS, ZSA ZSA PADILLA and many more.

Highlights include music collaborations especially made for the celebration. Jaya, Nyoy Volante, Ice Seguerra and Lou Bonnevie with other guest artists will sing a stylized stripped down Bill Wither original song, “Lean on Me”. Gloc 9 will rap his way with a new female hiphop discovery, Lirah while the band Sandwich jams with Kiara, the newest vocalist of the 90’s iconic band, Imago.

Karylle will do an original composition with her mom, Zsa Zsa Padilla. Meanwhile, Lou Bonnevie jams it up with the all girl band ROUGE

singing her hit song “Simpleng Babae”.

KANTALIKHASAN DepEd Learners and teachers and youth leaders will be joining via Zoom from all over the Philippines and will help launch the songwriting contest “KANTALIKHASAN”. The competition is open to all youth 30 years and below with themes of nature, environment and green practices in all genre of music –from pop to rap, to rock or folk.

Cash prizes will be given and a chance for collaborating with popular Pinoy artists. The full details will be unfolded on June 27.

zero trash environment. Our viewers will be quite surprised to witness that with the green lifestyle of our celebrity guests.” muses Lou. EARTHJAM SESSION will also serve as a fundraise wherein all proceeds will be used to sustain the campaign including the songwriting contests, art lessons, tree planting and music jamming that the Earthday Jam Foundation has lined up for the year.

For every donation, popular Earthday Jam tshirts and bandanas will be given as memorabilias. For corporate and company support , they may deposit their Donations to the Foundations official bank accounts EARTHDAYJAM FOUNDATION,INC. at BDO ACCNT NO. 0001780 19007 or LANDBANK ACCNT. NO. 001782103950or or via GCASH and Pay Maya (0917-8553439).

Special thanks to First gen Corporation, Smart Communications, Tagbalay Foundation, The EPWMD of Quezon City, Earthday Network Philippines with media partners Myx music channel, Business Mirror, The Philippine Information Agency, and 83k Studios.

For more info, email earthdayjamfoundation@ gmail.com ,visit our website : Earthdayjamfoundation.com .

To watch the session, go to our Facebook Page : www.facebook.com/ EarthdayJamFoundation

ACTS OF GREEN Viewers will be given a glimpse of the green lifestyle of some of our popular celebrity families such as Danica Sotto and March Pingris along with Oyo Boy and Kristine HermosaSotto with the ACTS OF GREEN segments. They will be discussing their earth friendly activities during the quarantine and will share some tips to young families via Zoom. Former Mayor and environmentalist Edward Hagedorn with some representatives from the Earthday Network will give pieces of advice on the most critical environmental issues. “Everybody has a key role when it comes to conserving the environment. We can protect Mother Earth through simple things like conserving water, keeping the air we breathe clean and managing an almost

Lou Bonnevie

Gloc 9

Karylle and Zsazsa Padilla

Jaya

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | JUNE 21, 2020

3

BUSINESS

#BeApp partners with CocaCola on Coke Studio Sessions New live music streaming platform for fans around the world

#B

EAPP, a new live music streaming platform, and Coca-Cola are partnering together globally on Coke Studio Sessions, an exclusive collaboration featuring a diverse line-up of musical performances for fans to enjoy across the world.

Launched last month, the collaboration includes live performances from more than 100 artists across the globe, including Katy Perry, DJ Khaled, Nicky Jam and Gryffin streamed digitally to refresh fans one virtual performance at a time and support the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

Coke Studio Sessions marks the official debut of #BeApp, the social live music streaming platform from tech industry veterans Ray Smith and Ross Mason. #BeApp is an immersive, digital destination for fans to enjoy live music in a new way. Unlike other virtual concert platforms, #BeApp will offer a variety of interactive features, including: In-App Sharing: Sharing feature will encourage fans to invite friends and family to join them during the livestream.

Currency/Points: By continuously interacting and sharing through the app, fans will earn in-app points and currency that can be redeemed for prizes, functionality upgrades and more.

Prizes and Upgrades: Prizes include upgraded access to “front row seats,” artist shout-outs during the livestream and #BeApp swag.

Front Row Seats: “Front row seats” offer fans a greater digital presence during the livestream, including having the user’s photo and name visible to all viewers.

Donations: Fans will have the ability to make a donation to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to support COVID-19 relief efforts. “#BeApp was designed for digital connection through a shared love of live music, and people need that connection now more than ever,” said Ray Smith, founder of #BeApp. “We’re thrilled to have Coca-Cola as our exclusive launch partner as we

introduce #BeApp to fans around the world through unique new experiences.”

“We know that people may continue to feel lonely or isolated as a result of the pandemic, and CocaCola remains committed to uplifting the human spirit and fostering connection while we’re apart,” said Teejae Sonza, Director for Marketing, Coca-Cola Philippines.

“By providing this line-up of live, interactive music content that fans can share and enjoy with others, we hope that Coke Studio Sessions will provide small, daily moments of entertainment for those adjusting to their new normal.”

The Coca-Cola Foundation has donated over $14 million USD to individual Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies around the world in response to COVID-19 and will additionally match up to a collective total of $3 million USD in consumer donations made through this program.

Throughout the 60-day

program, fans will have the opportunity to contribute directly to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to support COVID-19 efforts. “The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is grateful for partners like The Coca-Cola Foundation for stepping up during this difficult and uncertain time,” said Xavier Castellanos, a long-serving member and representative of the Movement in Asia Pacific. “The Coca-Cola Foundation’s contribution supports the global Red Cross and Red Crescent network’s efforts to slow the spread of this disease and alleviate suffering that the pandemic will cause. We are deeply grateful for their generous support during this challenging time.”

Fans will be able to join the livestreams on #BeApp, which can be downloaded for free on iOS or Android devices, as well as on Coca-Cola YouTube and Facebook.

Additional artists will be announced across Coca-Cola and #BeApp social channels.

Internships get canceled or go virtual because of pandemic

By Kelvin Chan

L

The Associated Press

ONDON—Yadeen Rashid was flying high in February.

He’d just earned stellar grades in his latest semester at Virginia Tech University, where he’s in his third-year double majoring in economics and political science.

And he’d just landed a summer internship at a data analysis company.

Then the pandemic hit, triggering lockdown restrictions and pushing the US economy into recession. Many companies canceled their internships programs and rescinded job offers—including NTT Data, where Rashid was set to intern.

“I was really upset, not just because finding an internship is hard, but because I actually was very excited to work with them very specifically,” said Rashid, 21. He said he bears no ill-will to the company and is looking for other internship opportunities. “But, you know, as time goes on, it gets a little less optimistic.”

Rashid’s experience shows how the global coronavirus crisis, which has already thrown much of the business world into turmoil, is also disrupting summer internships, an important stepping stone to working life for many university stu-

dents and recent graduates.

Half of all internship openings in the US have been cut since the pandemic outbreak, and 64 percent of those in the UK, according to research by Glassdoor, the career web site. Hundreds of companies, including AirBnb, Fedex, Gap and Walt Disney Co., have scrapped their summer programs, according to an online database.

Companies use summer internships as a pipeline for recruiting graduates while young people benefit from exposure to real working life. They can serve as a source of income or a graduation requirement.

More than one in every six young workers globally have stopped working during the pandemic, the International Labor Organization said last month. The UN labor agency added that the pandemic’s long-term fallout could lead to a “lockdown generation” scarred throughout their working lives.

Some companies are making their internships virtual—mirroring the workfrom-home trend that’s swept office life during the pandemic.

E-commerce giant Amazon is hiring more than 8,000 interns for its summer program, which it’s turning into “a virtual model.”

Global consulting firm EY said more than half of its 15,000 internships this year will be in virtual formats. Interns will be assigned a “peer counsellor,” someone who joined the company in the past two years, as well as a more senior “reporting counsellor” who will both regularly check in on them, said Trent Henry, EY’s global vice chairman of talent.

At The Associated Press, some internships will either likely be done remotely, some deferred until next year and others

Recent graduate Sahar Shabani, 22, did a threemonth remote internship with a development charity based in Thailand from her parents’ home in South London. The global coronavirus crisis is also disrupting summer internships, which are an important stepping stone to working life for many university students and recent graduates and a recruiting pipeline for companies. AP have been canceled.

One benefit of a traditional internship—networking—is harder to do virtually but companies are trying to help. Amazon is providing mentoring and weekly “fireside” chats via remote videoconferencing. US air-conditioner maker Lennox’s 54 summer interns can join lunchtime talks with senior executives by videoconference.

The company still wants to treat them to a good lunch so it’s considering sending them gift cards to buy food, said recruiter Lexie Williams.

Those who have done virtual internships say it’s a way to learn remote working skills that are more important now that Covid-19 has changed how people work.

Recent graduate Sahar Shabani, 22, did a three-month remote internship with a development charity based in Thailand from her parents’ home in South London.

Shabani applied in February through Queen Mary University of London, where

she earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and international relations. She checked in by phone every day with her supervisor, who assigned her to research and write reports about topics like corporate social responsibility and then give video presentations on them using Zoom.

“Whether it was in person or not, you still gained those skills or valuable experience,” she said. “It’s a new way of experiencing work.”

Universities with work placement or study abroad programs have scrambled to replace them with remote options, said Edward Holroyd-Pearce, president of Virtual Internships, a British firm that helped arrange Shabani’s programs and specializes in Asia.

“We’ve seen a huge demand because of coronavirus,” said Pearce. The number of students his company has placed has jumped tenfold this year, with inquiries coming from the US, Britain, Australia, the Middle East and many other countries, he said.

Still, the remote option doesn’t appeal to everyone.

Tobias Bidstrup, a third-year international business student at Copenhagen Business School, was offered an internship at Procter & Gamble’s London offices this summer. But after the pandemic hit Europe, the company offered to let interns to do it virtually or defer it for a year. Bidstrup, 21, chose to wait.

“Starting at a new company, doing the internship and you’re meeting people and being introduced to new tasks and also getting to know how the culture is at a company—I think that’s really difficult to do virtually compared to doing it in person at the office,” he said.

Job recruitment firm lists industries hiring amid crisis

By Pauline Joy M. Gutierrez

L

eading online employment firm JobStreet has revealed that a few key industries are still ramping up hiring despite the heavy toll on the job market brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

Information technology (IT)-enabled services and business-process outsourcing (BPO) jobs totaled 22,795 postings on the platform from March 15 to April 30, equivalent to 41 percent of the total hiring opportunities on the online employment site.

Meanwhile, government job postings accounted for a 15-percent share, followed by 9 percent in the education sector and 4 percent in banking and financial services. The pandemic has also placed increased demand for health-care professionals, which took the third spot with 9-percent share, with hospitals, pharmacies and insurance providers all currently hiring.

“Some companies have paused accepting applications, but many of them remain actively recruiting, so we’d like to encourage job seekers that there’s a way for them to signal hirers that they are up for urgent hiring,” said Philip Gioca, JobStreet Philippines country head.

“On the candidate side, they are mostly looking for part-time, freelance and home-based jobs,” he added, noting that among those looking to join the work force are 3 million fresh graduates.

The JobStreet executive noted that the strong shift to digital will soon reshape the way people work and the way companies operate. He said even companies that were resistant to the concept of a distributed work force have been forced to allow work-from-home setups because of the recent enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon.

During the two-month lockdown, Gioca said they found a 30- to 50-percent drop in local job postings, driven mainly by a slump on hiring from small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which accounts for 88.5 percent of businesses in the country and employ as much as 28.9 percent of total private sector employees.

Gioca pointed to the small capitalization of these firms for losing appetite for hiring at a time they were not earning because of city-wide closures.

4 BusinessMirror

June 21, 2020

As soon as more companies open and more areas transition to more relaxed measures under general community quarantine, however, Gioca said there will be parity in the job market.

“In May and June, we saw a very good traction of companies that started posting again,” he said. “It’s just a good indicator that business is about to start again.”

To help businesses and job seekers alike, JobStreet has launched an initiative titled #TogetherAhead (https://bit.ly/JobStreetTogetherAhead).

Through a Covid-19 microsite, the company displays information about available government financial assistance to guide employees and companies in their applications. The program also features the #WorkNow tool, which allows readyto-work candidates to conveniently connect with potential employers.

The campaign supports another, titled #SanaOL, which highlights online jobs that can be fulfilled in a work-from-home setup.

Currently, the platform has a listing of over 14,000 job vacancies that require no experience from job seekers, plus over 1,600 work-from-home opportunities and over 180 job openings for undergraduates.

“The pandemic has greatly impacted businesses and the work force on a global scale,” said Ramesh Rajandran, chief marketing officer of SEEK Asia, JobStreet’s parent company. “More than ever, JobStreet strengthens its commitment to rebuild businesses, careers, and people’s lives.”