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Amid the pandemic, a teacher in war-torn Marawi City struggles to educate displaced Moro students to foster peace, rebuilding.

Language of peace goes online T

By Manuel T. Cayon

going. Ultimately, this will not suffice their khamsata Ayyām [5 days] & yawmayn [weekends] classes. So I thought why not palagyan ng Wi-Fi ang madrasah so connectivity won’t be a problem [sa marami pa nilang kailangang problemahin]. Kung gusto niyo pong tumulong, below are the GCash/bank account deets. Inn shaa Allah na misosompat kano ko langon o balas ko omani morit a di ron di makatontot sa ilmo,” he said in a mix of Maranao and Filipino.

During the interview with the BusinessMirror on Wednesday, Sanggacala said he was already receiving financial donations from various places in Mindanao.

HE Jam-iyyah Enwaanul Islam bil Filibbin that stands at the heart of Marawi City’s infamous Ground Zero is trying its hand at online teaching, the first by any Arabic-language madrasah, or school, in the country, as it also tries to make sense of the massive displacement four years ago of its former students in Arabic language.

At a dilapidated residential building near Ground Zero, Ustadz Zobair Gutoc Nanagun, 47, struggled with his old mobile phone and aging laptop to set up the online class with 35 students who were able to establish contact with their former teacher when the madrasah was still standing inside Ground Zero.

The online class was started only in the middle of April after Nanagun and his family was able to settle snugly at an abandoned building inside a fenced 300-square-meter lot in Marawi City.

For Nanagun, teaching his students must resume immediately because learning the ways of peace and Islam is non-negotiable, immediate and in continuum.

Core of faith

THE name of the madrasah that Nanagun established in 1985 in downtown Marawi literally means society of advocates of Islam, and Nanagun wanted precisely to revive the education of Muslim youths in the finer points of the language.

For Muslims, the core of their faith hinges largely on the holy

book, Qur’an, the essence of which is best understood and extracted from Arabic from which it was written.

Nanagun’s extensive experience in handling and managing the madrasah has made him one of the few renowned madrasah teachers in Marawi City and Lanao del Sur. He has logged 35 years of teaching the Arabic language and grammar, a must for every Muslim who has reached high school.

The madrasah curriculum approximates the number of school years in the regular Department of Education curriculum.

Nanagun finished only high school in the regular Philippine educational curriculum, but his Islamic education brought him to the premier Islamic University in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

As in regular education, schooling in the madrasah (plural: madaris) was supposed to be required, but in the case of Marawi City and many parts of Lanao del Sur, this was interrupted when the Maute Group, a local affiliate of the Middle East-based Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Isis, attempted to control Marawi City in May 2017.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 48.3900

Struggle

USTADZ ZOBAIR GUTOC NANAGUN, a teacher of what used to be the Jam-iyyah Enwaanul Islam bil Filibbin at the Ground Zero in Marawi City, conducts his online class to teach the finer points of the Arabic language. PHOTOS COURTESY OF AMER SANGGACALA

The displacement was widespread, affecting all the lakeside towns of Lanao del Sur, populated mainly by the Maranao tribe. To this day, Ground Zero remains off-limits to its inhabitants due to what the military has warned is the presence of still unexploded ordnances during the May to October war in 2017.

Ground Zero incidentally was also the most densely populated in the city, and many of its inhabitants were scattered, as a result of the siege, across different evacuation camps and families in Lanao del Sur. Nanagun evacuated to a town farther away from Marawi City.

A number of them, unfortunately, became casualties of the war. That included Nanagun’s stu-

dents, and his madrasah.

Inspiration

THE group chat established by former and current students of Nanagun now has members from other asatidz (plural of ustadz) who are keenly observing how Nanagun would carry on online teaching.

“They are engaging in lively interaction with students and Nanagun, sharing what must be done, what should have been done,” said Amer Hassan Salacop Sanggacala, a former student of Nanagun when the madrasah was still untouched by the 2017 war.

He said Nanagun has a student assistant who would bring the mobile phone camera to focus on the blackboard as Nanagun wrote on the nuances of Arabic grammar.

What Nanagun has initiated has provided the inspiration for all asatidz, and all Filipino Muslim communities, Sanggacala said. “It’s his advocacy and mission.”

Sanggacala has started a solicitation campaign to support the online class, and detailed in his social media account and in the private online chat group what the Jam-iyyah Enwaanul Islam bil Filibbin needed. “[If hindi kaya ng oras mo to go physically to a madrasah, na zadqa ka ko madrasah ka gyoto e kinisompat ka ko balas iyan]. I just learned from a friend that our madrasah in Marawi is now adopting the online class scheme [because of health and safety protocols]. I also learned that they’re only using pocket WiFi to get their class[es]

HOWEVER, Nanagun told the BusinessMirror that he was still struggling with the technology, both with his mobile phone and the online class.

“I am adjusting to the technology,” he said, pointing out to the regular haplessness among Filipinos when Internet connection gets lost or is kept hanging, slowing down or stopping further communication.

“When it hangs, it also drains fast our load,” he added.

“If only they were supported, at least financially, we could reach out to more students to our online class, maybe double what we have now when we could accommodate only 35 students,” he said.

Sanggacala said the struggles of the nascent online class in the madrasah in Marawi City is an initiative that the whole world would be watching. And, he looks forward to that day that as they make headway with more help, their experience would provide people with hope in these dark times of pandemic, when rebuilding from war becomes even more challenging.

n JAPAN 0.4443 n UK 67.4702 n HK 6.2333 n CHINA 7.4768 n SINGAPORE 36.4905 n AUSTRALIA 37.5894 n EU 58.6777 n SAUDI ARABIA 12.9047

Source: BSP (April 30, 2021)

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India grieves 200,000 dead with many more probably uncounted

By Sheikh Saaliq, Krutika Pathi & Aniruddha Ghosal The Associated Press

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EW DELHI— Three days after his coronavirus symptoms appeared, Rajendra Karan struggled to breathe.

Instead of waiting for an ambulance, his son drove him to a government hospital in Lucknow, the capital of India’s largest state.

But the hospital wouldn’t let him in without a registration slip from the district’s chief medical officer. By the time the son got it, his father had died in the car, just outside the hospital doors.

“My father would have been alive today if the hospital had just admitted him instead of waiting for a piece of paper,” Rohitas Karan said.

Stories of deaths tangled in bureaucracy and breakdowns have become dismally common in India, where deaths on Wednesday officially surged past 200,000. But the true death toll is believed to be far higher.

In India, mortality data was poor even before the pandemic, with most people dying at home and their deaths often going unregistered. The practice is particularly prevalent in rural areas, where the virus is now spreading fast. This is partly why this nation of nearly 1.4 billion has recorded fewer deaths than Brazil and Mexico, which have smaller populations and fewer confirmed Covid-19 cases.

BEDS lie inside an indoor stadium converted into a Covid-19 treatment center for emergencies in the wake of the spike in the numbers of positive coronavirus cases in Srinagar, Indiancontrolled Kashmir, Wednesday, April 28, 2021. India, a country of nearly 1.4 billion people, Wednesday became the fourth nation to cross 200,000 deaths. AP/ DAR YASIN

‘Blindsided’

WHILE determining exact numbers in a pandemic is difficult, experts say an overreliance on official data that didn’t reflect the true extent of infections contributed to authorities being blindsided by a huge surge in recent weeks.

“People who could have been saved are dying now,” said Gautam Menon, a professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University. Menon said there has been “serious undercounting” of deaths in many states.

India had thought the worst was over when cases ebbed in September. But infections began increasing in February, and on Wednesday, 362,757 new confirmed cases, a global record, pushed the country’s total past 17.9 million, second only to the US.

Local media have reported discrepancies between official state tallies of the dead and actual numbers of bodies in crematoriums and burial grounds. Many crematoriums have spilled over into parking lots and other empty spaces as blazing funeral pyres light up the night sky.

India’s daily deaths, which have nearly tripled in the past three weeks, also reflect a shattered and underfunded health-care system.

Hospitals are scrambling for more oxygen, beds, ventilators and ambulances, while families marshal their own resources in the absence of a functioning system.

Jitender Singh Shunty runs an ambulance service in New Delhi transporting Covid-19 victims’ bodies to a temporary crematorium in a parking lot. He said those who die at home are generally unaccounted for in state tallies, while the number of bodies has increased from 10 to nearly 50 daily.

“When I go home, my clothes

IN this March 29, 2021, file photo, Indians, their faces smeared with color and glitter, dance as water is sprinkled on them during Holi celebrations in Prayagraj, India. India’s death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 200,000 as a virus surge sweeps the country, rooted in so-called superspreader events that were allowed to happen in the months following the autumn when the country had seemingly brought the pandemic under control. AP/RAJESH KUMAR SINGH

smell of burnt flesh. I have never seen so many dead bodies in my life,” Shunty said.

Running out of burial grounds

BURIAL grounds are also filling up fast. The capital’s largest Muslim graveyard is running out of space, said Mohammad Shameem, the head gravedigger, noting he was now burying nearly 40 bodies a day.

In southern Telangana state too, doctors and activists are contesting the official death counts.

On April 23, the state said 33 people had died of Covid-19. But between 80 to 100 people died in just two hospitals in the state’s

capital, Hyderabad, the day before.

It is unclear whether all were due to the virus, but experts say Covid-19 deaths across India aren’t being listed as such.

Instead, many are attributed to underlying conditions despite national guidelines asking states to record all suspected Covid-19 deaths, even if the patient wasn’t tested for the virus.

For instance, New Delhi officially recorded 4,000 Covid-19 deaths by August 31, but this didn’t include suspected deaths, according to data accessed by The Associated Press under a right-to-information request. Fatalities have

since more than tripled to over 14,500. Officials didn’t respond to queries on whether suspected deaths are now being included.

In Lucknow, officials said 39 people died of the virus in the city on Tuesday. But Suresh Chandra, who operates its Bhaisakhund electric crematorium, said his team had cremated 58 Covid-19 bodies

by Tuesday evening, and 28 more were cremated at a nearby crematorium the same day.

Ajay Dwivedi, a government official in Lucknow, acknowledged more bodies were being cremated but said they included corpses from other districts.

Dubious data, erroneous decisions LAST year, the Indian government used low death and case counts to declare victory against the coronavirus. In October, a month after cases started to ebb, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India was saving more lives than richer countries. In January he boasted at the World Economic Forum that India’s success was incomparable.

At the heart of these statements was dubious data that shaped policy decisions.

Information about where people were getting infected and dying

could have helped India better prepare for the current surge, said Dr. Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto who has studied deaths in India.

Accurate data would have allowed experts to map the virus more clearly, identifying hotspots, driving vaccinations and strengthening public health resources, he said.

“You can’t walk out of a pandemic without data,” he said.

But even when reliable data is available, it hasn’t always been heeded. With infections already rising in March, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan declared India was nearing the “endgame.” When daily cases were in the hundreds of thousands, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and other political parties were holding massive election rallies, drawing thousands of maskless supporters.

The government also allowed a Hindu festival drawing hundreds of thousands to the banks of the Ganges River to go ahead despite warnings from experts that a devastating surge was starting.

Many were already convinced Covid-19 wasn’t very lethal since the death toll seemed low.

India’s health ministry did not respond to queries from AP, and ministers from Modi’s party deflected questions about death counts.

Manohar Lal Khattar, chief minister of Haryana state, told reporters Monday that the dead will never come back and that “there was no point in a debate over the number of deaths.”

The Indian Medical Association in February said 734 doctors had died of Covid-19 since the pandemic began. Days later, India’s health ministry put the number at 313.

“This is criminal,” said Dr. Harjit Singh Bhatti, president of the Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum. “The government lied about the deaths of health workers first, and now they are lying about deaths of ordinary citizens.”

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

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Sunday, May 2, 2021

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Vaccine hoarding may backfire on rich nations as India reels

Workers stack empty oxygen cylinders near an oxygen plant at a government Covid-19 hospital in Ahmedabad, India, on April 27. The Covid-19 death toll in India has topped 200,000 as the country endures its darkest chapter of the pandemic yet. AP/Ajit Solanki

‘It’s like a war’: Inside an India hospital desperate for oxygen

By Ruth Pollard & Sudhi Ranjan Sen

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t his crowded emergency room in central Delhi, Ali Raza can’t focus much on when the next delivery of oxygen will arrive—12 of his 20 doctors are down with Covid-19, and the patients just keep coming.

“We always anticipated a second wave in April and May, but we never knew it would hit us so hard and so fast,” said Raza, the director of emergency and trauma at Moolchand Hospital. “They arrive gasping and they all need oxygen.”

Outside the ward’s double doors, Gagandeep Trehan had just found out there was no bed or oxygen available for his uncle, who was struggling to breathe. Trehan had driven 310 kilometers (192 miles) to Delhi from the northern state of Punjab in search of a bed, his car packed with four oxygen tanks to keep his uncle alive. Six hospitals had already turned him away and he was about to get back in his car and try number seven.

“I am scared he won’t live if he isn’t treated,”Trehan said. “I am ready to pay any amount for a hospital bed.”

The scenes inside one Delhi hospital provide a glimpse into the desperation throughout India, where the world’s fastest-growing virus surge now threatens to spawn new variants that undermine efforts in more developed countries to vaccinate the public and get back to life as normal. India added more than 360,000 new infections Tuesday, pushing its total above 18 million cases, second only to the US, while its deaths crossed 200,000.

On Wednesday morning, Delhi had just 13 intensive care beds available in a city of more than 16 million people. Social-media feeds have been filled with a seemingly endless stream of calls for beds, oxygen, Remdesivir and more.

‘I pushed the panic button’

Over the weekend things had gotten so bad at the 1,000-bed Moolchand Hospital—one of the main private Covid facilities in the capital—that it turned to Twitter to beg for oxygen. Tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the head of Delhi’s government, the hospital warned that its oxygen supply would run out in less than two hours for scores of patients on life support.

Vibhu Talwar, managing director of the Moolchand HealthCare Group, raised the alarm after his staff alerted him at 2 a.m. that oxygen supplies were running low.

“By 7 a.m. we were left with just an hour and I pushed the panic button,” Talwar said. “Obviously those hours between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. were the most stressful time for me, my management team and our doctors and nurses. We have close to 150

Covid patients, there was a lot of panic—something I hope we never go through again.”

But every day still carries the same risk, as hospitals across the Indian capital have no guaranteed oxygen supply. “We don’t know the quantity or the time,” he said on Tuesday.

With the political and financial capitals of New Delhi and Mumbai in lockdown, Modi has faced growing criticism over his handling of the pandemic and his focus on state election campaigns during an escalating health crisis.

“When we had six months and there were very low cases, the government could have built more hospitals with oxygen and more infrastructure,” said Raza, who heads Moolchand’s emergency department. “At this time, the oxygen supply should be continued—that is the least the government can do for us.”

A week ago the Delhi High Court expressed “shock and dismay” over the government’s neglect and directed Modi’s administration to “beg, borrow, steal” to ensure adequate oxygen supply for hospitals. Since then the government approved the allocation of funds to install 551 machines to produce medical oxygen inside public health facilities “as soon as possible.”

Modi this week spoke with US President Joe Biden, who agreed to send vaccines and other supplies to India. His administration has also announced plans to boost oxygen production and ramp up availability of beds, while the Delhi government announced Tuesday it would import 21 ready-to-use oxygen production machines from France and 18 oxygen tankers from Bangkok.

‘Supremely contagious’

“The current wave is particularly dangerous—it is supremely contagious and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly as was noticed in the previous wave,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said. “All hospitals at this point are running over and above their real capacity.

Beds are full, including ICU beds.”

In Moolchand’s emergency ward, a woman wailed with grief next to the prone body of a relative, as other family members looked quietly on. Raza has added more beds into every spare inch of the emergency department, increasing its capacity from 16 beds to 25—but it’s still not enough to keep up with demand.

“We try not to think about when the next oxygen tanker will come,” he said. “Every hospital is running short of oxygen. Whatever limited resources we have, we have to work with that.”

Sanjog, a manager in the nurse unit at Moolchand Hospital, said every day is a struggle to keep people alive.

“In this situation we have to fight for this,” he said. “It’s like a war situation.” Bloomberg News

F

or months, developed economies have hoarded Covid-19 vaccines and the raw materials needed to make them. Now, they’re being forced to act as an explosive outbreak in India raises the risk of new virus mutations that could threaten the wider world.

Under mounting criticism for dominating vaccine resources, the US said this week that it will help India by sending items needed to manufacture vaccines as part of an aid package. European countries are also pledging help as new cases in the South Asian country smash world records. President Joe Biden’s administration is separately vowing to share its stockpile of AstraZeneca Plc. vaccines—which the US hasn’t even approved for use—and meeting with drug companies about boosting supply and waiving intellectualproperty protections on Covid-19 shots, a shift India and South Africa have been pushing for.

The moves show a growing realization that the vaccine nationalism many wealthy nations have embraced has the potential to backfire, prolonging the global pandemic. While those countries have been cornering supplies of the first vaccines for their world-leading rollouts, places like India have run short, allowing the virus to run wild. Some scientists have linked the nation of 1.3 billion people’s second wave to a more virulent strain, with the out-of-control outbreak providing a petri dish for further mutations to evolve that could challenge the vaccines now being distributed from the UK to Israel.

“There is certainly potential for new variants to emerge in a country the size of India that could pose a threat elsewhere,” said Ramanan Laxminarayan, founder of the New Delhi and Washington-based Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy. “It is in the world’s interest to ensure that India exits the pandemic at the earliest, and vaccination is the only way.”

While viruses undergo changes all the time, not all are significant.

But some new strains in other parts of the world have ignited concerns because they could be more contagious. Earlier this year, data showed that AstraZeneca’s vaccine was less effective against one variant that emerged in South Africa.

India’s variant—a strain named B1617—is already raising alarms. It has two critical mutations that make it more likely to transmit and escape prior immunity that has been built up, Anurag Agrawal, the director of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s genomics institute, told Bloomberg last week.

Rakesh Mishra, the director of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, one of the labs working to sequence virus samples in India, said this variant appears to be more infectious, but it isn’t likely to cause more deaths.

Also, the AstraZeneca vaccine and another from India’s Bharat Biotech International Ltd. have been shown to be effective against it in preliminary data, he said. India’s health ministry hasn’t confirmed if this variant is more transmissible, and a spokesperson for the federal health ministry could not be immediately reached.

And at the rate infections are occurring in India, B1617 won’t be the only or last variant of concern out of India’s second wave.

“I fear there may be more trouble coming,” said William Haseltine, a former Harvard Medical School professor and HIV researcher who now chairs think tank Access Health International. “There are already second and possibly third-generation variant of the B1617 circulating in India. These may be more dangerous than is the B1617 variant itself.”

India’s second wave is certainly more destructive. Hospitals and crematoriums are cracking under pressure, while Indians are begging on social media for everything from oxygen cylinders to drugs. Almost 3,000 people are dying every day, with experts saying that figure likely underplays the real toll. The daily death rate is almost double what it was at the height of the first wave, stoking speculation the new variant, or other mutations, are to blame. Brazil, another developing country that has struggled to ramp up vaccines, suffered from a virus

In this April 20, file photo, notices informing about the shortage of Covid-19 vaccine is displayed on the gate of a vaccination center in Mumbai, India. India crossed a grim milestone on April 28, of 200,000 people lost to the coronavirus as a devastating surge of new infections tears through dense cities and rural areas alike and overwhelms health-care systems on the brink of collapse. AP/Rafiq Maqbool

strain that’s said to be responsible for a much higher Covid death rate.

“We are fighting a virus that is not standing still,” Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive officer of Moderna Inc., told reporters at a briefing held on Friday by a number of vaccine makers and industry bodies. “If you think about the variants that are emerging, the UK, Brazil, South Africa and now we are hearing about the double mutant variant in India, there are more appearing everywhere. I’m worried deeply about the next six months.”

Public health experts now see a ramped up vaccination effort as key to quelling outbreaks like the one in India.

But despite being home to the world’s largest vaccine industry, India’s immunization drive has slowed in recent weeks and many states are warning that their supplies have almost dried up.

The shortages have partly been blamed on bottlenecks related to a few key items, with Adar Poonawalla—the chief executive officer of the Serum Institute of India Ltd., the country’s biggest vaccine producer and AstraZeneca’s manufacturing partner—increasingly pointing to the US. Poonawalla has repeatedly called on the US to release shipments of critical raw materials, saying the US invoking the Defense Production Act to curb exports of some ingredients and bolster its own industry is one of the main reasons behind the slowdown in shots.

“It’s the shortage of critical input materials that is becoming a real bottleneck,” Rajinder Suri, chief executive officer of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers’ Network, said at Friday’s briefing.

“If anyone of the components is missing, the entire chain comes to a grinding halt. The problem is that

most of these materials are coming from the US.” The items that many vaccine makers have been struggling to get hold of include glass vials, single-use filters and bioreactor bags, according to the majority of 15 suppliers, developers and contract manufacturers surveyed ahead of a Chatham House summit last month. However, the scale of the problem, even within industry groups, has been hard to quantify due to a lack of data.

As the scale of India’s virus emergency rose to global prominence this week, the offers of aid and doses started to come. Besides the US’s commitments, the UK, France and Germany have also pledged aid and much needed oxygen tanks for India.

Biden said Tuesday that in a call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he discussed “when we’ll be able to send actual vaccines to India, which would be my intention to do.” In the meantime, the US is providing other aid, Biden said. The US government has said it plans to send about 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine overseas.

Still, a more marked shift in the way developed countries view vaccines will likely be needed.

Even if the US did send all of its AstraZeneca doses to India, it would have a limited impact on a population of its size. There are also other parts of the vast developing world that are yet to see shots, or consistent supplies.

“Many parts of the world still remain deeply at risk,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in a Bloomberg TV interview last week. “I worry about these headlines continuing for a year or more unless international partners get together and help share some of the vaccines that are there.” Bloomberg News

BioNTech boss strikes upbeat note on Europe’s vaccine drive

By Frank Jordans

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The Associated Press

ERLIN—More than half of Europe’s population should have received the coronavirus vaccine in the next two months, allowing governments to consider easing lockdown rules for those who’ve been immunized, the head of German pharmaceutical company BioNTech said on Wednesday.

The European Union has lagged behind Britain and the United States in the race to get shots into arms, but in recent weeks the pace of vaccinations has picked up significantly.

Ugur Sahin, whose company developed the first widely approved shot against Covid-19 with US partner Pfizer, predicted that “50 percent-60 percent of the population will have received the vaccine” by the end of June, at which point any easing of pandemic restrictions would affect a broad swath of the population.

He cited studies from Israel, which shares medical data on its vaccination campaign with Pfizer, showing that people who have

been immunized rarely fall seriously ill and are significantly less likely to transmit the virus to others.

Sahin suggested Europe could reach herd immunity “in July, latest by August,” but cautioned that children would still be among those at risk as the vaccine has so far only been approved for people over 16. A small number of children who fall ill with Covid-19 suffer serious illness or long-term effects.

While the exact threshold required to reach that critical level of immunization remains a matter of debate, experts say a level above 70 percent would significantly disrupt transmission of the coronavirus within a population.

BioNTech’s vaccine makes up a large share of the doses administered in North America, where it is more commonly known as the Pfizer shot, and the EU, which is poised to place a massive, multiyear order of 1.8 billion doses in the coming days.

Sahin said data from people who have received the vaccine show that the immune response gets weaker over time, and a third shot will likely be required.

Studies show the efficacy of the BioNTechPfizer vaccine declines from 95 percent to

about 91 percent after six months, he said.

“Accordingly, we need a third shot to get the vaccine protection back up to almost 100 percent again” Sahin told reporters during a video call.

Vaccine recipients currently receive a second dose three weeks after their first shot, although some countries have longer intervals. Sahin suggested the third should be administered nine to 12 months after the first shot.

“And then I expect it will probably be necessary to get another booster every year or perhaps every 18 months,” he said.

Concerns have been raised that existing vaccines might be less effective against new variants of the virus now emerging in different parts of the world.

Sahin said BioNTech has tested its vaccine against more than 30 variants, including the now-dominant one first detected in Britain, and found the shot triggers a good immune response against almost all of them in the lab. In cases where the immune response was weaker, it remained sufficient, he said, without providing exact figures.

Asked about the new variant first detected

in India, Sahin said the vaccine’s effectiveness against it was still being investigated.

“But the Indian variant has mutations that we have previously investigated and against which our vaccine also works, so I am confident there, too,” he said.

“The vaccine is quite cleverly constructed, and the bulwark will hold. I’m convinced of that,” Sahin said. “If the bulwark needs to be strengthened again, we’ll do so. I’m not worried.”

The company is investigating reports of heart inflammation cases in people who received the vaccine in Israel, but so far hasn’t seen any data that would indicate a heightened risk, Sahin said. Some 5 million people in Israel have been vaccinated, primarily with the BioNTech/Pfizer shot, giving it one of the highest coverages in the world.

“We take everything we hear very seriously,” Sahin said. “The most important principle in drug development is to do no harm.”

BioNTech expects to receive approval in July for its vaccine to be used in China, where it cooperates with local firm Fosun Pharma, he said.

Meanwhile, BioNTech and Pfizer are working

with other manufacturers to ramp up production of the mRNA shot as worldwide demand still far outstrips supply.

“When we started 2021, our goal was to produce 1.3 billion doses, and now we’ve increased that to 3 billion doses,” said Sahin, praising pharmaceutical giants such as Novartis, Sanofi and Baxter for joining in the effort.

His company is in talks to create production facilities in Asia, South America and Africa, and may also issue special licenses to other “really competent”manufacturers to boost global supply of the vaccine, Sahin said.

“We don’t want to have a low-quality vaccine in Africa,” he added, dismissing suggestions that the recipe for it could simply be made freely available.

Countering fierce criticism that the European Union had bungled its vaccine procurement process, Sahin said the 27-nation bloc deser ved praise for managing to coordinate the simultaneous delivery of the first batches to all member-states at the end of December.

“Europeans can be proud that they found a fair solution,” he said, adding that the bloc also

exported large numbers of doses elsewhere.

“It doesn’t help if Europeans are safe and other countries, where the virus is still raging, keep churning out new variants,” he said.

Sahin founded BioNTech in 2008 with his wife, the scientist Ozlem Tureci. Together they decided to pivot from cancer research to developing a coronavirus vaccine in early 2020 and reached out to Pfizer, which had the necessary expertise to conduct large-scale clinical trials.

The 55-year-old, whose family emigrated from Turkey to Germany when he was 4, told members of Germany’s foreign press association VAP that it was “a very nice feeling” to be hearing of more and more people who are able to finally see loved ones again after getting vaccinated with his company’s shot.

Sahin said he expects a “new normal” soon, where “one can move about freely and most people have a very good immune protection” against the virus.

Even so, some would either not want to get vaccinated or have a weak immune system “and we have to consider these people too,” he said.

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The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Biden-Powell seen defining an era like Reagan-Volcker

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By Rich Miller

orty years ago, President Ronald Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker oversaw a root-and-branch restructuring of the US economy.

Today, Joe Biden and Jerome Powell are trying to do the same thing—only in reverse.

In the Reagan-Volcker regime change, power in the economy shifted from the government to the market and from labor to the owners of capital. The emphasis was on efficiency, not equality, and on promoting supply, not demand.

Monetar y policy was put in charge of managing the economy and reining in inflation, while fiscal spending took a back seat. And the new priorities became entrenched— at least until now. “ The parameters of the economic system and of public policy went through profound changes at that time,” said Paul McCulley, the former Pacific Investment Management Co. executive who now teaches at Georgetown University. “We’re fundamentally going through exactly the same thing now.”

As the US emerges from the pandemic, Biden is reasserting the role of government spending and taxation in the economy—first with the $1.9-trillion relief bill approved in March, and now with proposals to spend more than $4 trillion on public investments and programs aimed at lower and middle-income families, like child care and paid leave.

He outlined the latest plan in an address to Congress late Wednesday.

To help pay for them, the president has set his sights on the owners of capital. He’s calling for higher taxes on capital gains, corporations

and the wealthy.

“Trickle-down economics has never worked,” Biden told Congress late Wednesday in a speech outlining his plan—using a phrase often applied to Reagan-era policies that favored the top earners. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.”

Biden has also championed labor unions, openly backing the failed effort to organize workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

“Biden is more pro-union, more pro-redistribution, more pro-social welfare state, more pro-government spending in an uninhibited way than arguably anybody we’ve had since LBJ,” said Peterson Institute for International Economics President Adam Posen. He was referring to former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose Great Society programs in the 1960s expanded health care and lowered poverty.

‘Very benign’

The Fed under Powell has undergone a regime change as well. Gone is the focus on capping inf lation, the cornerstone of the Volcker Fed. Now the emphasis is on avoiding the def lation that has bedeviled Japan for decades.

Rather than trying to offset the ultra-expansionary thrust of Biden’s policies, the Fed is amplifying them, as Powell again made clear to reporters on Wednesday. It’s keeping interest rates near zero—and as the government’s budget deficit wid-

ened, the Fed bought up trillions of dollars of the resulting debt.

Powell, whose term as Fed chair is up for renewal next year, is also allin on Biden’s bid to lift labor’s share of the economic pie and spread the benefits of a hot jobs market to Black Americans and other groups that have historically been left behind.

There are dangers in the paradigm shift that Biden and Powell are engineering. The economy could overheat and bring an unwelcome resurgence in inflation.

“The risks of inflation are really picking up and the Fed is acting in a very benign manner,” said economic historian Michael Bordo, a professor at Rutgers University. He sees a danger that the Fed “gets co-opted so much” into backing the administration’s agenda that it loses the inflation-fighting credibility won

by Volcker.

‘The new view’

It ’s perhaps no sur pr ise t hat Biden and Powell are staking out radically different policies than Reagan and Volcker did. The forces driving the economy have changed significantly.

Back then, double-digit inflation was enemy number one. Volcker led the drive to bring it down, jacking up interest rates and plunging the economy into a deep recession.

Reagan played a part as well, taking on the unions—whose automatic cost-of-living pay increases contributed to the wage-price spiral—by firing striking air traffic controllers in 1981 after they illegally walked off the job.

The president also championed what’s known as supply-side economics. He cut taxes on capital and household income, especially for the wealthy, and loosened regulations in a bid to boost economic efficiency.

“Reaganomics was based on this idea that there is a scarcity of supply of capital, goods and labor,” said Megan Greene, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. “The new

view is that there is an oversupply of all of those things.”

That oversupply has suppressed inflation and interest rates, held back economic growth and contributed to widening inequality. And it’s put a premium on government action to ensure that the economy doesn’t suffer from a chronic shortage of demand.

Since the Fed has cut interest rates close to zero, the onus falls on fiscal policy. Fortunately, those same low rates means the government doesn’t have to pay nearly as much to run up big debts—a point made repeatedly by Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

‘Seize-back of power’

The two paradigm shifts are alike in one sense: They’re both a backlash against what came before. In Reagan’s case, it was the increased sway of the government in the economy, which was seen as stifling enterprise and business dynamism.

Biden’s presidency comes after an epoch of increasingly unfettered capitalism that failed to deliver benefits for many Americans—a perception reinforced by the outsized impact of Covid-19 on those less well off.

The changes wrought by Reagan and Volcker lasted for decades, a longevity that may be tough to match.

With Biden’s Democrats only holding small majorities in Congress, political analysts say it’s almost inevitable that the president will have to pare back some of his more ambitious plans.

Still, McCulley sees political and economic forces in train that will push the country down a similar path whatever happens to individual pieces of Biden’s agenda.

“Income and wealth inequality was very much on the radar well before the pandemic, and was pointing to a seize-back of power by democracy from unbridled capitalism,” he said. Bloomberg News

Facing drought, Southern California has more reserve water than ever

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By Laura Bliss

he cracked and desiccated shoreline of Lake Mendocino made a telling backdrop for California Governor Gavin Newsom’s message at a news conference last week: Drought conditions are here, and climate change makes the situation graver.

But water supplies vary across regions, which is why the governor limited a drought emergency declaration to just two northern counties. In fact, highly urbanized Southern California has a record 3.2 million acre-feet of water in reserve, enough to quench the population’s needs this year and into the next.

That’s thanks in large part to tremendous gains in storage infrastructure and steady declines in water use—driven by mandates, messaging, and incentive programs—belied by the region’s storied reputation for thirst.

Brad Coffey leads water resource management at the Metropolitan Water District, the wholesale water cooperative that serves about half the state’s population via 26 member agencies in Southern California. Talking about the state’s drought cycles, he invoked John Steinbeck, who once wrote: “It never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years.”

“Our job is to not lose memory of the dry years,” Coffey said. “And we’ve planned for them.”

Since the early 2000s, the region has invested more than $1 billion in new storage infrastructure, including a nearly trillion-liter reservoir at Diamond Valley Lake and the Inland Feeder Pipeline, a 44-mile network of tunnels and pipes that more than doubled capacity for deliveries from the State Water Project, California’s massive system for water storage and delivery that serves many of its cities.

These, as well as expansions in groundwater storage, allow more resources to be stashed during flush years like 2017, when a record-wet winter dumped more than 100 inches of precipitation on the Sierra Nevada mountains and prompted the official end of California’s last drought. Conditions held in 2019, producing spectacular “superbloom” displays that drew flower-peepers from around the world.

Now snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is about 40 percent below average levels, and allocations from the State Water Project have been cut to just 5 percent of requested supplies. The return of dry conditions—for the second year in a row—brings a sense of déja vu from just a few years ago.

But the last drought triggered changes in how Californians consume their precious resource. At the press conference last week, Newsom praised the 16-percent reduction in water use the state has made since 2013.

Southern California has been a leader in that trend. LA now uses less water now than it did in the 1970s, despite adding 1 million residents.

While total and per capita water use crept up in the early 2000s, the 2012-2016 drought set off another major drop in demand. That’s because state conser vation mandates, intense media coverage and city-sponsored incentives for lawn tear outs and low-flow fixtures spurred changes in household behavior.

Gone are LA’s days of dribbling sprinkler heads and hosing down driveways, both banned under city ordinance. Since 2009, nearly 52 million square feet of lawn have been replaced through rebates and outreach programs boosting drought-tolerant succulents, flowers and chaparrals. Even the iconic grassy expanse that fronts Westwood’s Mormon Temple is now edged with low-water plants (though there’s still a lot of grass).

In other words, the land of swimming pools,

lush backyards and the historic thirst for growth that inspired the movie Chinatown has seen its conservation ethic outlast previous droughts.

“On the conservation side, we never lifted the foot off the pedal, which helps the region and city get into a good place with respect to the dry years we’ve had before and are having again,” said Delon Kwan, assistant director of water resources at the LA Department of Water and Power. “There’s a very direct correlation between demand going down and reserves going up.”

Investments in water recycling, desalination and stormwater capture have also made a difference. The city does not expect to ask residents to ration supplies this year or the next, Kwan said.

Such efforts have won praise—though with caveats—from water policy experts like Newsha Ajami, the director of urban water policy at Stanford University’s Water in the West program.

“People often focus on Southern California as a group that uses a lot of water and is unsustainable, and some of that is true,” she said, comparing the 106 gallons per capita per day used in Los Angeles in 2020 to the 72 gpcd used in San Francisco, where greater density means a lot less outdoor landscaping. (Ajami sits on the S.F. Public Utilities Commission, the city’s water agency.) Because population outweighs local water resources, LA and other nearby cities rely heavily on imports from the Sierra Nevada and Colorado River—a system that stems from early 20th-century water rights agreements and feats of human engineering.

Yet the recent storage expansion in the south is unmatched in the historically wetter north, Ajami said. “They’ve done a lot more to diversify and save water compared to some other communities across the state,” she said. “It shows that when you’re under constant stress, you respond.”

That doesn’t mean Northern California has neglected to store and conser ve. But many

communities that depend more on local rainfall— rather than state and federal water systems—are facing rationing this year. In Marin County, the Marin Municipal Water District has mandated limits on outdoor watering, car washing, and other water-intensive activities for its 191,000 customers, as have the towns of St. Helena and Calistoga in neighboring Napa County. The city of San Francisco plans to ask irrigation customers— such as parks and golf courses—to voluntarily cut use 10 percent.

Meanwhile, thousands of California farmers are expecting to receive tiny fractions of needed supplies as they face forecasts for an intensely hot, dry summer with elevated wildfire risk.

Environmentalists are sounding alarms about threats to the vulnerable species and ecosystems that rely on the same precious flows that feed agricultural and urban supplies throughout the state. As climate change brings higher temperatures, longer droughts, and more conflicts over those resources, they are set to dwindle, and with them, California’s potential supplies.

That’s why LA hopes to wean itself off of imports and expand its capacity for self-sustenance. Mayor Eric Garcetti has pledged to source 70 percent of the city’s water locally by 2035, while LA’s latest urban water management plan calls to reduce per capita water use to 100 gpcd by 2035.

Going beyond that would require a majority of customers to stop watering yards, which makes up the majority of LA’s water use, Kwan said, and may not be cost-effective. Still, many researchers say LA should aim higher. A recent UCLA sustainability report called for LA to set a goal of 75 gpcd.

“Demand management is the best and cheapest way we can approach water security,” Ajami said. “There is no supply in California that is not vulnerable.” Bloomberg News

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Biden plan for cleaner power system faces daunting snags

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

N

AP Business Writer

EW YORK—If the nation is to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by the end of the decade, it will have to undertake a vast transformation toward renewable energy.

And to achieve that, the near-impossible will be required: A broad network of transmission lines will have to be built to carry solar and wind power across the continent to deliver electricity to homes and businesses—something the administration envisions accomplishing by 2035.

What’s more, utility-scale batteries on a widespread scale, to store renewable energy for peak-use periods, would be needed.

The financial and technological tasks of linking cleaner power sources to an aging electric grid pummeled by climate change are daunting enough. Add to them the legal fights that states and localities will likely mount to fight the build-outs of transmission lines in their areas, and the challenges become extraordinary.

It normally takes years to win authorization to build new transmission lines. Because many such decisions are made at the local level, critics across the country that oppose having wires strung through their landscapes could further prolong the battles.

“I’m very worried,” said Larry Gasteiger, executive director of the transmission industry trade group WIRES. “Given the timeframes we’re looking at, it’s almost hard to see how we meet them. We really need to have everyone puling on the oars at the same time and in the same direction, and unfortunately, we’re not seeing that, to be honest.”

The idea behind the Biden plan for cleaner power transmission is to transform the fuel for America’s power grid from mostly coal and natural gas to wind, solar and hydroelectric power. The US electricity system relies on about 600,000 miles of transmission lines that carry electricity from power plants or dams to communities and 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Some of the consequences of climate change—more frequent storms, wildfires and other extreme weather—include damage to the nation’s electric grid. Severe weather was determined to be the predominant cause of more than 300 transmission outage events from 2014 to 2018, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. An additional 200 outages were caused by transmission disruptions or interruptions, which are essentially unexpected failures. Most of the nation’s transmission lines were strung in the mid-20th century with just a 50-year life expectancy, the group said.

That reality hit hard in February. Severe snowstorms in Texas caused deadly power outages that lasted days, killing more than 100 people. In California, Pacific Gas & Electric’s crumbling equipment sparked a series of deadly wildfires in recent years, and the worst, in the town of Paradise, California, killed 85 people in 2018.

Residents throughout California frequently lose power as utilities shut it off to reduce the chance that their old equipment could start a wildfire.

Even while extreme weather erodes the nation’s existing infrastructure, the need for reliable electricity to power an ever-growing number of electronic devices and vehicles is sure to surge. Given the state of the electric grid and the ambitious nature of the goals, Gasteiger calls Biden’s emissions goal, with its dependence on transmission lines, a “moonshot effort.”

To reach the president’s goal of a 50-percent reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the nation would have to stop using coal entirely by then and let consumption of oil and gas decline by 2 percent every year, according to Philip Verleger, a longtime energy analyst. Yet to meet the nation’s energy demand, he said, the United States would have to double the amount of energy that’s produced annually by wind and solar.

“I doubt that’s practical,” Verleger said. “You just can’t put up that many windmills that fast. And there may not be that many places to put windmills.”

The electric power generated by wind and solar has been growing at impressive clips, with wind power generation rising at a 14-percent annual rate from 2010 to 2020, and solar growing at a rate of 54 percent, Verleger said. But he doubts that the pace for solar growth can be maintained.

The nation obtained about 21 percent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2020, a share that is expected to grow to 42 percent by 2050, according to an estimate made by the US Energy Information Administration in February, before Biden’s accelerated goal was announced.

But it can take years to get high-voltage transmission lines approved, let alone built. Many plans will face resistance from landowners or communities in the path.

Those battles have killed ambitious projects before, including the Clean Line—a quest to build a 700mile transmission line to deliver wind energy from Oklahoma to Tennessee. The project had obtained federal approval. But given opposition from landowners and politicians in Arkansas and Tennessee, it couldn’t win all the rights of way. After a decade of planning, investing and efforts for approvals, the firm that was developing the transmission line accepted defeat and shut down.

Even projects that ultimately succeed tend to take far longer than expected. A 730-mile transmission line to carry wind energy from turbines in Wyoming to the electricity-hungry Southwest, begun in 2005, took 15 years to gain all the required federal and local permitting. Final approval ultimately paved the way for the construction of the TransWest Express Transmission Project to begin.

“It’s mostly local, not federal, authority,” Verleger said. “Is this administration going to issue rules that override the states? Will the Supreme Court approve them? How many years will that take?”

A fossil fuel power plant can be built near the populations that will use its energy. By contrast, wind and solar power is often developed in the Great Plains. Wind turbines in Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas and Illinois provide more than half of the nation’s wind-generated electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Yet that power is most needed by bustling cities along the coasts.

“You have to build a lot of transmission lines, and people have made that very, very difficult,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research. “You’ve got the ‘Nimby’ [Not In My Back Yard], the ‘Numby’ [Not Under My Back Yard], and ‘Banana’ [Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone]. Those are still very powerful political drivers around the country.”

Many steps and players are involved in building inter-regional transmission lines. The transmission system, which includes high-voltage lines that bring electricity from power sources to communities, is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It approves rates for transmission lines.

But permitting and siting for transmission is typically approved at the state and local level, Gasteiger said. The distribution system, which strings power within communities, is regulated by a myriad collection of state and local agencies.

“It’s the nature of transmission that it takes an awfully long time to get it from start to finish to get it built and put into service,” Gasteiger said.

The cost of decarbonizing the power sector is yet another hurdle. Using the technology available then, Wood Mackenzie estimated in 2019 that to fully decarbonize the US power grid, including eliminating all fossil fuels and building the new generation and transmission sources, would cost $4.5 trillion. That would cost every US household about $35,000, or $2,000 a year for 20 years.

The expense of building or repairing transmission lines is often borne by utilities, which, in turn, generally pass the costs on to customers. Thousands of utilities dot the country. Building transmission lines requires coordination among those companies and the cities, states and private properties where the lines must cross.

To spur investment in transmission, Congress directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2005 to begin providing incentives for transmission projects. The commission, though, began scaling back those incentives in 2012.

“I’m hearing a lot of happy talk,” Gasteiger said. “I’m not seeing actions that match up with the talk about how much transmission is needed.”

Analysts have been running scenarios to estimate whether Biden’s goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by roughly half over the next nine years is realistic. In S&P Global Platts Analytics’ most-likely-case scenario, which envisions a widespread adoption of electric vehicles, increased penetration of renewables and declines in coal generation, the United States would reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by about 27 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.

Under that scenario, even if all remaining coal burning were eliminated by 2030, that would still account for only about a quarter of the reductions needed. The remaining cuts that would be needed to achieve a 50-percent reduction would be nearly equivalent to the total emissions that are expected from gasoline in 2030, said Roman Kramarchuk, head of future energy analytics at S&P. Yet the goal isn’t necessarily impossible, Verleger said. Back in the 1970s, he noted, there was concern that a lack of copper to string phone wires across Africa would prevent many Africans from attaining telephone service. Yet over time, most people obtained service via cellphones instead of from landlines. So what was imagined as a logistical hurdle evaporated.

The White House has also signaled that it may institute a carbon tax. That would make it harder for emitters to continue at their current rate, further speeding the transition.

“It’s achievable,” Verleger said. “Probably it’s going to take couple technological breakthroughs, like the cellphone and the personal computer. I’m not going to say it’s not going to happen.” AP

Science

BusinessMirror

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

Sunday

Sunday, May 2, 2021 A5

Nutribun enhanced with carrots

By Rizal Raoul Reyes

LRT-1 gets DOST-MIRDC as partner for tech services

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‘Pink’ supermoon The “pink” supermoon was photographed by Grade 9 student Nathan

Bangtuan using a children's telescope with 40 times magnification that was attached to her cellphone camera. The supermoon was not colored pink, but it was tagged as such because it appeared when the pink wildflower in North America blooms during spring. A supermoon appears bigger and brighter than the usual full moon because it is at its closest to Earth. The next supermoons will be on May 25 and June 24.

Steps to take to secure oxygen for Covid-19 patients and beyond

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he SARS CoV-2 virus causes Covid-19 pneumonia and hypoxaemia. Hypoxaemia is a lack of oxygen in the blood—the most important complication of Covid-19 pneumonia and a major cause of death.

A few antiviral drugs have been effective in treating Covid-19 infection. However, in severe pneumonia, oxygen relieves hypoxaemia. It can allow time for the infection to clear and the lungs to heal. For many people affected by Covid-19, oxygen is lifesaving.

What are the challenges getting oxygen to patients?

Low and middle income countries face huge hurdles in getting oxygen to patients. In many countries proper systems to supply oxygen have been neglected for decades, despite pneumonia being the single biggest cause of hospital admission in low and middle income countries, even before the pandemic.

An oxygen system involves the equipment needed to detect hypoxaemia and give oxygen.

This includes: a small device called a pulse oximeter which is essential to detect hypoxaemia, the source of oxygen (of which there are several options), other technical equipment to give oxygen (such as flow meters and oxygen tubing), a small device called an oxygen analyser (which assesses the purity of oxygen from the source), and a power supply.

In addition to this, trained health workers, biomedical technicians and equipment maintenance are vital.

The neglect of oxygen systems has been partly market failure, partly lack of knowledge and anticipation, partly inertia.

In health-care settings, with no effective oxygen systems, there is also usually been an under-resourcing of other essential services required to make a hospital run safely—such as power, water supply, sanitation and infection control.

Until the pandemic, some governments may not have fully appreciated that oxygen is lifesaving. Or they may have been unprepared to invest in a properly functioning oxygen system.

Finally, a low priority has been given to develop and scale up oxygen relative to new drugs, for which a patent can be taken out and big pharmaceutical companies can make a large profit.

Robust oxygen systems, that would support a pandemic, take time to put in place. The basics are the oxygen source, and the options include gas cylinders, oxygen concentrators and oxygen generators.

Oxygen cylinders are logistically difficult and expensive to transport from many private suppliers in big cities, especially to remote hospitals.

A single oxygen cylinder, which would supply one person, may last for between 24 to 72 hours depending on the severity of hypoxaemia and how much oxygen they need.

However, people with severe Covid-19 often have hypoxaemia for more than a week, so a cylinder can run out.

Oxygen concentrators are small bedside machines.

They take in atmospheric air and remove nitrogen (which is 78 percent of air) leaving near pure oxygen.

They were developed commercially for the home care of adults with chronic lung disease in north America and Europe. Since the 1990s they’ve effectively provided oxygen in hospitals in low and middle income countries.

Oxygen concentrators can provide oxygen to up to five children, or one or two sick adults, at a time. They provide a continuous source of oxygen, drawn from the air, so they don’t need refilling.

They are relatively cheap (about $500 to $1,000), but require a reliable power supply (they can be solar powered), some training for staff, and maintenance.

They are manufactured in many places including the US, Europe, China, India and Russia.

Oxygen generators are another way of providing oxygen. They are large machines, which generate oxygen from the air (about 5,000 litres per hour) and can fill between 30 cylinders to 50 cylinders a day.

Oxygen generators are expensive (about $100,000) and require a trained biomedical technician, but they are a long-term investment. They have been used in Asia, Canada, and recently in Papua New Guinea.

They are made in China and the US. Some are produced fully set up and can be shipped to hospitals.

They only require an electrical connection and a trained biomedical technician to run them.

A key benefit of oxygen generators and concentrators is that they can supply a whole region or health service in a way that can be independent of private gas companies.

What can be done to improve the situation?

Each situation will be different. For an oxygen system to be developed there must be a good understanding of the local context.

This includes the systems that are already in use, the local providers, biomedical technician capacity, reliability of power supplies (often power supplies are erratic and power surges can damage concentrators, solar power is more stable), and the size of local populations and projected oxygen needs.

For instance, a medium sized district hospital (treating 15 to 20 patients with oxygen daily) will need upwards of 40,000 litres per day.

To meet these needs, the provision of oxygen should be done using oxygen concentrators and oxygen generators, using some cylinders for immediate emergency use, such as transport in an ambulance.

he famous nutribun, popularized in the 1970s as part of the nutrition campaign for publicschool students, has been enhanced anew by the Department of Science and Technology's Food and Nutrition Research Institute (DOST-FNRI)—with carrot, this time—to make it more nutritious, appealing and palatable to children, while creating economic opportunities for farmers and the entrepreneurs belonging to the micro, small, medium and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

In a webinar held on April 28, Science Secretary Fortunato de la Peña said the latest enhancement of nutribun has been given a new twist by the scientists at the FNRI to make it more appealing to its stakeholders.

“Our nutribun has been reformulated by the DOST to be more nutritious, softer and more delicious," de la Pena said in his opening remarks.

“It has also improved the quality of the nutribun to make it more appealing to the discriminating taste of children,” de la Pena added.

The newest "variant" of Enhanced Nutribun (e-nutribun) has carrots.

In 2020, the DOST-FNRI launched the first e-nutribun which had purée or crushed and mashed squash.

Similar to the previous e-nutribun, the new variant or the Enhanced Nutribun with Carrots is bread with natural fiber with no artificial flavor and color.

DOST-FNRI Director Dr. Imelda Angeles-Agdeppa told the webinar participants that they chose carrot because it provides energy, protein, vitamin A, iron, calcium, potassium and zinc in significant quantities recommended for young children.

“It has zero trans-fatty acids [or trans-fats] and has no cholesterol,” she said.

She said one serving of e-nutribun with carrots contains 500 kilocalories, 18 grams of protein, 6 milligrams of iron and 350 micrograms (ug) of vitamin A. It is a round-shaped bun that is shiny, light yellowish with orange speckles, sweet, delicious and milky that is acceptable to all ages.

Each bun weighs approximately 160 grams, which is the recommended amount for one serving.

When packed in polyethylene plastic, it can last up to five days at room temperature.

T

The DOST-FNRI launches its latest enhancement of the popular nutribun, now with carrots.

PNA photo screenshot

Unlike the nutribun of the 1970s that was mainly produced for undernourished school children, Agdeppa said the DOST-FNRI’s e-nutribun can also be consumed by the whole family, although the formulation is based on the nutritional requirements of a child six to nine years old, in accordance with the Philippine Dietary Reference Intake.

The squash e-nutribun variant is rich in beta-carotene that is converted to vitamin A in the body. Vitamin A is a micronutrient that is commonly lacking in regular meals of Filipino children.

Other than meeting the children’s requirements for micronutrients, energy and protein, the nationwide roll-out of the squash e-nutribun provides livelihood opportunities to bakery workers and farmers as sources of raw materials like squash and other related supply and service providers.

De la Pena said DOST-FNRI decided to develop a new variant of e-nutribun to be able to provide feeding coordinators in supplementary feeding programs to have another option in providing a nutritious and delicious choice.

Besides providing nutrition to marginalized children, de la Peña said the Enhanced Nutribun program also seeks

to entice entrepreneurs in the MSME category to engage in marketing quality and healthy products.

Moreover, it will also encourage prospective technology adopters and other stakeholders to continue the fight against the country’s malnutrition problems and contribute to the government’s efforts towards zero hunger.

At the same time, the challenge of tight supply and higher prices of squash used in the production of e-nutribun squash variant due to higher demand and off-season supply led to the development of carrotsbased e-nutribun.

“Thus, the DOST-FNRI, seeing the abundance of carrots in other regions, developed another variant using carrots as an ingredient,” Agdeppa said.

As of October 2020, de la Peña said the DOST-FNRI has signed 126 letters of intent and 77 licensing agreements for the production of e-nutribun.

"This will enable Filipinos to buy nutritious bread, thanks to the DOST-FNRI, its regional offices and the personnel working behind the program,” he said.

For the next e-nutribun project, de la Peña asked the FNRI to conduct studies on the possible inclusion of kamote (sweet potato) and ube (purple yam).

he Department of Science and TechnologyMetals Industry Research and Development Center (DOST-MIRDC) entered into a partnership with the Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC) with the shared goal of improving the services of the Light Rail Transit-Line 1 (LRT-1).

The LRMC sought the expertise of the DOST-MIRDC in the areas of fabrication of obsolete, or difficult-tosource spare parts, and conduct of structural repairs of light-rail vehicles (LRVs).

Even before the signing of the memorandum of understanding, the LRMC and the DOST-MIRDC have already began the inspection of the LRVs. The DOST-MIRDC later conducted a preliminary analysis, which gave the team a better perspective of the technological interventions needed.

Succeeding inspections are set to be conducted beginning in May, when the National Capital Region is hopefully placed in a less stringent community quarantine.

The LRMC expressed excitement and optimism in the partnership. It shared that they tried to look for a partner, either local or foreign, who will be able to help them address the technical issues with the LRVs. "We looked everywhere," said LRMC COO Enrico Benipayo. "But unfortunately...the interest of foreign companies is not really there."

DOST-MIRDC’s Executive Director Engr. Robert O. Dizon appreciated the partnership with the LRMC. He said that the DOST-MIRDC’s services are open to the LRMC, to help improve LRT-1 and also to pursue the center’s mandate of assisting the local metals, engineering and allied industries.

"We are optimistic that the establishment of a competitive railway industry will be one of the outcomes of this partnership," Dizon said. Zalda R.

Gayahan/S&T Media Services

8 Filipinos listed among 100 outstanding Asian scientists

By Lyn B. Resurreccion

W

hat is common among these people—Dr. Kathleen B. Aviso, Dr. Anabelle V. Briones, Dr. Salvacion Gatchalian, Dr. Desiree Hautea, Dr. Sandra Teresa V. Navarra, Dr. Jonel Saludes, Dr. Francis Aldrine Uy and Edgardo G. Vazquez?

They are scientists who are popular in their respective fields, such as biotechnology, chemical biology, engineering, environment, health, and housing.

But their latest common attribute is that they were honored to be listed among the most outstanding scientists and researchers in the 2021 edition of the Asian Scientist 100 of the Asian Scientist Magazine.

The list also includes scientists and researchers from Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

This year’s Asian Scientist 100 celebrates the meaningful science

taking place in Asia and the researchers that continue to make breakthroughs amidst a global pandemic, said the Asian Scientist.

In addition to fields ranging from physics to agriculture, this year’s list highlighted the achievements of six scientists at the forefront of Covid-19 research.

“It is now clearer than ever that science—and scientists—are what will help us overcome challenges like Covid-19 and longer term issues like climate change,” said Dr. Rebecca

Tan, editor-in-chief of Asian Scientist Magazine.

“We are committed to shining a spotlight on the scientists who often work behind-the-scenes to bring much needed innovations like new vaccines to the world,” Tan said.

To be considered for the list, the honoree must have been awarded a national or international prize in 2020 for their research, or must have a significant accomplishment in scientific discovery or leadership that benefits academia or industry.

Here are the Filipinos on the Asian Scientist 100:

Can any immediate steps be taken?

For now, governments and health services should invest in bedside oxygen concentrators and generators to supply whole hospital or district needs.

Global agencies should support this in a similar way that vaccines are being scaled up through global partnerships like Covax, or Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access.

There are many global manufacturers of oxygen concentrators and oxygen generators, and there are specifications from the World Health Organization for this equipment.

Supply is tight at present, but production is being scaled up. India recently announced the importation of 10,000 oxygen concentrators.

Health services and their partners should conduct training programs for health-care workers in the use of oxygen technology. This can be done in a relatively short time if there is good planning and management.

In many settings, the use of mechanical ventilators—machines which provide positive pressure to a patient’s airways and lungs through a tube—will not be appropriate.

They require sedation or anaesthesia, close monitoring in an intensive care unit, and the ability to detect and deal with complications, including the effects on the heart and circulation, a major feature of advanced Covid-19 infection.

The drive to acquire mechanical ventilators can be a distraction from scaling up oxygen supplies.

So, the priority should be scaling up oxygen and quality of care and monitoring. There are ways and models to do this, in even the least resourced healthcare settings.

Covid-19 is a long-game; the best time to start implementing effective oxygen systems may have been several years ago, but the next best time is now. Trevor Duke, The University of

Melbourne/The Conversation (CC)

Dr. Kathleen B. Aviso De La Salle University

Dr. Annabelle V. Briones Department of Science and Technology

Dr. Salvacion Gatchalian Research Institute for Tropical Medicine

Dr. Desiree M. Hautea University of the Philippines Los Baños

Aviso was awarded the 2020 Dr. Michael Purvis Award for Sustainability Research for her important contributions to environmental systems engineering as well as developing novel optimization models to guide national and global environmental decision making.

Briones was awarded the 2020 Gregorio Y. Zara Award for Applied Science Research for designing a mosquito ovicidal/larvicidal trap system aimed at reducing the incidence of dengue fever.

Gatchalian was posthumously honored with the Dr. Lourdes Espiritu Campos Award for Public Health for her advocacy for tobacco control and the immunization of children.

Hautea was conferred the 2020 Leads Agriculture Award by the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology for her research into the adoption of the genetically modified Bt eggplant in the Philippines.

Dr. Sandra Teresa V. Navarra University of Santo Tomas Hospital

Dr. Jonel Saludes University of San Agustin

Dr. Francis Aldrine Uy Mapua University

Edgardo G. Vazquez Vazbuilt Technology

Navarra was awarded the Dr. Paulo C. Campos Award for Health Research by the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology for her research on lupus.

Saludes was awarded the 2020 Gregorio Y. Zara Award for Basic Science Research for his research into the chemical biology of natural products from organisms.

Uy is the recipient of the 2020 David M. Consunji Award for Engineering Research for his engineering and innovation projects, including a sensor that monitors the structural integrity of buildings.

Vazquez, known for inventing sturdy, prefabricated modular housing, won the 2020 Ceferino Follosco Award for Product and Process Innovation.

Faith A6 Sunday, May 2, 2021

Sunday

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

Antipolo Cathedral joins global monthlong rosary to end pandemic

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he country’s oldest national shrine, the National Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, also known as the Antipolo Cathedral, is one of the Marian sanctuaries across the world that will lead a Vatican-initiated global prayer marathon to end the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each day in May, there will be a livestream in all Vatican media platforms from one of the 30 chosen Marian shrines to guide a prayer at 6 p.m. Rome time (12 midnight, Manila), with a different prayer intention related to the pandemic.

Pope Francis opened the monthlong rosary initiative on May 1 and will conclude it on May 31 with another specially-broadcast Rosary.

T he A ntipolo Cat hedra l is scheduled on May 7 for the intentions of all the families.

The shrine joins other famous Marian sanctuaries around the world, including the Basilica of the Annunciation in Israel, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico,

Mother Mary’s House in Turkey and Our Lady of Lourdes in France, among others.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines declared the Antipolo Cathedral as a national shrine in 1954, making it not just the first in the country but also in Southeast Asia.

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization has earlier announced the rosary initiative dedicating the whole month of May to prayer for an end of the health crisis.

It takes place under the theme,

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo City. Diocese of Antipolo

“The whole Church was fervently praying to God,” which recalls a verse in the Book of Acts (12:5).

Catholics across the globe are encouraged to dedicate the Marian month of May to praying for an end to the pandemic.

The initiative, behind which the pope has thrown his support, involves 30 Marian Shrines from various parts of the world.

“The initiative will involve all the shrines of the world in a special way, so that they might encourage the faithful, families, and communities to recite the rosary to pray for an end to the pandemic,” read the Vatican statement.

This year’s dedication of May to pandemic-related prayer recalls a similar occurrence during the first wave in March 2020.

Pope Francis led the world in prayer during that confusing and difficult time, celebrating a livestreamed, daily Mass in the Casa Santa Marta.

After more than a year, and with the world still in the grips of the pandemic, the Pope and the Church around the world are once again leading the way in imploring God for an end to the suffering which so many people are forced to bear.

CBCP News and Vatican News

US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion

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hen U S C a t h o l i c bishops hold t heir next national meeting in June, they’ll be deciding whether to send a tougher-thanever message to President Joe Biden and other Catholic politicians: Don’t receive Communion if you persist in public advocacy of abortion rights.

At issue is a document that w il l be prepared for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) by its Committee on Doctrine, with the aim of clarifying the church’s stance on an issue that has repeatedly vexed the bishops in recent decades.

It’s taken on new urgency now, in the eyes of many bishops, because Biden, only the second Catholic president, is the first to hold that office while espousing clearcut support for abortion rights.

“Because President Biden is Catholic, it presents a unique problem for us,” said Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, who chairs the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

“It can create confusion.... How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the church’s teaching?” Naumann asked.

The document, if approved, would make clear the USCCB’s view that Biden and other Catholic public figures with similar view points should not present t hemselves for Communion, Naumann said.

In accordance with existing USCCB policy, it would still leave decisions on withholding Communion up to individual bishops.

In Biden’s case, the top prelates of the jurisdictions where he frequently worships—Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Delaware, and Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C.— have made clear that he may receive Communion at churches they oversee.

The document results from a decision in November by the USCCB’s president, Archbishop

José Gomez of Los Angeles, to form a working group to address the “complex and difficult situation” posed by Biden’s stances on abortion and other issues that differ from official church teaching.

T he do c t r i ne com m it te e, whic h subsequent ly was assigned the document project, has not released details about it.

Bishops will vote in June on whether the committee should continue its work so a document could be publicly released later. Even critics of the initiative predict it will win overwhelming approval.

Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, is among those who worry the USCCB’s emphasis on abortion undercuts Pope Francis’s exhortations also to stress issues, such as climate change, immigration and inequality.

Stowe also worries that the US bishops are missing a chance to find common ground with Biden.

“If a politician is targeted as a negative example by his own church, that sets a sad context in which the church can deal with this Catholic president,” Stowe said. “It contributes to the polarization of the church and of society.”

Nonet he less, t he bi shops wanting to send a tough mes-

sage to Biden are determined to press ahead. “ There’s a growing sense of urgency,” said San Francisco A rc hbi shop Sa lv atore Cordileone. “Abortion is not just one among many impor tant issues.... It’s a direct attack on human life.”

Biden and others “need to understand the scandal that is caused when they say they are faithfully Catholic and yet oppose the church on such a basic concept,” Cordileone said.

This month the Biden administration lifted restrictions on federal funding for research involving human fetal tissue.

It also rescinded a Trump administration policy barring organizations, such as Planned Pa rent hood , f rom receiv i ng federal family planning grants if they also refer women for abortions. And it said women seeking an abortion pill will not be required to visit a doctor’s office or clinic during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Naumann issued vehement denunciations after each action.

Biden “doesn’t have the authority to teach what it means to be Catholic—that’s our responsibility as bishops,” Naumann said, “Whether intentional or

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, attend Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle during Inauguration Day ceremonies in Washington on January 20. AP/Evan Vucci

not, he’s trying to usurp our authority.”

The Vatican has not ruled on the specific matter of Communion and politicians supporting abortion in a major teaching document, though the church’s in-house canon law says people in a situation of persistent sin shouldn’t be allowed to receive Communion.

It has issued guidelines for Catholics in political life exhorting them to uphold principles consistent with church doctrine.

In 2004 the then-head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, told US bishops in response to a question about Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry that priests “must” deny the sacrament if a politician goes to receive Communion despite an “obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin.”

The bishops ultimately ignored Ratzinger’s advice and voted instead for the policy currently in place allowing bishops to decide themselves whether to withhold it.

Cordileone said the document being drafted by the doctrine committee may contain some guidelines for bishops but will not seek to strip their decisionmaking authority.

Edward Peters, who teaches canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, said the USCCB would have the option of seeking Vatican approval for a unified Communion policy applying to all bishops. But he doubted such a request would be made.

“The bishops’ conference does have broad responsibilit y to speak out on matters that impact the effectiveness and clarity of Church’s mission,” Peters said via e-mail. “The bad example being given by some high-profile Catholics who consistently fail to protect innocent human life is surely one of those matters.”

Some Catholic academics are uneasy about the document. AP

Bishop Crispin Varquez of Borongan. Photo from Borongan Cathedral

Borongan bishop warns against lifting mining ban

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llowing more mining operations in the country could prove disastrous on top of the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, warned a Catholic bishop.

Bishop Crispin Varquez of Borongan decried the lifting of the moratorium on new mining projects because it would further “exploit our already muchwounded land.”

“New mining operations will only worsen our environmental crisis on top of this health pandemic,” Varquez said in a recent pastoral letter.

The bishop was reacting to President Duterte’s lifting of the moratorium on new mining deals to boost state revenue and prop up the pandemic-hit economy.

The decision ended the policy imposed in 2012

by President Aquino, following public clamor over a spate of mining accidents.

Varquez also questioned the move due to lack of “dialogue for the common good” among all stakeholders.

“We call on President Rodrigo Duterte to issue again an Executive Order for mining moratorium in the Philippines,” Varquez said.

Eastern Samar hosts decades-old chromite and

nickel mining operations on the historic Homonhon Island in Guiuan town.

Efforts are also reportedly being made to revive the nickel mining operation on Manicani Island, also in Guiuan, that the government shutdown in 2002 over human rights and environmental issues.

Abandoned 26 years ago, the Bagacay mine spill disaster in Western Samar’s Hinabangan town still haunts the affected communities, especially those along the Taft River in Easter Samar.

For the diocese, the island has no history of responsible mining.

“Our local experience provides enough evidence,” Varquez said. “Bagacay, Homonhon and Manicani cry out this truth.”

Samar, the country’s third largest island, is hilly and mountainous. Mining in this area, he added, means lowland communities become more susceptible to flooding and pollution from mining operations.

“Locals may be temporarily employed or benefited. But the long-term consequence of a devastated landscape is also incalculable and irreversible,” Varquez said. CBCP News

Number 153: What is its meaning?

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By Robert Z. Cortes

e are in another season of Easter within this rather strange period in human history. It is a historical moment that is trying both our patience and our faith to their limits.

However, the readings at Masses these days, which remind us of the events that happened after the Resurrection of Christ, are meant to strengthen our flagging faith. One of these is the second miraculous catch of fish.

In the Douay-Rheims translation of the Gospel of John we read that “Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land, full of great fishes, one hundred and fifty-three. And although there were so many, the net was not broken” ( John 21:11 ).

Earlier in the Gospel the resurrected Jesus, whom they had not yet recognized, had told them to cast their net to the right of the boat. They had been fishing the whole night without catching anything, but in doing as Christ said, they hauled in a “multitude of fishes” ( John 21:6 ).

Previously, I had never really given much thought to the number 153. Perhaps, I thought in my ignorance, by being exact about the number of fishes St. John was just trying to show how “real” the event was. Clearly in my case, for whatever reason, the rather abstract concept of “multitude” somehow overshadowed the very exact “one hundred and fifty-three.”

That was before. In the last few months, however, I have had the good fortune of studying the Bible more closely.

Not only am I compelled to read more of both the Old and New Testaments because of my courses in the Polis Institute (a school for ancient languages in Jerusalem), I am now learning Hebrew and Greek, the original languages in which these books were written respectively.

It was this combination of more exposure to the Bible and of learning these languages that has made me see the number 153 in an entirely different light.

As I soon discovered, many great thinkers have already turned this number inside out and have interpreted it as representing the universal Church from different angles.

St. Jerome took the biological route by pointing out that 153 was the number of all known species of fish at that time.

Meanwhile St. Augustine took the mathematical route by pointing out that 153 is the sum that results by adding the whole numbers from 1 to 17. And why 17? Because it is the sum of 10 (representing the 10 Commandments) and 7 (representing the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit).

Both routes suggest that in specifying the number 153, St. John was hinting at the fact that Jesus Christ came to save all the nations of the world, from which would come those that would belong to the universal Church—Christ’s Church.

Yet engaging as those ideas are, what really piqued my interest in 153 had nothing to do with the Church, but with Christ Himself. It was sparked by a passing comment made by a Catholic Bible scholar, Jeff Cavins, which I heard in a podcast. In

it he referred to 153 as a number that pointed to Christ as God. “How does that work?” I asked myself. By coincidence, just a couple of weeks ago, we had to learn the number equivalence of each letter in the Hebrew alphabet. This lesson was just what I needed for me to answer my question.

In Psalms 46:10 , we read: “Be still and know that I am God.” The original Hebrew words used for “I am God” are ‫( ם י ִ ה ֹ ל ֱא י ִ כ ֹנָא‬pronounced from left to right “anokhi Elohim,” and literally means “I God”).

However, there is a shorter form for the pronoun “I” and a very slightly different spelling of “Elohim,” and using those forms we write “I am God” in Hebrew as ‫( ם י ִהֹו ל ֱא י ִ נ ֲא‬pronounced from left to right “ani Elohim”).

Using the number equivalents of each letter in the latter Hebrew phrase, we see that ‫ = י ִ נ ֲא‬1 + 50 + 10 = 61, and that ‫ = ם י ִהֹו ל ֱא‬1 + 30 + 6 + 5 + 10 + 40 = 92. If we add those two sums, 61 and 92, we get 153.

The suggestion here is that in making the apostles catch the “great multitude of fishes…153” just by his word, Christ was not only providing them breakfast, but likewise telling them “I am God.” Christ always provides for our bodies and our souls.

My suspicion is that whoever came up with this interpretation worked his way backwards. Yet I have to say that this was an inspired, if not brilliant, piece of deduction (and by “inspired,” I don’t necessarily suggest “divinely inspired”).

In any case, whether made backwards or forwards, I will admit that this interpretation has changed the way I regard and will read the Scriptures.

It has convinced me that the ability to read the ancient languages of Hebrew and Greek—even Latin—really does opens doors in the study of Scriptures.

Understandably, of course, this sort of Hebrew numerology, technically termed as gematria, may be dismissed by many as silly or even insignificant, as far as Biblical exegesis is concerned.

However, what it is not is uninteresting. It has certainly piqued the interest of one like me who began his education in the exact sciences but has slowly and steadily made his way into the heart of the humanities and of what it means to be human—the languages.

Indeed, in my short foray into gematria, since I first discovered it a couple of weeks ago, I have already encountered quite a few things which I can only describe as very exciting.

Very exciting not only for the new knowledge horizons they are opening, but also—and more importantly—for the stronger convictions in faith that I feel they are now working within me.

Cortes is assistant professor of Communication Ethics in the University of Asia and the Pacific. He has a PhD in Social Communications from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, Italy, and is completing a Certificate in Ancient Philology in The Polis Institute of Ancient Languages and the Humanities in Jerusalem, Israel.

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

GIVING VALUE TO BIODIVERSITY The rarest crocodile species in the world TO HELP RESTORE THE EARTH

Saving the Philippine crocodile

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

released on the island are able to adapt to the harsh conditions and are now breeding.

h e effor ts to save the Philippine crocodile, also known as Mindoro crocodile ( Crocodylus mindorensis )— the rarest and the most threatened crocodile species in the world—are slowly paying off and offering renewed hope for this critically endangered species.

Commonly called buwaya, there are only around 100 Philippine adult crocodiles left in the wild with small populations in southwestern Mindanao and northern Luzon.

Not applicable to all wildlife species

Different species

T

he recent launch of the global report, “Economics of Biodiversity: Dasgupta Review,”has once again revitalized discussions around the question: “How does one live a sustainable life and help restore the Earth?”

These conversations came at a timely opportunity in the recent April 22 celebration of Earth Day. With the report asserting that“our economies are embedded within nature, not external to it,” economic and environmental experts are now compelled to think about sustainable ways forward for people, planet and profit.

In line with this, the Asean Centre for Biodiversity has initiated a webinar series on Conservation Financing. The first session of the webinar series, “Introduction to Economics of Biodiversity and Conservation Finance,” was held online on April 7, ACB said in a news release.

ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim, in her remarks, pressed that essential services—such as water, clean air, flood mitigation and food supply— are provided by healthy ecosystems.

“Being able to value these contributions will present an even better case why one should pay closer attention to our high biodiversity areas such as our protected areas and Asean Heritage Parks, and invest in them,” she said.

The region’s protected areas, especially the Asean Heritage Parks (AHPs), play a vital role in sustaining natural capital and the accompanying ecosystem services that provide the needed raw materials for most industries that drive the region’s economy, Lim said.

However, the sustainable management of these critical areas is hindered by insufficient financing.

Conservation Finance Alliance Executive Director David Meyers discussed the different funding tools available for conservation. He defined conservation finance as “mechanisms and strategies that generate, manage and deploy financial resources and align incentives to achieve nature conservation outcomes.”

To increase capital for conservation and bridge the $316 billion annual biodiversity finance gap, Meyers shared seven finance mechanisms: returnbased investments, economic instruments, grants and other transfers, business and markets, public financial management, risk management and financial efficiency.

The Biodiversity Conservation and Management

of Protected Areas in Asean Project of the ACB and the European Union supports the Asean member-states (AMS) in reducing biodiversity loss.

The persistent gap in financing for the protection and management of protected areas led to the ongoing study on Conservation Financing for five AHPs under the BCAMP funding support.

Two of the researchers on conservation financing shared preliminary results for the Eastern Forest Complex in Thailand and the Virachey National Park in Cambodia during the webinar.

In Cambodia, Virachey National Park, at its current area of 332,500 hectares, has an approximate 115,030,970 (MgC) tons of carbon stored in its vast array of forest ecosystems potentially to be counted as carbon credits.

This, according to Dr. Chou Phanith, may be adequate to finance biodiversity conservation and livelihoods in the national park.

Meanwhile, in the Eastern Forest Complex of Thailand, the environmental impacts of the proposed flooding of the Ang Rue Nai Wildlife sanctuary for water supply threaten critical elephant habitat.

It was shared during the online session how the bid to restore the complex’s ecosystem can significantly reduce the risks for both elephants and humans.

Data shows that the Philippine forests and coral reefs could generate approximate $300 per hectare per year and $450 per hectare per year, respectively, the news release said.

However, despite being one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a gap exists in the allocated funds for the management of protected areas.

Protected area managers and key environment officials from the AMS discussed potential efforts to augment revenue and diversify sources of funds to finance conservation across the region, the ACB news release said.

On April 27, the second session to the conservation finance webinar series held an in-depth discussion of the economics of biodiversity taking off from the recommendations of the Dasgupta Review.

The webinar aims to identify and explore actions and priorities in the Asean context and build a good case for investing in nature and biodiversity-related actions, including protected areas.

Slow loris rescued in Tawi-Tawi

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AVAO CITY—A Philippine slow loris was rescued from a resident in Tawi-Tawi, the Bangsamoro Ministr y of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (Menre) said.

Locally known as “kokam,” the animal was found by a resident in a malnourished condition in barangay Mandulan, in the municipality of Bongao.

It was held captive for a few months before it was rescued, the Menre said.

“The slow loris is now being monitored to determine if it has any diseases or if it is already capable of aclimatizing to its natural diet and habitat,” said Tawi-Tawi First District Community Enre Officer Saido Espiliro.

The Tawi-Tawi Enre Office and the Police Provincial Office in Baywalk, Pahut, Bongao, jointly conducted the rescue.

The Bangsamoro Information Office quoted Emerson Sy, executive director of the Philippine Center for Terrestrial and Aquatic Research, as saying that this was the second time a Philippine slow loris was rescued from captivity in the last decade. The first was in 2019 in the municipality of Simunul, also in Tawi-Tawi province.

The Menre Tawi-Tawi has eyed Bud Kabugan as a release site to ensure the animal’s safety.

The information office said the capture of the slow loris was an opportunity for the Menre “to launch a community-wide ecological awareness campaign to gain the residents’ commitment to not hunt, collect, harm and trade wildlife species.”

The loris belongs to the family of primates known as Lorisidae, which has nine genera and over 25 species, according to the Vietnam-based Endangered Primate Rescue Center (EPRC).

The family includes the loris of Asia and the galagos and pottos of Africa. The eight species of loris currently recognized range across India, Sri

H ow e v e r, don’t mistake the Philippine c ro c o d i l e f ro m t h e s a l t w a t e r c ro c o dile ( Crocodylus porosus ).

Philippine crocodiles are freshwater crocodiles. They can grow to a maximum of 3 meters long. They live in freshwater rivers and creeks, and in small lakes, ponds and marshes.

They have enlarged scales in the neck.

A saltwater crocodile can grow up to 6 meters long. They live in mangroves, coastal waters, large rivers and lakes. And have small scales in the neck, said Marites Gatan-Balbas, COO of Mabuwaya Foundation Inc.

Saving crocodiles

T h e saltwater crocodile is listed globally under the category of “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.

However, in the Philippines, like the Philippine crocodile, the saltwater crocodile is considered critically endangered because of its declining population in the wild.

As it is allowed to be traded under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna, crocodile farming began in 1987 with the establishment of the Palawan Crocodile Farm with the Philippine government as the main proponent.

It is with the hope that with the breeding, both species of crocodiles could be released into the wild later in order to help repopulate known crocodile habitats.

Along with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and its Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENRBMB), which oversees the operation of the Palawan Crocodile Farm, at the forefront of the effort to conserve the Philippine crocodile are two nongovernment organizations—the Mabuwaya Foundation Inc. and the Crocodylus Porosus Philippines Inc. (CPPI).

Both the Mabuwaya Foundation and CPPI are into research, conservation work, communication, education and public awareness campaigns about crocodiles.

Mabuwaya Foundation

F o und e d in 2003 by Dutch scientists and Filipino conser vationists, Mabuwaya has been involved in Philippine crocodile research and conser vation after a baby crocodile was turned over by a fisherman in San Mariano, Isabela, narrated GatanBalbas.

Mabuwaya is also working for the conservation of other threatened species.

It is helping local governments in declaring local conser vation areas for flying foxes, Isabela oriole, Philippine duck, freshwater fish and sea turtles in the provinces of Cagayan and Isabela, and is assisting them develop management plans for each LCA.

Philippine crocodile Jake B. Binaday/CPPI

It is also implementing various programs to help protect and conserve the environment.

“We support reforestation and agroforestry development and we assist indigenous communities in Isabela and Cagayan provinces with sustainable green livelihood programs,” Gatan-Balbas said.

Why save Philippine crocodile?

A s k e d why the need to save the Philippine crocodile, Gatan-Balbas gave a number of reasons. But easily, she said: “The Philippine crocodile can only be found in the Philippines and that is something to be proud of.”

“The Philippine crocodile is as much part of our natural and cultural heritage as the Philippine Eagle, or other endemic species. The Philippines has a responsibility to conserve all its endemic species, and has signed international treaties to that effect,“ she added.

Philippine crocodile plays an important role in Philippine indigenous cultures, in folk stories and in literature.

“Even [National Hero] Jose Rizal has written about the Philippine crocodile,” she said.

Working with LGUs

A s a key predator at the top of the food chain, the Philippine crocodile eats a wide range of prey.

“It eats the weak fish so it keeps the fish population healthy. It eats pests, such as rats and golden apple snail [kuhol] so it actually helps farmers in controlling pests in rice fields,” Gatan-Balbas said, adding that the species is helping save wetland environments.

The Mabuwaya Foundation is working with various LGUs to protect and conserve the Philippine crocodile with the hope of making the unique species a tourist attraction.

In San Mariano, Isabela, a total of eight Philippine crocodile sanctuaries were successfully set up.

While in Maconacon, Isabela, the group helped the LGU put up a saltwater crocodile sanctuary, the first in the Philippines.

“LGU Divilacan [in Isabela] also declared Dicatian Lake as a Philippine crocodile sanctuary,” Gatan-Balbas said.

Head-start program

T h e foundation has been implementing a so-called head-star t program for the Philippine crocodile.

Every year, during the breeding season from March to August, community wardens, or Bantay Sanktuwaryo, search crocodile nests.

Once located, they protect and guard the nest from human intrusion and predators.

Once the eggs are hatched, the baby

crocodiles are brought to the Municipal Philippine Crocodile Rearing Station in San Mariano, where they are raised under protective condition for two years before they are released back into the wild. “ This helps them survive the critical first two years, when normally about 95 percent of them would die in the wild as a result of predation, lack of food and strong water currents. In the rearing station, 70 percent of them survive, so head-starting decreases infant crocodile mortality drastically,” GatanBalbas said.

Since the head-star ting program of Mabuwaya started in 2007, more than 150 juvenile crocodiles have been released into the wild.

Unfortunately, she said, many of the released crocodiles have not survived to adult reproductive age.

Captive breeding

Mabu waya Foundation is planning to start captive breeding soon.

“We are not yet into captive breeding, but we have two crocodiles [male and female] with disabilities that we cannot release back into the wild because they may not be able to survive,” Gatan-Balbas said.

However, she said they are establishing a Philippine Crocodile Conservation Center to breed them.

The facility will also serve as a one-stop shop for tourists who would like to see Philippine crocodiles.

Crocodylus Porosus

Establis h e d in 2000, CPPI was formed by six commercial crocodile farms in the Philippines. It has been working with government agencies in conserving the two species of crocodiles in the country.

Of the six commercial crocodile farmmembers of CPPI, two are into captivebreeding the Philippine crocodile, said Rainier I. Manalo, marine biologist and program head for crocodile research at CPPI told the B usiness M irror via Zoom on April 27.

Through the CPPI, 36 progenies of the Philippine crocodile were released in the Paghungawan Marsh on Siargao Island in March 2013. Another 29 were released on the same area in June 2017.

Some of the crocodiles that were released in 2013 are now starting to breed, said Manalo, one of the country’s leading researchers on the Philippine crocodile.

Some years back, the discover y of crocodile nests and eggs revealed the good news: that the progenies of the first batch of Philippine crocodile bred in captivity and

Du r ing the same Zoom meeting, Teri Aquino, a consultant at CPPI and a member of the Crocodile Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, said captive breeding only works with some wildlife species.

“Not a lot of wildlife species flourish in captivity,” Aquino said.

“We are fortunate that the crocodile is amendable to captive breeding. [This is good only] as long as you can provide enough space, the right ratio of water and dryland, and of shelter so they wouldn’t get stressed. Over the years, we have learned what is amenable to them and what is not,” she said.

A boost to conservation

A m o ng crocodiles, commercial farms that are into ex-situ breeding helps in-situ conservation, Aquino said.

“In crocodiles, even commercial farming feeds into in-situ conservation. This is a good strategy for crocodile conservation globally. Anywhere you go, like in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, the crocodile farmers set aside funds for the conservation of crocodiles of their country,” she said.

According to Aquino, crocodile farmers are the biggest source of funds for conservation in most countries.

Asean treasures

Theresa Mundita S. Lim, executive director of the Asean Centre for Biodiversity, said Asean treasures like the Philippine crocodile, and the Crocodylus siamensis common to Thailand and other neighboring countries, such as Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar, need to be protected.

“They are Asean endemics. They are impor tant because they have limited distribution,” Lim, a former DENR-BMB d i re c t o r t o l d t h e B u s i n e s s M i r r o r v i a Messenger on April 24.

Asked on the prospect of commercial f a rm i n g P h i l i p p i n e c ro co d i l e, l i ke i t s saltwater cousins, Lim said they are native to the Philippines. The first option to take in conserving them must be to protect them in their natural habitat and to make sure that there is also good genetic diversity in the wild.

“Farming can be a complementary action if there are threats to their natural habitat that cannot be immediately addressed, such as destruction of the wetland areas and the breeding grounds or heavy poaching,” she said.

“I mentioned complementary, because the propagation of the Philippine crocodile will not be an effec tive conser vation measure on its own. There must be parallel activities that will protect and restore their habitat so that they can eventually be reintroduced and once again perform their ecological function in the natural environment,” Lim said.

The Philippines remains one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots because of the rapid rate of biodiversity loss due to habitat loss.

Other than that, hunting in the wild, such as that of crocodiles, continues to drive this already critically endangered species to the brink of extinction. Saving them will take more than successful captive breeding. Keeping their habitats safe and intact as well is a must.

Colgate-Palmolive PHL, Green Antz reach first milestone in plastic waste management initiative

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The Philippine slow loris, locally known as “kokam,” that was rescued in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi. Bangsamoro Information office Lanka and the Southeast Asia up to southern China, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The EPRC said that “like every other primate, a loris’s fingers and toes have nails although their second toe has a claw.

This characteristic allows the animal to climb trees skillfully despite their slow movement.

However, it does not prefer to travel on the ground and needs a closed tree canopy for an easy walk.

Loris loves to eat insects and tree sap for which it can forage themselves by drilling holes into tree bark and extract the tree sap with their relatively sharp teeth In 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified it as vulnerable due to decreasing population caused by human encroachment into its natural habitat for pet trade. Janine de la Cruz

olgate-Palmolive Philippines and Green Antz Builders recently reached the initial milestone of their plastic waste management program—they turned over the first of a series of “Wash and Brush Stations” that was made in part of plastic-sachet waste, to the municipality of Pulilan.

The two companies have been collaborating to divert plastic waste from the environment with their Closed Loop Plastic Waste Management Program in partnership with five local government units (LGUs) and 62 schools in Bulacan.

Green Antz is an innovative, visionary provider of building and housing solutions integrating eco-friendly practices and green technologies in its products and services, and is known for its ecobricks, eco-pavers, and other materials composed, in part, of waste plastic sachets.

T h e c o m p a n y ’s t a g l i n e i s “ C re a t i n g Sustainability. Challenging Poverty. Now.” The turnover was led by Colgate-Palmolive Philippines President and General Manager Arvind Sachdev, and Green Antz President and CEO Rommel Benig.

The Wash and Brush Station was received

by Pulilan Mayor Maria Rosario Ochoa-Montejo.

The handwashing station, constructed with Green Antz eco-bricks located at the Pulilan Public Market, was a joint effort with the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office, headed

by Roberto Cruz, the Department of Education (DepEd), through District Supervisor Dr. Ana Liza Villanueva, and community members and organizations.

At t h e t u r n o ve r, O c h o a - M o n te j o s a i d safeguarding the environment is a major challenge to the LGU. “We cannot do it alone. But we do not despair.

We are inspired by Colgate-Palmolive Philippines,

by Green Antz, by our NGOs [nongovernment organizations] in Pulilan for putting the environment first. This is an advocacy. We are grateful for the help you are extending. Let us continue working hand in hand to preserve our surroundings and the planet,” she said.

S a c h d e v s a i d : “At Co l g a t e - Pa l m o l i v e Philippines, we are committed to help create a healthier and more sustainable future for everyone.

We have pledged to allocate resources to divert plastic waste from landfills and oceans, toward our goal of helping eliminate plastic waste and

recovering the equivalent amount of plastic we generate in the market.”

“We welcome this partnership with Green Antz, the different LGUs of Bulacan, and the [DepEd] as it not only helps to divert plastic waste but it also fulfills the advocacy of Colgate-Palmolive Philippines of educating our students and the community on proper waste management, and instilling new behavior and understanding about environmental responsibility,” Sachdev added.

“By helping to collect plastic waste, we are able to make Wash and Brush Stations available to the schools and the community. These handwashing stations are most appropriate at this time to help inculcate proper hygiene and cleanliness within the community. This is only the start for us in our efforts to address plastic waste,” Sachdev said.

He noted that some 18,000 discarded plastic sachets were used in the construction of the first handwashing station.

He said the company is doing its part in providing every Filipino with more sustainable products.

These are the biodegradable Colgate bamboo toothbrush, the recycle-ready Palmolive Shampoo

sachets and Palmolive Soap cartons, and soon Colgate Toothpaste in recyclable tubes.

“This way we are increasing the acceptability of our products’ packaging in the recycling stream,” Sachdev said.

For his par t, Benig said at Green Antz “we are glad to share this simple milestone toward environmental sustainability. Even as a handwashing station is highly relevant in helping people to keep healthy during the pandemic, we can collaborate to transform waste into a resource of value.”

He added: “We are glad that more and more people are joining the Green movement. If we combine forces and help each other, we can successfully address the plastic waste crisis.”

Besides Pulilan, the Closed Loop Plastic Waste Management Program of Colgate -Palmolive Philippines and Green Antz Builders involves the LGUs of Baliwag, Malolos City, Plaridel and San Ildefonso.

It also involves more than five dozen schools, where plastic waste is collected, then is processed into eco-bricks and used to construct handwashing stations.

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | S

unday,

May 2, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

GAME CHANGER IN ISRAELI SOCCER R

AMAT GAN, Israel—An Israeli soccer referee has come out as transgender and is living—and enforcing the rules of the game—as the only woman in the country’s top-shelf league.

Sapir Berman announced Tuesday she has received the support of her family, the local referees’ union and Israeli and international soccer officials. She said players and fans have begun to address her as a woman, even when they gripe about her calls on the field.

On Sunday, Berman was the head referee for a playoff match between heavyweight teams Hapoel Haifa and Beitar Jerusalem.

It will be a marquee event on Berman’s lifelong road to living, as she said Tuesday, as herself.

“I always saw myself as a woman, from a young age,” Berman, whose birth name was “Sagi,” told reporters at Ramat Gan Stadium, headquarters of the Israel Football Association.

“I realized society will not accept me, will not be on my side, so I continued like this for nearly 26 years,” she said.

Berman said that being involved in such a male-dominated profession made her hesitate to go public. But about six months ago, “I decided to come out and to show who I am, first of all to myself, for my soul,” she said with a smile.

Fans and players quickly took notice, she said, addressing her with the feminine form of Hebrew words—a change Berman chooses to see as a sign of respect for her decision to transition.

Israeli soccer officials stood behind Berman at Tuesday’s news conference in a room above the

stadium’s playing field.

“We have a new referee, Sapir Berman,” the Israel Football Association tweeted. “We are so proud.”

Berman’s decision to come out, and stay on at the Israeli Premiere League, comes at a time when gay and transgender people are achieving higher profiles and acceptance in some parts of the world.

Last week, Caitlyn Jenner—an Olympic hero, reality TV personality and transgender rights activist—joined a growing list of candidates seeking to oust California Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.

And a British soccer referee came out as transgender in 2018. Lucy Clark, formerly known as Nick, has said she hopes to become a “game changer.”

“Look, it hasn’t been all roses and tinsel,” the 49-year-old Clark said in a telephone interview from her home in London. Once in awhile, she’ll get hecklers who might have had something to drink. And recently, Clark corrected someone who had wrongly identified her gender during a game, which didn’t go over smoothly.

But “overwhelmingly, it’s been a positive experience,” because most people accept the change and focus on the soccer, she said.

“You tell Sapir for me, they will” accept her transformation, Clark said. “When she sees her name on the program, and when Sapir goes out on to the pitch and the announcer announces that today’s men’s referee is Sapir, she’ll do brilliantly.”

There’s also troubling, or at least inconclusive,

SAPIR BERMAN’S decision to come out comes at a time when gay and transgender people are achieving higher profiles and acceptance in some parts of the world. AP news around the world for transgender people, particularly on the legal front.

In the US, five states have passed laws or put in force other policies limiting the ability of transgender youths to play sports or receive certain medical treatment. There’s been a vehement outcry from supporters of transgender rights—but little in the way of tangible repercussions for those states.

Israel is generally progressive on LGBTQ rights, but some soccer matches are played in conservative communities. The match on Sunday that Bergman will lead is scheduled at Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa, one of the most tolerant areas of the country.

So far, Berman said, there have been no problems from fans. That’s notable, said one expert, because transgender people are generally socially accepted by Israelis. But the lack of heckling also can be credited to the early and unequivocal support of the IFA and other Israeli soccer institutions.

“It’s a good thing; it was a pre-emptive move on their part to send the signal of acceptance,” said Eran Globus, policy adviser and former chairperson of Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. He said no men’s soccer players have come out as gay. “I think Sapir will be a beacon on that frontier.”

Israel is one of the world’s most progressive countries on LGBTQ rights, despite its image as a society struggling with religious coercion. Gay and transgender people can serve openly in Israel’s military and the Knesset, for example. AP

Japan’s Olympic chief marks pride week with LGBTQ event

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OKYO—The head of the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday took part in an event marking Japan’s LGBTQ pride week at a center in the capital, as activists and dozens of lawmakers pushed for an equality law to be enacted before the games begin in less than three months.

Seiko Hashimoto visited Pride House Tokyo, an international initiative to provide a place for LGBTQ people and others to connect during the games. The first Pride House was set up during the 2010 Winter Games.

Japan is the only country in the Group of Seven major industrialized nations where same-sex marriages are not legally recognized. A Japanese court ruled last month that samesex marriage should be allowed under the constitution, although the ruling has no immediate legal effect.

“We need to take action now,” Hashimoto said, adding that she wants people to remember the Tokyo Games as a “turning point in achieving diversity and harmony, including understanding for LGBTQ” issues. Hashimoto toured Pride House and met with LGBTQ activists, including athletes, for talks.

Elsewhere in Tokyo, over 40 lawmakers and their aides from the governing and opposition parties—all wearing matching rainbow-colored face masks—as well as activists and supporters gathered in person and online for what they called a Rainbow Parliament event to push for enactment of an LGBTQ equality act. Tennis great and equal rights advocate Billie Jean King also sent a video message of support.

Late last month, activists submitted a petition with over 106,000 signatures to the governing and opposition parties calling for an equality law before the Tokyo Games begin on July 23. They say momentum for the legislation is growing as Japan gets more attention over its handling of gender equality, diversity and other rights issues.

“We hope to speed up an enactment of the equality act,” said Yuri Igarashi, co-chair of the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation.

Kanako Otsuji, a lesbian lawmaker from the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, said she was a target of bullying at school. “I was often called a ‘manly girl’ and bullied,” she said.

“Many people cannot speak up because of fear of discrimination. Then how can we change the situation? Legal protection is the only way,” she said. “For the children of the next generation to not face this kind of bullying, we need antidiscrimination laws.”

Many sexual minorities still hide their sexual identities in Japan, fearing discrimination at school, work and even from their families. In addition, transgender people must have their reproductive organs removed before their gender can be changed on official documents—a requirement that international medical experts and human-rights groups criticize as inhumane.

Aki Nomiya, a transgender activist, said people whose appearances and official records don’t match feel especially vulnerable. “Unless we are free of fear of prejudice and discrimination, we cannot live peacefully,” she said.

Gon Matsunaka, who heads Pride House Tokyo and led Hashimoto on the tour, said the sports world remains unfriendly to LGBTQ people because of its gender specificity.

“In many sports, players are divided between men and women. In sports, masculinity is often emphasized because of competition in speed and power, and sexual minorities are often made fun of or harassed,” Matsunaka said. AP SEIKO HASHIMOTO wants the Tokyo Olympics to be a turning point in achieving diversity and harmony, including understanding for LGBTQ issues. AP

Tier One Entertainment to set up first content creation hub in PHL

By Tyrone Jasper Piad

G

AMING and eSports company Tier One Entertainment will establish its first content creation hub in the Philippines after securing funding from a recent Preseries A round.

In a statement on Thursday, the company announced that Gobi Partners led the fundraising program through its joint-venture fund with Core Capital and US record label conglomerate Warner Music Group Corp.

Singapore-based Octava, Japanese Internet firm KAYAC Inc. and Atlas Ventures—which is the company’s early-stage investor—have also infused funding to this round whose amount was not disclosed.

Besides setting up a content creation hub, Tier One Entertainment said it can also widen its presence in other Asian countries with the capital infusion. It is currently operating in the Philippines, Malaysia and Myanmar.

Proceeds are also earmarked to hire back-end teams that will further support the company’s talents. This, in addition to expanding eSports operations in Tier One’s eSports team Blacklist International.

With Tier One securing support from capital firms, founder and CEO Tryke Gutierrez said the company is “now poised for explosive growth.”

“The gaming industry is going through a golden age and this funding will help accelerate our growth by allowing us to replicate our success in other markets. In just a few years of operations, we’ve found a winning formula in eSports and gaming by developing a robust business model around top tier content creation and authentic distribution,” Gutierrez said.

Tier One Entertainment Cofounder Alodia Gosiengfiao, meanwhile, expressed her gratitude toward the investors, noting that the funding can bring the “company to the next level.”

“We have come a long way since our first business meeting at my home in 2017. With the growth of mobile gaming, streaming and eSports as an avenue for youth entertainment, we came up with the foresight to develop and house these talents by building our very own YG Entertainment of gaming,” said Gosiengfiao, who is also a famous cosplayer.

Tier One Entertainment is also backed up

by Bitkraft Ventures and Atlas Ventures during its seeding round. The company’s clients include GroupM, Foodpanda, Unilever, Riot games, Samsung and Smart Communications, among others.

The company has 420 talents with a cumulative reach of 100.9 million on Facebook, 23.5 million on Youtube, 11.8 million on Instagram, and 9.1 million on Tiktok.

Iran gets 4-year ban from world judo body over anti-Israel policy

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AUSANNE, Switzerland—Iran was suspended by judo’s world governing body on Thursday as punishment for refusing to let its athletes face opponents from Israel.

The International Judo Federation imposed a four-year ban after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ordered a disciplinary review last month which said a previous indefinite ban was not allowed.

The CAS judges had been tough on Iranian officials from the national Olympic and judo bodies and government sports ministry, saying the case “clearly reveals an institutionalized scheme” to prevent athletes facing Israelis.

The case began when former world champion Saeid Mollaei left the Iranian team in 2019, claiming he was ordered to lose world championships matches to avoid facing Israelis.

The ban—backdated to start in 2019 and run into September 2023—is provisional and can be lifted if the Iranian judo federation respects its rules on discrimination and accepts to compete with Israel.

The IJF said Thursday it “continues to defend the fundamental human values and rights of all its members, with a special emphasis on the rights of athletes and reiterates its commitment to fight against any form of discrimination in the sport of judo.”

Until the Iranian policy toward Israel changes, its judokas cannot compete at IJF events, including world championships, and officials cannot take part in the world governing body’s work.

The ban does not affect Iranian judokas going to the Tokyo Olympics because that team is sent by the national Olympic body and not the national judo federation.

Iranian officials can again challenge the IJF verdict at CAS. Mollaei fled to Germany in 2019 and has since switched national eligibility to compete for Mongolia in a move approved by the International Olympic Committee.

The United States, meanwhile, will open its second chance to qualify for the baseball tournament at the Tokyo Olympics when it faces Nicaragua on May 31 at Port St. Lucie, Florida.

The US, managed by Mike Scioscia, plays the Dominican Republic the next day at West Palm Beach in a Baseball Americas Qualifier, the World Baseball Softball Confederation announced Thursday. It closes first-round play in Group A against Puerto Rico on June 2 at Port St. Lucie, Canada, Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela are in Group B. AP IRAN’S Saeid Mollaei of Iran (top) competes against Kazakhstan’s Didar Khamza in the men’s – 81 kgs final at the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta in August 2018. AP

BusinessMirror

May 2, 2021

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube pressed on ‘poisonous’ algorithms

2

BusinessMirror MAY 2, 2021 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM Japanese Breakfast showcases newfound confidence in upcoming release

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

Group Creative Director : Eduardo A. Davad Graphic Designers Contributing Writers

Columnists

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

MICHELLE Zauner a.k.a. Japanese Breakfast during a recent Zoom meeting with SoundStrip and other members of the media.

A

By Stephanie Joy Ching

FTER the success of her second studio album Soft Sounds From Another Planet, Japanese Breakfast, the solo musical project of KoreanAmerican artist, Michelle Zauner, has recently the announced the release of her third and by far, most ambitious album to date, Jubilee.

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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

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According to Zauner, the third album represents a lot of things, both as an artist and as a person.

‘I thought a lot about the third record and what a third album means in the discography of an artist,” she said. “I think for a lot of artists, for the second record you make there’s a lot of pressure. The first record, I thought was maybe successful as an accident, so I had so much pressure preparing the second album. I was really, really stressed out, and after it did quite well I felt so much relief. And for this third album I felt like I had this new confidence like; ‘okay, you know what you’re doing, it wasn’t an accident, now you can just be really ambitious and put your best foot forward,’” Compared to the first two albums, Jubilee’s theme of joy and hope is both

unexpected yet a “natural progression” from the gloomy atmosphere of the prior albums.

“I wanted to write an album about joy because my first two records Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet were largely about the death of my mother and about grief and trauma, a lot of really dark heavy material. Even the colors of the albums were this kind of melancholic blue, red and dark black. In my head, I just saw like a yellow image and a lot of warm tones for the next record,” she added.

Additionally, Zauner stated that she took theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time during quarantine, which she felt helped make her songwriting more “mature” and ambitious in nature.

“For the first time, I felt really confident to try to do string and brass arrangements, so we have like a string quartet, we also have saxophone and trumpets and trombones. There’s a lot more instrumentation and I think the sound is much bigger,” she shared.

Other than being a light at the end of some extremely bleak chapters in Zauner’s life, the album also allowed Zauner to explore her “sassy 80’s diva” side with the album’s lead single, “Be Sweet.” Another natural jumping off point from Soft Sounds’ synthesizer instrumentals, the single allowed Zauner to experiment with blending city pop and classic 80’s musicalities.

This led “Be Sweet” to becoming an elegant, smooth and sassy girl power song that fits Zauner’s vocals so well, it’s hard to believe that Zauner almost didn’t sing it.

“I originally thought we were going write it to maybe sell to some pop artist,” she recalled. “So the style of the writing is more pop oriented, kinda like a sassy 80’s diva like Janet Jackson or Madonna.

We just wanted to write something fun but I ended up really falling in love with it so I decided to keep it.”

Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee is scheduled for release this June, 2021.

Her latest singles, “Be Sweet” and “Posing for Bondage” are now available in major streaming platforms.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | MAY 2, 2021

BUSINESS

3

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

AGILE BATTLE RHYMERS

NEW MUSIC TO SOUNDTRACK YOUR SUNDAY ESCAPADE death growls and thrash metal blasts that permeate the band’s first album post a 10’ in extreme metal scale.

Still, where that debut managed to slip moments of ethereality in a female voice, SSG’s sophomore release offers reprieve from the doomy ambience in occasional emo male vocals as counterpoint to the hairraising howls. Oh, there’s a second solace in lyrics that acknowledge a Greater God will give hell to the Coronavirus freak. Otherwise, “Petrochar’ which translates to Patron is unrelenting, heavy and categorically, an acquired taste.

Silken Plangken Plink Orchestra, BUMI

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OCKSTEADY fans CoffeeBreak Island and Wuds’ Bobby Balingit named their musical collaboration Silken Plangken Plink Orchestra apparently on a whim but it does not make the resulting album titled BUMI whimsical. Far from it.

Bumi is the Sanskrit word for Earth and true to its origin, the namesake album is filled with songs with an Earthly connection like the air (“Hangin”), water (“Agos”), fire (“Apoy ng Alitaptap”) and the moon (“Unang Buwan”). The music however resounds neither in CBI’s roots reggae or Balingit’s ‘80s punk attack. The overall sound draws closer to soft rock and strummy folk allowing CBI frontman Paul Puti-an to sing the words cleanly, especially on the track that pays tribute to the artists’ community in Amadeo, Cavite.

Well, the players give themselves some room for creative stretches in the “Yaman ng Mundo” which appears inspired by “At Nakalimutan Ang Diyos” and the classical piano reverie in the 8-minute instrumental, “Unang Buwan.” You can’t ask for more in a crazy time of lockdowns and quarantines.

RINGING up the name of a former pornstar is a charming promotional gimmick but the Cagayan do Oro-based metal band called Saving Sasha Grey (SSG) hardly traffics in cuteness. The

AVE Grohl invited Brit indie rockers The Cribs to record their newest album on his L.A. studio. Previous to this, The Cribs were supposed to be no more than a footnote in history of rock in the 2020.

It comes as no surprise that the UK trio kickstarts their latest release, “Night Network” with “Goodbye.” It turns out to be a false start, probably an in-joke among the members and the ensuing three heady pop-rockers starting with the gorgeous “Running Into You” are a swirl of melodic noise, combining post-millennial indie rock crunch with the finest harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys and the Hollies.

From then onwards, the guitars lead the charge and the killer hooks pop up at every turn except for moody grunge takeover in “Under the Bus Station Clock.” One thing’s sure: The Cribs are rolling once more.

ARMED POETS, Armed Poets, Vol. 1

R

IGHT at the opening track, Armed Poets proclaim their manifesto: “Armado pero kalmado.”

Subsequently, they boast about “Mga titik na pumapatay” and “Kami ang boses na gagambala/ May utak na matalinhaga.”

Over a three-chord note, they sling: “Kung ang dila ko lang ay baril/Malamang tadtad ka na ng bala” in “Limitasyon” which is the second part of their easy-going prickly tirade against pretenders, fakes and wannabes. But yo! These eggheads can be also cloyingly baduy lovers as they dish out. “Pag-ibig mo sa akin di ko sasayangin/ Wala nang hahanapin basta’t ika’y kapiling” in “Alay.”

It’s sweet and sour for these agile battle rhymers.

SAVING SASHA GREY, Petrochar

B

D

THE CRIBS, Night Network

CHRIS STAPLETON, Starting Over

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NTIL he released his Grammy-winning “Traveller” in 2015, Chris Stepleton was just a sought-after songwriter to both veteran and newcomer in the US country music scene. Now a certified star, Chris puts out his fourth and latest album that’s oddly titled “Starting Over.”

For one, he isn’t actually rebooting a stalled career. For another, his music on the new album crosses over to the blues, to the rock of Allman Brothers and Steve Earle and to hillbilly boogie, which was influential in the rise of rockabilly.

Overall though, Stapleton’s grasp of hooks is firmly entrenched in the titular opener, the boisterous rock and roll of “Arkansas” and the ‘80s RnB sparkle of “You Probably Should Leave”. The same holds true even in the contrasting elegy behind “Maggie’s Song” ranged against the blissful balladry in “Joy of My Life.”

No wonder, “Starting Over” made it among the top critically acclaimed albums of 2020.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube pressed on ‘poisonous’ algorithms

By Anna Edgerton & Ilya Banares

E

Bloomberg

xecutives from Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube were pressed by US lawmakers last week on how user content is shared and highlighted on their platforms through algorithms that one senator said can be misused, “driving us into poisonous echo chambers.”

Senator Ben Sasse, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on Privacy, Technology and the Law, made the comment as members examined algorithms—the lines of software code that determine how user-generated information is displayed and who gets to see it.

“Algorithms, like almost any technologies that are new, have costs and benefits” and can be abused, said Sasse, who is from Nebraska.

The hearing took place as the US Congress is considering how to overhaul Section 230, a provision of the 1996 communications law that protects Internet companies from liability for user content. One House proposal would make social-media platforms responsible for the way content is shared and amplified through algorithms.

“I plan to use this hearing as an opportunity to learn about how these companies’ algorithms work, what steps may have been

Twitter’s Lauren Culbertson speaks remotely during the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on April 27. Bloomberg taken to reduce algorithmic amplification that is harmful and what can be done better,” said Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and the subcommittee’s chair, as he opened the hearing.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the full Judiciary Committee, urged social-media companies to do more to remove harmful content, citing the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. He said domestic extremists organized and shared disinformation on some of the platforms represented at Tuesday’s hearing.

Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for content policy, testified that its tools make the platform’s algorithm more transparent, so users can see why certain posts appear on their news feed.

“It is not in our interest financially or reputationally” to push people toward extremist content, Bickert said.

Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s head of US public policy, highlighted the positive uses for algorithms and machine learning, especially the ability to recognize harmful content to review and remove. She said in

her opening statement that Twitter is committed to studying the unintended consequences of algorithms and to giving users more choice over how algorithms shape their experience.

Alexandra Veitch, YouTube’s director of government affairs and public policy for the Americas and emerging markets, said the service uses an automated process to detect videos that violate the company’s policies, and algorithms can be used to promote trusted sources and minimize content that’s questionable. She described YouTube as “not just a hobby, but a business” for people who create and share videos on the platform.

‘Addicted, outraged’ But Tristan Harris, cofounder and president of the Center for Humane Technology, dismissed the testimony by the company executives, saying “it’s almost like having the heads of Exxon, BP and Shell asking about what are you doing to responsibly stop climate change.”

Harris, a former design ethicist at

Google, said “their business model is to create a society that is addicted, outraged, polarized, performative and disinformed.

That’s just the fundamentals of how it works.”

The role that algorithms play in sharing information—and disinformation—has taken on renewed importance as people turn to social media to learn and comment on issues such as Covid-19 vaccines, protests over police killings and election security. As Durbin indicated, the platforms have been under increased scrutiny since supporters of former President Donald Trump amplified disinformation ahead of the January 6 attack.

Trump was suspended by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for comments that the companies said could lead to violence.

Facebook’s Oversight Board is reviewing the decision, while YouTube has left open the possibility of reversing the suspension.

Twitter said its ban of Trump’s account is permanent.

But Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the full Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced the frequent GOP complaint that social-media platforms censor conservatives. He described the companies as monopolies that don’t face the competition that would make them more responsible with user information. “We must look at the power and control that a handful of companies have over speech,” Grassley said.

Facebook has been advocating for updated Internet regulation, including new privacy rules. It has also called for election protection measures and an overhaul of section 230 to require more transparency, reporting requirements and best-practice guidelines for larger companies. As part of that campaign, Facebook is buying ads in the nation’s capitol pointing out how much the Internet has changed in the 25 years since current regulations became law.

Twitter has ‘scary amount of power,’ cofounder says

T

witter Inc. cofounder Biz Stone believes the social-media company made the right decision when it banned then-President Donald Trump from its service in January, but that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable with it.

“It’s a scary amount of power,” Stone said during an interview for the recent Collision Conference. “The CEO of a company in San Francisco can quiet the president of the United States. He is not elected, nothing like that, and yet that had a major impact.”

Stone, who cofounded Twitter with Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey in 2006, is the latest tech executive to publicly question whether social-media

companies have too much power when it comes to policing people online.

Shortly after the Trump ban, Dorsey himself questioned Twitter’s power.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told US lawmakers last month that he was worried about his company’s role in suspending Trump from its service.

“Many people are concerned that platforms can ban elected leaders,” he said during a March 25 hearing. “I am, too.”

Stone said he wasn’t involved in the formal decision-making process on Trump, although he did send his views to Dorsey and agreed with the decision. “It was a good decision for Twitter I think,” he added. “But it’s also a little bit fright-

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ening to know that maybe there’s that much power in one person’s decision.”

Stone was supposed to become “entrepreneur in residence” at the venture capital firm Spark Capital in 2017 when Dorsey persuaded him to return to Twitter instead.

“When I came back, the main reason was ‘let’s improve morale,’” Stone said. He created short films about different teams inside the company to highlight their efforts. He also worked with Dorsey to create the company’s purpose statement, “We serve the public conversation,” which is often repeated by executives on investor calls and press events.

“It worked way better than I thought it would,” he said. “It highlighted all

May 2, 2021

Biz Stone cofounded Twitter with Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey in 2006

the stuff that wasn’t serving the public conversation and brought up the question ‘why are we even working on these things?’”

Stone said he moved into a part-time adviser role at Twitter earlier this year, and has shifted some of his focus to outside projects, including philanthropy and venture investing. Bloomberg