BusinessMirror May 15, 2022

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A broader look at today’s business n

Sunday, May 15, 2022 Vol. 17 No. 219

P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 16 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK

AGARWOOD chips. PHOTO COURTESY OF IBA BOTANICALS INC.

THE TREE OF FORTUNE

Issuance of a government permit paves the way for cultivation, propagation of ‘wood of the gods’ in Philippines

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By Jonathan L. Mayuga

O it right and a P12.5-million investment in agarwood production today, through the establishment of a one-hectare Aquilaria tree farm, can potentially yield as much as P500 million after 10 years, says Australian businessman Benjamin Mead, founder and CEO of Iba Botanicals Inc.

Along with his business partner, former Department of Agriculture Secretary Luis “Cito” Lorenzo Jr., Mead was first to invest in agarwood production in the Philippines.

Iba Botanicals, which is based in Zambales, has started selling imported agarwood seedlings. In five to six years, the company is expected to sell its own seedlings to prospective buyers.

Huge demand, big opportunity

“USING even the most conservative projection, it is an extremely profitable opportunity. What I want to do is encourage the people to plant because we want to grow the industry and we can see very strong demand for Philippine agarwood,” Mead added.

Agarwood-importing foreign markets include Middle Eastern countries, China, India and Japan.

The tree by-product is also used for perfumes, and countries in Europe are expected to source their raw materials in the Philippines, given that the country’s agarwood is the most sought-after among agarwood products even in the black market.

Estimated to be worth $8 billion a year on a global scale, the birth of the agarwood industry in the Philippines essentially began only last year when the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), through the Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB), granted the firstever Wildlife Culture Permit to Iba Botanicals.

It has also secured the necessary import permits and went through a rigid process to secure

AGARWOOD-PRODUCING Aquilaria malaccensis seedlings at a tree nursery. PHOTO COURTESY OF CENRO MASINLOC

Native tree species

MEAD: “Using even the most conservative projection, it is an extremely profitable opportunity. What I want to do is encourage the people to plant because we want to grow the industry and we can see very strong demand for Philippine agarwood.”

its permit from the Bureau of Plant Industry under the Department of Agriculture.

The firm produces essential oils and is a pioneer in the business of producing essential oils from ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata), vetiver grass (Vetiveria zizanioides), and Elemi, which is produced from the resin of the Pili tree (Canarium luzonicum).

Also known as the “wood of the gods,” agarwood is reputedly the most expensive forest product in the world.

A kilogram of premium quality agarwood, sought for its fragrant resinous heartwood from the Aquilaria tree that naturally grows in the wild in the Philippines, can fetch up to P5 million.

Grown in plantations, each Aquilaria tree can produce from four to six kilos of agarwood that can fetch from a range of P75,000 to P100,000 per kilogram.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.3860

INTERVIEWED by the BusinessMirror, Lorenzo Jr., chairman of Iba Botanicals, said the company is targeting to plant within the year at least 60 hectares of Aquilaria malaccensis, a species that naturally occurs in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and

the Philippines.

This early, Iba Botanicals has already sold seedlings to some 1,000 buyers. Iba Botanicals sells seedlings at P1,000 each, which are about 25 centimeters to 30 centimeters tall, but the price goes down depending on the quantity being purchased.

Easily, Lorenzo and Mead

said that with the incorporation of the Agarwood Association of the Philippines, the areas planted to Aquilaria malaccensis can reach 1,000 hectares in a couple of years, noting that the Philippines is known to produce premiumquality agarwood.

Because of the huge demand for agarwood, Aquilaria malaccensis

is threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, and in the case of the Philippines, due to the absence of a legal source, and rampant tree poaching to harvest agarwood in the wild.

The trading of Aquilaria malaccensis is strictly regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and it requires special permits to import or export CITES-listed species.

The DENR-BMB also strictly prohibits the harvesting of the species, its seeds, or seedlings from the wild as it is already on the endangered list and will stop at nothing to apprehend those in the illegal trade of agarwood-producing trees and their most expensive products.

Sure buyers

IBA Botanicals has been working with some of the largest buyers of essential oils and these are Continued on A2

THIS Sunday (May 15) sees the holding of one of Biñan City’s most colorful festivals, the Puto Latik Festival. Seen here is file photo of the Puto Latik Festival 2019 Grand Opening Ceremony held at the heart of the town plaza.

For more of the Puto Latik Festival, please see pages A6-A7. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

n JAPAN 0.4079 n UK 63.9057 n HK 6.6735 n CHINA 7.7183 n SINGAPORE 37.5231 n AUSTRALIA 35.9001 n EU 54.3924 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.9663

Source: BSP (May 13, 2022)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, May 15, 2022

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Where Sri Lanka’s inflation-driven crisis could head next

By Niluksi Koswanage

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minister would take over, with the house speaker as next in line.

Then parliament has one month to elect his replacement by an absolute majority through a secret ballot, according to the constitution. Any lawmaker would be eligible, including an outsider who takes a party list position ahead of the vote. The new president will hold office for the remainder of the term, which ends in 2024.

Nishan De Mel, executive director of Verite Research, said Gotabaya Rajapaksa has three main options: resignation, impeachment or a compromise that includes reducing presidential powers. “He has been resisting all three options,” De Mel said.

Bloomberg News

RI Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has defied calls to resign, pledging instead to form a new government after violent clashes this week left eight people dead in an escalation of a months-long crisis over food and fuel shortages.

“I will give the opportunity for the new government and new PM to start a new program to take the country forward,” he said in a televised address, adding that after stability is restored, he will discuss curbing his executive powers with all political parties.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa earlier extended a nationwide curfew until Thursday morning, after government supporters on Monday initiated attacks on protesters who had camped out for weeks in downtown Colombo to call for his ouster. Rajapaksa opponents then attacked ruling-party lawmakers and burned some of their houses, prompting key family members to effectively go into hiding.

His brother Mahinda Rajapaksa quit as prime minister, leading to the dissolution of the Cabinet, leaving no government in place to negotiate with the International Monetary Fund and creditors on $8.6 billion of debt due this year.

A deal is essential to stabilize the nation’s finances and help the gov-

ernment provide essential goods to the island nation’s 22 million people.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is refusing to step down, and the opposition has declined his offers of a unity government without constitutional change that would reduce the powers of the presidency.

“He needs to give the country a timeframe on what will happen,” Jehan Perera, executive director at the National Peace Council in Colombo, said of the president. “This is one way he can redeem himself as a statesman before things get worse.”

Here’s what could happen next: 1. President is impeached.

Under Sri Lanka’s constitution, removing a president is difficult and time consuming. First a resolution must be passed by two-thirds of parliament explaining why a president is unfit for office, then it must be investigated by the Supreme Court, and then if judges agree with the findings lawmakers need to vote again.

SRI Lankan army officers on patrol during a curfew in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Violence erupted in Sri Lanka on Monday evening after the brother of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned as prime minister, with local reports saying protesters targeted the homes of ruling-party lawmakers and the government ordering the army to shoot anyone damaging property. BLOOMBERG

Officials in the ruling Sri Lanka People’s Front party say they still command a majority in parliament, and last week they proved they had the numbers in a vote for a new deputy speaker. It’s unclear if the violence, which led to attacks on the houses of more than two dozen lawmakers and former ministers linked to the Rajapaksas, and the death of a ruling party lawmaker, changed that equation at all.

2. President forms unity government with opposition. Now that his brother is gone as prime minister, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has made another overture to the opposition to form an all-party government. The main opposition parties have consistently rejected his offer, as the president would still retain large powers.

The influential Buddhist clergy and the Bar Council of Sri Lanka proposed an interim government that would run the country for 18 months while lawmakers draw up constitutional amendments to curb presidential powers. But any government that doesn’t have broad-based support is likely to be unstable.

3. President dissolves parliament, holds fresh elections. The constitution doesn’t allow the president to dissolve parliament until midway through its five-year term, which isn’t until February 2023.

But it does allow the parliament to request a dissolution before then by passing a resolution.

While some opposition leaders have floated this option in recent days, elections will also be expensive and time consuming. And even if

the opposition wins, Gotabaya Rajapaska would still retain key powers as the president. He has the power to appoint a prime minister who in his opinion commands the parliament majority, and he will have a large say in naming and firing Cabinet ministers. He can also assign himself to any ministry portfolio.

This is why the opposition has put forward a bill to clip the powers of the presidency rather than pushing for an election. The previous Cabinet under Mahinda Rajapaksa had also put in motion the writing of a new bill to curb the executive presidency.

While an election could possibly give the opposition the twothirds majority it needs to change the constitution, that may need the endorsement of a referendum and will possibly get tied up in the Supreme Court—all of which could drag on for months.

4. President resigns, flees the country. This is what the protesters are hoping for with their chants of “Go Home Gota,” and can’t be ruled out if the violence spreads.

If the President resigns, then immediately whoever becomes prime

5. Military coup. While Sri Lanka has a history of authoritarian rule, if anyone stages a coup it will likely be to help the Rajapaksas. The brothers have run Sri Lanka for 13 of the past 17 years, often with an iron fist.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa is widely credited with putting an end to a 26-year separatist conflict with ethnic Tamil rebels, and has appointed more than two dozen serving or retired military officers into key posts.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s top allies include Sri Lankan Army chief General Shavendra Silva, who has been sanctioned by the US on allegations of war crimes committed during the last phase of the conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and Kamal Gunaratne, secretary to the defense minister who stands accused of similar actions. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

Silva has told foreign diplomats that Sri Lanka’s army would uphold the constitution and was “prepared to provide security and protection to the state as necessary.”

For now Rajapaksa has given powers to the military under the emergency to detain people a without warrant for 24 hours while private property can be searched.

“In a country where we don’t have a prime minister and a Cabinet and the emergency rule brings broad powers to an executive with broad ties to the military, that combination is extremely dynamic,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a Colombo-based senior researcher for the Center for Policy Alternatives. “It can lead to scenarios that Sri Lanka has not seen before even with the civil war.”

THE TREE OF FORTUNE Continued from A1

multibillion-dollar companies that are willing to buy huge volumes of chips and oil products that are of premium quality, says Mead.

“The way we do this is with best practice mentality and traceability, we do it the right way,” he said.

Moreover, Mead said they are currently working with the University of the Philippines-Los Baños and are set to formalize the partnership to optimize the agronomic practices and work together on the inoculation techniques so that farmers will get the most return.

There are about 12 species of agarwood or Aquilaria trees that produce agarwood. But Iba Botanicals decided to focus on the malaccensis species because it grows in Bukidnon and produces high volumes of top-quality agarwood.

More important, the inoculation technique is well understood, thereby reducing the risk of failure.

In the Philippines, Iba Botanicals Inc. said the company is working to secure the right of first refusal or be the first buyer of agarwood from its partners.

Advocacy

“WE as a country have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to reforestation and environmental initiatives. It is not just a function of responding to climate change but rather we pretty much used a lot of our tree resources that we need to replenish,” Lorenzo said,

adding that nurturing the agarwood industry in the Philippines is now one of his advocacies.

“It is also difficult to plant anything for the sake of the environment because it is not sustainable since there’s no steady stream of benefactors that could supply a permanent tree crop,” he said.

According to Lorenzo, Aquilaria malaccensis is already acclimatized to Philippine tropical conditions for hundreds of years, making it ideal species for plantation forests.

“There have been efforts before in Mindanao to bring in different trees like pine trees from New Zealand, but it was not sustainable for a host of reasons,” says Lorenzo, adding that one factor is due to the fact that the species is not endemic to the Philippines.

New agriculture

ACCORDING to Lorenzo, starting it right is important in doing business with agarwood production, adding that a systematic and very organized approach that adheres to the rules of engagement by those in the business every step of the way is paramount, citing the case of Iba Botanicals when it started to produce essential oils in the Philippines.

“The corresponding process… the user processor…consumers— they have studied it and they are consistent and [there is] no shortcut,” says Lorenzo, describing Iba Botanicals’ way and assurance of

producing premium-quality essential oils using the best practices developed through years of research and partnership with the communities and other stakeholders.

“Now, we are encountering a new way at agriculture and forestry.

This new way is looking at an endemic species. It’s been localized or native to the Philippines. It, however, is endangered so all the permits have to be followed, not harvested in the wild,” says Lorenzo.

A known technology

MEAD was previously involved in the agarwood business in Laos prior to securing the permit from the DENR-BMB for the establishment of the Aquilaria malaccensis in the Philippines. To do it right, Iba Botanicals provides training and seminars to prospective buyers twice a week and even guides potential partners in securing the necessary permits, especially the legal sourcing of agarwood-producing species for forest plantation establishments or even backyard tree farming.

“The vision is not just to plant agarwood and create a new highvalue agroforestry industry but also to relieve poaching pressures in the wild,” he said.

Also, he said, this will pave the way for imparting and perfecting the best practices, consistent practices, and traceability.

“With agarwood, it can be worth so much money if it is done right,” Mead asserts.

The World

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

Nearly 1 million Americans died: A look at the US Covid numbers

By Carla K. Johnson & Nicky Forster

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The Associated Press

oug Lambrecht was among the first of the nearly 1 million Americans to die from Covid-19. His demographic profile—an older white male with chronic health problems—mirrors the faces of many who would be lost over the next two years.

The 71-year-old retired physician was recovering from a fall at a nursing home near Seattle when the new coronavirus swept through in early 2020.

He died March 1, an early victim in a devastating outbreak that gave a first glimpse of the price older Americans would pay.

The pandemic has generated gigabytes of data that make clear which US groups have been hit the hardest. More than 700,000 people 65 and older died. Men died at higher rates than women.

White people made up most of the deaths overall, yet an unequal burden fell on Black, Hispanic and Native American people considering the younger average age of minority communities. Racial gaps narrowed between surges then widened again with each new wave.

With 1 million deaths in sight, Doug’s son Nathan Lambrecht reflected on the toll.

“I’m afraid that as the numbers get bigger, people are going to care less and less,” he said. “I just hope people who didn’t know them and didn’t have the same sort of loss in their lives due to Covid, I just hope that they don’t forget and they remember to care.”

Elders hit hard Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older, according to US data analyzed by The Associated Press.

About 255,000 people 85 and older died; 257,000 were 75 to 84 years old; and about 229,000 were 65 to 74.

“A million things went wrong and most of them were preventable,” said elder care expert Charlene Harrington of the University of California, San Francisco. Harrington, 80, hopes the lessons of the pandemic lead US health officials to adopt minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes, “then maybe I can retire.”

Spouses left behind In nearly every 10-year age group, more men have died from Covid-19 than women.

Men have shorter life expectancies than women, so it’s not surprising that the only age group where deaths in women outpaced those in men is the oldest: 85 and older.

For some families who lost breadwinners, economic hardships have added to their grief, said Rima Samman, who coordinates a Covid-19 memorial project that began as a tribute to her brother, Rami, who died in May 2020 at age 40.

“A widow is losing her home, or she’s losing the car she drove the kids to school with, because her husband died,” Samman said. “Little by little, you’re getting pulled down from middle class to lower class.”

Race, ethnicity and age White people made up 65 percent of the total deaths, the largest proportion of any race by far.

This isn’t that surprising because there are more white people in the US than any other race. American Indians, Pacific Islanders and Black people had higher death rates when looking at Covid-19 deaths per capita.

Death rates per capita still leave out a characteristic that is crucial to understanding which groups were disproportionately affected—Covid-19 is more deadly for the elderly.

In the US there are many more elderly white people than elderly people of other races. To evaluate which race has been disproportionately affected, it’s necessary to adjust the per-capita death rate, calculating the rates as if each race had the same age breakdown.

After the shares of Covid-19 deaths are age-adjusted in this way, we can compare that with the race’s share of the total population. If the age-adjusted share of Covid-19 deaths is higher than the share of the US population, that race has been disproportionately affected.

When considering age, it’s apparent that Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander and Native American people suffered disproportionately more from Covid-19 deaths than other groups in the US. Looking at deaths per capita, Mississippi had the highest rate of any state.

“We’ve lost so many people to Covid,” said Joyee Washington, a community health educator in Hattiesburg. “The hard thing in Mississippi was having to grieve with no time to heal. You’re facing trauma after trauma after trauma. ... Normal is gone as far as I’m concerned.”

Communities pulled together. Churches set up testing sites, school buses took meals to students when classrooms were closed, her city’s mayor used social media to provide reliable information. “Even in the midst of turmoil you can still find joy, you can still find light,” she said. “The possibilities are there if you look for them.”

Native Americans experienced higher death rates than all other groups during two waves of the pandemic. For Mary Francis, a 41-year-old Navajo woman from Page, Arizona, the deaths reinforce a long-held value of self-sufficiency.

“It goes back to the teachings of our elders,” said Francis, who helps get vaccines and care packages to Navajo and Hopi families. “Try to be self-sufficient, how to take care of ourselves and how to not rely so much on the government (and) other sources that may or may not have our interests at heart.”

Rural versus urban The surge that began in late 2020 was particularly rough for rural America.

Americans living in rural areas have been less likely to get vaccinated than city dwellers, more likely to be infected and more likely to die.

“I’ve had multiple people in my ambulance, in their 80s and dying,” said paramedic Mark Kennedy in Nauvoo, Illinois. “Some did die, and when you ask if they’ve been vaccinated, they say, ‘I don’t trust it.’”

Surges swamped the thin resources of rural hospitals. During the Delta surge, Kennedy transferred patients to hospitals in Springfield, which is 130 miles away, and Chicago, 270 miles away.

“Every day you had multiple transfers three and four hours away in full protective gear,” Kennedy said.

The recent Omicron wave felt even harder to David Schreiner, CEO of Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital in Dixon, Illinois.

“In the first wave, there were signs throughout the community about our health care heroes. ... People loved us the first time around,” Schreiner said.

But by this past winter, people had Covid-19 fatigue.

“Our people have been through so much. And then we would get a patient or a family member who would come to the hospital and refuse to put a mask on,” Schreiner said. “It’s a little bit hard to take.”

AP writer Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed.

BusinessMirror

Sunday, May 15, 2022

A3

Pandemic gets tougher to track as global Covid testing plunges

By LAURA UNGAR

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AP Science Writer

esting for Covid-19 has plummeted across the globe, making it much tougher for scientists to track the course of the pandemic and spot new, worrisome viral mutants as they emerge and spread.

Experts say testing has dropped by 70 percent to 90 percent worldwide from the first to the second quarter of this year—the opposite of what they say should be happening with new omicron variants on the rise in places such as the United States and South Africa.

“We’re not testing anywhere near where we might need to,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, who directs the Duke Global Health Innovation Center at Duke University. “We need the ability to ramp up testing as we’re seeing the emergence of new waves or surges to track what’s happening” and respond.

Reported daily cases in the US, for example, are averaging 73,633, up more than 40 percent over the past two weeks, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

But that is a vast undercount because of the testing downturn and the fact tests are being taken at home and not reported to health departments.

An influential modeling group at the University of Washington in Seattle estimates that only 13 percent of cases are being reported to health authorities in the US—which would mean more than a half million new infections every day.

The drop in testing is global but the overall rates are especially inadequate in the developing world, Udayakumar said. The number of tests per 1,000 people in high income countries is around 96 times higher than it is in low income countries, according to the Geneva-based public health nonprofit FIND. What’s driving the drop? Experts point to Covid fatigue, a lull in cases after the first Omicron wave and a

sense among some residents of lowincome countries that there’s no reason to test because they lack access to antiviral medications.

At a recent press briefing by the World Health Organization, FIND CEO Dr. Bill Rodriguez called testing “the first casualty of a global decision to let down our guard” and said “we’re becoming blind to what is happening with the virus.”

Testing, genomic sequencing and delving into case spikes can lead to the discovery of new variants. New York state health officials found the super contagious BA.2.12.1 variant after investigating higher-than-average case rates in the central part of the state.

Going forward, “we’re just not going to see the new variants emerge the way we saw previous variants emerge,” Rodriquez told The Associated Press.

Testing increases as infections rise and people develop symptoms—and it falls along with lulls in new cases.

Testing is rising again in the US along with the recent surge.

But experts are concerned about the size of the drop after the first omicron surge, the low overall levels of testing globally, and the inability to track cases reliably. While home tests are convenient, only tests sent to labs can be used to detect variants. If fewer tests are being done, and fewer of those tests are processed in labs, fewer positive samples are available for sequencing.

Also, home test results are largely invisible to tracking systems.

Mara Aspinall, managing director of an Arizona-based consulting company that tracks Covid-19 testing trends, said there’s at least four times more home testing than PCR testing,

Workers at a drive-up Covid-19 testing clinic stand in a tent as they prepare PCR coronavirus tests, January 4, 2022, in Puyallup, Wash., south of Seattle. Testing for Covid-19 has plummeted across the globe, dropping by 70 to 90 percent worldwide from the first to the second quarter of 2022, making it much tougher for scientists to track the course of the pandemic and spot new, worrisome viral mutants as they emerge and spread. AP/Ted S. Warren and “we are getting essentially zero data from the testing that’s happening at home.”

That’s because there’s no uniform mechanism for people to report results to understaffed local health departments. The CDC strongly encourages people to tell their doctors, who in most places must report Covid-19 diagnoses to public health authorities.

Generally, though, results from home tests fall under the radar.

Reva Seville, a 36-year-old Los Angeles parent, tested herself at home this week after she began feeling symptoms such as a scratchy throat, coughing and congestion. After the results came back positive, she tested twice more just to be sure. But her symptoms were mild, so she didn’t plan to go to the doctor or report her results to anyone.

Beth Barton of Washington, Missouri, who works in construction, said she’s taken about 10 home tests, either before visiting her parents or when she’s had symptoms she thought might be Covid-19. All came back negative. She shared the results with the people around her but didn’t know how to report them.

“There should be a whole system for that,” said Barton, 42. “We as a society don’t know how to gauge where we’re at.”

Aspinall said one potential solution would be to use technology like scanning a QR code to report home test results confidentiality.

Another way to keep better track

of the pandemic, experts said, is to bolster other types of surveillance, such as wastewater monitoring and collecting hospitalization data. But those have their own drawbacks.

Wastewater surveillance remains a patchwork that doesn’t cover all areas, and hospitalization trends lag behind cases.

Udayakumar said scientists across the world must use all the tracking methods at their disposal to keep up with the virus, and will need to do so for months or even years.

At the same time, he said, steps must be taken to boost testing in lower-income countries. Demand for tests would rise if access to antivirals were improved in these places, he said.

And one of the best ways to increase testing is to integrate it into existing health services, said Wadzanayi Muchenje, who leads health and strategic partnerships in Africa for The Rockefeller Foundation.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said there will come a point when the world stops widespread testing for Covid-19 – but that day isn’t here yet.

With the pandemic lingering and virus still unpredictable, “it’s not acceptable for us to only be concerned about individual health,” he said. “We have to worry about the population.”

AP reporters Bobby Caina Calvan in New York and Carla K. Johnson in Seattle contributed to this story.

China fights economic slump, sticks to costly ‘zero Covid’

By Joe Mcdonald AP Business Writer

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EIJING—China’s leaders are struggling to reverse an economic slump without giving up anti-virus tactics that shut down Shanghai and other cities, adding to challenges for President Xi Jinping as he tries to extend his time in power.

The ruling Communist Party has declared its “zero-Covid” goal of preventing all infections takes priority over the economy. It is a decision with global implications and comes despite warnings by experts including the head of the World Health Organization that the goal might be unattainable.

“We don’t think it is sustainable,” the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Tuesday.

China kept infection numbers low until early this year with a strategy that shut down cities, but entailed soaring costs.

Beijing has switched to “dynamic clearing” that seals buildings or neighborhoods if infections are found. But with thousands of new cases of the highly infectious Omicron variant reported every day, that keeps most of Shanghai’s 25 million people at home.

Big parts of Beijing and other cities with tens of millions of people also are closed.

That is disrupting manufacturing and hampering the global flow of goods from smartphones to iron ore, increasing inflation risks in the United States and Europe.

Consumer spending is weak, chilling Chinese demand for imports.

The ruling party is promising tax refunds and other aid to struggling entrepreneurs

that Beijing counts on to create jobs and wealth. Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader, warned last week the employment situation is “complex and grim.”

On Wednesday, Li called during a Cabinet meeting for officials to focus spending and credit policies on preventing job losses, state TV and the official Xinhua News Agency reported. They gave no details of possible new initiatives.

Despite promises of aid, forecasters say economic growth in the current quarter will fall as low as 1.8 percent over a year ago from an anemic 4.8 percent in the last quarter. Growth for the full year is forecast as low as 3.8 percent, below the ruling party’s official 5.5 percent target and less than half of 2021’s 8.1 percent expansion.

“The Chinese government is willing to make some sacrifices on the economy in the short term to trade for long-term growth,” said Nomura economist Ting Lu. However, he said, “achieving ‘zero Covid’ is quite challenging, because Omicron is more infectious.”

A foreign ministry spokesman on Wednesday defended China’s approach as realistic.

China’s strategy is “not to pursue zero infection but to control the epidemic situation in the shortest time at the lowest social cost,” said Zhao Lijian. “The vast majority of people in most areas in China live and work normally.”

Complaints about food shortages and other hardships and videos posted online showing people in Shanghai and other areas arguing with police have been deleted by censors.

Public frustration and economic losses add to complications for Xi ahead of a ruling party congress in October or November at which he is expected to try to break with tradition and award himself a third five-year term as leader.

Xi, the most dominant Chinese leader since at least the 1980s, still is expected to secure another term. But experts say rivals might gain leverage to trim his powers. Supporters of market-style economic reforms also want to roll back policies that favor state industry and tighter control of the private sector, China’s economic engine.

Wrangling over the cost of anti-virus strategies gives “an opening to his factional opponents” with “deeper ties to business sectors,” said Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics in a report. “They are more attuned than Xi and his supporters to the impact of zero-Covid on the economy and on middle-class citizens.”

In a sign private industry is weakening, 4.4 million companies closed last year while only 1.3 million new enterprises opened, down from 13.8 million in 2019, according to Choyleva.

Covid restrictions have closed factories or suspended access to manufacturing centers for autos, electronics and other industries including Changchun and Jilin in the northeast and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south.

In the central city of Zhenzhou, the Xiao Nan Guo restaurant closed May 4 but still is paying its workforce of 100, according to an employee, Wang Huiqin. She said

business was down about 40 percent before restaurants in the city of 13 million people were told to stop providing dine-in service.

“If the situation lasts for a few weeks, the company can handle it,” said Wang.

“If it lasts longer, there will be problems because the costs will be too much.”

In Shanghai, most businesses have been closed since late March at an estimated cost of tens of billions of dollars a month in lost activity.

Cargo volume at the Port of Shanghai, the world’s busiest, is down 30 percent.

Economists say foreign customers are looking for non-Chinese suppliers that might be more likely to deliver but charge more.

“This will add further to stagflation risk this year” in Western economies, said Tommy Wu of Oxford Economics, referring to a scenario of rising prices and falling economic activity.

Export growth in April sank to 3.7 percent over a year earlier from March’s 15.7 percent. Imports crept up 0.7 percent, in line with the previous month’s growth below 1 percent.

China was the only major economy to grow in 2020 after Beijing shut factories, shops and offices nationwide to fight the virus. The ruling party declared victory after a few months and reopened the economy.

Last year, Xi’s government shifted back to long-range plans that include trying to reduce excessive real estate debt. That triggered a plunge in construction and housing sales in mid-2021.

AP researcher Yu Bing contributed.

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World Features BusinessMirror

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Black doctors say they face discrimination based on race

By Kate Brumback

A

The Associated Press

TLANTA—Dr. Dare Adewumi was thrilled when he was hired to lead the neurosurgery practice at an Atlanta-area hospital near where he grew up. But he says he quickly faced racial discrimination that ultimately led to his firing and has prevented him from getting permanent work elsewhere.

His lawyers and other advocates say he’s not alone, that Black doctors across the country commonly experience discrimination, ranging from micro aggressions to career-threatening disciplinary actions. Biases, conscious or not, can become magnified in the fiercely competitive hospital environment, they say, and the underrepresentation of Black doctors can discourage them from speaking up.

“Too many of us are worried about retaliation, what happens when you say something,” said Dr. Rachel Villanueva, president of the National Medical Association, which represents Black doctors. “We have scores of doctors that are sending us letters about these same discriminatory practices all the time and seeking our help as an association in fighting that.”

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, Black doctors made up just 5 percent of active physicians in the US in 2018, the most recent data available. People who identify as Black alone represent 12.4 percent of the total US population, according to the 2020 US census.

For the 2021-2022 academic year, 8.1 percent of students enrolled in medical schools identified as Black alone.

The medical school association and the National Medical Association in 2020 announced an initiative to address the scarcity of Black men in medicine—they made up only 2.9 percent of 2019-2020 enrolled students.

The American Medical Association, the country’s largest, most influential doctors’ group, is also trying to attract Black students to medicine, working with historically Black colleges and universities and helping secure scholarships, president Dr. Gerald Harmon said.

“We’re trying to put our money where our mouth is on this and our actions where our thoughts are,” he said, acknowledging that, among other things, a shortage of Black physicians contributes to poorer health outcomes for Black patients.

Some Black doctors who believe they’ve been mistreated are speaking out. Adewumi, 39, filed a federal lawsuit in September against Wellstar Medical Group and Wellstar Health Systems alleging employment discrimination based on race.

“If they don’t like him, that’s one thing, but you can’t penalize some-

one—according to the law—based on race,” his lawyer C.K. Hoffler said.

“And that’s the exact thing that happened to Dare. And that’s what many, many highly skilled, highly trained, highly credentialed African American doctors are experiencing in this country.”

Adewumi said some of his surgical decisions were questioned and he was placed on a performance review plan, steps he says were a pretext to push him out. He said he had a previously unblemished record and his white colleagues didn’t face similar scrutiny.

“I’ve worked so hard, done so much to get to this level, and all I really wanted to do was help sick people,” he said. “And here I was having this taken away from me for no reason other than my skin color.”

William Hill, an attorney for Wellstar, said the case is sealed so he’s unable to speak about specifics.

“Wellstar does not discriminate.

Dr. Adewumi has not been the subject of discrimination or unfair treatment.

Patient care and safety are Wellstar’s top priorities,” Hill wrote in an e-mail, noting that they have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Dr. Stella Safo, an HIV specialist, is among a group of past and present employees at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at Mount Sinai in New York City who in April 2019 sued alleging sex, age and race discrimination. Some claims have been dismissed but others are moving forward. Safo’s claims focus on alleged gender discrimination, but she said that, as a Black woman, race and gender discrimination are intertwined. Since filing the lawsuit, she’s heard from a lot of people with similar stories.

Adewumi’s allegations don’t surprise her: “It’s what many of us have gone through directly,” she said.

Speaking out has been “terrible,” Safo said, adding that she risked her career and lost friendships. But she’s felt vindicated by changes: The New York City Council last year passed legislation to create an advisory board to examine racial and gender discrimination in hospitals.

A judge sealed Adewumi’s lawsuit and some filings in the case at the request of Wellstar, which cited confidential information. The following account of what happened comes from an interview with Adewumi and

Dr. Dare Adewumi poses for a portrait on March 15, 2022, in Atlanta. Adewumi was thrilled when he was hired to lead the neurosurgery practice at Wellstar Cobb Hospital in Austell, Ga., in the Atlanta-area near where he grew up. But he says he quickly faced racial discrimination that ultimately led to his firing and has prevented him from getting permanent work elsewhere. His lawyers and other advocates say he’s not alone. AP/Mike Stewart a complaint he filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which in July granted him permission to sue.

Adewumi signed on in March 2018 to lead neurosurgery services at Wellstar Cobb Hospital in Austell, Georgia.

The hospital hadn’t had a neurosurgeon for a decade and referred patients elsewhere, including Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, where Adewumi’s supervisor worked.

As his practice started to flourish, Adewumi felt his supervisor was targeting him “with the intention of undermining my skill as a physician and pushing me out of the group,” the EEOC complaint says.

In November 2018, Adew umi began receiving “letters of inquiry” about surgeries he’d done. These anonymous letters can be submitted by any member of the medical staff or be triggered by a patient complaint.

They’re reviewed by the hospital’s medical executive committee.

At first, Adewumi said, he didn’t know what the letters were, having never received anything similar. But within eight months, he had received 15, all but one filed by colleagues.

Separate independent reviews requested by the hospital and by Adewumi’s lawyers found that concerns stemmed from differences in opinion about the approach or surgical technique, not patient care standards or safety, according to the EEOC complaint.

In contrast, Adewumi said, he’s aware of at least two cases where white colleagues performed surgeries that were unnecessary or left a patient disfigured. He doesn’t believe they received letters of inquiry or were disciplined in any way.

After trying unsuccessfully to mend the relationship with his supervisor, Adewumi said he went up the chain to raise concerns and a hospital system executive suggested it might be better if he resigned. Floored by the suggestion, Adewumi refused to quit.

Wellstar then proposed an “action plan.” It wasn’t meant to be punitive but would help “better integrate” him into the main group of neurosurgeons at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, he was told.

Several Black doctors in Georgia and elsewhere who spoke to The Associated Press said the hierarchy and competition in hospitals, where surgeons are evaluated and compensated based on productivity, can lead to people being targeted if they aren’t liked or are perceived as professional threats. Racial bias can compound that, they said.

Adewumi suspects that’s what happened to him. Before arriving at Wellstar, he’d done two fellowships on spine and brain tumors, learning difficult techniques that others within the neurosurgery group couldn’t do.

Additionally, his presence at Wellstar Cobb meant lucrative surgeries were no longer being referred to his colleagues at Wellstar Kennestone.

During an action plan check-in meeting in August 2019, medical executive committee leaders applauded Adewumi’s progress. Two months later, on Oct. 8, he was fired “not for cause.” He was assured he’d done “nothing wrong,” that he was being dismissed because “certain relationships were not fostered.”

His termination was effective at the end of a 180-day notice period, in April 2020, but he wasn’t required or allowed to work at the hospital in the meantime. That meant he couldn’t fulfill a six-week “mentorship” requirement, leaving his action plan incomplete.

In March 2020, as the coronavirus began to strain hospitals, he emailed Wellstar administrators offering to come back temporarily in any capacity to help. He figured the hospital could use extra hands, and it could allow him to complete his action plan and resolve his situation without suing.

But Wellstar refused.

With his action plan incomplete, the hospital refused to give him a “letter of good standing,” leaving him unable to find a hospital that will credential him, meaning he can’t work as a neurosurgeon. “ They have cornered him and locked him out, effectively,” Hoffler said. “You don’t do this by happenstance, by mistake. This is intentional and deliberate and that is why we have a lawsuit pending.”

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

Motherhood deferred: US median age for giving birth hit a new record at 30

By Mike Schneider The Associated Press

F

or Allyson Jacobs, life in her 20s and 30s was about focusing on her career in health care and enjoying the social scene in New York City. It wasn’t until she turned 40 that she and her husband started trying to have children.

They had a son when she was 42.

Over the past three decades, that has become increasingly common in the US, as birthrates have declined for women in their 20s and jumped for women in their late 30s and early 40s, according to a new report from the US Census Bureau.

The trend has pushed the median age of US women giving birth from 27 to 30, the highest on record.

As an older parent celebrating Mother’s Day on Sunday, Jacobs feels she has more resources for her son, 9, than she would have had in her 20s.

“There’s definitely more wisdom, definitely more patience,” said Jacobs, 52, who is a patients’ services administrator at a hospital. “Because we are older, we had the money to hire a nanny. We might not have been able to afford that if we were younger.”

While fertility rates dropped from 1990 to 2019 overall, the decline was regarded as rather stable compared to previous eras.

But the age at which women had babies shifted. Fertility rates declined by almost 43 percent for women between ages 20 and 24 and by more than 22 percent for women between 25 and 29. At the same time, they increased by more than 67 percent for women between 35 and 39, and by more than 132 percent for women between 40 and 44, according to the Census Bureau analysis based on National Center for Health Statistics data.

Decisions by college-educated women to invest in their education and careers so they could be better off financially when they had children, as well as the desire by working-class women to wait until they were more financially secure, have contributed to the shift toward older motherhood, said Philip Cohen, a University of Maryland sociologist.

In the past, parents often relied on their children for income—putting them to work in the fields, for example, when the economy was more farm-based. But over the last century or more in the US, parents have become more invested in their children’s future, providing more support while they go to school and enter young adulthood, he said.

“Having children later mostly puts women in a better position,” Cohen said. “They have more resources, more education. The things we demand of people to be good parents are easier to supply when you are older.”

Lani Trezzi, 48, and her husband had their first child, a son, when she was 38, and a daughter followed three years later. Even though she had been with her husband since she was 23, she felt no urgency to have children. That changed in her late 30s, once she’d reached a comfortable spot in her career as an executive for a retail company.

“It was just an age when I felt confident all around in the many areas of my life,” said Trezzi, who lives in New Jersey, outside New York City. “I didn’t have the confidence then that I have now.”

Over the last three decades, the largest increases in the median age at which US women give birth have been among foreign-born women, going from ages 27 to 32, and Black women, going

from ages 24 to 28, according to the Census Bureau.

With foreign-born women, Cohen said he wasn’t quite sure why the median age increased over time, but it likely was a “complicated story” having to do with their circumstances or reasons for coming to the US. For Black women, pursuing an education and career played roles.

“Black women have been pursuing higher education at higher rates,” said Raegan McDonald-Mosley, an obstetrician and gynecologist, who is CEO of Power to Decide, which works to reduce teen pregnancies and unwanted births. “Black women are becoming really engaged in their education and that is an incentive to delay childbearing.”

Since unintended pregnancies are highest among teens and women in their 20s, and more of their pregnancies end in abortion compared to older women, ending Roe v. Wade would likely shift the start of childbearing earlier on average, in a reverse of the trend of the past three decades, “although the magnitude is unknown,” said Laura Lindberg, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

“The burden will fall disproportionately on women of color, Black women, people without documentation, people living in rural areas, people in the South—where there are a lot of Black women—and in the Midwest,” said McDonald-Mosley, who also has served previously as chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Motherhood also has been coming later in developed countries in Europe and Asia. In the US, it could contribute to the nation’s population slowdown since the ability to have children tends to decrease with age, said Kate Choi, a family demographer at Western University in London, Ontario.

In areas of the US where the population isn’t replacing itself with births, and where immigration is low, population decline can create labor shortages, higher labor costs and a labor force that is supporting retirees, she said.

“Such changes will put significant pressure on programs aimed at supporting seniors like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare,” Choi said. “Workers may have to pay higher taxes to support the growing numbers of the retired population.”

Although the data in the Census Bureau report stops in 2019, the pandemic over the past two years has put off motherhood even further for many women, with US birth rates in 2020 dropping 4 percent in the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years. Choi said there appears to have been a bit of a rebound in the second half of 2021 to levels similar to 2019, but more data is needed to determine if this is a return to a “normal” decline.

During the pandemic, some women at the end of their reproductive years may have given up on becoming parents or having more children because of economic uncertainties and greater health risks for pregnant women who get the virus, she said.

“These women may have missed their window to have children,” Choi said.

“Some parents of young children may have decided to forego the second ... birth because they were overwhelmed with the additional child-caring demands that emerged during the pandemic, such as the need to homeschool their children.”

Kim Jong Un lookalike disrupts Australian election campaign S

YDNEY—A man impersonating North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday disrupted the Australian election campaign when he burst into an event that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was attending with lawmaker Gladys Liu. The impersonator, who later identified himself by the stage name Howard X, started talking to gathered media.

“Thank you very much. Gladys Liu is the communist candidate for Australia,” he said, before he was interrupted by an aide to Morrison.

“Excuse me, you are going to have

to leave. This is the most offensive thing I have ever seen in a campaign,” said the aide, Nick Creevey.

The impersonator responded: “Excuse me, you don’t tell the supreme leader what to do. I support Gladys Liu.” The impersonator left the Melbourne venue soon after.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Liu said she was focused on delivering outcomes for the Melbourne communities she represents.

“I will not be distracted by my opponents and their grubby tactics,” she said.

Liu was born in Hong Kong and has lived in Australia for more than 30 years.

The disruption appeared to have been orchestrated in part by longshot Queensland State senate candidate Drew Pavlou, who said on social media that he was good friends with Howard X and it was “one of the best things we have ever managed.”

Pavlou had earlier claimed in posts that Liu had defended China’s leadership and had ties to the regime.

Pavlou described himself as a “young larrikin” who thought the election was

boring and needed more excitement.

During the event at Extel Technologies in Melbourne, Morrison praised Chinese Australians.

“I talk about the assertive and aggressive nature of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people,” Morrison said. “You know, Chinese Australians are the greatest patriots you could hope for in this countr y.”

The disruption came at a time of heightened tensions between Australia and China, most recently over a security pact that China signed with the Solomon Islands.

Howard X is well known for his impersonation of Kim Jong Un. In 2018, he was detained and questioned when he arrived in Singapore days before a summit between the North Korean leader and US President Donald Trump.

His real name is Lee Howard Ho Wun. Media reported the impersonator was being interviewed by police on Friday.

Australia’s election will be held on May 21 and early voting began this week. Opinion polls have the centerleft opposition Labor Party tracking a h e a d o f M o r r i s o n ’s c o n s e r v a t i v e coalition. AP

A man impersonating North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un arrives as Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaves Extel Technologies manufacturing facility on Day 33 of the 2022 federal election campaign, in Melbourne, Australia on Friday, May 13, 2022. Mick Tsikas/AAP Image via AP

Journey

»life on the go

BusinessMirror

Editor: Tet Andolong

Sunday, May 15, 2022

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Coasting Along Paradise Island

Crystal boating in Boracay BLS

T

By Bernard L. Supetran

he country’s idyllic string of islands is beckoning us to recapture the fun moments in the long, hot summer we lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

One exciting island which has eluded beach bums for so long is Boracay, with its 8-month rehabilitation and almost two years of shutdown.

With the vaccination card as the only travel requirement, entry to the coveted hideaway is no longer like passing through a gauntlet.

However, in compliance to the island’s carrying capacity and monitoring mechanism, travelers have to secure a QR code from the Boracay Tourist web site before entering.

A trendy way to reach the island is to fly via Air Asia Philippines which consolidates travel needs such as hotels, activities and online shopping on its travel and lifestyle platform airasia Super App, as well as integrated logistics through Teleport and financial ser v ices through its BigPay money app.

Coast Boracay, a charming boutique resort in the beach and party place, can facilitate a seamless point-to-point journey, particularly with the entry documents. From that point on, travel bugs can set aside the hassles and bask directly in the sun, sea and sand.

As part of its recent sixth anniversary, the resort rolled off its “Let The Fun Shine” campaign to recreate fun memories with family and friends in this tropical getaway.

An innovative concept of Raintree Hospitality, this cozy nest takes pride in its well-crafted food and beverage, topped with trade-

mark warm service which keeps guest coming back.

According to Raintree president and CEO Annabella Wisniewski, Coast is a work of art which they meticulously put together for a bespoke staycation.

We aim to be a home away from home where all the guest’s special needs are attended to, and the only instance we have to say to ‘no’ a guest is when we say ‘no problem,” enthuses the amiable hospitality industry icon.

At the resort, you can spend quiet moments in an uncrowded environment as it only has 59 rooms.

Built around a cozy courtyard pool, each room is well-appointed with a comfy bed, toilet and bath, Smart TV with free Netflix access.

Located at Boracay’s famed Station 2 beachfront, you can plunge into the area’s bohemian vibe and feast on the specialties of Cha Cha’s Beach Café which boasts of greattasting culinary creations Raintree is known for.

Regarded as among the island’s trendiest dining and hangout places by online reviews, you can wake up to a power buffet breakfast with the wide mix of international and Filipino favorites, and sink your teeth on gustatory savories which

Cha Cha’s Beach Cafe BLS

Cha Cha's Seafood Platter

Coast speedboat transfer

COAST Swimming Pool

include the seafood tower for lunch or dinner. You can also swing to acoustic music from Thursdays till weekends while gazing at the kaleidoscopic sunset.

Indulge in adrenaline-pumping adventures such as snorkeling, parasailing, helmet diving, scuba diving, banana boat ride, jet ski, kitesurfing, island hopping and other activities you can think of.

Pamper yourself at Ta’La Tropical Nail and Foot Spa, and relax to the magic of a Tala Signature Massage, a 90-minute therapy using Reiki energy healing, or a Foot & Leg Massage matched with manicure and pedicure.

Fitness buffs won’t miss their exercise regimen with the cardio machines and weights at the mini gym at the activity room which also has children’s games, books, and a wide flat TV. If you prefer a laid-back quiet setting, you can stay at Blue Marina, Coast’s the 12-room sister garden resort situated just a few minutes away. With rates starting at P3,250++ which goes with a plated breakfast for two and access to the Coast’s amenities, it is definitely among the biggest deals you can get.

Grab the obligatory pasalubong and souvenir items at The General Store for a piece

of the fabled island before heading home.

From April to September, the resort is offering an irresistible room promo starting at P 6,000 for deluxe rooms to a spacious loft suite with a small kitchen for only P 12,500++. Rates go with a gourmet buffet breakfast for two, roundtrip land and boat to and from the Caticlan airport for a smooth coast-to-coast transfer.

Early bookings can enjoy the best rates starting at P8,500++ for the peak months and the Christmas Season.

With superb service, delightful dishes and everything in between, coasting along paradise island has never been this enticing.

PutoL THE CIT Y OF LIFE

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Business

Sunday, May 15, 2022 | www.businessmirror.com.ph

BIÑAN CITY CELEBRATES THE 12

F

By Rory Visco Contributor

OR nine long days from May 15 up to May 23, 2022, expect the colorful and progressive City of Biñan to pull out all the stops to make the “12th Puto Latik Festival 2022” the best of them all and highlight the city’s best talents, its human resource, in terms of innovation, creativity and resiliency.

And the best way to do it is through the “12th Puto Latik Festival 2022” that has captured the imagination of people all over, both domestic and foreign tourists, as the city highlights two of its most important contributions to Philippine cultural heritage: its worldrenowned Puto Biñan and the Maglalatik Dance.

Bryan Jayson “BJ” Borja, head of the Biñan City Culture, History, Arts and Tourism Office (BCHATO), said that in the past 12 years, the festival has been at the forefront of tourism efforts for the province of Laguna, where the city showcases its talents, products and overall, it is a celebration of life.

“The 12th Puto Latik Festival 2022 is a histo-cultural festival that focuses on the people and the talents, while also highlighting the city’s 24 barangays, their achievements and contributions to the growth of the city,” Borja explained.

Why Puto Latik?

THE festival is an amalgamation of two of the city’s most important contributions to Philippine cultural history: the popular Puto Biñan, a pulverized rice cake topped with grated cheese, salted eggs and condensed milk, and the active and enthralling Maglalatik Dance, which historical books and other reference materials traces its origins in Biñan. This mesmerizing “war” dance captivates its audiences with two groups of dancers, Muslims in red trousers and Christians wearing blue trousers, who are engaged in a mock war battle scene done through dance as they fight for the prized “latik,” a residue made up of sweet oil and curd, which was a by-product of slowly simmered coconut milk.

The quintessential puto

THERE are many iterations of the Puto or rice cake depending on the

region or area you are in. There is the traditional puto popularly dipped in “Dinuguan,” a blood-based stew that combines pork meat and innards, and then there’s the Puto Pao, which also looks like the usual puto but with meat fillings stuffed inside like the ubiquitous siopao, hence the name. It also evolved to use other types of fillings that included fish (tuna) or even chocolate.

Puto Biñan, however, is in a class all by itself because it can stand on its own, where you can taste its goodness without the need for any more deviations or variations. Many still say that Puto Biñan is also the perfect partner to another Biñan food delicacy, the “pospas,” an iteration of the popular “lugaw” (rice porridge) and comes with chicken, tomatoes, ginger and spring onions.

Believed to have been born in the kitchen of a plain housewife, who refused to be incarcerated by a domesticated life, which in most areas mean cleaning the house, taking care of the children and of course, taking care of the husband, the Puto Biñan was created by simple individuals, they who were armed with an inventive mindset and an unbelievable mastery of their domain, which is the kitchen.

Petronila “Nila” Samaniego, Filomena “Menay” Belizario Hernandez, Constancia “Nene” Mendiola Reyes, Natividiad Samson Patiño, Marciano Austria Reyes, Avelino Sawal, Pacita Bernardo de Mata, were just some of the names that concocted this soon-to-becomea-favorite meal time food item served to families during snacks.

Soon enough, word spread out to the community of how good this delectable rice cake was. And in due time, the potential for business of the kitchen-borne Puto Biñan was made evident.

In all its simplicity, the Puto Bi-

Puto Latik Festival 2019 Grand Opening Ceremony held at the heart of the town plaza.

Mayor Dimaguila and Dr. Borja receive awards for Best Tourism Event Festival Category (city level) and Most Outstanding Tourism Officer of the Philippines in 2019 from ATOP-DOT Pearl Awards.

ñan managed to capture the imagination of people from all walks of life, and that means up until the 21st Century. Despite the presence of more modern kitchen-concocted food ideas, the Puto Biñan continued to hold on its own, defying almost a century of existence.

The Maglalatik

FOR numerous schools in the metropolis, particularly the public ones, in their attempt to introduce cultural history and heritage to schoolchildren, even high school students, they never miss out on introducing the Maglalatik dance to young Filipinos despite the rising use of technology, gadgets and other electronic devices.

It will always be a joy to see young Filipinos garbed in plain white shirts (dancers in Biñan were traditionally bare chested) and wearing either red or blue trousers, holding two pieces of halved coconuts shells in both hands, and also halved coconut shells strapped to the upper parts of their chests, their hips and thighs. Dancing to a rhythmic—sometimes hypnotic beat—the groups of maglalatik dancers execute a variety of movements that are really fun to watch,

complemented by cries by the dancers to simulate a “war” between Muslims and Christians.

Pretty soon, the Maglalatik Dance became one of the main highlights of the Puto Latik Festival of Biñan, particularly during the streetdance competition, and perhaps will be for generations to come.

Pandemic strikes

THE celebration of the Puto Latik Festival has been ongoing for 12 years with much aplomb and grandeur, until the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020. This somewhat forced the organizers to put the festival to a halt. With restrictions brought about by community lockdowns and restrictions on mobility, there was no choice.

“Of course, the most challenging time for the festival was the pandemic, which happened at the 10th anniversary of the festival. We had to think of something so that the celebration will continue even in the presence of a dreaded disease, so what we did was to make the celebration online. Despite the lockdowns, we were the first in the country to have celebrated a festival fully online,” Borja said.

He reasoned out that for them,

Puto Biñan 2.0 - In the efforts to revitalize the world-renowned Puto Biñan, Puto Biñan 2.0 Cook-Off Challenge serves as one of the highlights of the festival.

Winners of Mister and Miss Biñan 2019

Winners of Miss Biñan Gay Queen 2019

Latik

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www.businessmirror.com.ph | Sunday, May 15, 2022 A7

2TH PUTO LATIK FESTIVAL 2022

STREET DANCE COMPETITION - Participants don colorful costumes to celebrate Puto Latik Festival and the heritage of maglalatik dance.

Biñan Flair Challenge – The City of Biñan mounted the 1st Open Flair Bartending Competition as part of the Puto Latik Festival 2019 celebration and Philippine Flair Tour 2019.

CITY OF LIFE AWARDS - The City Government of Biñan honors Outstanding Companies and Barangays with utmost contributions to the city via the annual City of Life Awards.

whatever the challenges that came along, whether there’s a pandemic or not, the festival cannot be halted because the festival is meant for the people. “Rarely do the people get recognized, celebrated and given importance despite the fact that they are a vital element in the success of an area or a city like Biñan.

We believe that you can measure the success of an area or city if you celebrate the people, the human resource, an area’s most important and vital asset.”

Timeline of Activities

NOW that mobility restrictions have relaxed and face-to-face or onsite activities are now allowed, the

12th Puto Latik Festival 2022 will proceed with much magnificence and splendor and following government-mandated health protocols.

On May 15, the town fiesta, the festival’s focus will be on the drum-beating and street dance competition where the Maglalatik dance will be highlighted featuring groups from various barangays. Why hold the street dancing on May 15th? Historically, the Maglalatik dance became also a ritualistic activity aimed at celebrating San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of Biñan, which was once an agricultural town.

“Before, the Puto Latik Festival was celebrated every February but I

decided to move it to May to give it an even more significant meaning.

So we thought of making the festival a 9-day celebration to culminate on May 23, which is what we call as “Pistang Intsik,” a celebration of the Chinese people who live in Binan and continue to support the festival in so many ways, the fireworks celebration in particular,” Biñan City Mayor Arman Dimaguila pointed out.

Then the festival will culminate with “Puto Biñan 2.0,” a Puto Biñan cook off challenge to show the evolution of this world-renowned product. “We thought that this product should not remain just like that; it has to evolve, and the challenge was to create that conti-

nuity to make it even more appreciated by the next generation of Filipinos and get them acquainted with the heritage of Biñan,” Dimaguila added.

And reinvent the Puto Biñan was what creative Biñanenses did.

One particular example, Borja said, was on the toppings of the Puto Biñan. When thinking about Puto Biñan, they believe it cannot really be just like any simple puto, that there has to be something else, a costefficient topping that may still allow buyers to close the box without harming the product.

Like for example last year, Borja said there were entries of Puto Biñan that contain the Labahita fish as topping; one even had suka (vinegar) in the puto. “We were really surprised. What’s vinegar doing in a Puto Biñan, which is supposedly sweet and a bit salty? But we were surprised that it turned out to be delicious. Then there’s macapuno and even chocolate toppings, or even when you cut it in half, there’s cream cheese inside. It’s such a nice activity that people look forward to. We even included some sort of nutrition element to the challenge to highlight the nutritional value of Puto Biñan.”

There will also be the Biñan Cultural Summit, which carries the theme “Pamanang Lokal: BInhi ng Kulturang Pilipino.” It will focus on the celebration of National Heritage Month, celebrated usually dur-

COSTUME PARADE COMPETITION - Congresswoman Len Alonte and Vice Mayor Gel Alonte support various activities of the festival such as the Puto Latik Costume Parade Competition

ing May, where the talks center on cultural education.

One of the speakers, Borja said, will be Prof. Felipe de Leon, Jr., former chairperson of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). There’s also the Open Flair Bartending Competition, which gave importance to the growing fondness among many towards bartending, a lucrative job for Filipinos especially overseas, and even among Hotel and Restaurant Management students in order to promote food tourism, which is also a highlight of the festival.

Meanwhile, the winners of the City of Life Awards will be feted on May 20, 2022. It awards the city’s 10 Outstanding Business Taxpayers of 2021, while three DOT-accredited establishments will be given recognition as well.

There will also be beauty pageants like the Mr. and Ms. Biñan 2022 Beauty Pageant, the Ms. Biñan Gay Queen 2022, the Puto Latik Battle of the Bands, the Thanksgiving Mass in honor of San Isidro Labrador and the City Government of Biñan Employees’ Day, and finally the Biñan Grand Santacruzan, a celebration of the city’s most beautiful princesses dressed in regal garb.

It’s been two years that grand celebrations like the Puto Latik Festival took a backseat because of a debilitating pandemic, but

that didn’t stop Biñanenses from keeping the spirit of the festival alive, albeit done online. Borja said it is the city’s most impressive and grandest festival that put Biñan in the country’s festival map and they will not let it go to waste. In fact, the Puto Latik Festival was even awarded by the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines-Department of Tourism (ATOP-DOT) Pearl Awards, which was established to recognize exceptional tourism practices in the country, for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019 as one of the Best Tourism Events in the Philippines under the Best Tourism Event Festival Category (city level).

Even Borja himself won as Most Outstanding Tourism Officer of the Philippines that year.

“As mentioned, the festival is aimed at celebrating Biñanenses, our people and most important asset, and their significant contributions that brought the city where it is right now, with the able stewardship of our city mayor Atty. Arman Dimaguila and Vice Mayor Gel Alonte. It was a partnership, with the good results brought about by good teamwork and total team effort. It can never be done in any other way,” he concluded.

To know more about the festival, please contact BCHATO via Facebook, through (049) 5118479 or via email at binanchato@gmail.com.

Features BusinessMirror

A8 Sunday, May 15, 2022

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Here’s what analysts say are priorities for Philippines’s Marcos

By Karthikeyan Sundaram & Siegfrid Alegado

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the 2000s.” (Editor’s note: The ratio was reported on May 12 as having risen to 63.5 percent the first quarter.)

• Marcos may also be keen to pursue closer ties with China to benefit from low interest loans, they said, adding that help may be less forthcoming given Beijing has reined in overseas investment and lending in recent years.

Bloomberg

HILIPPINES watchers, including economists and bankers, have a raft of priorities for Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who’s set to take over as president as faster inflation threatens to undermine the economy’s recovery from the pandemic.

Growing price pressures may dent demand, which is a key driver of the economy. Policy makers have said gross domestic product needs to grow at least 6 percent for the next five to six years to help it pare debt it took on to fight Covid-19. Meanwhile, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is among the few central banks in Asia that have stood pat on rates to support economic recovery, rather than pivoting toward the inflation risk.

From continuing outgoing leader Rodrigo Duterte’s economic policies, especially his “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program, to fighting inflation, here’s what Philippine watchers are saying Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, needs to do after taking office:

Sonia Zhu, economist at Moody’s Analytics

• “The incoming president will need to treat inflation as a top economic priority.”

Tamara Mast Henderson, economist at Bloomberg Economics

• Marcos’s “No. 1 task will be securing the robust foreign investment needed to maintain strong growth and put the nation’s ballooning debt on a sustainable track.

To do this, Marcos must persuade investors that he won’t repeat his father’s mismanagement—a tall order” • He must also restore fiscal restraint and stay out of the central bank’s way as it works to tamp down inflation expectations

Michael Ricafort, economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.

FERDINAND “BONGBONG” MARCOS JR. speaks to reporters at his headquarters in Mandaluyong on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Marcos has declared victory in this week’s presidential elections. AP/AARON FAVILA

• If first-quarter GDP growth exceeds 6 percent year-on-year, the odds of an interest rate hike in June will rise to 60 percent, she said in a note dated May 6, commenting on the need to tame inflation that’s running above the central bank’s 2 percent-4 percent.

Wick Veloso, president of Philippine National Bank

• Investors would like to hear Marcos’ plan of creating more jobs and helping consumers and sectors hardest hit by the pandemic.

• Market would also like to

know how his government intends to manage public debt which increased by three times, Veloso said in an interview Bloomberg Television. “You can’t just cure this with taxes.” A number of assets will have to be sold for it would take “a long time” to bridge this gap if it’s taxation alone.

Nalin Chutchotitham, economist at Citigroup Inc.

• Cabinet formation is an opportunity for Marcos to address some of the private-sector concerns on governance.

• “High inflationary pressures from energy and commodity prices could hurt the positive economic recovery momentum thus far, and must be well-managed with continuation of supply-side measures,” she wrote in a report to clients Tuesday.

• “Ensuring confidence among the international community and foreign businesses could help support capital flows and currency stability.”

Alex Holmes and Gareth Leather of Capital Economics

• “Marcos gave away few policy details on the campaign trail. But one thing he is keen to do is resume the ‘Build, Build, Build’ infrastructure program of President Duterte,” they wrote in a report to clients Monday. They said the new leader will hope to “expand and improve” the program.

• While the additional spending on infrastructure would increase government debt, the economists saw room for the government to deal with higher debt, which at 58 percent of GDP “is still much lower than it was for much of

• “Key success factors” for the incoming president that would help sustain economic recovery and attract more investment include a credible and competent economic team, promotion of ESG, strengthening institutions and rule of law as well as continuation of fiscal reforms • Investors are in “some waitand-see attitude, as a matter of prudence, while waiting for details in the coming days or weeks”

Analysts at ING Bank NV

• “Marcos has vowed to subsidize food and fuel items, which will adversely affect the country’s fiscal sustainability goals,” analysts at the bank wrote in a report to clients Tuesday. The peso is likely to come under selling pressure today as foreign funds exit, they said, while adding that little was known about his election platform target amid supply shocks to food and energy prices.

Allies of Marcos Jr. set to dominate Philippine Congress

By Jim Gomez

The Associated Press

A

LLIES of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the presumptive next president of the Philippines, appear set to dominate both chambers of Congress, further alarming activists after the late dictator son’s apparent election victory restored his family to the seat of power.

Ongoing counts from Monday’s vote show they’re set to capture most of the 300-seat House of Representatives and half of the 24-seat Senate that was up for election, and likely their top leaderships. Their family members and siblings have been also proclaimed winners in local posts, reflecting the strong grip of political dynasties on the Southeast Asian democracy despite a constitutional prohibition that was never enforced.

“It’s going to be problematic because an opposition is very much needed in a democracy,” said Jean Franco, a political science professor at the state-run University of the Philippines. “There has to be alternative ideas and there has to be monitoring of what the executive is doing, otherwise, we will be like North Korea.”

The electoral triumph of Marcos Jr. and his allies is an astonishing reversal of the army-backed but largely peaceful “People Power” revolt in 1986 that forced his father out of office following years

of massive human-rights atrocities and plunder that his son never acknowledged.

Marcos Jr. had more than 31 million votes in the unofficial count in what’s projected to be one of the strongest majority mandates for a Philippine president in decades.

His vice-presidential running mate and daughter of the outgoing populist leader, Sara Duterte, appeared to have also won with a massive margin.

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping were among the world leaders who have congratulated them on their huge victory and the relatively smooth conduct of the elections. The separately elected president and vice president are set to take office on June 30 for a single, six-year term after Congress confirms the results.

‘Tsunami in Congress’

“IT’S like a storm surge, a tsunami in Congress for the opposition,” left-wing House Rep. Carlos Zarate, whose nine-year term ends in June, told The Associated Press.

“The challenge for the broad opposition is not to concede but to press the fight for good governance, accountability and democracy wherever it takes.”

The small fraction of a leftwing opposition bloc would likely be trimmed further in the incoming Congress largely due to a military campaign to link it to communist guerrillas, Zarate said.

Rep. Ferdinand Martin Ro-

FERDINAND MARCOS JR., the son of the late dictator, center, carries a Philippine flag beside running mate Sara Duterte, the daughter of the current President, during their last campaign rally known as “Miting de Avance” on Saturday, May 7, 2022, in Parañaque City. AP/AARON FAVILA

mualdez, a cousin of Marcos Jr., has been endorsed as House speaker by his party. Another possible candidate is Romualdez’s ally and former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who brokered the alliance of Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte.

Only one opposition candidate, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, would likely make it to the new slate in the Senate.

Aside from deciding the fate of the president’s legislative agenda and budget proposal, Congress is

a crucial oversight that investigates major government anomalies and decides on impeachment complaints. A new anti-terror bill opposed by human-rights groups, for example, easily passed in both chambers that were dominated by allies of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Court cases and legal issues still hound the late dictator’s family, including payment of a huge estate tax, a 2018 corruption conviction of his widow, Imelda Marcos, which is on appeal, and full com-

pensation of thousands of victims of torture, detentions, disappearances and other atrocities committed in the martial-law era when he was in power.

A brutal anti-drug crackdown launched by Duterte, which killed thousands of mostly petty drug suspects, has sparked an investigation by the International Criminal Court as potential crimes against humanity. The outgoing leader, who is known for his brash language, has said he would likely face

more criminal complaints when he steps down on June 30.

Monday’s elections assured the political longevity of both the Marcoses and the Dutertes. A son of the presumptive president, Sandro Marcos, was elected to the House as a representative of their northern home province of Ilocos Norte and several relatives captured provincial posts.

Sara Duterte’s brother, Sebastian Duterte, would succeed her as mayor of southern Davao city. Another brother, Paulo Duterte, has been reelected to another congressional term.

Philippine elections have long been dominated by politicians belonging to the same bloodlines. At least 250 political families have monopolized power across the country, although such dynasties are prohibited under the Constitution. Congress—long controlled by members of powerful clans targeted by the constitutional ban—has failed to pass the law needed to define and enforce the provision.

Duterte, the outgoing president, carved a political name starting in the 1980s as a longtime Davao mayor with his extra-tough campaign against criminality. It left hundreds of drug suspects dead and presaged similar killings on a wider scale that would follow him when he rose to the presidency in 2016 on an audacious but failed campaign promise to eradicate illegal drugs and corruption in three to six months.

Science Sunday

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

BusinessMirror

Sunday, May 15, 2022

A9

Lighting torches for Science for Change Summits

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he Freshwater Fisheries Center in Isabela State University received a grant of ₧22.5 million for the research and development (R&D) for the management of the indigenous fisheries resources of the Cagayan Valley Region.

The project focused on highvalue species, such as lobed river mullet, or “ludong,” and freshwater eels that are present in the Cagayan River system.

The fisheries center is a beneficiary of the Science for Change Program’s (S4CP) Niche Center in the Region for R&D Program (Nicer) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

The project gives emphasis on developing artificial breeding and culture techniques for fish species and provide information on their natural habitats to determine options for their management.

It was one of the highlights of the S4CP Summit that was held in Baguio City on May 13, the second leg of the summits after the Bacolod City event last week, a news release said.

S4CP is Science for the People

With the theme, “Science for Change is Science for the People,” the summits showcased beneficial changes in institutions, industries and communities from the S4CP’s four subcomponents programs.

They are the Nicer; Collaborative R&D to Leverage the Philippine Economy Program (Cradle); Business Innovation through S&T for Industry Program (BIST); and R&D Leadership Program (RDLead).

“For the past six years, DOST endeavors to significantly accelerate science, technology and innovation in the country through a massive increase in investment in the S&T human resource development and R&D,” said Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña in the news release.

He added that the S4CP allows the undertaking of relevant and meaningful R&D in Nicers that are on a par with international

research institutes.

Through these centers, there will be a continuing increase in technology-based and value-adding business investments, both foreign and domestic, due to a conducive STI-supported economic environment, de na Peña pointed out.

DOST Undersecretary for Regional Operations Sancho A. Mabborang remarked that the DOSTRegional Offices champion the banner projects of the S4CP. “Having been from the region myself, I am fully aware of the capacities that we can maximize in the commercialization of the results of our R&D activities in the countryside. We are perennially one with the regions when it comes to bringing S&T to our people on the ground,” Mabborang said.

For herself, DOST Undersecretary for Research and Development Rowena Cristina L. Guevara pointed out: “R&D investments in the region are essential to address regional disparity in R&D funding and will drive industry growth all over the country.”

“Bringing opportunities to key industry players in the Regions levels the playing field in the development of the STI landscape in the country,” Guevara added.

North Luzon beneficiaries

The Nicer Program prov ides grants to higher education institutions (HEIs) to undertake collaborative research that promotes regional development.

The 42 total number of Nicers established across 17 regions have P2.23 billion approved grants.

From the total Nicer grants, P450 million, or 20 percent, were granted to North Luzon HEIs. The Cradle Program for academe, research development institutions

DOST officials light the torches for Northern Luzon Science for Change Program Summit. They are (from left) DOST Region II Director Virginia Bilgera, DOST CAR Director Nancy Bantog, DOST Region I Director Armando Ganal, Undersecretary for Regional Operations Engr. Sancho Mabborang, DOST Region III Director Julius Caesar Sicat, Undersecretary for Research and Development Dr. Rowena Cristina Guevara and DOST-NRCP Executive Director Marieta Sumagaysay. S4CP photo

(RDIs), and industry aims to provide industries with the appropriate R&D to solve their problems.

To d ate, 86 projects w it h P388.6-million total approved budget have been implemented by 36 HEIs and 87 industry partners across 10 regions.

For North Luzon, a total of P37.9 million was granted to nine academe-industry collaborations under Cradle.

One of these collaborations is with Edcor Multipurpose Cooperative, a cassava business in San Guillermo, Isabela.

Farmer-members of Edcor have experienced low quality cassava harvests. One of the reasons is disease-infection in cassava plantations, which directly affected the quality of the produce.

Through the Demeter’s Eyes project, undertaken by Isabela State University, an embedded system for smart detection, recognition and mapping of Cassava Phytoplasma Disease (CPD) in cassava plants and was developed with a budget of P5 million.

The monitoring results of the CPD-infected cassava plants can be used by cassava farmers to immediately isolate the infected plants to avoid possible spread to other areas of plantation.

To date, there is no approved BIST project in North Luzon. The BIST for Industry encourages private companies to invest in R&D through acquisition of strategic

and relevant equipment or technologies.

“I encourage all local companies from CAR [Cordillera Administrative Region], Regions I, II and III to avail [themselves of] the financial assistance from BIST,” Guevara said.

Meanwhile, the RDLead Program capacitates host institutions by sending them an R&D expert who can guide them in bringing out the potential or latent talents of universities, researchers, and research personnel.

In the Cordillera Region, Dr. Ronald T. Del Castillo, a consultant in the United Nations World Food Programme (Philippines), is the RDLeader in Saint Louis University.

He is the team leader on research about developing and applying social and behavioral communication tool in improving food and nutrition-related behaviors, including indigenous peoples and in the DOST-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development-funded research on mobile mental health.

His expertise in public and mental health guided the faculty and staff of the Saint Louis University in crafting their research program proposal on mental health in the Cordillera Region.

Undersecretary Guevara further noted that it is important to sustain the R&D initiatives and undertakings with the stakehold-

ers in all regions.

“Through the S4CP Bill, we can ensure that research studies and results propagate society-centric solutions that benefit the Filipinos,” Guevara said.

Visayas beneficiaries

In the Visayas, the DOST provided funding for agricultural, pharmaceutical, herbal supplement manufacturing and regional science communities, the S4CP news release said.

Among the Visayas Nicers is the establishment of the Eastern Visayas Center for Crustacean Research and Development at Samar State University.

With the dwindling supply of crustaceans, including crabs, shrimps, prawns, the center with the new state-of-the-art facilities and technologies will help the local government units in Eastern Visayas with the information and strategies for policy for mu lation in f isher ies and aquatic resources management and sustainable utilization.

The collaboration will likewise guarantee socio-economic impact in the region.

The Cradle Program provides support to MCPI Corp., a leading natural carrageenan manufacturer and exporter, partnered with the University of San Carlos to develop three product lines— cold-soluble powders, bioplastic sheets, and bioactive hydrogels.

The results of the studies will help the industry design bioplastic with desired rigidity and strength, constitute powders that dissolve in tap water without heating, and prepare hydrogels for biomedical use.

In BIST, the beneficiary is Herbanext, a 100 percent Filipinoowned company in Bago City, Negros Occidental, which manufactures botanical ingredients, nutraceuticals, functional food products, herbal drugs and herbal cosmetics.

The company received an interest-free loan worth P11.7 million. It was used to acquire stateof-the-art extraction equipment and modern pilot scale machinery that allow increase in potency and therapeutic quality and reduces issues in shelf stability and microbial load in the manufacturing herbal products.

“Herbanext is more empowered to do more research and is more confident in the qualit y and safet y of our herba l products. In the not so distant future, we look for ward to the export of world class Filipino herbal medicine,” testified Philip Cruz, president of Herbanext Laboratories Inc. The RDLead Program in the Visayas has Dr. Esperanza Maribel Agoo of Bohol Island State University, an expert in Plant Taxonomy, Conservation and Ecology.

“There is a need to tap the university’s existing resources in manpower and facilities for them to gain more impactful researches. Notably, there is also a need for the institution to be more aware of the research priorities of funding agencies and for researchers to collaborate more among themselves and at the regional, national, and international level,” Agoo said.

The S4C Program opened the opportunities to research institutions and industries to invest in R&D to improve their processes, operations, and profits.

With these R&D investments, Visayas sees industry revitalization and progress in aquaculture, pharmaceuticals, herbal supplement manufacturing, and other collaborative research and partnerships, the S4C Program said.

Lyn R. Resurreccion

DepEd lauds young achievers for bagging intl recognition

Searca Director Glenn B. Gregorio (left) presents to Romanian Ambassador to the Philippines Răduţa Dana Matache a replica of Searca’s Growth Monument, which consists of interlinked stylized human figures symbolizing synergy amid the diversity of the Southeast Asian nations, during her visit to Searca. Searca photo

Grade 10 STEM students Symone Monika A. Yambao and Juliene Gabrielle U. Catibog of Oriental Mindoro National High School both won in the 12th Regional Congress Search for Seameo Young Scientists. DepEd photo

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ducation Secretary Leonor Magtolis Briones praised young students who excellently represented the Philippines in international science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) competitions in the past years.

Briones cited the recent triumph of Oriental Mindoro National High School’s Grade 10 STEM learners Symone Monika A. Yambao and Juliene Gabrielle U. Catibog in the 12th Regional Congress Search for Seameo Young Scientists (SSYS) from March 7 to 10. Seameo is the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization.

“I commend our learners, together with their passionate teacher-coaches, who are dedicated to prove that Filipinos are worldclass in science, mathematics and innovation,

even amid a global health crisis. DepEd [Department of Education] will continue to hone the young generation as we prepare them for the challenges of the future,” Briones said in a news release.

Guided by Teacher Aldrin Ramilo, Yambao and Catibog were awarded Most Promising Young Scientists (Science Category) in the international search for their science paper “Exploring the Potential of Cycloid Fish Scales as a Sustainable Bioplastic.”

“Of all the intelligent students that participated in the event, we didn’t expect that two students from a province in a country so little would even be considered for this award.

We’re just really glad that our study can possibly have a great impact on our community and winning this award just motivated us to

Maria Isabel Layson, Iloilo National High School’s alumna and a winner in the National Science and Technology Fair, was recognized as one of the 2022 Young Shapers of the Future (Health and Medicine) of Britannica. DepEd photo further improve our study,” Yambao said.

The Education chief also lauded Iloilo National High School’s alumna and a product of the National Science and Technology Fair (NSTF) Maria Isabel Layson, who was recently recognized as one of the 2022 Young Shapers of the Future (Health and Medicine) of Britannica.

Before being recognized in Britannica’s list, Layson won Best Individual Research in Life Science at the NSTF for studying “aratiles,” or “sarisa,” and its antioxidant compounds that combat diabetes.

Meanwhile, Briones also noted that Filipino learners have been reaping awards in the global scene even before the pandemic.

DepEd produced annual winners in competitions such as the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), Asean Quiz Regional

Competition, and Mathematics Guild of the Philippines.

In 2019, the trio of Evan Relle Tongol, Shaira Gozun, and Neil David Cayanan of Angeles City Science High School, Pampanga, bagged an honorable mention in ISEF for their project, “Hibla,” a sound-absorption material made from locally available fibers abaca, bamboo and water hyacinth.

A year earlier, Joscel Kent Manzanero, Keith Russel Cadores, and Eugene Rivera of Camarines Sur National High School bagged the Second Grand Award in the Energy: Physical category of ISEF for inventing the Solar-Tracking Arduino-Rooted PV Panels, which improve the power harvesting and generating capacity of photovoltaic cells by mimicking a flower.

Romanian envoy, Searca eye research, education ties

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he Romania ambassador to the Philippines eye research and education ties with the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) during her visit to the Los Baños-based think tank last month.

Ambassador Răduţa Dana Matache of Matache met with Searca Director Dr. Glenn B. Gregorio, Deputy Director Joselito G. Florendo and key Searca executives She was given a briefing on Searca’s programs and activities that are geared toward Accelerating Transformation Through Agricultural Innovation in the 11 Southeast Asian countries that the center is

mandated to serve in partnership with governments, academe, other research and international development institutions, civil society, and the private sector in the region and other parts of the world.

The Romanian envoy commended Searca for its development programs in Southeast Asia.

In particular, Matache expressed keen interest to serve as facilitator between Southeast Asian and Romanian research and education institutions for future collaborations.

She also expressed her support to efforts of the center to partner with France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries.

A10 Sunday, May 15, 2022

Faith

Sunday

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

Bishop calls for reconciliation after ‘divisive election’

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umaguete City—Bishop Julito Cortes of Dumaguete has called “families torn by politics” in the recent local and national elections toward reconciliation.

“For all of us who went through this divisive election, we should forgive each other,” Cortes said in a video message on Wednesday.

“Let us return to nurturing our relationships with one another as

family torn because of politics,” he said.

The bishop pointed out that “change is not just external but also internal in each of us and our homes.”

Bishop Julito Cortes of Dumaguete

As he assured the Church’s “cooperation” with the government for the welfare of the public, he said the diocese will also monitor the campaign promises of the newly elected leaders.

The prelate also congratulated the winners, reminding them to always seek the grace of knowledge to see the “will of God for His people.”

“The hand of God can be seen in history,” he said. “God is the one who gave them the authority. God calls them to serve, especially those weak and poor in our society.”

CBCP News

For those who did not win, he enjoined them not to lose hope.

“Losing does not mean complete failure but an opportunity for the will of God for you to happen,” Cortes said.

“When a window closes, another opens,” he added. “Search for God’s purpose for you through faith and in obedience to the Holy Spirit.”

As of this posting, most of the election winners have been proclaimed in Negros Oriental and Siqujor provinces.

Ryan Christopher J. Sorote/CBCP News

Pope decries divisions caused by old-school liturgy fans

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OME—Pope Francis recently blasted Catholics who, hewing to old-school versions of liturgy like the Latin Mass, have made an ideological battleground of the issue, decrying what he described as devil-inspired divisiveness in the church.

Francis pressed his papacy’s battle against traditionalists, whose prominent members include some ultra-conservative cardinals.

They have resisted restrictions, imposed last year by the Vatican, on celebrations of the old Mass in Latin in St. Peter’s Basilica and, more generally, for years have disparaged the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Speaking at the Vatican to instructors and students of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, Francis said it’s not possible to worship God while using the liturgy as a “battleground” for nonessential questions that divide the church.

Francis has made clear that he prefers Mass celebrated in local languages, with the priest facing the congregation instead of with his back to the pews.

That was the way Mass was celebrated before the revolutionary Vatican Council reforms, more than a half century-ago, which aimed at making rank-and-file Catholics feel more connected to liturgical celebrations.

“I underline again that liturgical life, and the study of it, must lead to greater ecclesial unity, not to division,’’ the pope told the institute’s participants. “When liturgical life is a bit of a banner for division, there is the odor of the devil being inside there, the deceiver.’’

“It’s not possible to render worship to God and at the same time make a battleground of liturgy for questions that aren’t essential,’’ Francis added.

Last year, two prominent cardinals questioned the legitimacy of a Vatican decree

placing restrictions of the celebration of the old Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and forbidding private Masses in its side chapels.

Such traditionalists have openly voiced hostility to Francis.

The retired chief of the Vatican’s doctrinal orthodoxy office, German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, contended that no one was obliged to obey that decree. US Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was given the heave-ho by Francis early in his papacy from a Vatican post, called for the decree to be scrapped.

Francis told his audience that “every reform creates some resistance.” He recalled that, when he was a youngster, Pope Pius XII allowed faithful to drink water before receiving Communion and that scandalized opponents.

Similar indignation followed later reforms allowing Catholics to fulfill their weekly Mass obligation by attending an evening service instead of on Sunday

Fatima and reparation

By Rev. Fr Roberto Francis A. Tiquia, STD

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ur Lady of Fatima, in her apparitions to the three children, said that men must not offend the Lord anymore for He is already too much offended.

Her appeal in her July 13, 1917, apparition can be succinctly summarized: “Sin no More.”

On May 13, 1917, Our Lady told them: “Will you offer yourselves to God, ready to make sacrifices and accept willingly all the sufferings that He may wish to send you, in reparation for so many sins by which the Divine Majesty is offended, and to obtain the conversion of sinners?” (cf. Our Lady of Fatima, first apparition , May 13, 1917).

The three answered in the affirmative and Our Lady told them that they will have much to suffer.

Indeed, the three children suffered tremendously, but not in vain for they offered them all as reparation for sins.

Fatima apparition is considered as one of the most important Marian apparitions approved by the Church in our times.

The Blessed Virgin Mary reiterated the need for prayer and penance saying to the three children that there are many souls in hell because very few pray and make sacrifices for sinners.

Our Lady highlighted the importance of the spirit of reparation in her messages to the three children, two of which have been canonized, Sts. Jacinta and Francesco.

Sister Lucia’s cause for canonization has already been started, she died on February 13, 2005. On February 13, 2008, the third anniversary of her death, Pope Benedict XVI decided that in her case the five-year customary waiting period by church law before opening a cause for beatification would be waived.

This norm was also dispensed in the causes for Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. On February 13, 2017, Sister Lúcia was accorded the title Servant of God, as the initial step toward her canonization.

Even after our Lady’s apparition, men continues to commit sin. People become forgetful of God. Instead of rendering God just homage, service and praise, men continue to hurt God by sinning.

Our Lady of Fatima tells us that wars, chaos and other disasters are the effects of sin. She emphatically reminds us to sin

no more and do more sacrifices.

We need to practice reparation which can help turn the tide of the evils of our times. Reparation must be done by all, for all have sinned and many continue living in sin.

Reparation, especially to the Eucharist, is very much needed today as St. John Paul II said in Dominici Cenae # 2,3: “Let our reparation never cease.”

Venerable Pius XII mandated consecration and reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus conjointly with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (cf. Pius XII Haurietis Aquas, 1956, No. 124) Since the Hearts of Jesus and Mary bleeds because of the many sins committed against their hearts, reparation has to be offered. (cf. Pope Pius XI Miserentissimus Redemptor, No.6.)

Pius XI defines reparation as: “The creature’s love should be given in return for the love of the Creator, another thing follows from this at once, namely that the same uncreated love, if so be it has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offense, some sort of compensation must be rendered for the injury, and this debt is commonly called by the name Reparation.”

The motive for reparation is love. When one loves, one is willing to do reparation.

Reparation: Meaning and notion

Reparation, from latin “reparare,” means to make new, to make amends. It is an attempt to right what is wrong. Every sin is wrong.

In the spiritual sense, the soul desires to help renew a sinful world with its own cooperation in the mystery of redemption.

The soul who makes reparation for sin is really making at attempt to appease the divine justice. Those who make reparation, in a sense, “bargain with the Lord” in order to hold back His chastisement.

One who makes reparation tries to buy as much time as possible so that more sinners might be saved through the prayers and sacrifices that are offered for them. (cf. Freze Michael, S.F.O They Bore the Wounds of Christ. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, Huntington Indiana, USA 1989 p.68,69) One who offers reparation is more concerned with appealing to God’s mercy to forgive the sinners by means of prayer and sacrifice.

Reparation seeks to undo the damage

The first sculpture of Our Lady of Fátima by Portuguese José Ferreira Thedim in 1920.

Wikimedia Commons

already done from past sin (to “repair” a past wrong).

Reparation is a close ally of the Sacrament of Penance. A reparator longs for the soul to make an act of contrition for their sins, to be truly sorry from the depths of their hearts, and to confess their wrongdoings in order to be converted and reconciled with the Savior of all mankind.

In his encyclical “Miserentissimus Redemptor,” published in 1928, Pope Pius XI tell us of the need for reparation.

In fact, he ordered it.

He speaks of the numerous heinous crimes/sins in which men, under the influence and deception of Satan, have shamefully abandoned Christ and His Mystical Body in great sorrow.

Among them are: Heinous crimes of man; governments and heads of countries have openly attacked Christ; religious dedicated to the Lord have been persecuted; apostasy has become commonplace; disrespect for Church discipline and tradition has become rampart; human and divine rights have been overthrown.

Grievous assaults have been made on the purity of the youth; the assault on the sanctity of marriage has become vigorous; the education of children has become based upon false theories; the virtue of modesty has been virtually forgotten; materialism abounds; the

mornings.

Francis also blasted what he called “closed mentalities” that exploit the liturgy.

“This is the drama we are living, in ecclesial groups which are moving away from the Church, putting in question” the authority of bishops and of the church, he said.

In 2016, a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group, the Society of St. Pius X, accused Francis of sowing confusion and errors about the faith, joining a chorus of conservative criticism over what they perceived as the pontiff’s lax doctrine.

In 1969, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society, opposed to the modernizing church reforms of the 1960s.

In one of the more spectacular chapters of the Vatican’s long-running duel with traditionalists, he and four other bishops were later excommunicated by the Vatican after the archbishop consecrated them without papal consent. AP authority of the Word of God is publicly despised; and personal adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is neglected, even forgotten.

We are all being called to live the Fatima message that is more urgent today than it was more than a hundred years ago.

If we want our Church to have renewal, let us return to the sacrament of Confession, let us Adore the Lord truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, let us pray the holy Rosary daily as requested by our Lady and let us attend the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass if possible daily, if not every Sunday.

Let us offer more reparation for our sins and the sins of the world.

Let us also take to heart the admonition of St. John Paul II to make Reparation to Jesus really present in the Eucharist because of many desecrations, irreverences and sacrileges done against the august presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

May our daily adoration become Reparative adoration. (cf. St. John Paul II Dominici Cenae # 2,3) Our faith tells us that Jesus is there wholly and substantially present as God and man in the Eucharist cf. CCC 1374 In his encyclical “Mystici Corporis Christi (1953),” Venerable Pius XII invited all to do works of reparation “to follow with good will the footsteps of Jesus our King, as is demanded by true and effective charity toward the Church and the soul that the Church continually begets for Christ.”

The same Pius XII mandated consecration and reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus conjointly with the Immaculate Heart of Mary (cf. Pius XII Haurietis Aquas, 1956, No. 124)

Paul VI

In 1966, in his Apostolic Constitution “Poenitentiam Agite,” Paul VI confirmed that reparation is necessary in the Church.

He believed that the solution to the evil of these days is to pray and offer sacrifices for others.

Reparation made of prayers and sacrifices is exactly the message of the approved message of our Lady of Fatima.

The doctrine of repairing for the sins of others is an integral part of the message of Our Lady of Fatima to the three seers.

Let us dry the tears of our heavenly Mother, let us practice reparation and console the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Fr. Roberto Francis A. Tiquia, STD, is from the Diocese of Virac and works as National Spiritual Director of Alliance of Holy Family International.

A detail from a stained-glass window featuring Marie Rivier in Bourg-Saint-Andéol, France. Pubic Domain

4 holy women to be canonized

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ope Francis will preside over the first canonizations in more than two years this weekend. Ten people will be officially recognized as saints by the Catholic Church on May 15.

Among them are some relatively wellknown figures, like Charles de Foucauld, Titus Brandsma, and Devasahayam Pillai. Less well known are four Catholic female leaders who will be canonized alongside them.

Each of the women founded religious orders which have grown worldwide and made a lasting impact on the Church.

Here are the stories of these four holy women, who all happen to be named for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Marie Rivier

As the French Revolution forced convents and monasteries across France to close and priests and nuns were martyred under the Reign of Terror, this 28-year-old Frenchwoman founded a religious order in 1796.

Marie Rivier founded the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary, dedicated to the education of young girls in the faith. The congregation received official approval in 1801 and expanded across France.

Rivier struggled for much of her childhood from a debilitating disability that caused her joints to swell and her limbs to shrink. She could hardly stand with the help of crutches, according to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Her health problems also hindered her ability to enter religious life, but Rivier persevered and helped to educate unemployed women in her parish before the founding of her congregation.

Within a few decades of Rivier’s death in 1838, the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary spread to Canada and the United States. Today the sisters are present on five continents.

Maria Francesca of Jesus (Anna Maria Rubatto)

Mother Maria Francesca of Jesus was a 19th-century missionary foundress who crossed the Atlantic Ocean seven times by boat to establish an order of Capuchin sisters in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.

The Italian religious sister, originally from the province of Turin, was born Anna Maria Rubatto in 1844. She lost her mother at the age of four and her father when she was 19 years old.

She worked as a servant and cultivated a deep spirituality, visiting a church daily to pray. But she did not discover her vocation until she was 40 years old.

One day when she was leaving a church, she heard the cries of a construction worker who had been injured by a stone that fell from the scaffolding onto his head.

Maria helped to wash and treat his wounds. She discovered that the building he had been working on was a convent.

The Capuchin friar who was overseeing its construction invited her to join

as a founding member and then the first superior of the Institute of the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of Loano.

Within just seven years, Mother Maria found herself traveling to South America to found new houses as her religious order grew.

Today, the sisters are known as the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto and are present in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and other countries across South America, Europe, and Africa.

Maria Domenica Mantovani

Maria Domenica Mantovani served as the first general superior of the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, which she co-founded to serve the poor, orphaned, and the sick.

At the age of 24, she made a vow of virginity on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in her hometown of Castelletto di Brenzone in northern Italy.

She co-founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family in 1892, at the age of 29, along with Blessed Giuseppe Nascimbeni, a priest who had been her spiritual guide since she was 15 years old.

Serving as the order’s superior general for more than 40 years, Mantovani wrote the constitutions of the order and oversaw the opening of numerous convents.

By the time she died in 1934, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family had grown to have 1,200 sisters present in 150 convents in Italy and abroad.

Maria of Jesus Santocanale

Mother Maria of Jesus founded the Capuchin Sisters of Immaculate Mary of Lourdes in Sicily in 1910.

Born in Palermo in 1852, Carolina Santocanale felt a desire to consecrate herself to God from an early age despite her father’s wishes.

Under the spiritual guidance of Father Mauro Venuti, she discerned to devote her life to works of charity for the poor rather than entering the cloister.

At the age of 32, she began to experience significant health problems. Severe pain in her legs led her to be bedridden for more than a year. After her illness, she embraced an even more radical Franciscan spirituality.

After making simple vows at the age of 39, she spent most of her free moments, day or night, in front of the tabernacle.

She oversaw the establishment of an orphanage and a nursery school, and nurtured many vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life.

Today, Santocanale’s sisters are present in Albania, Brazil, Italy and Madagascar. She wrote that the mission of her Capuchin sisters was “to be bread broken for the hunger and the life of our brothers and sisters, in the image of Mar y Immaculate in the myster y of salvation.” Courtney Mares/

Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

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There’s money in used election materials

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

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fter the challenge of picking the right candidates for various national and local positions ended on May 9, the Philippines is now faced with an equally difficult challenge: how to dispose of the tons of materials produced during the elections.

Posters and streamers made of tarpaulin, leaflets, flyers, comics, sample ballots and other campaign collaterals like ballers and fans were everywhere.

Eventually, they will all end up in trash cans further aggravating the problem of proper waste disposal.

The Philippines generates around 59,846 tons of waste per day, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The huge volume of waste goes up every time there’s a huge event like the annual religious pilgrimages during the Holy Week, visits to public and private cemeteries during All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day, Christmas and New Year celebrations, and the national and local elections held every three years.

During the 2016 mid-term election, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) reported having hauled more than 30 truckloads of post-election garbage.

Digitized election Over the years, the volume of garbage produced by candidates, including papers for their posters, single-use plastic for flaglets flags and small banners; cloth for huge streamers, have been rendered obsolete by tarpaulins.

“Digitization of the election results in lesser garbage year after year,” said Crispian Lao, vice chairman of the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC), told the BusinessMirror during a telephone interview on May 11.

Lao said that in the earlier elections the streets of Metro Manila were flooded with campaign materials, including sample ballots, after elections.

“Now, we see less and less of these kinds of garbage because of the prohibition of their distribution in polling precincts during elections,” said Lao, who represents the private sector in NSWMC.

Bad news for the environment Tarpaulin, or tarp, a large sheet of strong, flexible, water-resistant material, such as cloth or polyester coated with polyurethane, or made of plastics, such as polyethylene, are currently often used by businesses to advertise their products.

Because it is tough and durable, and now very affordable, politicians have now been using tarp for their election propaganda.

Undersecretary Jonas R. Leones of the DENR‘s Policy, Planning and International Affairs observed that this year’s election was particularly special due to the increased number of voters, as well as candidates.

Tarpaulin, however, is bad news for the environment, especially if they are produced in volumes and are not properly disposed of.

Leones said it contains toxic chemicals, and the paint used is equally deadly.

“Tarpaulins are temporary [election] campaign materials. So if they end up in landfills, they become residual waste. If they end up in water bodies, they cause pollution and cause flooding,” Leones added.

Biggest in history The May 9 elections had the highest number of candidates. Besides the president and vice president, up for grabs were 12 seats for the Senate; 316 seats for the House of Representatives;

Members of EcoWaste Coalition show the various products made from tarpaulins used during the elections.

81 governors and vice governors; 782 seats for the provincial boards; 146 seats for both city mayors and vice mayors; and 1,650 seats for city councils; and 1,488 both for municipal mayors and vice mayors plus the 11,908 seats for municipal councils in all the municipalities.

For the two highest positions in the country alone, 10 vied for president and nine for vice president, which required thousands of kilograms of tarpaulins to generate awareness about their candidacies.

“Politicians were heavily invested to advertise themselves to get elected,” Leones told the BusinessMirror in a telephone interview on May 11. “Then we also have the election for seats for party lists,” he added.

Good news for recyclers The good news is that tarpaulin is a recyclable, reused and repurposed material. There’s no need for it to go directly to the sanitary landfill or end up clogging canals and waterways. People can make money out of it.

Lao and Leones said the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is doing right in recycling tarpaulins and other post-election garbage to drastically cut down the volume of waste generated in the elections.

“There are organizations that make bags out of tarpaulins,” Lao said.

He added that there are many ways to use tarpaulin at home and can also be used as fuel, or material to make cement, Leones said.

‘Cleanup your mess’ Lao and Leones said the local government units helped a lot by being responsible enough to remove the campaign materials and think of ways of how to properly disposed of them.

Two days after the election, zerowaste-advocacy organizations, have pitched for the safe reusing and repurposing of campaign materials.

In a news release, the EcoWaste Coalition appealed to both winning and losing candidates to take the lead in cleaning up their mess.

Proper disposal The group said politicians are supposed to prevent their campaign materials from being thrown around dumped in the oceans of burned.

“Regardless of your poll standing, we appeal to all candidates to exemplify your concern for Mother Earth and for public welfare by finding ways to prevent your publicity materials from ending up in waste dumps and furnaces and, God forbid, the oceans,” Aileen Lucero, national coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition.

For her part, Miss Philippines Earth 2021 Naelah Alshorbaji said: „Happy or not with the outcome [of the elections], it remains our responsibility to clean up after ourselves and to do due diligence: recycling and upcycling where possible. Give a second life to durable materials used, and responsibly dispose of nonuseable items as per your local waste management rules.“ Alshorbaji likewise reminded everyone not to burn any item because it contributes to the emission of toxic

chemicals, which are hazardous to health.

The call was made during an event in Quezon City that was attended by the MMDA led by Director Francis Martinez.

The group showed how paper-based campaign materials can be creatively reused or repurposed. Sample ballots were turned into notepads with the use of a binding glue, fastener, ribbon or string.

Cardboard posters were cut to make bookmarks, envelopes, folders, nameplates and other school needs.

Polyethylene plastic posters were reused as book and notebook covers, and the sturdier polyvinyl chloride tarpaulin posters were cut and sewn into bags of various sizes.

Tarpaulins were also made into bags, shoe, shoulder, laundry and toiletry bags, as well as waist bags for electricians and janitors.

They were also transformed into aprons, letter and tool organizers, and waste sorters.

Tarps can also be repurposed as awnings or canopies for homes and stores, upholstery material, and as a protective shield against sun and rain for jeepneys, pedicabs and tricycles, the group said.

However, the EcoWaste Coalition advised the public to only reuse or repurpose tarps for non-food and non-child applications as tarps may contain hazardous chemicals, particularly cadmium and phthalates, leaching and contaminating the food or expose children to chemical risks.

To make the reusing or repurposing of campaign materials easier, the group reiterated its plea to prohibit the use of cadmium, phthalates, and other toxic chemical additives in plastics, and for the authorities to require the use of recyclable, non-toxic campaign materials in future elections.

Coral reefs provide stunning images of a world under assault

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IAMI—Humans don’t know what they’re missing under the surface of a busy shipping channel in the “cruise capital of the world.”

Just below the keels of massive ships, an under water camera provides a live feed from another world, showing marine life that’s trying its best to resist global warming.

That camera in Miami’s Government Cut is just one of the many ventures of a marine biologist and a musician who’ve been on a 15year mission to raise awareness about dying coral reefs by combining science and art to bring undersea life into pop culture.

Their company, Coral Morphologic, is surfacing stunning images, putting gorgeous closeups of underwater creatures on social media, setting time-lapsed video of swaying, glowing coral to music and projecting it onto buildings, even selling a coral-themed beachwear line.

“We aren’t all art. We aren’t all science. We aren’t all tech. We are an alchemy,” said Colin Foord, who defies the looks of a typical scientist, with blue hair so spiky that it seems electrically charged. He and his business partner J.D. McKay sat down with The Associated Press (AP) to show off their work.

One of their most popular projects is the Coral City Camera, which recently passed 2 million views and usually has about 100 viewers online at any given time each day.

“We’re going to actually be able to document one year of coral growth, which has never been done before in situ on a coral reef, and that’s only possible because we have this technological connec-

A variety of fluorescent and fleshy solitary stony corals are on display at the Coral Morphologic lab in Miami on March 2. Coral Morphologic was founded by marine biologist Colin Foord and musician J.D. McKay to raise awareness about dying coral reefs, presenting the issue through science and art. AP/Lynne Sladky

tion right here at the port of Miami that allows us to have power and internet,” Foord said.

The livestream has already revealed that staghorn and other corals can adapt and thrive even in a highly urbanized undersea environment, along with 177 species of fish, dolphins, manatees and other sea life, Foord said.

“We have these very resilient corals growing here. The primary goal of us getting it underwater was to show people there is so much marine life right here in our city,” Foord said.

McKay, meanwhile, sounds like a Broadway producer as he describes how he also films the creatures in their Miami lab, growing coral in tanks to get them ready for closeups in glorious color.

“We essentially create a set with one of these aquariums, and then obviously there’s actors—coral or shrimp or whatever—and then we film it, and then I get a vibe, whatever might be happening in the scene, and then I soundtrack it with some ambient like sounds,

something very oceanic,” McKay explained.

Their latest production, “ Coral City Flourotour, ” will be shown on the New World Center Wallscape this week as the Aspen Institute hosts a major climate conference in Miami Beach.

Foord is speaking on a panel about how the ocean’s natural systems can help humans learn to combat impacts of climate change.

The talk’s title? “The Ocean is a Superhero.”

“I think when we can recognize that we’re all this one family of life and everything is interconnected, that hopefully we can make meaningful changes now, so that future generations don’t have to live in a world of wildfires and melted ice caps and dead oceans,” Foord told the AP. Their mission is urgent: After 500 million years on Earth, these species are under assault from climate change. The warming oceans prompt coral bleaching and raise the risk of infectious diseases that can cause mass die-offs in coral,

according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Stronger storms and changes in water chemistry can destroy reef structures, while altered currents sweep away food and larvae.

“Climate change is the greatest global threat to coral reef ecosystems,” NOAA said in a recent report.

That gets at the second part of Coral Morphologic’s name. “What does it mean to be morphologic? It really means having to adapt because the environment is always changing,” Foord said.

The staghorn, elkhorn and brain coral living in Government Cut provide a real-world example of how coral communities can adapt to such things as rising heat and polluted runoff, even in such an unlikely setting as the port of Miami.

Their video has documented fluorescence in some of the coral, an unusual response in offshore waters that Foord said could be protecting them from solar rays.

“The port is a priceless place for coral research,” Foord said. “We have to be realistic. You won’t be able to return the ecosystems to the way they were 200 years ago.

The options we are left with are more radical.”

Beyond the science, there’s the clothes. Coral Morphologic sells a line of surf and swimwear that takes designs from flower anemones and brain coral and uses environmentally sustainable materials such as a type of nylon recycled from old fishing nets.

“We see the power of tech connecting people with nature. We are lucky as artists, and corals are benefitting,” Foord said. AP

Children and adults draw what they think forests look like in the future.

Mindanao forest conservation stories featured on ‘Kwentong Kalikasan‘

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o put a human face on the issues affecting the countr y’s forests, the A ssociation of Young Environmental Journalists (AYEJ), in collaboration with Forest Foundation Philippines, has launched a new project that aims to highlight ecosystem restoration, preservation and conservation through v isual stor ytelling and v ideo advocacy.

Kwentong Kalikasan is a video advocacy initiative that seeks to feature the stories and works of individuals, scientists, conservationists, champions, and emerging advocates of forest landscapes through a video series in the hopes of multiplying, amplifying and creatively documenting the positive impact of forest conservation work.

Power of visual storytelling

Kwentong Kalikasan is a twocomponent series. The first is a seven-episode TV-magazine show composed of a series of intimate indoor conversations. It features stories of Mindanaoans on forest conversation, indigenous narratives, biodiversity, science, the environment and everything in between.

The second is a seven-part Mini-Documentary Series that will feature profiles of emerging

advocates and personalities in the Bukidnon-Misamis Oriental area, zooming in on the human dimension of solutions-making in forest landscape issues.

Moreover, the project hopes to immortalize the work being done in forest conservation and the people behind it.

The episodes will be launched twice a month that started in April and will end in October this year on the Facebook pages of AYEJ and Forest Foundation.

Traveling film fest

Following the roll-out of videos, AYEJ will hold a Traveling Film Festival by the end of the year, where it will screen the episodes in and around communities and schools in Bukidnon and Misamis Oriental.

AYEJ is an environmental development communication nonprofit based in Cagayan de Oro City committed to enabling communities to be ecologically literate and proactive toward a more livable planet.

They have been doing capacitybuilding initiatives and knowledge product development with partners such as the Department of Education’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Service, Internews and the US Embassy in the Philippines.

Sports BusinessMirror

PLDT, Smart, MVPSF support PHL athletes

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LDT Inc. its wireless unit Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart), and the MVP Sports Foundation, Inc. (MVPSF) are supporting the Filipino athletes representing the Philippines in the 31st Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam.

PLDT and Smart President and CEO Alfredo Panlilio said the athletes’ skills and unyielding spirit will take them far in the competition.

“From our successful run during the Tokyo Olympics and in the SEA Games in 2019, we have high hopes for our talented delegation as they proudly wear our country’s colors,” Panlilio said. “We are proud to have been part of their journey, and we are excited to see the fruits of their hard work. Laban Pilipinas, puso!”

Panlilio is also the President of MVPSF and the First Vice President of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

From basketball to badminton to gymnastics to weightlifting to esports and many others, the MVP group has long been empowering 17 national sports associations, backing hundreds of athletes, and contributing to nation-building through sports development.

The MVPSF is building several sports centers to help the training of Filipino athletes, starting with gymnastics, badminton, and boxing.

The country’s largest fully integrated telco company, PLDT has also partnered with the Philippine National Volleyball Federation to help in the development of the sport in the Philippines.

Smart, together with the Philippine Esports Organization, has been a key figure in the development of SIBOL, the country’s national esports team.

PLDT and Smart have also been huge supporters of Gilas Pilipinas, Caloy Yulo, Olympic gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz, and several other Filipino athletes who are vying for medals in the SEA Games and other international competitions.

Filipino fans can also watch and cheer for Filipino athletes in the upcoming SEA Games live via GigaPlay, free of streaming charges until May 23 at smrt.ph/gigaplay.

They can also download the app via Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

GigaPlay is powered by Smart, the country’s fastest 5G mobile network, as reported by Ookla, the global leader in mobile and broadband intelligence.

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| Sunday, May 15, 2022 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

SOCCER’S NEW RIVALRY

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ONDON—The name “Fifa” can bring to mind images of the World Cup and soccer’s greatest players, like Pele, Zinedine Zidane or Lionel Messi. The acronym for the sport’s governing body may also remind some of shameless bribery and corruption.

For many, though, it’s the video game that is synonymous with Fifa.

For three decades, the Switzerland-based soccer body has enjoyed a flourishing, mutually beneficial relationship with EA Sports. The annual edition of the video game, alongside related products, has raked in billions of dollars and has proven to be so lucrative that Fifa thinks it can be making even more on its own.

Fifa severed the licensing deal partnership with Electronic Arts Inc. on Tuesday, making Fifa23 the last new EA game with the involvement of both sides.

They are now becoming opponents.

EA will continue to make soccer games with best players and biggest teams, they will just be stripped of the Fifa brand and instead called EA Sports FC. Confusingly, perhaps, Fifa24 should also be on the shelves next year because the soccer body is determined to go ahead with its own launch.

EA has already begun to highlight its advantages over the Fifa game, given it has the rights to show 19,000 players from more than 700 teams in more than 30 leagues playing in 100 stadiums. Manchester United, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain will still be there, along with their best players.

“That is the only place that you can have an authentic, famous and fully representative football experience,” David Jackson, vice president of brand for EA SPORTS Fifa, told The Associated Press. “I do think that there is an element of potential confusion in the marketplace.”

The hyperbole from Fifa is already trying to undercut EA’s marketing by claiming it is in talks with multiple rival gaming companies and has plans

GAMERS play latest video games from Electronic Arts at the Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. to enter the metaverse.

“I can assure you,” Fifa President Gianni Infantino said, “that the only authentic, real game that has the Fifa name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans.”

How that will be achieved is far from clear, although Fifa does hold the rights to the biggest soccer show on earth. The World Cup will disappear from the EA game.

“The Fifa name is the only global, original title,” Infantino said. “Fifa 23, Fifa 24, Fifa 25 and Fifa 26, and so on—the constant is the Fifa name and it will remain forever and remain the best.”

That kind of bombastic talk puts pressure on Fifa to deliver on Infantino’s vision for a game that usurps the EA franchise despite not having the rights to feature leagues such as the Premier League—and the teams that play in them.

“New entrants would face a steep licensing curve to compete with EA,” said Andrew Marok, an analyst covering the digital media sector at investment bank Raymond James.

Soccer gaming is big business for EA. The annual report issued this week showed revenue of $6.19 billion.

“We’ve just had our biggest year— ever—for EA SPORTS Fifa games,” EA Sports CEO Andrew Wilson told investors on Wednesday, a day after it was announced the Fifa deal would cease at the end of the year.

A huge part of the revenue comes from the Ultimate Team mode, where customers buy extra content in EA sports games. That generated $1.623 billion in 2021.

“We have historically derived a significant portion of our net revenue from sales related to our largest and most popular game, Fifa, annualized versions of which are consistently one of the bestselling games in the marketplace,” EA told investors.

Brand loyalty will be key starting next year. Will gamers stay with EA’s rebranded product or jump to the rival being launched by Fifa?

It’s already a competitive market with eFootball, the former Pr Evolution Soccer game produced by Japanese firm Konami. That game has a partnership with Manchester United, though the record 20-time English champions will still feature in EA’s game through a Premier League agreement.

EA has already warned its investors of the risks to its soccer gaming business from rivals.

“Any events or circumstances that negatively impact our Fifa franchise, such as product or service quality, other products that take a portion of consumer spending and time, the delay or cancellation of a product or service launch, increased competition for key licenses, or real or perceived security risks, could

negatively impact our financial results to a disproportionate extent,” EA said in its annual report.

EA should get an edge over Fifa by retaining its 300 license partners, 30 leagues and federations, 700 teams and 19,000 athletes, JPMorgan analyst David Karnovsky said in a client note.

“While it’s difficult to think there won’t be at least some impact from the brand shift to sales, the $150 million available from the absence of a license fee to Fifa provides ample room for marketing to drive awareness around EA Sports FC,” Karnovsky wrote.

Untangling itself from the world of soccer politics has its benefits for EA. Tensions between regional confederations have led to European body UEFA and South American counterpart Conmebol circumventing Fifa to launch their own meeting of champions. The debut of the Finalissima will see Italy and Argentina meet at Wembley Stadium in London on June 1. It would seem incongruous for EA to promote its Fifa game at the match.

“What name would we put on a perimeter board in a UEFA-Conmebol event? It’s really tough for us to put Fifa on there,” said Jackson, EA’s vice president of brand. “What has previously been a springboard for our brand, and an accelerant to it many years ago, has just become less valuable to us over time.”

EA might just have saved the Fifa brand as well. The fond association with the video game by so many fans has balanced against the toxicity of Sepp Blatter-era organization after the opening of sprawling criminal investigations into soccer corruption in 2015.

“If you ask a young football fan what Fifa is, they’re more likely to say a video game than they are the global governing body, but that value lives with us, I believe,” Jackson said. “We are the predominant voice in the world of football from an interactive entertainment perspective, and we don’t see a world where that changes.” AP

Group insurance for national team in Vietnam SEAG

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NBA tweaks design of trophies, adds conference finals MVPs EW YORK—The National Basketball Association’s (NBA) championship trophy has a new look, and the league will hand out some new trophies for the first time during these playoffs.

The league unveiled a slightly redesigned Larry O’Brien Trophy on Thursday, plus announced changes to the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP trophy and changes to the design of the conference championship trophies.

And four of the game’s legends now have their names on NBA hardware.

The Eastern Conference championship trophy has been renamed for Bob Cousy, the Western Conference championship trophy for Oscar Robertson. And for the first time, there will be MVP’s of the conference finals—the East

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finals MVP will receive the Larry Bird Trophy, the West finals MVP will receive the Magic Johnson Trophy.

“The NBA Conference Finals represent the last hurdle a team must face for an opportunity to make it to the big stage, the NBA Finals,” Johnson said. “I’m truly honored to have my name memorialized on the Western Conference Finals Most Valuable Player Trophy.”

The most visible change is to the Larry O’Brien, the trophy given to the NBA champions. The ball now tilts in a different direction, the netting is much more visible and the base is now round—two discs stacked atop one another, the first bearing the names of past champions, the second to bear the names of teams that win the title starting this year.

THE championship trophy has a new look, and the league is going to be handing out some new trophies for the first time during these playoffs. AP

HE Pioneer Group partnered with the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) to provide Filipino athletes, coaches, trainers and technical staff with group personal accident insurance for the Vietnam 31st Southeast Asian Games.

This forms part of the memorandum of agreement signed

by Pioneer Inc. President and CEO Lorenzo Chan Jr., Pioneer Insurance President and CEO Atty. Betty Medialdea and PSC Chairman William “Butch” Ramirez in February, naming Pioneer as the official insurance partner of national athletes and coaches in the next few years.

Pioneer is providing a yearround Group Personal Accident with Accident Medical Expense insurance to over 1,300 national athletes and coaches.

The insurer is covering the entire Philippine delegation of athletes, technical officials, PSC representatives and staff The conference finals MVP trophies awarded next month for the first time are similar to the Bill Russell trophy, which has a slightly different look as well. And the trophies presented to the East and West champions have new looks and new names—the Oscar Robertson Trophy goes to the West champion, the Bob Cousy Trophy to the East champion.

“I have been part of the NBA family since 1950 and among the greatest joys of my post-playing career has been watching the game continue to evolve into what it is today,” Cousy said. “There are few greater achievements in sports than representing your conference in the NBA Finals, and I’m moved that the NBA has granted me the honor of being connected to the Eastern Conference champions for years to come.” AP

participating in the 31st SEA Games.

“This partnership represents another significant milestone for Pioneer,” Chan said. “After a threeyear break (2018 to 2021), we are excited to once again be of service to our country through the field of sports.”

“We want to ensure our national athletes, coaches, and trainers are properly covered,” Chan said.

“We are grateful to Pioneer Insurance for extending a hand to our national athletes competing in the 31st SEA Games. It is very important that when they compete, they are confident that they are covered whatever happens,” Ramirez said.

Pioneer’s involvement in the world of sports can be traced back to the 1975 Thrilla in Manila heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, wherein it provided personal

accident insurance as well as third party liability coverage.

One of its most significant contributions in sports occurred in 1991 when it was designated as the exclusive insurer for the Manila SEA Games. It was during this time when Pioneer provided P720 million worth of group personal accident coverage to participating athletes, officials and sportswriters from nine countries.

“Rooted in our belief that insurance has a role to play in the protection of life and what matters, we strive to offer insurance that is relevant, accessible, affordable, easy to comprehend and simple to claim,” Chan said.

He added: “Our dream is that no one in this country of close to 110 million will be left behind. While it is true not every insurance can provide all the coverage one may need, appropriate insurance enables one to restart and rebuild after each setback.”

RICH STRIKE will take a rest for five weeks. AP

Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike skips Preakness

R

ICH STRIKE will not run in the Preakness after his major upset to win the Kentucky Derby, keeping horse racing from having a Triple Crown winner for a fourth consecutive year.

Owner Rich Dawson made the stunning announcement Thursday, 10 days before the race in Maryland.

Dawson said he and trainer Eric Reed agreed to stick with the initial plan for Rich Strike and rest him for five weeks. Rich Strike, at 80-1, was the biggest long shot to win the Derby in more than a century. Only Donerail in 1913 paid more to win.

The plan now is to have Rich Strike ready to run in the Belmont Stakes in New York on June 11.

Dawson said it was wise for the colt to get extra rest and not face a short, two-week turnaround at Pimlico.

“It’s very, very tempting to alter our course and run in the Preakness at Pimlico, which would be a great honor for all our group,” Dawson said in a news release. “However, after much discussion and consideration… we are going to stay with our plan of what’s best for Ritchie.

“We thank the wonderful Preakness and Pimlico folks that have reached out and very much appreciate the invite.”

Reed did not immediately respond to a message from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Rich Strike was not expected to be the morning-line favorite for the Preakness, with Derby runner-up Epicenter and Kentucky Oaks winner Secret Oath set to be part of the field.

He could have been the first Derby winner not to go off as the Preakness favorite at post time since 2012 when I’ll Have Another won the first two legs of the Triple Crown.

With Rich Strike’s surprise withdrawal, the Preakness will go on without the official Derby champion for the second time in four years.

Country House and disqualified winner Maximum Security skipped the race in 2019.

Bob Baffert-trained Medina Spirit finished third in the 2021 Preakness after testing positive following the Derby for a substance not allowed on race day. Mandaloun, who was elevated to the 2021 Derby win long after Medina Spirit tested positive, did not run in the Preakness last year.

Rich Strike’s incredible charge past the leaders down the stretch at Churchill Downs after being initially left out of the Derby field became one of the biggest upsets in sports.

The owners, trainer Reed and jockey Sonny Leon had all never won the race.

Adding to the impressive tale, Rich Strike had won only once before and had been claimed for $30,000— pennies in racing and unlikely for Derby-caliber horses.

Neither Reed nor the Maryland Jockey Club immediately responded to messages from the AP seeking comment.

With Rich Strike pointing to the Belmont, the Preakness appears to be a wide-open race among horses back from the Derby, potentially including Zandon and fourth-place finisher Simplification. Trainer Chad Brown, who saddles Zandon, is also expected to enter Early Voting.

Horse racing has had two recent Triple Crown winners: American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.

Each was trained by Baffert, who is currently serving a suspension in Kentucky for medication violations that is being observed in Maryland and elsewhere. Baffert transferred Derby horses Taiba and Messier to former assistant Tim Yakteen.

Neither is expected to run in the Preakness.

Longtime Baffert friend D. Wayne Lukas confirmed Wednesday that filly Secret Oath would run in the Preakness and decided to pick a different race next Saturday for Ethereal Road—the horse that was scratched to make room in the Derby for Rich Strike. AP

BusinessMirror

May 15, 2022

Social prescriptions:

Why some health-care practitioners are prescribing food to their patients

2

BusinessMirror MAY 15, 2022 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com

YOUR MUSI

EZ DOES IT

Fil-Am rapper Ez Mil hopes to make local fans proud

C

By Stephanie Joy Ching

OMING off the success of his first album, Act 1, Filipino American rapper Ez Mil (born Ezekiel Miller) comes back with a more hopeful, and mature sound with his second album, DU4LI7Y. EZ-MIL (Photo from his FB page)

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

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

Columnists

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

Photographers

: Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

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

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

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

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For Act 1, Ez states that the album’s progression was “light to dark”, DU4LI7Y is the opposite.

“I tried to make a continuation of my first album, so it starts off as that, DU4LI7Y is dark to light,” he said.

Off of DU4LI7Y comes two singles, “Re-Up” and “Dalawampu’t Dalawang OO (2200),” both showcasing a more mature side of Ez Mil’s magic with words. As someone who “writes para di mabaliw”, the rapper shared that he found himself to have suddenly matured over the course of the pandemic.

“The simplicity of the words and how they were phrased, it definitely sounds like an older Ez,” he comments on the album’s theme of returning to his roots. “If I look at it from a second person’s perspective, ganun talaga nangyari from Act 1 to DU4LI7Y,” Despite the similarities, however, the two singles have very different themes. According to the 23 year old Las Vegas based musician, “Re-up” was a way for him to “re-up the product”, along with flexing his fluency both in Tagalog and English. Meanwhile, Dalwampu’t Dalawang OO is “a narration of my own story filled with struggle” inspired by Olongapo City.

“It was to re-up the new product to the world who listens to Ez Mil, while Dalwampu’t Dalawang OO is based on my hometown of Olongapo. Yung cadence noon was inspired by the Olongapo hymn.

With this song, I hope listeners can feel the angst, and my pride, mixed with orchestral instruments fused with nerve wracking-beats.

It’s a song about the citizens of Olongapo first and foremost, the bad and the beauty - but it doesn’t just stick to one city but can speak to all Filipinos as a whole. I’ve always been proud of representing my hometown, 2200, so anyone who is proud of their city will definitely feel this,” Having just returned to

the Philippines, Ez Mil will be performing across the country for the first time and hopes to make his fellow Filipinos proud.

“I can’t put it into words how excited I am. We’re just gonna have fun. It’s overwhelming, super grateful to everyone who’s been very supportive of me, my music.

Just the thought of coming home, man - it’s a mixture of excitement and thrill that I can’t shake off.

Performing in the homeland is very special to me because I haven’t done this before. I’ve always been proud to represent my hometown, my roots - I just want them to be happy and proud. I want to give back all the love and support that I’ve been getting and I’m very excited to meet my fans in the Philippines, and see my family, friends - and everyone! Really looking forward to this, and just to do what I love doing and have fun!”

Ez Mil’s forthcoming second LP, DU4LI7Y, is due out this summer via FFP Records. Details for his shows can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

IC

soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | MAY 15, 2022

BUSINESS

3

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

Societal concerns and more OPM pop

BEN&BEN

B

EN&BEN“Paninindigan Kita” Filipino folk-pop collective Ben&Ben marks a new chapter in the band’s career with the effortless songwriting and anthemic pop sound of their 2022 single “Paninindigan Kita.”

Written by Paolo and Miguel Benjamin, the upbeat pop song captures the fearlessness of fighting for someone you love despite the disapproval from the people around.

“It is also an ode to a lover who might be hesitant to take a step forward in the relationship,” says the nine-piece outfit. “It’s a heartfelt song that gives a balance between understanding where the lover is coming from, and a gentle reassurance that the one singing the song is ready and sure, after learning a lot so far about life and love.”

The new single holds a special place in the band’s catalog, being the first song that they recorded in an actual studio since the pandemic started.

DILAW, “3019” YEAR after year, songs with powerful political messages pop up to create space for listeners to discuss local and global issues.

After all, nothing unites people like music.

KEIKO Necesario Dilaw Obero and Vie Dela Rosa, collectively known as Dilaw, take a serious stance on societal concerns through their persuasive lyrics, Their latest track entitled “3019” narrates the effects of corruption, emphasizing the government’s unjust ways, consistently tormenting minorities and aggravating the divide between social classes.

Talking about “3019”, Dilaw said, “Corruption has been a huge problem in our society. Speaking up for the oppressed and standing up to our oppressors, that is the main message of ‘3019’. With theater elements fused with heavy melodies and thought-provoking lyrics, the song is based on R.A 3019 also known as the ‘Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act’.

JIKAMARIE, “Aking Buwan” THE single “Aking Buwan” expresses pining for someone who doesn’t know you exist.

It’s a parallel to admiring the moon which does not know that you exist to admire it. It unveils bittersweet sentiments because even then, the longing only grows stronger.

R&B-soul singer and songwriter jikamarie was raised by a musically-inclined family

where her passion for singing manifested at an early age. She started to compose songs at age 20 as a way of expressing her feelings and finding solitude in her compositions as well. “I like the idea that I could keep writing songs and singing them as a career. I also believe in the saying, ‘If you pursue something that you love as a career, you will never have to work a day in your life.’”

OF MERCURY, CHANGIN’ Volume 2 EP AFTER dropping the Crazy Donkey-assisted track “New Highs” last month, alternative pop/soul trio of Mercury pivots toward a more experimental direction on their new EP titled “Changin’ Volume 2.” Embracing genre-melding tunes with fresh, innovative production, The EP sets the stage for a groovy kind of trip.

Co-produced by their former bandmate knōwmaad, the threepart release includes “Stresses,” a soulful, electro-pop anthem punctuated by retro-modern grooves; “Energy,” a club jam that articulates the frustration of enacting changes within a retrogressive system; and “Cholula (Cut You Loose),” a feelgood bop with laid-back funk

influences.

“In this whole process, we explored new elements that we haven’t tried before,” shares the band in a statement. “Lyricswise, all the songs differ in themes from each other.” ` KEIKO NECESARIO, Obra THIS time, it’s an all Tagalog EP from Keiko Necesario, a new release that speaks about love in its different forms. Joy, pain, hope, loneliness, contentment, loss, waiting and growth form the thematic thread of the album.

It’s a body of work that consists of a collection of stories with melodies. Her push ingle “Obra” is a song about the beauty of life and the personal development that comes with it.

It celebrates being alive with a narrative about becoming and learning in the name of love.

DREAMCATCHER, Apocalypse : Save us AFTER much anticipation, Dreamcatcher finally drops their second album, the 14-track ‘[Apocalypse : Save us] as they embark on a new journey, making way for their ‘Apocalypse’ trilogy.

Following Dreamcatcher’s ‘Dystopia’ series, their new album ‘Apocalypse : Save us’ is a desperate plea and cry to save the planet from ecological damage and global warming. The title track “Maison” (translating to “home” in French) stays true to Dreamcatcher’s sonic identity and style based on rock genre and distortion bass.

The track serves as a warning to deafened ears and those who are turning a blind eye to the environmental concerns surrounding everyone’s home, the Earth. In addition, the album presents solo turns for each member, which also marks the first album where all seven members contribute in songwriting.

Social prescriptions:

Why some health-care practitioners are prescribing food to their patients

By Matthew Little & Eleah Stringer University of Victoria;

Warren Dodd

A

University of Waterloo

ngela is a 54-year-old mother of two living with Type 2 diabetes in a small apartment in Guelph, Ontario.

Despite steady access to health care and a physician who encourages regular exercise and healthy eating, Angela’s complications have worsened in recent years, causing mobility challenges, sometimes rendering her unable to leave the house.

She blames her poor diet. Due to her limited income, she frequently misses meals, goes some days without food and can often only afford nutrient-poor foods.

Angela is classified as severely food insecure, which means she is one of more than 4.4 million people in Canada who are unable to acquire a diet of sufficient quality or quantity. Food insecurity is a public health crisis in Canada that has worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During one of Angela’s recent visits to the Guelph Community Health Centre, a nurse practitioner surprised her with a new “prescription” for fresh fruits and vegetables. The prescription included weekly $40 vouchers that could be spent on fruits and vegetables at a local farmer’s market.

Speaking after 12 weeks of enrolment, Angela expressed gratitude for the initiative.

“The program’s fantastic,” Angela said,

“I’m eating a diet with a lot more fruits and vegetables and proteins, which is so good for me when I’m trying to get my diabetes under control.”

Social prescribing

Food prescriptions are part of a broader concept of social prescribing. Pioneered in the United Kingdom and growing in popularity in the United States and Canada, social prescriptions are issued by health-care practitioners to provide patients with nonpharmaceutical interventions, including dance classes, walking groups, volunteer work, art lessons and, of course, fresh fruits and vegetables.

The rise of food prescriptions has been particularly pronounced in the US, largely driven by not-for-profits and the 2018 Federal Farm Bill, which provided $25 million to support produce prescription programs across the country.

In Canada, food prescriptions have been slower to gain traction, with independent community health centers, regional notfor-profits and researchers implementing produce prescriptions in partnership with allied health professionals in a more localized and uncoordinated manner.

Our interdisciplinary health research team has collaborated with the Guelph Community Health Centre since 2019 to implement and evaluate multiple phases of a food prescription program. Food security is important to disease prevention and management, so it makes sense that health-care practitioners should be able to prescribe healthy foods and reduce barriers to healthier diets.

As exemplified by Angela’s experiences, preliminary results are promising. Participants report improved food security and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. Meanwhile, during interviews, patients perceived the program to reduce

financial stress and improve health outcomes.

And yet, food prescriptions should not be immune to scrutiny. One question is whether such initiatives respect and honor people “as people.”

Do food prescriptions trivialize the suffering of food insecurity and ignore its underlying determinants, which are often rooted in poverty, mental health, substance use, race and racism and systemic oppression? Do they leverage the power differential between practitioners and patients to coerce patients into making different food choices, thereby eroding patients’ sense of control over their own health decisions?

Do they promote the false dichotomy of “good” and “bad” foods and reinforce the

to the land and dependent on the health of our planet and our society. To argue that food is a commodity to be sterilized and medicalized would undermine the true significance of food.

Improving access to healthy foods

Despite these questions and critiques, we are not arguing against food prescriptions.

Indeed, our team facilitates food prescription programs that have been immensely beneficial for patients. Within these programs, our motivations are simple: to improve access to healthy foods for those who need it. This includes individuals like Angela who face difficult choices every day about whether they can afford a healthier diet.

“Food security is important to disease prevention and management, so it makes sense that healthcare practitioners should be able to prescribe healthy foods and reduce barriers to healthier diets.” stigmatization of fat bodies in the healthcare system?

The medicalization of food

Hippocrates supposedly said, “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.” Now, almost 2,400 years later, the “food is medicine framework” promotes the idea that health-care systems should offer food interventions alongside pharmaceuticals. This framework has gained popularity as an easily digestible model that plays into basic truisms about the links between food and health.

However, the medicalization of food should be cautioned. Food is more than its nutrient value. It is cultural identity. It is history. It is belonging. Food is connection

We must, however, interrogate food prescriptions to determine if they are in fact the best way to leverage health systems to promote the nutritional health of low-income and other marginalized communities. And if we do provide food prescriptions, we need to recognize and be responsive to the fact that each patient— like Angela—has a different and complex relationship with food based on their own health, histories, culture, worldview, traumas and triumphs. The Conversation n This article was co-authored by Abby Richter, a registered dietitian and a Master of Applied Nutrition. She is the program lead for The Fresh Food Prescription program, an initiative of The Guelph Community Health Centre.

Envisioning healthy, delectable dining for Filipinos

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes

H

ealthy food need not be boring nor bland. This is the idea that young entrepreneur John Michael Hilton presents to Filipinos with his food and beverage company, Visum Ventures Inc. Named after the Greek word for vision, the company offers the market new and exciting ways of looking at healthy food.

Visum Ventures Inc. currently owns seven brands, namely, Koomi, Oh My Greek, Zig, Salt & Ice, T2, Sante by Zig, and Meraki by OMG. “Visum Ventures Inc. is a young and passionate food and beverage company that provides fresh experiences through new brands, product trends, and concepts,” Hilton, the company’s 35-year-old founder, president and chief executive officer, said in a recent media briefing. “Our locally curated brand portfolio aims to provide unique culinary experiences and make them ac-

Greek concepts Sante and Meraki of Visum Ventures Inc. offers healthy chic dishes, perfect for diners who want to eat healthier without feeling deprived of a filling and satisfying meal. cessible to the Filipino dining public who wanted to eat healthier.”

Visum started by bringing the natural drinking yogurt offerings of Australian brand KOOMI to the country in 2019.

Then the pandemic hit, but Hilton and Visum trudged on. They continued to expand their portfolio with Greek concepts, Oh My Greek and Zig. Hilton described the two as mostly grab-and-go brands for the healthconscious that were delivery-friendly—the perfect concept given the circumstances.

4 BusinessMirror

Next, as mobility restrictions were relaxed, Hilton opened Salt & Ice, an oyster and craft cocktails bar at the Uptown Parade in Bonifacio Global City. This was followed by the introduction of Sante and Meraki, elevated versions of Zig and Oh My Greek, located at the SM Mall of Asia Square.

To date, the expansion drive continues. The group’s flagship brand, KOOMI, just opened its 80th branch in the country, and the goal is to have 100 stores by June.

May 15, 2022

The 35-year-old founder, president, and CEO of Visum Ventures Inc., John Michael “Mike” Hilton Meanwhile, Visum targets to close the year with close to 2,100 staff and 10 brands both internationally and locally curated in its portfolio.

“We thrived during the pandemic by ensuring our products adapted to the need for social distancing by offering grab-and-go, and a delivery-friendly menu,” Hilton said.

“Now that the economy is opening up, we are crafting more offers and menu items that would cater to the renewed dine-in crowd.”