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Sunday, October 3, 2021 Vol. 16 No. 354

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‘WIND of CHANGE’

40 years after escaping martial rule, a Zambaleño recalls the horrors—and eventual redemption

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By Henry E. Empeño

ASINLOC, Zambales—On May 30, 1981, a native son of this town left home to become one of the first Filipinos to be granted political asylum by the government of Canada.

It was a tough decision to make for Bernard-Adan Ebuen, then 34 years old. He had to leave his wife and two children, abandon his calling in organizing poor miners and fishermen, and fly away with little money to an unfamiliar place where he knew not a soul. But it was a choice he had to make. The Philippines was then under the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law regime, and he felt the noose closing in.

“For almost eight years in the underground movement, I prepared myself for this eventuality. I found it harrowing,” related Ebuen in an essay he posted on social media on the eve of the anniversary of the declaration of martial law on September 21.

Ebuen wanted to be a priest, graduated with a degree in philosophy from the Major Seminary in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, and taught philosophy and theology at the Ateneo de Zamboanga from 1970 to 1971. But after a stint at Delta Motor Sales Corporation—then a

ENJOYING being a senior citizen with Gov. Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. (left), who is Ebuen’s distant cousin.

MARCOS-ERA human-rights victim Bernard-Adan Ebuen visits his old detention cell at Camp Conrado Yap, where he was first held after his arrest in 1980.

MEMENTOES of a former political activist and refugee: an article in Canada’s The Mail and Globe; acknowledgement receipt from the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board; HRVCB resolution awarding four points for Arbitrary Detention.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.8790

progressive automotive manufacturer and dealer until its owners fell out of favor with the powers-that-be and operations stopped in 1983, Ebuen went home to Masinloc for a different work.

“With some friends, I helped organize the workers of Benguet Consolidated Mining Company at Coto,” he now recalled. “We established initial contacts and formed a core group to formally establish a legal union which later on became affiliated with a national labor group in Manila.”

Sitio Coto was famous for its lucrative export of refractory chromite, which is used in making projectiles, guns, ballbearings, safes, as well as armor-plate for warships. The mine is located at the rugged foothills of Taltal, the village where Ebuen was born. And while it was then operated by one of the oldest and biggest mining and mineral extraction firms in the country, miners grumbled about low wages and poor work conditions.

Dangerous times

THE formation of a miners’ union at Coto was soon followed by more organizing work. By 1978, Ebuen became involved with local fishermen and formed the Samatob, or Samahan ng mga Mangingisda ng Atob, also in Masinloc.

Atob is a sitio of Baloganon, a coastal village with a port where chromite ores from Coto were loaded onto ships. It is also where some of the poorest fishermen in town lived and eked meager living from the sea. Ebuen organized the fisherfolk and helped to give them a voice in the community. “It was the first fishermen’s union in Zambales, I believe,” Ebuen said.

It was a good opportunity for Ebuen and his fellow community organizers to change the lives of the poorer sectors of the society, a fruitful period that was also fraught with danger. At this time, elections were held for the Batasang Pambansa, and the Continued on A2

n JAPAN 0.4572 n UK 68.5595 n HK 6.5350 n CHINA 7.8620 n SINGAPORE 37.4772 n AUSTRALIA 36.7703 n EU 58.9382 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.5666

Source: BSP (October 1, 2021)

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, October 3, 2021

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‘WIND of CHANGE’ Continued from A1

opposition, led by jailed former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., gave a credible fight that, while they lost, gave the strong impression that the poll was rigged.

In 1980, Marcos allowed Aquino’s exile in the United States, and the next year, ostensibly announced the suspension of martial law. But as his winning another new six-year term in a virtually uncontested election soon showed, Marcos was, in fact, trying to consolidate his grip on power. It was at this time that Ebuen heard that dreaded knock in the night.

Horrors

“ONE early morning in July 1980, I woke up to find soldiers had encircled our house. My knees almost buckled and my stomach churned.

I tried to be calm,” Ebuen remembered. Three nights before, five heavily armed men furiously knocked on the door at 2 in the morning. “As per my previous instructions to my family, nobody opened the door.

I knew they were coming to get me that night, and I was soundly asleep six houses away.” But upon their return that morning, the soldiers did get Ebuen.

He was brought to a military camp in the capital town of Iba 36 kilometers away. “Through the day and night, Army trucks full of people kept rolling in. The next day, there were about 400 people in the camp: men, women, teenagers,

students, farmers and fishermen,” Ebuen said.

He also recalled that at one point, soldiers brought two mine workers out of the camp into an isolated barrio, and tortured them.

“Presumed dead, the two were thrown over a bridge into a murky river. One drowned; the other regained consciousness under water, clung to a post and stayed still, and survived to tell the brutal tale.”

That survivor would later receive compensation from the Victims of Human Rights Compensation Board, Ebuen added.

At the camp, more tension and anxiety beleaguered the detainees, more so when informers were planted into their ranks, Ebuen said. Soon, the spies rooted out from the detainees the source of a written complaint against military abuses and atrocities signed by concerned citizens. “I stood up in front of the crowd and defended the just position we had taken,” Ebuen recalled. “I knew the risk. Sure enough, at dawn, I was whisked to a waiting car and brought to Camp Olivas in Pampanga.”

Nightmare in solitary

AT Camp Olivas, Ebuen was locked in maximum solitary, a cell he said was reserved for the most wanted and dangerous. And the following weeks incommunicado almost drove him crazy. “Even the guards who brought me measly meals nev-

CANDLELIGHT illuminates the names of the disappeared and those found dead during the martial-law years, as engraved on the Bantayog ng Desaparecido, inside the National Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help Church, also known as the Redemptorist Church or Baclaran Church, in Parañaque City, September 21, 2020. The memorial was set up in memory of Redemptorist priest Fr. Rudy Romano and other missing persons. NONIE REYES

er showed their faces. I came to realize this was a part of the mental torture to break down a prisoner,” he narrated. “To fight the tedium, I talked to the spiders on the wall, and swatted the mosquitoes that dared to enter my cell. I took showers no less than six times a day.”

Then one night, more nightmare as a guard brought him into another room. Two officers were waiting and interrogated Ebuen on who’s who in the underground movement. “I professed to know nobody,” he recalled. “Frustrated and angry, one of them shoved to my face a gruesome photograph: a man with eyes half-closed, naked to the waist, with three blackened holes on his chest, a dark spot on the forehead between his eyes…and a whitish glob of brains behind his head.”

Ebuen said he knew it was “Ka Nelson,” an acquaintance of his in the movement. “My knees shook.

I retched nauseously, and I was about to pass out. Tears were filling my eyes from anger and fear.

But I brought myself back,” he said. He reminded himself that the people’s struggle depended on his endurance. He told the interrogators: “No, I have never seen him; not even once in my life.”

The next day, Ebuen was visited in his cell by a high-ranking officer who told him: “Look, you’re highly intelligent with lots of potential. Why don’t you channel your energy with us? We’ll send you to any university of your choice, with a handsome monthly stipend and a .45 pistol for your protection.

No one among your comrades will know. We can arrange that.”

Ebuen said this made him angrier and he couldn’t contain himself. “Sir,” he snapped back, “you’re insulting my intelligence and sense of values. I’d rather plow the rice fields under the heat of the noonday sun than work for you.” The officer left flabbergasted.

Freedom someplace

IN October of 1980, Ebuen was temporarily released but needed to report once a week at a military safehouse in the Edsa-Kamias area.

At this time, some friends from his previous Delta Motors job secretly worked on his travel documents.

Soon, the Canadian Embassy issued him a three-day visa. On May 30, 1981, Ebuen landed in Toronto, a place he knew nothing about.

The next two and a half years were spent on hearings before the Refugee Status Advisory Commit-

tee (RSAC) in Ottawa, which heard his appeal to be granted refugee status in Canada. While his case was pending, Ebuen was given a temporary work permit and he took on odd jobs to support himself—dishwasher, factory worker, garage attendant, or bellhop in a downtown Toronto hotel.

Finally, in March 1984, he found his redemption when the RSAC declared his claim to refugee status legitimate. Bernard-Adan Edejer Ebuen, then 37, officially became a refugee in Canada in what The Mail and Globe, Canada’s most widely read newspaper, described as “one of the first such cases viewed as an indictment of the Government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.”

Ebuen’s case, The Mail and Globe also said, was “among only six favorably acted upon by the federal committee since 1982, when one application was rejected.”

“Mr. Ebuen is the first to come out in the open as a refugee from the Philippines in more than 50 years of Filipino immigration to Canada,” the newspaper added.

“His case has had an unsettling effect on Filipino Government representatives in Canada because it is viewed as a reflection of conditions in the Philippines.”

Home again

IN 2010, Ebuen finally returned to Zambales for good with a dual Canadian-Philippine citizenship.

But before that, he used to visit his mother Nanay Diday every five years at their ancestral house.

In the interim, he had sponsored the resettlement of his two children with his estranged wife to Canada, where the two boys have since married and had their own children. Two other boys were born to Ebuen and his partner in Canada, from whom he eventually separated.

He also tried taking up some English courses in Toronto at George Brown College, where he submitted an essay on his martial law experience in 1985, and later at the Ryerson University, but going back to school was “nothing remarkable,” he found out, as he had to devote his time to a full-time job for the sake of his new family.

On May 22, 2014, Ebuen filed a claim before the Philippines’ Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board, which finally resolved on October 14, 2016, that he is a human rights violations victim under RA 10368, or the Act Providing for Repara-

tion and Recognition of Victims of Human Rights Violations During the Marcos Regime.

Today, Ebuen lives in singleblessedness and apparent contentment at Barangay Taltal, not too far from where he used to organize mine workers and later, fisherfolk.

“This is what preoccupies me nowadays,” he told the BusinessMirror, showing a mini-library filled with non-fiction, biographies, Filipinianas, tomes on spirituality, and books “of different interests, mainly Left issues.”

The former activist said he leads a simple life. “Often, I go to the market to have some fresh fish—no meat, as I had a radical nephrectomy last year in Canada, so I should watch my diet,” he said.

Isms and the subversive

STILL, Ebuen rued about immense poverty and the prevalence of corruption in the government today.

“I will never exchange the Philippines for another country as this is my ‘bayang sinilangan,’ but the feeling here is like living in hell.”

He added: “After living and carefully observing the governance system of both the Philippines and Canada, I eventually came to the conclusion that the root cause of our social problems is not the ‘Imperyalismo, Pyudalismo, Kapitalismo, Ibagsak!’ that I used to shout in the streets of Manila in the ’70s.

It is the government itself.”

Ebuen said too that he “gradually became disillusioned with the Reds” and came to realize that not one single person, nor party, nor ism can provide a simple answer to the problems of humanity. “We have to adapt to the constant flux and make meaningful adaptations and not be captives of a single ism.”

And what about today’s historical revisionism among the masa that appears to drive the Marcoses to seek power again? To this, Ebuen cringed and said: “For the life of me, I cannot understand the world of Marcos loyalists and the DDS.” With the horrors of Martial Law still vivid in memory, and with the remnants of those dark days reemerging from the shadows, Ebuen reminded everyone not to forget.

“Ferdinand Marcos is the true subversive,” he stressed, “not the activists who committed themselves to the liberation of the people from poverty and injustice— even when such commitment inevitably meant either imprisonment or death.”

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

The World

A deep freeze this winter hinges on La Nina and the polar vortex

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obody controls the weather, and yet temperatures this winter will ripple through every conceivable market, from fuel to food, with a particularly frigid outcome threatening to turn a worldwide energy crunch into a full-blown crisis.

The stakes have never been higher. If the weather’s bad, households and businesses around the world, already facing the heftiest energy costs in years, could face crippling heating bills. Governments struggling to ease fears of inflation could lose popular support. And the clean energy transition, already under fire after low wind generation helped contribute to Europe’s power shortage, could be thrown even further into question.

Every meteorologists’ long-term forecast is frustratingly different, given how hard it is to accurately predict the winter’s bite when summer just ended. But projections share some features: The emergence of a La Nina could bring colder weather to the northern US and milder climates in the south while drying out other parts of the world. At the same time, the polar vortex that contains icy air above the North Pole appears weaker than last year. That means there’s a greater chance that frigid cold will occasionally spill out of the Arctic into the temperate zones of Asia, North America and Europe, bringing intermittent chilling effects throughout the season.

“We expect a ‘warm sandwich’ this heating season with a potentially very cold center,” said Todd Crawford, director of meteorology at commercialforecaster Atmospheric G2. That could mean an unusually warm start to the season, then a cold period into January, followed by a mild end of winter and an early spring. “These expectations are broadly appropriate for all major energy-demand centers in eastern US, western Europe and northeast Asia.”

Of course, these are only forecasts, and early ones at that. There are a multitude of interrelated weather patterns and factors that will determine the fate of this winter, and scientists don’t even agree on which will be key. Here are some of the main phenomena that meteorologists are closely watching to make their predictions, and a look at what they’re signaling so far:

La Nina and the Pacific Ocean A weather-bending phenomenon that twists atmospheric patterns, La Nina threatens to rear its head for the second straight year.

When a La Nina forms, upending storm patterns across North America, it usually brings cooler weather across the US’s Pacific Northwest and upper Great Plains, while drying and warming the southern part of the country. These formations also conspire to drive weather patterns the world over, potentially chilling Japan and Korea, bringing drought to Brazil and Argentina, and drying out parts of China. The phenomenon is so large, it will play an underlying role in many seasonal forecasts. The US Climate Prediction Center says there is a more than 70% chance that cool waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean will trigger the phenomenon.

Back-to-back La Ninas aren’t unheard of—they’ve happened eight times since 1950. The problem for forecasters is they don’t always impact climate the same way. Last winter, La Nina brought a relatively mild winter to the Northern Hemisphere, but this year’s pattern could be different.

La Nina isn’t the only tremor in the world’s largest ocean that’s drawn attention. Stretching west from British Columbia across the North Pacific is a large pool of warm water that’s sometimes called—no fooling—“the blob.” La Nina and the blob “both favor dry conditions for western states, which is horrible news,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research Center. That means the potential for “ongoing drought and fires.”

Polar vortex disruption Tilted away from the sun’s warmth for months on end, the North Pole builds a reservoir of some of the Earth’s coldest air during winter. A girdle of winds called the polar vortex spins around the top of the world, locking that cold air up tight. If it escapes the confines of the Arctic, parts of Asia, Europe and North America will be blasted with bursts of cold, driving demand for heat.

Meteorologists weighing the likelihood that the polar vortex weakens and lets the cold out are watching indicators like the accumulation of sea ice and sudden stratospheric warming, two early signs of disruption.

Such a warming over the North Pole in the stratosphere—a layer in the atmosphere that stretches from about 5 to 30 miles (8 to 48 kilometers) above the earth—happens in about 55% to 60% of winters, Crawford said. It can have disastrous effects: It was a sudden stratospheric warming last January that ultimately resulted in the historic cold that slammed the Southern US the following month, crippling the Texas electric grid and killing at least 210 people.

If the cold does drop out of the Pole, the big question becomes where it will go, since it can’t chill all parts of the Northern Hemisphere at once. A key factor is often the North Atlantic Oscillation, a shifting pattern of high and low pressure over Greenland and the ocean. If the oscillation is in its negative phase, high pressure blocks station themselves over Greenland, slamming the atmospheric flow from North America shut and usually leading to cold—and sometimes stormy—weather in the US Northeast.

It can also shift the storm track over Europe to the south, leaving the northwestern Europe quite chilly, said Tyler Roys, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc. The colder Europe gets, the worse its energy crunch will be. If a so-called blocking pattern sets up over the Gulf of Alaska, it can create a pump of cold air into the heart of the US, said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist at commercial-forecaster Energy Weather Group.

Siberia and the Urals For Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, part of risk analytic firm Verisk, one indicator worth scrutinizing is Siberian snow. While not everyone subscribes to this theory, Cohen believes that if snow rapidly accumulates across Siberia in October, it can create conditions that will eventually trigger a disruption in the polar vortex. Scientists will know more about how this metric is shaping up at the end of the month.

He’s also closely watching the formation of high pressure areas in the Scandinavian-Urals region as an indicator. If such a pattern persists “into November and especially December, a significant disruption of the polar vortex this winter is almost inevitable,” he said.

Francis at Woodwell is watching the same area for signs. “Some models are hinting at a weakened vortex, which often opens the ‘refrigerator door’ and allows cold air to spill southward over North America and Eurasia,” she said. “Could be an early winter for lots of folks if that happens.”

Bloomberg News

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Unapologetic old boys’ network is costing Australia billions I

By Nabila Ahmed

t’s the Australian Paradox. In terms of women’s educational attainment, no country does better, according to the World Economic Forum. But when it comes to women’s participation in the economy, this nation of 26 million ranks 70th on the WEF’s list—behind Kazakhstan, Serbia and Zimbabwe. As recently as 2006 it sat at no. 12.

Political and economic life here is dominated by men to an even greater degree than in the United States, the United Kingdom or Canada—Australia’s cultural kin.

And Down Under, as elsewhere, the pandemic is making inequality of all kinds even worse.

Four years after #MeToo shook American power centers from Wall Street to Hollywood, Australia is trying to play catch-up. In September, the government formally adopted six recommendations from the Australian Human Rights Commission aimed at reducing workplace harassment. Equality advocates wanted 55.

The price of inaction—nationally, as well as for individuals—is significant: Sexual harassment is costing the economy an estimated $2.75 billion a year.

The numbers from corporate Australia over the past year are equally sobering. Only one of the 23 new chief executive officers appointed to a major company was a woman. Among the top 200 businesses, the number of woman CEOs has fallen to 10, down from 14 in 2018. That compares with 33 in the US, or around 6 percent—a slightly higher level of representation than in Australia, according to Bloomberg calculations. The gender pay gap rose almost 1 percentage point to 31.3 percent when taking into account total full- and part-time salaries and overtime.

In the US, where the gap is calculated differently, it stayed steady at 16 percent.

At the cultural core of gender inequality in Australia is “mateship,” a concept that traces its history back to the country’s penal colony roots and through its participation in various far-flung wars.

The term connotes a sense of shared sacrifice, duty and loyalty—and largely applies only to men operating in a man’s world.

While the US has bro culture and Britain has its lads, mateship is singularly antipodean and applies predominantly to men—that is, those who tend to hold the power.

“It has no translation into a feminine view of the world,” said Sam Mostyn, president of women’s leadership advocacy group Chief Executive Women.

Privately, and occasionally publicly, Australian executives concede that women’s careers are blunted by mateship and the exclusionary culture it fosters. Some executives have used the pandemic as an excuse to avoid promoting women to top roles, says Mostyn, who also serves on the board of Citigroup locally and of toll road company Transurban Group. She says they argue that women present a “risk” in uncertain times.

“Australia has a cultural problem with women in leadership,” Mostyn said. “There is a lack of respect for women at work, there is a very high tenor of safety issues for women in their homes, and Australia hasn’t taken advantage of the advances made in women’s education.”

While 54 percent of all finance workers are female, more than two-thirds of the sector’s key management executives—and 90 percent of its CEOs—are men.

(Shemara Wikramanayake, who turned Macquarie Group Ltd.’s asset management business into its most profitable unit before taking the top job in 2018, is the exception that proves the rule.)

The earnings gap in the financial

services industry was 24.1 percent as of May, second only to professional and technical services.

At investment banks, the lack of senior women in client-facing roles is so dire that corporate and government clients are starting to push back.

When some of the biggest banks presented to the government of Victoria state for a mandate to help sell its $1.3 billion motor registry unit earlier this year, they were told they would be assessed not only on diversity within their deal teams but also firm-wide policies and initiatives addressing gender equality, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Morgan Stan ley won t he mandate. A Victorian government spokesperson said that all public sector suppliers must demonstrate progress on gender equality in the workplace and the community following the implementation of new state regulations earlier this year.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was in the crosshairs earlier this year after sending an all-male team to pitch a deal to Telstra Corp., Australia’s biggest telecommunications company. At the time, Telstra complained that no women were included. A spokesperson for Goldman declined to comment on the incident.

“Definitely the large majority of the investment-banking teams that I have dealt with have been pretty much all male, or male by a large majority,” said Vicki Brady, chief financial officer of Telstra.

“But in the last few months we have made it very clear to the investment banks that one of our requirements is to see how they bring to us diverse teams to bring us the best advice. The more the diverse the team, the better the advice.”

Telstra, Australia’s 10th biggest listed company, is stepping up its own efforts as investors sharpen their focus on environmental, social and governance issues. About 30 percent of the executive leadership team is currently made up of women and the telco has promised all new recruits will be hired from a gender-balanced pool. BHP Group Plc, the world’s biggest miner, property group Stockland and Sydney Airport are among companies that have not only set ambitious gender diversity goals but have made progress in the past year, with women making up at least half of their executive leadership teams.

Perhaps because they face more scrutiny, large companies tend to have better representation and more aggressive goals for improvement. Most of the country’s top 100 companies have set some kind of goal for increasing female representation, and only 25 percent have no target. In the top 300, some 43 percent haven’t set a target.

Security software firm Nuix Ltd., which made its debut on the stock market in December, is one of them: Just 11 percent of its executive leadership team is female. A Nuix spokesperson said the company wants to promote more women and has a dedicated awareness-raising group inside the business. It’s also aiming to lift the proportion of women on its board to 30 percent from the current level of 20 percent.

Optimists had hoped for more in 2021. First Grace Tame, an activist and sexual assault survivor, was named Australian of the Year.

Then thousands of Australians marched for change after Brittany Higgins, a former legislative aide in Parliament, accused a senior colleague of raping her in the defense minister’s office.

But for many people, Prime Minister Scott Morrison inadvertently embodied the country’s sexism problem when he said publicly that he hadn’t understood the se-

riousness of Higgins’ claims until his wife asked him to imagine the victim was one of his daughters.

Persistent inequality

The second nation in the world to grant women the vote and the first to let them stand for parliament, Australia now lags not only cultural peers like the US but wealthy nations more broadly, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Rae Frances, professor of history at the Australian National University and dean of its College of Arts and Social Sciences, points to an obvious reason for the country’s women problem: “A very strong old boys’ network.”

She says that in addition to Australia’s historical commitment to traditional nuclear families, the prevalence of single-sex schools has fostered sexist and exclusionary attitudes that carry over into industries likes finance and law. Some 16 percent of Australian students attend single-sex schools, compared to 7.5 percent in the U.K. and just 2.8 percent in the US. The persistence of those exclusionary attitudes was laid bare earlier this year by the Australian Club—the oldest gentlemen’s club in the southern hemisphere, with a membership that reads like a Who’s Who of the Australian elite. In June, members voted overwhelmingly to maintain the 183-year-old ban on letting women join the club.

Some of the men expressed concern that they might be seduced out of their marriages by new female members or that they would no longer be able to behave in a “boorish” way if women were allowed into the space. A representative for the Australian Club declined to comment. “ T hat’s about elites and a certain section of the elites,” Frances said.

Meanwhile, more than half of Australian workers are employed in industries that predominantly employ one gender, such as mining or nursing. That dynamic has remained stubbornly persistent over the past 20 years, according to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. And because wages tend to be higher in male-dominated industries than ones that employ a lot of women, the pay gap hasn’t changed much either. It hardly helps that men hold almost twothirds of all full-time jobs.

Bridging the difference between male and female employment rates alone could provide an 8 percent boost—$114 billion a year—to the Australian economy, according to 2019 estimates from Goldman Sachs.

Mary Wooldridge, director of the government agency set up almost a decade ago to improve gender equality in the workplace, said discrimination remains the biggest issue for professional women.

Career breaks to have and take care of children affect the pay gap, too.

Even though Australia, unlike the US, has mandated parental leave policies, the cost of childcare is relatively high and few men take up flexible working options.

Of course women aren’t the only ones facing prejudice. One in two Indigenous Australians experienced discrimination or harassment in the workplace in the previous 12 months, according to a 2020 study by the Diversity Council of Australia— twice the rate of non-Indigenous workers. Disabled employees and LGBTQI staff also faced significantly higher rates of harassment than their colleagues.

On the gender front at least, change seems to be coming, albeit slowly. The Australian Human R ights Commission concluded—unsur prisingly—that sexual harassment tends to be worse in male-dominated industries. BHP in August said it had fired 48 workers at remote mining sites in Western Australia since July 2019 over instances of harassment. For its part, R io Tinto repor ted 29 instances.

And in the same month all-male boards disappeared from the nation’s top 200 companies for the first time.

Kate Jenkins, Australia’s sex discr imination commissioner and architect of the human rights commission report that found one in three people experienced sexual harassment at work, says the nation has finally reached a turning point.

“Up until the last few years, the general view by many leaders has been that this isn’t a big problem, that this is a thing of the past or that it doesn’t cause harm or cost,” Jenkins said in an inter view.

“T he attitude has changed with the realization that this isn’t just a few bad blokes, this is systemic risk that industries need to manage.” Bloomberg News

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The World BusinessMirror

Sunday, October 3, 2021

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Africa Internet riches plundered, contested by China broker

By Alan Suderman, Frank Bajak & Rodney Muhumuza

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The Associated Press

AMPALA, Uganda—Outsiders have long profited from Africa’s riches of gold, diamonds, and even people. Digital resources have proven no different.

Millions of Internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent’s addresses. Instead of serving Africa’s Internet development, many have benefited spammers and scammers, while others satiate Chinese appetites for pornography and gambling.

New leadership at the nonprofit, AFRINIC, is working to reclaim the lost addresses. But a legal challenge by a deep-pocketed Chinese businessman is threatening the body’s very existence.

The businessman is Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. Under contested circumstances, he obtained 6.2 million African addresses from 2013 to 2016. That’s about 5 percent of the continent’s total—more than Kenya has.

The Internet service providers and others to whom AFRINIC assigns IP address blocks aren’t purchasing them. They pay membership fees to cover administrative costs that are intentionally kept low. That left lots of room, though, for graft.

When AFRINIC revoked Lu’s addresses, now worth about $150 million, he fought back. His lawyers in late July persuaded a judge in Mauritius, where AFRICNIC is based, to freeze its bank accounts.

His company also filed an $80-million defamation claim against AFRINIC and its new CEO. It’s a shock to the global networking community, which has long considered the Internet as technological scaffolding for advancing society. Some worry it could undermine the entire numerical address system that makes the Internet work.

“There was never really any thought, particularly in the AFRINIC region, that someone would just directly attack a foundational element of Internet governance and just try and shut it down, try and make it go away,” said Bill Woodcock, executive director of Packet Clearing House, a global

nonprofit that has helped build out Africa’s Internet.

Lu told The Associated Press that he’s an honest businessman who broke no rules in obtaining the African address blocks. And, rejecting the consensus of the Internet’s stewards, he says its five regional registries have no business deciding where IP addresses are used.

“AFRINIC is supposed to serve the Internet, it’s not supposed to serve Africa,” Lu said. “They’re just bookkeepers.”

In revoking Lu’s address blocks, AFRINIC is trying to reclaim Internet real-estate critical for a continent that lags the rest in leveraging Internet resources to raise living standards and boost health and education. Africa has been allocated just 3 percent of the world’s first-generation IP addresses.

Making things worse: the alleged theft of millions of AFRINIC IP addresses, involving the organization’s former No. 2 official, Ernest Byaruhanga, who was fired in December 2019. It’s unclear whether he was acting alone.

The registry’s new CEO, Eddy Kayihura, said at the time that he’d filed a criminal complaint with the Mauritius police. He shook up management and began trying to reclaim wayward IP address blocks.

Lu’s legal gains in the case have stunned and dismayed the global Internet-governance community.

Network activists worry they could help facilitate further Internet resource grabs by China, for starters.

Some of Lu’s major clients include the Chinese state-owned telecommunication firms China Telecom and China Mobile.

“It doesn’t seem like he’s running the show. It seems like he’s the face of the show. I expect that he has got quite a significant backing that’s actually pulling the strings,” said Mark Tinka, a Ugandan who heads engineering at SEACOM, a South Africa-based Internet backbone and services provider. Tinka worries Lu has “access to an endless pile of resources.”

Facebook prioritizes ‘greed’ over children, senators say

By Anna Edgerton & Rebecca Kern

F

acebook Inc.’s head of global safety faced tough questions from lawmakers who accused the company of prioritizing profit and growth over the health of its youngest users.

Senators at a hearing Thursday seized on Facebook’s internal research about the mental-health effects of its platforms, arguing the social-media giant can’t be trusted to act in the best interest of children and teens. Senator Richard Blumenthal said Facebook has “chosen growth over children’s mental health and well-being, greed over preventing the suffering of children.”

“Facebook has shown us once again that it’s incapable of holding itself accountable,” said Blumenthal, the chair of the Senate

Commerce Committee’s consumer protection panel.

Antigone Davis, Facebook ’s global head of safety, said the company uses its own studies and works with outside experts to develop tools to keep young users safe on its platforms, give parents more safety options and prevent people younger than 13 from lying about their age to create accounts.

“It’s why we conduct this research: to make our platforms better, to minimize the bad and maximize the good, and to proactively identify where we can improve,” Davis said. “Facebook is committed to building better products for young people, and to doing everything we can to protect their privacy, safety and well-being on our platforms.”

The hearing follows reporting by the Wall Street Journal that

Two young boys use a computer at an Internet cafe in the low-income Kibera neighborhood of Nairobi, Kenya, on Wednesday, September 29. Instead of serving Africa’s Internet development, millions of Internet addresses reserved for Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including in insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent’s addresses. AP/Brian Inganga

Lu said allegations he’s working for the Chinese government are “wild” conspiracy theories.

He said he’s the victim of ongoing “character assassination.”

While billions use the Internet daily, its inner workings are little understood and rarely subject to scrutiny. Globally, five fully autonomous regional bodies, operating as nonprofit public trusts, decide who owns and runs the Internet’s limited store of first-generation IP address blocks. Founded in 2003, AFRINIC was the last of the five registries to be created.

Just shy of a decade ago, the pool of 3.7 billion first-generation IP addresses, known as IPv4, was fully exhausted in the developed world. Such IP addresses now sell at auction for between $20 and $30 each.

The current crisis was precipitated by the uncovering of the alleged fraud at AFRINIC. The misappropriation of 4 million IP addresses worth more than $50 million by Byahuranga and perhaps others was discovered by Ron Guilmette, a freelance Internet sleuth in California, and exposed by him and journalist Jan Vermeulen of the South African tech web site MyBroadband.

But that was far from all of it.

Ownership of at least 675,000 wayward addresses is still in dispute. Some are controlled by an Israeli businessman, who has sued AFRINIC for trying to reclaim them. Guilmette calculates that a total of 1.2 million stolen addresses remain in use.

Someone had tampered with AFRINIC’s WHOIS database records—which are like deeds for IP

addresses—to steal so-called legacy address blocks, Guilmette said.

It’s unclear if it was Byahuranga alone or if other insiders or even hackers were involved, he added.

Many of the misappropriated address blocks were unused IP space stolen from businesses, including mining giant Anglo American.

Many of the disputed addresses continue to host web sites that have nonsense URL address names and contain gambling and pornography aimed at an audience in China, whose government bans such online businesses.

When Kayihura fixed his sights on Lu this year, he told him in writing that IP address blocks allocated to his Seychelles-registered company were not “originating services from within the AFRINIC service region—contrary to the justification provided.”

Lu would not discuss the justifications he provided to AFRINIC for the IP addresses he’s obtained, but said he’s never broken any of AFRINIC’s rules. Such justifications are part of what is typically an opaque, confidential process.

Kayihura would not comment on them, citing the legal case. Nor would the two men who were AFRINIC’s CEOs when Lu received the allocations.

E-mails obtained by the AP show that in his initial request for IP addresses in 2013, Lu made clear to AFRINIC that his customers would be in China. In those e-mails, Lu said he needed the addresses for virtual private networks—known as VPNs—to circumvent the Chinese government’s firewall that blocks popu-

lar web sites like Facebook and YouTube there.

He sa id he d iscussed t his with Adiel Akplogan, AFRINIC’s first CEO, in Beijing in a 2013 meeting cited in the e-mails.

A kplogan, who stepped down in 2015, would not comment on any discussions he may have had with Lu on the subject.

A kplogan’s successor, South African Internet pioneer A lan Barrett, would say only that “all appropr iate procedu res were followed.”

By t h at t i me, i n 2016 -2017, L u s a id h i s comp a ny, C lou d I n nov at ion , h ad qu it t he V PN business and shif ted into l e a s i n g a d d re s s s p a c e.

Lu notes that other regional registries—including R IPE in Europe and AR IN, the North A merican registr y—routinely allocate address blocks outside their regions.

That may be so, experts say, but Africa is a special case because it’s still developing and vulnerable to exploitation—even if AFRINIC’s bylaws don’t explicitly ban geographical outsiders from obtaining IP space.

Unlike at other regional registries, AFRINIC’s stewards neglected to forge strong alliances with governments on the continent with the resources to fend off legal challenges from wealthy usurpers, said Woodcock of the Packet Clearing House.

“The governmental relationships necessary to get it treated as critical infrastructure were never prioritized in the African region,” he added. “This is not a threat coming from Africa. This

Facebook understood the negative effects its photo-sharing app, Instagram, has on young users, including anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, and yet downplayed the research.

Almost a third of teen girls with body-image issues told Facebook that scrolling through Instagram made those problems worse, according to documents reviewed by the newspaper.

The Journal also detailed how Facebook is aware that millions of celebrities get special treatment for questionable content, human traffickers actively use the platform and an algorithm change fueled increasingly divisive posts.

The newspaper series has reignited anger in Washington at the socialmedia giant, although lawmakers are still far from passing proposed legislation aimed at the platform.

“You’ve lost the trust and we do not trust you,” Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, the panel’s ranking Republican, told Davis.

Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said he thinks the hear-

ing will add to momentum to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act—the 1998 law that prohibits data collection on those younger than the age of 13. He also said he would consider issuing subpoenas for any additional internal studies from Facebook.

“The combination of today’s testimony and the evidence from the whistle-blower on Tuesday will certainly bolster momentum very powerfully,” Blumenthal told Bloomberg, referring to next week’s public hearing with a former Facebook employee who provided company documents to the Journal. “There’s certainly an urgency to the problem.”

Instagram use and mental-health outcomes, and she explained how the company has made changes to the platform to try to improve user experience. Davis spoke about her own experience raising a daughter, and with her brother and a close friend who died by suicide.

“If there’s one person on our platform who attributes their suicidal ideation to our platform, that’s one too many,” Davis said.

“We care deeply about it.”

Senators also questioned Facebook’s governance model, with most of the power and decisionmaking concentrated in the hands of founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. When asked repeatedly who at the company would sign off on releasing more research or approving product changes, Davis said such decisions would involve many people and the company is “looking to provide more transparency.”

Sharp questions

Senators asked sharp questions regarding suicide rates for Instagram users, specific policy changes as a result of Facebook’s research and how the company’s business model guides product design.

Davis emphasized that the company’s studies didn’t establish a causal relationship between

‘Totally insufficient’

Instagram’s head of research, Pratiti Raychoudhury, said in a blog

is a threat from China.”

The international registry community has rallied to the aid of AFRINIC’s embattled reformers.

ARIN’s president, John Curran, said in a statement of support that the Mauritian court should also consider whether any fraud was committed in awarding the IP addresses to Lu. His legal battle “ has potential for significant impact to the overall stability of the Internet number registry system,” he wrote.

A mutual assistance fund of more than $2 million created by the regional registries is helping keep AFRINIC running during the court fight.

The AP found several pornography and gambling sites aimed at a Chinese audience using IP addresses that Lu got from AFRINIC. While those sites are banned in China, they can still be accessed there via VPNs. Lu said such sites make up a minuscule part of the web sites using his IP addresses and his company has strict policies against posting illegal material like child pornography and terrorism-related content. He said he does not actively police the content of millions of web sites hosted by those leasing from his company, but all actionable complaints of illegal activity are immediately forwarded to law enforcement.

It is not clear whether the police investigation into Byaruhanga has advanced. Mauritian police did not respond to attempts to determine if they have even sought to question him. Byahuranga is believed to be living in his native Uganda but could not be located for comment.

Akplogan, his former boss, said he was not aware at the time of Byahuranga’s alleged misappropriation of addresses.

“I don’t know how he did it,” said Akplogan, who is Togolese and now based in Montreal. “And for those who know the reality about my management of AFRINIC they know very well that it’s not something that I will have known and let it go [on].”

Inducted two years ago into the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame, Akplogan is currently vice president for technical engagement at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the California-based body that oversees the global network address and domain name businesses.

Bajak reported from Boston and Suderman from Richmond, Virginia.

post Sunday that the study quoted by the Journal was a small sample of 40 teens, and most of them reported feeling better in other categories like loneliness and anxiety after using Instagram. Raychoudhury’s post also detailed actions taken to make Instagram a healthier platform for young people, like adding resources for those struggling with eating disorders and removing some content related to suicide.

The company released two slide decks late Wednesday outlining Instagram’s mixed impact on the way young people feel about themselves. The Journal later released additional documents that informed the newspaper’s reporting.

As part of its response to the fallout from the Journal’s reporting, Facebook announced Monday that it will pause work on a version of Instagram for children.

Still, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, said in a blog post that building a version of the app for children ages 10 to 12 is still “the right thing to do” to give parents more control. Bloomberg News

Science

BusinessMirror

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

Sunday

Sunday, October 3, 2021

A5

Mindanao’s 1st earthquake and tsunami monitoring center launched; country's 111th

M

indanao’s first monitoring center for earthquake and tsunami was launched recently to make the country’s largest island in the south resilient and prepared for such natural disasters and prevent casualties.

T he center brings to 111 the seismic stations in the countr y.

The Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (DOSTPhivolcs) unveiled online the Phivolcs Mindanao Cluster Monitoring Center for Earthquake and Tsunami.

DOST Undersecretary Renato U. Solidum Jr. said the center was set

to further increase the protection capabilities of the Philippine Seismic Network (PSN) in monitoring and warning in Mindanao.

It aims to ensure the continuity of operations should the key operations of the Phivolcs Data Receiving Center (DRC) in Quezon City get hampered by any disaster.

The Mindanao monitoring center

The recently launched DOST-Phivolcs Mindanao cluster earthquake and tsunami monitoring center. DOST.gov.ph

can generate and deliver reliable earthquake and tsunami information for both Phivolcs and the public similar to its DRC in quezon city.

The newest earthquake and tsunami monitoring center is set at

the Philippine Science High SchoolSouthern Mindanao Campus in Mintal, Davao City. It is envisioned to be beneficial not only for monitoring activities but to serve as a facility for students’ education in the region.

In the online news conference, Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña pointed out that the department has always pushed for better appreciation of scientific information to transform people’s lives.

“With the inauguration of this cluster center, we hope to bring the products and services of our earth science team...closer to the people whom we serve, and they will truly appreciate the meaning of earth sciences [in the region and at the] local level,” de la Peña said.

On the other hand, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio extended her commendation to DOST-Phivolcs for continuing its mandate to mitigate disasters by disseminating relevant information on disaster preparedness and risk reduction through a video message.

With Mindanao monitoring center as the newest addition to the PSN, the Philippines now has 111 seismic

stations, consisting of nine staff-controlled seismic stations, 18 satellitetelemetered seismic stations, and 12 sea-level detection stations and tsunami alerting stations.

The agency eyes to have a total of 115 seismic stations by 2022.

Solidum thanked partner institutions for their support and contributions as the Mindanao monitoring center finally comes full circle this year.

He pointed out that preparedness against disasters need the action of everybody, reiterating the agency’s and partner institutions’ mission to strengthen community resilience and disaster preparedness.

Solidum added that they must collaborate and build on each party’s efforts and expertise to ensure provision of right service to the people to bring forth safe and disaster-resilient citizenry especially in the region of Mindanao. Eunice Anne Narvadez/S&T

Media Services

Public urged: Take part in science-based discussions on biotech products' safety

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Extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB occurs when a mycobacterium tuberculosis strain is resistant to two of the most powerful first-line drugs, as well as key drugs of the second line regimen. The XDR TB strains may also be resistant to additional drugs, greatly complicating the therapy. NIAID/Wikimedia Commons

DOST study to halt drug-resistant TB reports 70% to 80% success rate

T

he Philippine Council for Health Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCHRD) is supporting a project to control and stop drug-resistant tuberculosis in the country which has recorded a 70 percent to 80 percent success rate.

Titled “Community Approach to Control and Halt Drug-Resistant TB [COACH DRTB],” the five-year project is being led by Dr. Charles Yu from De La Salle Medical and Health Sciences Institute (DLSMHSI), Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña said in his recent weekly DOST Report.

Currently, the success rate of the project is 70 percent to 80 percent which is a combination of the patients cured and completed the treatment.

The success rate of the project is remarkably high and comparably sustained even during the lockdown brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, de la Peña said.

The project aims to determine the effectiveness of the community-based approach strategy to control and halt drug-resistant tuberculosis in the detection and treatment of drug-resistant TB in the Philippines.

The five-year project, which is currently in its fourth year of implementation, is one of the projects supported by the Regional Prospective

Observational Research for Tuberculosis (RePORT) International Program that aims to advance regional tuberculosis science that is relevant in a global context.

Following the RePORT Common Protocol platform, the COACH DRTB project is conducting targeted intensified case finding in selected communities, using a community-based approach rather than a facility-based approach.

These outcomes were chosen as they reflect completion of treatment as well as the level of quality of care.

In addition, the project assesses the outcomes in children who were previously diagnosed to have TB disease, latent TB infection (LTBI), or were exposed.

A major feature of the COACH DRTB study is the deployment of existing TB health community workers, or “Kagabays,” to the community for case finding, treatment monitoring and case-holding.

This uses the home as the treatment site since there has been an increasing number of DRTB cases that are lost to follow up in the present set-up.

K agabays are barangay health workers who were trained as educators, counselors, and treatment partners for DRTB in 2015.

ene editing is among the technologies that can be used to improve farm productivity and mitigate the effects of climate change, a biosafety expert said recently.

Dr. Carl Ramage, managing director of Rautaki Solutions Inc., gave this statement at the recent webinar, “SOLVE Public Info-sufficiency on Genome-edited Crops,” where he and Dr. Saturnina Halos, president of the Biotechnology Coalition of the Philippines, presented the global and local perspectives on genome editing technologies and biosafety regulations, respectively, a news release said.

Ramage shared several examples of genome editing regulatory approaches implemented in countries, such as Argentina and the United States.

He said that the commercialization of gene-edited products depends on a clear pathway to market; an effective value capture model; and clear and harmonized regulatory requirements.

“We should not fear new technologies. We should keep asking scientists and the government questions to ensure that we maintain the safety of the

food that we eat and produce,” he said.

“Be part of the discussion, take an open mind, listen, and contribute,” urged Ramage, also the chairman of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of La Trobe University, Australia.

Meanwhile, Halos talked about the opportunities and constraints of genome editing in the Philippines.

She said the National Committee on Biosafety of the Philippines has ruled that gene-edited crops will not be regulated under the existing guidelines covering genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Halos clarified that the current Philippine regulation on modern biotechnology, which is based on the Cartegena Protocol, is specific only to GMOs. She added that there is government support for molecular breeding using gene editing led by the Department of Agriculture.

“We should not stop exploring new methods of improving agriculture because we are in a different situation today than we are a hundred years ago. For instance, climate change is affecting everything,” Halos said.

Halos concurred with Ramage and

affirmed that “we should be open to new technologies that could help us.

We must be aware that these products can cause damage, thus, there are regulations put in place."

She said: "We’ve had GMOs for more than 20 years and because of the science-based biosafety regulations, they have been proven to be safe for humans and the environment.”

The online discussion was held by the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, in partnership with the United States Department of Agr iculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service, United States Embassy Manila, and the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), the Searca news release said.

Held via the Searca Online Learning and Virtual Engagement (SOLVE), the webinar was part of Searca’s Biotech Outreach Program, which provides a venue for knowledge sharing and learning with different stakeholders and contribute to improved understanding and acceptance of biotechnology in the country, with focus on genome editing technologies in crops.

Searca Director Dr. Glenn B.

Gregorio emphasized the importance of gene-editing applications for crops and the need for regulatory frameworks that are scienceand evidence-based.

Gregorio, a professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, as well as plant breeder and geneticist, also underlined the significance of discussing the benefits of these technologies.

“We can clearly see and appreciate how modern biotechnology as an agricultural innovation accelerates transformation. We are in the age where crop breeding innovations and gene-edited products are highly relevant now more than ever,” he said.

For almost five years, the USDA together with Searca, ISAAA, and its strong network of partners have been leading and organizing the annual Biotech Outreach Program.

The webinar was attended by more than a hundred participants via Zoom with more than 1,400 views on Facebook. Most attendees came from the Philippines, but participants from Myanmar, Japan, TimorLeste and Indonesia also joined the discussions.

Proteins created into music using Chopin’s classical style

W

ith the right computer program, proteins become pleasant music.

There are many surprising analogies between proteins, the basic building blocks of life, and musical notation.

These analogies can be used not only to help advance research, but also to make the complexity of proteins accessible to the public.

We ’r e c o m p u t a t i o n a l b i o l o gists who believe that hearing the sound of life at the molecular level could help inspire people to learn more about biology and the computational sciences.

W hile creating music based on proteins isn’t new, different musical styles and composition algorithms had yet to be explored. So we led a team of high-school students and other scholars to figure out how to create classical music from proteins.

The musical analogies of proteins Proteins are structured like folded chains. These chains are composed of small units of 20 possible amino acids, each labeled by a letter of the alphabet.

A protein chain can be represented as a string of these alphabetic letters, very much like a string of music notes in alphabetical notation.

Protein chains can also fold into

wavy and curved patterns with ups, downs, turns and loops.

Likewise, music consists of sound waves of higher and lower pitches, with changing tempos and repeating motifs.

Protein-to-music algorithms can, thus, map the structural and physiochemical features of a string of amino acids onto the musical features of a string of notes.

Enhancing the musicality of protein mapping Protein-to-music mapping can be fine-tuned by basing it on the features of a specific music style. This enhances musicality, or the melodiousness of the song, when converting amino acid properties, such as sequence patterns and variations, into analogous musical properties, like pitch, note lengths and chords.

For our study, we specifically selected 19th-century Romantic period classical piano music.

This includes composers like Chopin and Schubert, as a guide because it typically spans a wide range of notes with more complex features, such as chromaticism, like playing both white and black keys on a piano in order of pitch, and chords.

Music from this period also tends to have lighter and more graceful and emotive melodies. Songs are

usually homophonic, meaning they follow a central melody with accompaniment.

T hese features a l lowed us to test out a greater range of notes in our protein-to-music mapping algorithm.

In this case, we chose to analyze features of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” to guide our development of the program.

To test the algorithm, we applied it to 18 proteins that play a key role in various biological functions.

Each amino acid in the protein is mapped to a particular note based on how frequently they appear in the protein, and other aspects of their biochemistry correspond with other aspects of the music.

A larger-sized amino acid, for instance, would have a shorter note length, and vice versa.

The resulting music is complex, with notable variations in pitch, loudness and rhythm.

Because the algorithm was completely based on the amino acid sequence and no two proteins share the same amino acid sequence, each protein will produce a distinct song.

This also means that there are variations in musicality across the different pieces, and interesting patterns can emerge.

For example, music generated

from the receptor protein that binds to the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin has some recurring motifs due to the repetition of certain small sequences of amino acids.

On the other hand, music generated from tumor antigen p53, a protein that prevents cancer formation, is highly chromatic, producing particularly fascinating phrases where the music sounds almost toccatalike, a style that often features fast and virtuoso technique.

By guiding analysis of amino acid properties through specific music styles, protein music can sound much more pleasant to the ear. This can be further developed and applied to a wider variety of music styles, including pop and jazz.

Protein music is an example of how combining the biological and computational sciences can produce beautiful works of art. Our hope is that this work will encourage researchers to compose protein music of different styles and inspire the public to learn about the basic building blocks of life.

Peng Zhang, The Rockefeller Universit y, and Yuzong Chen, National Universit y, Singapore, in collabo ration with Nicole Tay, Fanxi Liu, Chaoxin Wang and Hui Zhang/The Conversation (CC)

Faith A6

Sunday

Sunday, October 3, 2021

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

20 church and civic groups launch movement

‘Halalang Marangal 2022’ commits to righteous polls

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ith less than a year before the 2022 elections, various faith-based organizations banded together to work for a “clean, accurate, responsible and transparent” polls.

men and Professionals (BCBP); De La Salle Brothers Philippines; Network for Justice and Compassion (NetJC); People Empowerment via Transformative Electoral Reforms (PETER); Philippine Misereor Partnership (PMPI); Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB); Bawat Isa Mahalaga (B1M); The Faith Initiative; and Radio Veritas846.

The national Caritas is hoping that the coming together of various groups will lead to a continuing communal discernment and action.

“We are doing this for the sake of our country and to protect the sacredness of our votes,” said Fr. Antonio Labiao, its executive secretary.

“I hope that we elect leaders whom we can rely on for real peace, justice and for life in this country,” he said.

Bishop: ‘Our choice reflects our values’ “Halalang Marangal 2022” is a coalition of more than 20 church and civic groups that are committed to ensure “righteous elections.”

Among its main activities include a campaign for voters’ registration and education, and poll monitoring.

Caritas Philippines Head Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo encouraged the faithful to join the movement to achieve its cause.

“We need to share the burden of managing and administering the electoral exercise with the Commission on Elections,” Bagaforo said.

“We need to help fill gaps in the entire process, help explain how automated systems work and reinforce trust and confidence now at an alltime low in elections,” he said.

The electoral process, according to him, consists of several stages that citizens should understand and involve themselves in with “dynamism

and courage.”

He asked the laity to familiarize themselves with the process and know how each stage in the voting chain contributes to transparent and honest elections.

“We have this special responsibility in times of serious moral, economic, health, food security, livelihood and leadership crises,” Bagaforo said.

“Apathy and indifference are unforgivable and jeopardize our democracy and help perpetuate Godless values,” he said.

Besides Caritas, the coalition is composed of the bishops’ Commissions on Indigenous Peoples and Commission on Youth; the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines (AMRSP); Sangguniang Laiko ng Pilipinas; and the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP).

Other coalition members are the Brotherhood of Christian Business-

At the same time, Bagaforo, also the bishop of Kidapawan, called on voters to vote responsibly, saying that the votes people cast are a mirror of them.

“Our choice reflects our values,” Bagaforo said. “It is an expression and affirmation of our human dignity, a foundational principle of Catholic social teaching.”

According to him, voting is God’s gift to people “and how we use this is our gift to our country.”

“It is a fulfilment of one’s responsibility to participate in and influence the social, political affairs of our nation,” he said.

The bishop made the statement during the virtual launching of Halalang Marangal 2022 Coalition on Tuesday.

With the many issues and challenges besetting the country, he said that Filipinos deserve “leaders with servant hearts.”

But to be a true and working servant leader, he said, requires “competence, experience, compassion, kindness, passion and perseverance.”

“A functioning leader provides direction and inspires God’s family to work tirelessly to improve the condition of all Filipinos with preferential attention to the marginalized and excluded,” Bagaforo said.

‘Ensure 2022 polls will push through’ For his part, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, vice president of the bishops’ conference, said the public must make sure that the health crisis will not be used by certain sectors to thwart the elections.

“We need to help guarantee that we’re going to have an election and all,” David said during a recent virtual conference to mark this year’s National Laity Week in the diocese.

“We must make sure that it will push through and that the pandemic won’t be used to prevent the elections. We have to avoid that,” he said.

The incoming president of the episcopal conference also said that after ensuring the conduct of elections, it is necessary to safeguard the integrity of ballots.

“We have to make sure that these elections will be clean, honest, accurate, meaningful, and peaceful,” David said.

He stressed that the public should not avoid political activities and political issues, such as the elections, as it is an integral part of being responsible citizens.

“It is wrong to avoid political issues because it is part of our lives as citizens, to have that concern for our country,” the prelate added.

Some lawmakers earlier noted the possibility that the May 9 polls may not push through if the pandemic is not resolved. CBCP News

Pope Francis meets participants in the general assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall on September 27. VATICAN MEDIA

Pope slams abortion and euthanasia as treating human life like ‘waste’

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ATICAN—Pope Francis decried abortion and euthanasia in a recent speech in which he said that today’s “throwaway culture” leads to the killing of children and discarding of the elderly.

“There is the discarding of children that we do not want to welcome with the law of abortion that sends them to the dispatcher and kills them directly.

And today this has become a ‘normal’ method, a practice that is very ugly.

It is really murder,” Pope Francis said on September 27.

In a live-streamed address to members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope said that to understand what abortion is, it helps to pose two questions.

“Is it right to eliminate, to take a human life to solve a problem? Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? That’s what abortion is,” the pope commented.

Pope Francis said that the elderly today were also viewed as “waste material” and “of no use” in today’s throwaway culture.

“But they are wisdom. They are the roots of wisdom of our civilization, and this civilization discards them,” he said.

“Yes, in many parts there is also the law of ‘hidden euthanasia,’ as I call it. It is the one that makes people say: ‘Medications are expensive, only half of them are needed,’ and this means

shortening the life of the elderly.”

The pope added that both abortion and euthanasia “deny hope” by negating “the hope of children who bring us the life that keeps us going and the hope that is in the roots that the elderly give us.”

Pope Francis underlined that this was not a path for Catholic universities or hospitals to follow.

“This is a road on which we cannot go: the road of discarding,” he said.

The speech marked the second time in September that Pope Francis has spoken out strongly about abortion.

During a news conference on his return flight from Slovakia on September 15, the pope repeatedly said that “abortion is murder” and compared the acceptance of abortion to “accepting daily murder.”

The Pontifical Academy for Life was founded by Pope John Paul II in 1994. It is dedicated to promoting the Church’s consistent life ethic.

This week, the academy is holding its plenary assembly in Rome, focused on the pandemic, bioethics, and the future of public health.

“I entrust to the Virgin Mary the work of this assembly and also the whole of your activity as an Academy for the defense and promotion of life,” Pope Francis said in his speech in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. Courtney

Mares/Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

Biggest Islamic group driving religious reform in Indonesia; influencing the Muslim world

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fter its return to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban are again imposing their religious ideology, with restrictions on women’s rights and other repressive measures.

They are presenting to the world an image of Islam that is intolerant and at odds with social changes.

Islam, however, has multiple interpretations. A humanitarian interpretation, focusing on “rahmah,” loosely translated as love and compassion, has been emphasized by a group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), which literally means “Reawakening of the Islamic Scholars.”

Nahdlatul Ulama was founded in 1926 in reaction to the Saudi conquest of Mecca and Medina with their rigid understanding of Islam.

It follows mainstream Sunni Islam, while embracing Islamic spirituality and accepting Indonesia’s cultural traditions.

Functioning in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, Nahdlatul Ulama is the world’s biggest Islamic organization with about 90 million members and followers.

In terms of membership, the organization hugely outstrips that of the Taliban—yet this face of Islam has not been sufficiently recognized on the international stage.

In 2014, NU responded to the rise of the Islamic State group and its radical ideology by initiating an Islamic reform. Since then, it

Indonesia’s tolerant Islam

has elaborated on this reform that it calls “Humanitarian Islam.”

Humanitarian Islam During the past seven years, NU’s general secretar y, Yahya Cholil Staquf, has organized several meetings of the organization’s Islamic scholars with a reformist agenda.

They made public declarations for reforming Islamic thought on controversial issues, including political leadership, equal citizenship and relations with non-Muslims.

The Nahdlatul Ulama declarations include crucial decisions that differentiate “Humanitarian Islam” from other interpretations.

First of all, they reject the notion of a global caliphate, or a political leadership that would unite all Muslims.

The concept of a caliphate has been accepted by both mainstream Islamic scholars, such as those in AlAzhar—Egypt’s world-renowned Islamic institution—and radical groups, such as the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.

Moreover, the NU declarations emphasize the legitimacy of modern states’ constitutional and legal systems, thus, reject the idea that it is a religious obligation to establish a state based on Islamic law.

Additionally, these declarations stress the importance of equal citizenship by refusing to make a distinction between Muslims and nonMuslims as legal categories.

Abdurrahman Wahid, the leader of the biggest Islamic organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, became Indonesia’s first democratically elected president in 1999, the country’s fourth president.

Wikimedia Commons

They call for a deeper cooperation among Muslims, Christians and followers of other religions to promote world peace.

Nahdlatul Ulama has taken practical steps for realizing these aims.

For example, it has established a working relationship with the World Evangelical Alliance, which claims to represent 600 million Protestants, to promote intercultural solidarity and respect.

These NU declarations may sound insufficient from a Western liberal point of view, since they do not touch upon some issues such as LGBTQ rights. To better understand the importance of NU’s perspective and its limits requires an examination of the Indonesian context.

My research on 50 Muslim-majority countries finds that Indonesia is notable because it is one of the few democracies among them.

Indonesia’s foundational credo, Pancasila, means “five principles” and basically refers to the belief in God, humanitarianism, Indonesia’s national unity, democracy and social justice.

About 88 percent of Indonesia’s population of 270 million are Muslim. Both Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, the country’s secondbiggest Islamic organization, have been respectful of these principles.

Like NU, Muhammadiyah also has tens of millions of followers, and these two organizations often cooperate against radical Islamist groups.

Robert Hefner, a leading expert on Indonesia, documents in his 2000 book Civil Islam how NU and Muhammadiyah made important contributions to the country’s democratization in the late 1990s.

During this process, the leader of NU, Abdurrahman Wahid, became Indonesia’s first democratically elected president in 1999.

Wahid, who died in 2009, left a religious legacy, too. During my conversations, senior NU members repeatedly referred to Wahid’s reformist ideas as the main source of inspiration for Humanitarian Islam.

Indonesia’s intolerant Islam Not all Islamic theories and practices

in Indonesia are tolerant toward diversity. The country’s Aceh province has enforced certain rules of Islamic criminal law, including the punishment of caning for those who sell or drink alcohol.

Another example of religious and political intolerance is the country’s blasphemy law, which resulted in the 20-month imprisonment of the capital city Jakarta’s Chinese Christian governor, Basuki Purnama in 20172018, for a statement about a verse in the Quran.

In January 2021, the story of a Christian female student being pressured by the school principal to wear a Muslim headscarf went viral on Facebook.

In two weeks, the Indonesian government responded with a decree that banned public schools from making any religious attire compulsory.

In short, there is a tug-of-war between tolerant and intolerant interpretations of Islam in Indonesia.

Even within NU, there exist disagreements between conservatives and reformists.

Nonetheless, Nahdlatul Ulama reformists are becoming more influential. One example is the current minister of religious affairs, Yaqut Cholil Qoumas, a leading NU member and the younger brother of NU’s reformist general secretary. He was one of the three ministers who signed the joint decree banning the imposition of headscarves on students in February.

NU’s Humanitarian Islam movement might be crucial to promote tolerance among Indonesia’s Islamic majority. But can it have an effect beyond Indonesia?

Influencing the Middle East This reform movement’s reception in the Middle East, the historical center of Islam, is important if it is to have a global impact.

Humanitarian Islam has been mostly ignored by scholars and governments of Middle Eastern countries, who generally see it as a competitor of their own attempts to influence the Muslim world.

As a nongovernmental initiative, Humanitarian Islam is different from Middle Eastern efforts to shape the Muslim world, which are mostly government-led schemes.

With its reformist emphasis, Humanitarian Islam may appeal to some young Middle Eastern Muslims who are discontent with their countries’ political and conservative interpretations of Islam.

In order to reach a Middle Eastern audience, the Humanitarian Islam movement is launching an Arabic-language version of its English web site.

Whether this Indonesian initiative can have an impact in the Middle East and become a truly global movement for Islamic reform remains to be seen.

Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University/The Conversation (CC)

Biodiversity Sunday BusinessMirror

Asean Champions of Biodiversity Media Category 2014

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

A7

Oyon Bay: Protecting C. Luzon’s biggest, only marine protected area

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

I

n 1992, former President Ramos took a dive at a little-known spot in Masinloc, Zambales.

Overwhelmed by the beauty of the bay, the beach and its pristine waters, the thick beach and mangrove forest, and the diversity of the marine life, President Ramos declared that the area should be set aside for conservation.

Hence, it was declared a protected area through Presidential Proclamation 231 on August 18, 1993.

Today, the place is popu larly known as the Masinloc and Oyon Bay Protected Landscape and Seascape (MOBPLS), one of the 97 protected areas covered by Republic Act 11038, or the Expanded National Integrated Protected Area System Act of 2018.

Reef fishes in Oyon Bay

against single-use plastic.

Vast territory Located in the western portion of Masinloc, the 7,558-hectare marine protected area (MPA), which is a combination of beautiful landscape and seascape, covers the municipalities of Masinloc and Palauig in Zambales.

It straddles 11 coastal barangays in Masinloc, while it covers three coastal barangays in the northwestern portion, or the side of Palauig.

The multiple-use zone of MOBPLS covers an approximate area of 5,195.3493 hectares, while the strict protection zone covers an approximate area of 2,362.7972 hectares.

Unique species According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), some of the notable species or resources found in the MOBPLS are the rare hybrid mangrove species bakawan bato (Rhizophora stylosa) and apiculata or bakawan lalaki (Rhizophora x lamarckii). They can all be found in Mangrove Island, or Yaha.

Meanwhile, the San Salvador Marine Sanctuary, a local marine protected area, is blessed with unique mesophotic coral species.

Also within the MOBPLS are several giant clams (Tridacna Gigas) at the so-called Taclobo Farm MPA. Thriving in the MOBPLS reefs are the threatened Blue-spotted rabbit-

Photos courtesy of Don Guevarra, DENR Central Luzon Public Affairs Office

Ecotourism, livelihood

Oyon Bay beach fish or Siganus corallines which was named as the Flagship Species of the MOBPLS. Finally, the MOBPLS will not be complete without its own marine turtle nesting area.

Threats to MOBPLS Like other MPA in the country, the MOBPLS is threatened by various activities, notably, the docking and anchoring of vessels that threaten the coral reefs and seagrass beds in and around the protected area.

It is also threatened by the presence of informal settlers in the coastal area while the corals are under siege by the dreaded crown of thorns.

The proliferation of fish cages, siltation in fish-cage areas as well as improper solid waste management pollute the waters.

Biodiversity-Friendly Enterprise Various programs and projects were implemented in partnership with various stakeholders to help conserve and protect the area. The DENR, through the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB) and the Office of the MOBPLS Protected Area Management Office, headed by Pro-

tected Area Superintendent Ariel M. Mendoza, implemented the programs.

Mendoza is also the Community Environment and Natural Resource Office (Cenro) chief of Masinloc, Zambales.

T he Biodiversit y-Friend ly Enterprise initiatives in the MOBPLS started in December 2018 with the Samahang Magbabalat ng San Salvador as the DENR’s development partner.

Among the projects is the sea cucumber-ranching project, which covers an area of 0.63 hectares for handling, harvesting, processing and marketing.

The Implementing Biodiversity Sustainable Ecotourism Project was also awarded to the group for catering, tour guiding and kayaking activities.

As the DENR’s development partner, the group received the total financial assistance of P1,260,000.

Protected The MOBPLS is protected against various threats, Mendoza said in an interview via Zoom on September 22.

Even the harvesting of mangroves for fuel and charcoal making, he said, no longer occurs.

“It is illegal because we prohibit

cutting of mangroves in the area,” he said.

Don Guevarra, chief of the Regional Public Affairs Office of DENR Central Luzon, said the DENR Central Luzon Office intensified the information and communication activities for Oyon Bay this year, especially in areas with no information and communication units, in order to enhance the awareness of various stakeholders, and encourage the communities to help protect natural wonders like the bay.

“We have an eight-year Regional Strategic Communication Plan. Part of the plan is our protected area, including the Masinloc-Oyon Bay,” he said.

“This year, we conducted environmental education lectures in targeted barangays within the MOBPLS,” he said.

“We wanted to talk to the barangay officials in the area to help protect the mangrove areas and our coral reefs.

There’s a mangrove island there and we have beautiful beaches in Masinloc-Oyon Bay,” he said.

Guevarra said part of the plan to preserve the MOBPLS beauty is to promote proper solid waste management in coastal barangays, particularly

According to Mendoza, promoting the MOBPLS as an ecotourism destination in Zambales is one of the objectives of conserving and protecting Oyon Bay. “We have several ecotourism areas that attract local tourists like the San Salvador MPA. We also have beaches where people can go swimming,” he said.

From the operation of over 300 fish cages being managed by at least nine fish cage operators “we are limiting the operation of fish cages because we don’t want Oyon Bay to end up like the Laguna de Bay. We limit the acceptance of new applicants and we only allow the operation of fish cages in the multiple-use zone,” he said.

According to Mendoza, to efficiently run the operation of fish cages, the DENR is getting the much-needed boost from the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources which has a representative in the MOBPLS PAMB.

Funding support The official said lack of fund is a big problem in running the operation of the MOBPLS. Mendoza said right now, the DENR Central Luzon and the Masinloc Cenro works with a very limited budget to

run the operation of the MOBPLS. “Hopefully, by next year with the help of [Deputy Speaker] Loren Legarda, we will finally receive regular funding for the MOBPLS,” he said.

He added that the designation of permanent personnel will boost the conservation and protection effort for what is currently the only MPA in Central Luzon.

Biodiversity monitoring Speaking mostly in Filipino, Mendoza said one of the important activities to be performed by would-be regular employees or personnel of MOBPLS is biodiversity assessment and monitoring to be able to come up with a more science-based conservation strategy for the entire MPA. The official said he wants to see fishing communities near the MOBPLS to continue enjoying the benefit of a healthy marine area.

“There are many corals in Masinloc and we have the San Salvador MPA. With this alone, the marine ecosystem can be self-sustaining,” he said.

The San Salvador MPA, he said, can be described as a huge fish sanctuary where various seafood, such as fish, shellfish and other seafood thrive.

“Of course, with a healthy mangrove area, coral reefs and seagrasses, we can expect plenty of food for the coastal communities,” he said.

US: Ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species declared extinct

B

ILLINGS, Montana—Death’s come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The US government on Wednesday declared them extinct.

It’s a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they’ve exhausted to find these 23.

They warn that climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was perhaps the best known species the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared extinct.

The woodpecker went out stubbornly and with fanfare, making unconfirmed appearances in recent decades that ignited a frenzy of ultimately fruitless searches in the swamps of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Others—such as the flat pigtoe, a freshwater mussel in the southeastern US—were identified in the wild only a few times and never seen again, meaning by the time they got a name they

were fading from existence.

“When I see one of those really rare ones, it’s always in the back of my mind that I might be the last one to see this animal again,” said Anthony “Andy” Ford, a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist in Tennessee who specializes in freshwater mussels.

The factors behind the disappearances vary—too much development, water pollution, logging, competition from invasive species, birds killed for feathers and animals captured by private collectors.

In each case, humans were the ultimate cause.

Another thing they share: All 23 were thought to have at least a slim chance of survival when added to the endangered species list beginning in the 1960s. Only 11 species previously have been removed due to extinction in the almost half-century since the Endangered Species Act was signed into law.

The announcement kicks off a threemonth comment period before the species status changes become final.

Around the globe, some 902 species have been documented as extinct. The actual number is thought

to be much higher because some are never formally identified, and many scientists warn the Earth is in an “extinction crisis” with flora and fauna now disappearing at 1,000 times the historical rate.

It’s possible one or more of the 23 species named on Wednesday could reappear, several scientists said.

A leading figure in the hunt for the ivory-billed woodpecker said it was premature to call off the effort, after millions of dollars spent on searches and habitat preservation efforts.

“Little is gained and much is lost” with an extinction declaration, said Cornell University bird biologist John Fitzpatrick, lead author of a 2005 study that claimed the woodpecker had been rediscovered in eastern Arkansas.

“A bird this iconic, and this representative of the major old-growth forests of the southeast, keeping it on the list of endangered species keeps attention on it, keeps states thinking about managing habitat on the off chance it still exists,” he said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerlandbased group that tracks extinctions globally, is not putting the ivory-billed

woodpecker into its extinction column because it’s possible the birds still exist in Cuba, said the group’s Craig Hilton-Taylor.

Hilton-Taylor said there can be unintended but damaging consequences if extinction is declared prematurely.

“Sudden ly t he [conser vat ion] money is no longer there, and then suddenly you do drive it to extinction because you stop investing in it,” he said.

But wildlife officials said in an analysis released on Wednesday that that there have been no definitive sightings of the woodpecker since 1944 and “there is no objective evidence” of its continued existence.

They said the 23 extinction declarations were driven by a desire to clear a backlog of recommended status changes for species that had not been acted upon for years.

They said it would free up resources for on-the-ground conservation efforts for species that still have a chance for recovery.

What’s lost when those efforts fail are creatures often uniquely adapted to their environments.

Freshwater mussel species like the

ones the government says have gone extinct reproduce by attracting fish with a lure-like appendage, then sending out a cloud of larvae that attach to gills of fish until they’ve grown enough to drop off and live on their own.

The odds are slim against any freshwater mussel surviving into adulthood—a one in a million chance, according to Ford of the wildlife service—but those that do can live a century or longer.

Hawaii has the most species on the list—eight woodland birds and one plant. That’s in part because the islands have so many plants and animals that many have extremely small ranges and can blink out quickly.

The most recent to go extinct was the teeny po’ouli, a type of bird known as a honeycreeper discovered in 1973.

By the late 1990s just three remained—a male and two females. After failures to mate them in the wild, the male was captured for potential breeding and died in 2004. The two females were never seen again.

The fate of Hawaii’s birds helped push Duke University extinction expert Stuart Pimm into his field. Despite the grim nature of the government’s

proposal to move more species into the extinct column, Pimm said the toll would probably have been much higher without the Endangered Species Act. “It’s a shame we didn’t get to those species in time, but when we do, we are usually able to save species,” he said.

Since 1975, 54 species have left the endangered list after recovering—including the bald eagle, brown pelican and most humpback whales.

Climate change is making species recovery harder, bringing drought, floods, wildfires and temperature swings that compound the threats species already faced.

How they are saved also is changing. No longer is the focus on individual species, let alone individual birds. Officials say the broader goal now is to preserve their habitat, which boosts species of all types that live there.

“I hope we’re up to the challenge,” said biologist Michelle Bogardus with the wildlife service in Hawaii. “We don’t have the resources to prevent extinctions unilaterally. We have to think proactively about ecosystem health and how do we maintain it, given all these threats.” AP

Sports BusinessMirror

Athletics investigators take over Olympic case on Belarusian runner

M

ONACO—An investigation into two Belarus team officials who tried to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya on a flight from the Tokyo Olympics will now be run by track and field authorities.

World Athletics said on Thursday its independent Athletics Integrity Unit is taking over the case from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). No timetable was given for the investigation.

The Belarus team’s treatment of Tsimanouskaya created a diplomatic incident at the Tokyo Olympics with Japanese authorities and Poland’s embassy coming to her aid.

Team officials Artur Shimak and Yury Maisevich were involved in taking Tsimanouskaya to the airport to send her home to Belarus after she criticized coaches on social media.

Tsimanouskaya sought help at the airport because she feared for her safety if she returned to Minsk. Within days, she and her husband got humanitarian visas to stay in Poland.

Belarus has been in turmoil amid a state-ordered security crackdown since August 2020 when authoritarian president Aleksander Lukashenko claimed a sixth term after an election widely viewed as rigged in his favor. The former Soviet republic has relentlessly pursued its critics.

Shimak and Maisevich continued to have contact with Belarus team members in Tokyo for four more days after the airport incident until the IOC withdrew their Olympic credentials.

IOC President Thomas Bach said in Tokyo it was a “deplorable case.”

The IOC last year banned both Lukashenko and his son Viktor from attending future Olympics after athletes said they faced reprisals and intimidation in the security crackdown.

Lukashenko led the Belarusian Olympic committee from the 1990s until this year when his son replaced him.

Still, the IOC had been urged for months ahead of Tokyo by activists in Belarus and international groups representing athletes to fully suspend the national Olympic committee. That would have let Tsimanouskaya and the rest of the 103-member Belarusian team compete in Tokyo as independents under the Olympic flag.

Tsimanouskaya had criticized her coaches for asking her to run in an event she had not trained for. She was needed to replace athletes ruled ineligible because of a substandard national anti-doping program.

World Athletics said its investigators in the Belarus case “will conduct the procedure, with the full collaboration and support of the IOC.”

EX-WORLD CHAMP BANNED

FORMER world champion weightlifter Boyanka Kostova was banned for eight years for doping on Thursday after making her comeback from an earlier sanction for performance-enhancing drug use at the Olympics.

The International Testing Agency (ITA) said Kostova tested positive for traces of the steroid stanozolol on her way to winning the European championship title in the 59-kilogram category in April. She was born in Bulgaria but later switched allegiance to Azerbaijan, which lavishly funded her bids for Olympic medals.

Kostova was banned from 2016 through 2018 after a reanalysis of her sample from the 2012 Olympics, where she placed fifth, found the steroid turinabol.

Kostova was the 2015 world champion and world record holder in the old 58-kilogram category but was prevented from competing at the Olympics the following year in Rio de Janeiro amid her first doping case. Despite her European title, she didn’t compete at this year’s Olympics in Tokyo because she didn’t have enough valid results during the qualifying period.

On Monday, the ITA also announced doping bans for three Russian weightlifters including two-time European champion Andrei Demanov.

The cases were based on re-examining evidence of past doping and cover-ups within Russia. None of the three had competed recently. AP

BELARUS’S Krystsina Tsimanouskaya runs in the women’s 100 meters at the Tokyo Olympics in July. AP

F

NBA changes late-game review rules for out of bounds violations

N

unday, October 3, 2021 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

BRADY FACES PATS: HOW’S THE FEELING? OXBOROUGH, Massachusetts—Tom Brady’s legacy is forever steeped in each of the six Super Bowl championship banners he had a part in hanging above New England’s Gillette Stadium.

Yet, he might as well be playing in front of a mirror when he returns to face the Patriots.

Everything will be in reverse.

“I know that home locker room. I know that home tunnel. I know which way the wind blows. I know everything about that,” Brady said this week. “So, in some ways it’ll be unique. I’ve never had that experience. New England will be the first time for me being on the other sideline.”

Brady will be back in Foxborough on Sunday night to meet the Patriots for the first time since he left after 20 seasons to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He’ll be opposite not

EW YORK—Instant replay of out-of-bounds violations in the final two minutes of regulation or overtime of National Basketball Association (NBA) games this season will be initiated by a coach’s challenge, rather than referees.

The NBA’s Board of Governors approved the change Wednesday on a one-year trial basis.

Under the previous rule, coaches could not challenge an out-ofbounds ruling within the final two minutes. The change allows coaches to challenge an out-of-bounds ruling at any point in the game.

The FedEx Forum in Memphis, meanwhile, will continue requiring face masks to everyone attending games for the Memphis Grizzlies and University of Memphis Tigers and other arena events regardless of vaccination status through the end of October.

The announcement followed Shelby County’s health directive continuing its mask mandate.

A release stated that unvaccinated spectators 12 years and older must present proof of a negative Covid-19 test at least 72 hours allowed to attend before Grizzlies and Tigers

A8 | S

games, starting with the NBA club’s October 20 home opener.

Vaccinated fans must show proof of at least one dose for entry.

Children age two to 11 must be masked, the release added, and will need to provide proof a negative Covid test if seated within 15 feet of the court at Grizzlies games. Children under age two will not have to wear a mask.

Grizzlies President Jason Wexler said the team polled season ticket holders and found “a clear-cut supermajority” of them are vaccinated and want to be in a similar or tested environment.

He added that once the mask order is lifted and with the vaccination/negative test policy in place, “fans can get back to a mask-less environment inside FedExForum with the confidence that everyone in attendance is either vaccinated or has shown proof of a negative test.” AP

only former Coach Bill Belichick, but past teammates who have also never taken an National Football League (NFL) field and looked across at Brady wearing another team’s jersey, let alone ever had a chance to tackle him.

“The opportunity is wonderful and I’m looking forward for the moment,” Patriots defensive end Deatrich Wise Jr. said.

While they all have played against former teammates before, the Patriots acknowledge this time is much different. None of those other players has the institutional knowledge Brady does of their defensive schemes or tendencies.

It makes the margin for error minute against a quarterback who is a master at getting the ball out quickly and reading and deceiving defenses with his eyes.

“It’s gonna be a guy that he’s gonna know a lot of what we do,” said veteran safety Devin McCourty, who won three Super Bowls with Brady. “So what we do, we’ve gotta do a good job of. We have to play our best football.”

This 44-year-old version of Brady is still playing at a high level after taking the Bucs to a Super Bowl title last season. He leads the league this season with 10 touchdown passes and his 362.3 passing yards per game are second to Las Vegas’s Derek Carr.

Tampa Bay’s 34.3 points per game are also tied for tops in the NFL, thanks largely to one of the most stacked offenses in the league that includes

Qatar to host F1 race for first time in November

MECHANICS push the car of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton on the grid before the Russian Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom in Russia recently. AP

receivers Chris Godwin, Mike Evans and tight end Rob Gronkowski.

“This is one of those weeks where we can’t have a bunch of ‘my bads,’” McCourty said. “We gotta be on.”

As much as Brady knows the Patriots, they also know him.

But Belichick, 8-11 since Brady’s departure, said it doesn’t mean they will reinvent themselves this week.

“Certainly, Tom has an intimate knowledge of everything that we do here, more so than any other player in the league by far. So, I’m sure he’ll use it to his advantage. I would expect him to,” Belichick said. “I don’t think it would be in our best interest to go in there and do everything differently than we’ve done it all year. What we need to do is continue to do the things we do and do them better. That would help us more than anything else.”

ELITE CLUB

A VICTORY would make Tom Brady the fourth quarterback with wins against all 32 NFL teams, joining Brett Favre, Drew Brees and Peyton Manning. With 68 yards passing Brady will surpass Brees’ mark of 80,358 yards, most ever in the regular season. It would add to his long list of NFL records that already includes most TD passes (591), most wins as a starting quarterback (232), most Super Bowl titles (seven), and most conference championships (10).

SHAQ ATTACK

FOR all the talk about what Tom Brady’s arrival

in Tampa Bay did for the offense, the defense has been a big part of the team’s success, too. In addition to leading the league in rushing defense each of the past two seasons, the Bucs have had one of the league’s most effective pass rushes since Todd Bowles was hired as coordinator in 2019.

Linebacker Shaquil Barrett topped the NFL with 19 1/2 sacks two years ago and finished with eight during the regular season in 2020.

He has one through three games this year, none the past two weeks.

As a team, the Bucs are last in the league with three sacks.

“I think Todd knows and Shaq knows it’s time to get to the quarterback,” Coach Bruce Arians said. “Just one sack is not good enough.”

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

BRUCE ARIANS is noted for his success working with quarterbacks over a long career as a NFL assistant and head coach. Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer and Jameis Winston are among the high draft picks Arians mentored over the years.

The coach, who turns 69 on Sunday, likes what he’s seen so far from New England rookie Mac Jones.

“I loved him coming out. He’s smart, a pocket player who’s going to get the ball out, and he’s very accurate,” Arians said. “Obviously, pressure doesn’t bother him.

He played in some big games [at Alabama]. He led his team to the championship so, yeah, he’s legit.”

DON’T FORGET GRONK

TOM BRADY’S return has in many ways overshadowed that of Gronkowski, who spent nine seasons (2010-18) with New England and ended his tenure with 521 receptions for 7,861 yards and 79 touchdowns, the most receiving TDs in franchise history.

He enters Sunday with 8,668 receiving yards and can surpass Greg Olsen (8,683) for the fifthmost receiving yards by a tight end in NFL history.

Gronk originally retired following the 2018 season after winning a third Super Bowl ring with the Patriots before being coaxed out of retirement by Brady in 2020. AP TAMPA Bay’s Tom Brady waves to fans as the Buccaneers celebrates their Super Bowl 55 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs with a boat parade in Tampa, Florida, in February. AP

ATAR will host its first Formula One race in November as part of the series’ pandemic-related schedule shuffling, and the nation signed a 10-year hosting agreement that begins in 2023.

The announcement on Thursday gives Qatar the last vacant slot on this year’s F1 schedule. The night race will be held under floodlights at Losail International Circuit on November 21, exactly one year before the start of the 2022 World Cup in Al Khor.

International communications company Ooredoo will be the title sponsor for the event.

The Qatar Grand Prix will be the 20th of 22 races on the F1 schedule and create a three-race swing through the Middle East to conclude the season. Qatar will be followed by the inaugural Saudi Arabian GP in Jeddah and the December 12 season-ending Abu Dhabi GP. “There was a strong will from Qatar to be helpful to F1, and in the course of this process, the vision for a longer partnership was discussed and agreed,” F1 said in a statement on Thursday. “The vision for F1 to be the showcase for Qatar after the [soccer] World Cup in 2022 was the driving force.”

The Qatari circuit is most

recognized for the MotoGP events it has hosted since 2004. The 5.4-kilometer (3.4-mile) circuit holds 8,000 fans. F1 had been searching for a venue to replace the Japanese Grand Prix, which was canceled in August and created a late-season hole on the schedule.

“I’m very proud that we’ve been able to support Formula 1 by stepping in and hosting a race in our country in such a short time frame, while also securing a ground-breaking long-term deal with F1,” said Abdulrahman AlMannai, president of Qatar Motor & Motorcycle Federation.

“This exciting agreement means that Qatar will be the home of both Formula 1 and MotoGP for the next decade, which are the pinnacle events in global motorsport. We have a proud motorsport history and this is the next chapter for us. Qatar will be a great destination for F1 and we look forward to welcoming all the drivers, teams, media and fans very soon.”

Because of the World Cup next year, the 10-year deal to host F1 will not begin until 2023. But F1 said it is in discussion on if Losail will be the venue beginning in 2023 because the circuit needs alterations. AP

BusinessMirror

October 3, 2021

Young activists bemoan climate inaction, demand more say

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YOUR MUSI

GOOD DAY SUNSHINE

Lorde is back and is still in pop royalty mode

I

By Stephanie Joy Ching

NSPIRED by the “Flower Power” movement of the 1960s, New Zealand platinum artist Lorde releases her sun worship-inspired third studio album, Solar Power.

Publisher

: T. Anthony C. Cabangon

Editor-In-Chief

: Lourdes M. Fernandez

Concept

: Aldwin M. Tolosa

Y2Z Editor

: Jt Nisay

SoundStrip Editor

: Edwin P. Sallan

According to the enigmatic 24-year old singer-songwriter best known for the global monster hit, “Royals,” the album is a “celebration of the natural world” that combines “60’s and 70’s California folk” with songs from her youth to form tracks that “sounds like nature.”

“It was walking in the park by my house with my dog,” she said about the inspiration behind the album, “I would wake up every morning and walk my dog, and

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

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LORDE Photo by Ophelia Mikkelson Jones

through that little routine I saw the seasons changing for the first time and I saw the morning light every morning and I really started to feel the magic of nature and the outside world,” Other than being struck by the natural world, Lorde also shared that she made the album as a “response” to the popstar lifestyle.

“I realized that I am someone who always needs to retreat from being a popstar to be able to make something and undergo

a transformation that makes me want to write something new,” she shared.

And transform she has. From the angry, disillusioned tone of ‘Melodrama’ to the quieter but still introspective take of Solar Power, Lorde tackles themes of escapism and celebrity culture against a backdrop of floaty guitar instrumentals. From “unpacking wellness culture” with Mood Ring to a letter to her younger self in Secrets of a Girl (Who’s seen it all), the album explores themes of grief, climate crisis, and re-connection with nature. Additionally, she also expresses thoughts of the future, namely how different the natural world will be for her future children.

“I thought a lot about our changing climate and how different our environment and our natural world will look for my children, for example. I think that I am pretty environmentally conscious and when making this album, I was also thinking of the parallels between our time and the 1960s Flower Child movement when they were also really thinking about the environment in a focused way. And through that framework I have tried to make conscious decisions and ask questions of the way I make work because we have only got one planet,” she said.

Though the album deals with the environment, she confessed that the album is actually not meant to be a big statement piece. Instead, it was more of an experience for her to reevaluate how she can contribute to a greener environment. This prompted her to not release a CD and instead opted for a music box with handwritten notes and exclusive photographs, which she describes as a “carbon offset product.”

“I’m a pop star, I’m not a scientist,” she said. ‘I didn’t answer any of my own questions. So I tried to not come at it too much of a ‘here’s my take on this’ necessarily.

But what I did was try to reevaluate all of the things that I do in my job, whether it is making a cd or making merch,”

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soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | OCTOBER 3, 2021

BUSINESS

SoundSampler

by Tony M. Maghirang

An assortment of sounds for an eclectic treat You,” and “Guided by Angels” from the band’s new album. You’ll be blissfully punked to the high heavens.

LADY I, Vibe Up ADY I continues to preach freedom, herbal healing and “One Love, One World, and One God” buoyed by the happy vibe of Caribbean riddim. On her latest EP, Lady I’s reggae comes a-burnin’ with a soulful fire that’s partly noted in the opening song itself with “From the underground the stars came down/Oh what a flaming light/This cure is so pure to my heart and my soul.” On the final track, guitar hero Jun Lopito takes centerstage with a long and winding solo to wrap up things in a blazing extro.

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AMYL and THE SNIFFERS, Comfort To Me

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OMEBODY coined the term ‘earworm punk” for the kind of noise Aussies Amyl and the Sniffers peddle in spades. To these punk-worn ears, the band borrows a few things from The Dead Boys, steals some from The Descendents then pays homage to the sneer of DK’s Jello Biafra, and boom!, the whole racket makes you wanna wish pop-punk as we now know it never happened.

This is ‘70s punk reinvigorated with power pop’s DNA. Full on.

Well, we can call it hardcore pop ha ha, but enough with the name-calling. Just go out and get comfortable with “Freaks to the Front” “Don’t Need a Cunt Like

DEAFHEAVEN, Infinite Granite

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EAVY Metal is many things to many people in as many subgenres such as power metal, death core and Black metal. In the hands of San Francisco-based Deafheaven, Black metal sheds its forbidding name with the band scattering the leaden surface with dazzling shoegaze polish and periodic showers of hooks. It’s the template that landed Deafheaven’s Sunbather among the critically acclaimed recordings of 2013.

In album number six, the austere elements suggested by Infinity and Granite in the title are further demoted ever so slightly by incredibly attractive hooks so that songs like “Shelstar,” “In Blur” and especially “Mombassa” tower still into ethereal zones never before conquered in the annals of progressive music. It’s a humbling yet beautiful experience from the get go.

instant classic” and a sub-par Fleet Foxes. For the collective’s second release, the advance word was it won’t be “a retread of the comfortably familiar.”

Now out, the Ben&Ben’s sophomore album titled “Pebble House Vol. 1,” is not exactly a new ‘instant classic’ nor a Fleet Foxes wannabe but surely something’s retreaded here though in a massively good way such as the gorgeous sound of the band that has been magnified to a rich cascade of melodies and hooks.

Then there’s the collaboration with the likes of Chito Miranda and Moira dela Torre which on closer listen does not detract from the bigger fact that it’s the signature voice and the expert interplay of the members that make Kuwaderno a strong contender for best album of 2021 honors.

Oh, let’s not forget.

Ben&Ben this time around has scaled its lyrical sweep to include the politically pointed “Kapangyarihan (featuring SB19)” and the unnervingly brave lament of “Sabel.” It’s better to be excellent at your craft and be relevant in the now. The classic peg can wait when the time is ripe.

DALISAY, Ang Trahedya ng Dalisay at Ketungin

T BEN&BEN, Pebble House Vol. 1: Kuwaderno

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THE 2019 debut of this ninepiece folk/pop ensemble has been variously described as “an

HE album, which translates to ” The Tragedy of the Unblemished and the Leper” tells in 7 tracks the story of a sexually abused boy who, after killing his abuser, leads a life of crime and corruption before finally succumbing to guilt and madness. Jorel Torres, guitarist/ vocalist/songwriter, screams

and howls sending out messages of pain and suffering while scratching the wall of stoic old school death metal with volleys of bright thrashing guitar riffs.

The album cover art is an actual oil painting by Jorel Torres depicting Lazaro’s damnation and his lost innocence. Cassette Tape Format released by Screaming Skull Records ( Norway); CD released by Surrogate Rec. (Ukraine).

Albums reviewed can be listened or even purchased on most digital music platforms, especially Bandcamp.

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, Lindsey Buckingham

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HE story goes that the former guitarist of the poppier incarnation of Fleetwood Mac, the one behind the best-selling Rumours album, got kicked out of his own band’s 50th anniversary reunion shows in 2018. Things got worse for Lindsey Buckingham, what with subsequent health issues and marital woes.

So it’s a surprise that he’s just released a self-titled solo album whose overall feel hardly reflects nor references any of his previous troubles. Instead, it radiates with an “I’m happy with where I am now” vibe. It’s there in track titles like “Power Down,” “Blue Light” and “Dancing.”

Listen and he’ll enchant some more with the bristling EDM of “Swan Song,” the never-failto-charm revision of “Trouble” as well as roots folk-pop of “Time.” In hindsight, “Lindsey Buckingham” is one more proof as to who’s got the enduring smarts in Fleetwood Mac.

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Young activists bemoan climate inaction, demand more say

By Colleen Barry

The three-day Youth4Climate Summit will be followed by a two-day pre-COP meeting before Glasgow aimed at finding common ground on sticking points among countries, which range from the world’s big carbon emitters to developing nations that are lagging both economically and technologically.

Hopes for a successful Glasgow summit have been boosted by announcements from the world’s two biggest economies and largest carbon polluters. Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will no longer fund coal-fired plants abroad while US President Joe Biden announced a plan to double financial aid for green growth to poorer nations. (see related story)

The Associated Press

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ILAN—Youth climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg chastized global leaders last week for failing to meet funding pledges to help poor nations adapt to a warming Earth and for delivering too much “blah blah blah” as climate change wreaks havoc around the world.

They even cast doubt on the intentions behind a youth climate gathering where they were speaking in Milan.

Four hundred climate activists from 180 countries were invited to Italy’s financial capital for a three-day Youth4Climate summit that will send its recommendations to a major United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that begins on October 31. But participants are demanding more accountability from leaders and a bigger official role for young people.

“They invite cherry-picked young people to pretend they are listening to us,” Thunberg said. “But they are not. They are clearly not listening to us. Just look at the numbers. Emissions are still rising. The science doesn’t lie.”

“Leaders like to say, ‘We can do it.’ They obviously don’t mean it. But we do,” the Swedish activist said.

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate (right) is comforted by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg as she is overcome by emotion after speaking at the opening of a three-day Youth for Climate summit in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, September 28, 2021. AP

‘We are still waiting’ Nakate, a 24-year-old activist from Uganda, said pledges of 100 billion euros ($117 billion) a year to help countries particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change have not materialized, even as wildfires in California and Greece and floods in Germany and Belgium show that “loss and damage is now possible everywhere.”

“In fact, funds were promised by 2020, and we are still waiting,” she said. “No more empty conferences. It’s time to show us the money. It’s time, it’s time, it’s time.”

Nakate dramatically underlined how climate change is affecting Africa, “which is ironic given that Africa is the lowest emitter of CO2 emissions of any continent except Antarctica.”

Just last week, she said she saw police taking away a body that had been washed away by violent storms in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, while others searched for more victims. Her mother told her that

one man dragged off by the water had been trying to protect the goods he was selling.

Nakate collapsed in tears after her emotional speech, getting comfort from Thunberg, who followed her to the podium, which was too tall for her small stature.

Thunberg, who coalesced the global protest movement Fridays for Future, said it wasn’t too late to reverse climate trends.

But she has clearly heard enough from leaders, whom she said have been talking for 30 years while half of all carbon emissions have occurred since 1990, one-third since 2005.

“This is all we hear from our so-called leaders: words. Words that sound great but so far have led to no action. Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises. Of course we need constructive dialogue, but they have now had 30 years of blah, blah blah. And where has this led us?” she said.

Maintaining realistic expectations “What we can do is hope for the best, said 16-year-old Zainab Waheed of Pakistan, who is campaigning to include climate in the national school curriculum. But looking at the past, and relying on the science of deduction, and learning from history, we have seen even ministers from COP26 countries not keep their promises.”

Rose Kobusinge, a 27-year-old Ugandan with a masters degree in environmental change and management from the University of Oxford, said the Glasgow meeting needs to come up with concrete action if fighting climate change is to maintain any credibility. She also thinks the youth delegates should be invited as participants— not just to send a message.

“Let it not stop from negotiations in Glasgow,” she said. “If it stops, then I guess COP won’t be necessary any more because what is it? Just coming and discussing and go back to your countries?”

ON THE COVER: Photo by Francesca Di Pasqua on Unsplash

On climate change, Biden $3.5-T plan making up for lost time

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s President Joe Biden visited one disaster site after another this summer—from California wildfires to hurricane-induced flooding in Louisiana and New York—he said climate change is “everybody’s crisis” and America must get serious about the “code red” danger posed by global warming.

In many ways, the president is making up for lost time.

Biden and Democrats are pursuing a sweeping $3.5-trillion federal overhaul that includes landmark measures to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in what would be the most consequential environmental policies ever enacted, after years of fits and starts.

Sidelined after the former administration withdrew from the landmark Paris climate accord—the 2015 global effort to confront climate change—the US has returned to the arena, with Biden promising world leaders in April that the US would cut carbon pollution in half by 2030.

But following through on Biden’s climate goals depends in large part on passage of the Democratic package, and it will take the White House’s heft to close the deal between centrist and progressive lawmakers, including disputes over its climate provisions. A poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 83 percent of Democrats are very concerned about climate change, compared with just 21 percent of Republicans.

Included in the massive legislation is a nationwide clean-electricity program that is intended to eliminate climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions from US power plants by 2035—catching up to requirements already set in some states. The proposal would spend billions to install 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations and upgrade the power grid to make it more resilient during hurricanes and other extreme weather events that are increasing and intensifying as a result of climate change.

The measure also would create a New Deal-

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style Civilian Climate Corps to unleash an army of young people to work in public lands and restoration projects.

“The climate crisis is here, and the cost of inaction is already staggering,” said Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone, D-N.J. The US had 22 climate and weather disasters in 2020 with losses exceeding $1 billion each.

Hurricane Ida and other recent disasters are likely to cost tens of billions more.

Overall, the Biden package aims to provide more than $600 billion to tackle climate change and lower greenhouse gas emissions, funded in large part by taxes on corporations, the wealthy and other fees, keeping to Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. One alternative for raising revenues would be to impose a carbon tax. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Monday he is developing legislation “that would make polluters pay for the costs of the climate crisis.”

But Wyden and others are mindful of Biden’s pledge not to hit pocketbooks of

October 3, 2021

In this September 13, 2021, file photo President Joe Biden speaks about recent wildfires, at Sacramento Mather Airport in Mather, Calif., as California Gov. Gavin Newsom listens. AP Americans and the senator said the carbon tax is being developed as part of a menu of options for consideration.

With elections around the corner, approval of the bill is crucial, Democrats say.

“If we miss this moment,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., referring to Democratic control of Congress and the White House, “it is not clear when we will have a second chance.” AP