BusinessMirror October 23, 2022

By Manuel T. Cayon

It’s still holding its market though, government regulators and private growers would say, although the percentage share of what was once a dominant mar ket control keeps slipping past, as countries like Japan and South Korea impose higher tariff on Phil ippine banana than on newcomers from countries like the No. 1 grow er, Ecuador.

A higher tariff means export ers from the Philippines would have to charge higher retail prices to offset the tax in the foreign mar ket, but this simple economic real ity would not be palatable to the or dinary Japanese or South Korean consumer, who have other choices from cheaper competing brands.

And so Philippine exporters have to bring down their retail price at the level of their competi tors to stay afloat, at the risk of trimming down further the profit margin, while costs of growing the banana at home are getting more expensive.

Small success

A HIGH-LEVEL banana lobby with the Japanese government led lately to a new and higher retail price of the Cavendish banana in Japanese stores, the first price movement to happen in the last five years in fa vor of Filipino exporters, the Pilipi no Banana Growers and Exporters Association (PBGEA) said.

It could be a breakthrough for

Filipino exporters seeing the price movement in the retail market, from ¥248 per kilo to ¥278, a dif ference of ¥30, said Alberto Pater no Bacani, president of Unifrutti and PBGEA chairman.

This means a little increase in the buying price of the second most exported Filipino agricultur al product.

He said the price of the Caven dish banana grown in Mindanao has plateaued during the last five to six years, while prices of farm inputs in growing the banana have either doubled or tripled in the aftermath of the Ukraine-Russia conflict since February this year.

However, the impact of the small price movement in the re tail of the Cavendish banana was wiped out after the yen devalued by 30 percent, or “more than the retail price increase.”

PBGEA took it still as a big achievement.

Bacani credited it to the work of the public-relations campaign put up by PBGEA and the Depart ment of Agriculture, “For the pur pose of bringing to the attention of the Japanese consumers and the Japanese government, as well as other groups like the retail su permarket organizations in Japan, about the plight of the Philippine banana industry.”

“Since last year, a lot of the farm inputs required for banana growing really went up like all the

A broader look at today’s business

basic macronutrient fertilizers like urea and potassium, almost dou bled,” he said.

“We have also the big infla tionary cost involved in packaging materials, particularly paper that you need to produce boxes, which went up by about 30 percent, fol lowed by the increase in fuel and bunker almost doubled. And the container rate, for some markets, has tripled,” Bacani added.

He said, “There was really a need to bring to the attention of the Japanese consumers that they have to support the banana industry, which supplies about 75 percent of the banana consumed in Japan.”

The PBGEA official said the PR team they hired has deep connec tions to some members of the Jap anese Diet, the lawmaking body of Japan.

“It’s a big supply of banana in Japan, and to make it sustainable, there has to be some support, par ticularly from the retail players in Japan, to increase the price of ba nana, because if you look at the last five to six years on a per kilo basis, banana price has not increased, [it’s] almost flat,” Bacani explained.

Compared to the other fruits in Japan on the retail shelf, prices have gone up on the average by 15 percent.

Bacani added: “That is really the plea, the whole purpose of hav ing this PR campaign,” he said. He acknowledged the help of DA and the ambassador of the Philippines to Japan, the former Ambassador Jose C. Laurel V. “There was a press conference in June, and there was a direct plea.”

Trade decision

THE bigger goal, which may be more sustainable for exporters, was to lobby for lower tariff.

Stephen A. Antig, PBGEA ex ecutive director, said the issue would not be a simple case of per

suading Japanese authorities and Japan’s association of fruit retail ers to increase prices on their store shelves.

It happened with South Ko rea, which brought tariff down af ter the Philippines agreed to some trade concessions on Seoul’s ex ports to Manila.

Bacani said Japan, the coun try’s main and lucrative market, has already slashed tariff to zero for Mexico and Peru. It did the same with Cambodia and Laos.

Vietnam’s tariff is now at 8 percent and will slide to zero by 2028.

In contrast, “The Philippines is still at 8-13 percent,” Bacani said.

He said Chinese money funded the plantations in Laos and Cambo dia, and the technology came from the Philippines, from Filipinos who were pirated. “Laos was not a ba nana country before, but in only four years, it has begun exporting now. These Asian countries have logistical advantage. They would be a threat to the Philippines,” he added.

Four years ago, 80 percent of the banana in China came from the Philippines. With the entry of Cambodia and Vietnam just along its border, the Philippine share was cut down to 36 percent, and 61 percent was accounted for by Cam bodia and Vietnam. China is the Philippines’s second big market for banana, Bacani said.

One bright spot in tariff was South Korea, which decided to bring down tariff to zero percent in five years from the current 30 per cent. This happened after the Phil ippines signed a free-trade agree ment with South Korea.

The share of the Gulf region in the Middle East, in the last six years, went down by 50 percent, “Because our banana is seen as ex pensive than the Latin American banana although the Latin Ameri can export was the banana that were not sold in Europe.”

He said PBGEA already wrote President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., “And I hope it would get to his at tention to negotiate it when he vis its Japan.”

“It would be a complicated bilateral agreement, a give and take. If we want Japan to reduce or eliminate banana import tar iff, it might as well ask us to re duce also the tariff on cars or auto parts, or TV. It would require a long talk,” he said.

Dim outlook

THESE efforts to bring down tariff and raise retail price should help buoy up, or, in a best-case scenario, ensure the survival of an industry still plagued by the crawling devas tation of the Fusarium Wilt, popu larly known as Panama disease. This is a soil-borne disease that wilts affected banana. The virus could stay in the soil for as long as the next 50 years.

Ten years ago, or before Ty phoon Pablo wrought havoc on Eastern Mindanao, the banana sector had as much as 85,000 hectares. With the Panama dis ease aided by Pablo’s floodwaters in its spread across the region, the industry lost 30,000 hectares in the last 10 years, with half of this hectarage lost in the Davao Region.

The Cavendish banana was first widely grown in Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley (now renamed Davao de Oro). With the ravages caused mainly by the Panama disease, Bacani said, “It now looks depressing in Davao del Norte, with many abandoned farms.”

Bacani said some multination al companies like Sumifru and lo cal big growers like Lapanday have “already left the industry to invest elsewhere, like Sumifru, which bought 2,000 hectares in Ecuador.”

He said projections indicated that this year’s export volume would go down to 140 million

13.5-kilogram boxes, from 160 million in 2020-2021, due mainly to the Panama disease.

“Whatever new areas opened are not expansion but replacing lost hectarage. The industry would not even venture into the Visayas and Luzon because these are with in the typhoon belt,” he said.

Abel James Monteagudo, di rector for regional office of the Department of Agriculture, said the bright spot in the industry “is that we still have the big market share in Japan, our main outlet for banana, and the work here is to maintain that market, manage the Fusarium Wilt and help the indus try stay afloat.”

Jose Laquian, the agriculture attaché of the Philippine Embas sy in Japan, said some 500,000 families depend on and have been surviving because of the banana industry.

Despite the dim situation, Ba cani said the industry remained on second spot as the most exported agricultural crop after coconut. “On a freight-on-board basis, ba nana fetches around $8 to $9 per 13.5-kilogram box.”

Antig expressed hope that President Marcos would notice the dire straits of the industry and rush to its succor with the needed government support. He said Rep. Raymund Democrito C. Mendoza of the Trade Union Con gress of the Philippines (TUCP) has filed a bill establishing a ba nana research institute with an allocation of P300 million.

Antig said this would be a good start again. “This bill has been pushed over and over again the past years and did not get past the first reading.” He surmised this may be because “people in Manila” do not attach much importance to the industry.

Still and all, “We just have to get going, be positive and let the industry survive,” he said.

APICHART TEAPAKDEE

THE Philippine Cavendish banana has been keeping its head barely above water, despite growing stiff competition from Latin American growers and a still creeping and devastating Panama disease at home.

PHL Cavendish banana export faces the odds amid a devastating plant disease, growing competition

RACE FOR SURVIVAL

News

Global housing market pain has echoes of a crash 30 years ago

By Neil Callanan | Bloomberg News

WHEN

Covid sent the UK economy into lockdown in 2020, the government jumped in to help the property market by cutting a tax on purchases. The temporary measure triggered a kind of mania among buyers, who responded by bidding up average prices by £31,000 ($35,000)—more than double the maximum tax saving.

The frenzy echoed the build up to the house price crash that started at the end of the 1980s, when the government announced it would cut a tax relief for couples buying property, leading to a surge in demand. The slump that fol lowed was brutal, with the market taking almost nine years to return to its previous high.

The housing market now faces similar challenges, according to Si mon French, chief economist at in vestment bank Panmure Gordon, who forecasts a 14-percent fall in house prices over the next three years. That would take values back to 2013 levels in real terms. Bloom berg Economics expects values to drop about 10 percent next year.

It’s not just in the UK that prop erty markets are flashing signals of downturns from 30 years ago.

The big losers then—which in cluded Australia, Canada and Swe den—all saw home prices reach re cords in recent years as cheap credit made home ownership possible even as values soared. But now, they’re

facing a reckoning as central banks battle to cool inflation.

That means interest rates are rising rapidly, bringing to a close the era of easy money that’s de fined the years since the 2008 glob al financial crisis. There are also implications for household wealth and economic growth at a time when recession risks already hang over many countries.

“There are parallels between now and then,” said Manoj Prad han, founder of research firm Talk ing Heads Macroeconomics and a former Morgan Stanley econo mist. But soaring inflation means “things could be significantly worse. The overall increase in and level of debt is quite high compared with that time. The sensitivity to interest rate rises is huge.”

Here’s a look at some of the key developments then and now in countries where property is at risk, or already in a downswing.

port toward downturn and you pass row upon row of apartment blocks developed during the easy money era.

That has echoes of the 1980s boom in the city, driven by specula tion on condos, which ended sud denly, leaving prices plunging. Then, as now, inflation was on the march, and interest rates had to move sharply higher to combat it. In 1990, mortgage rates topped 13 percent and the Toronto housing market tumbled into a deep freeze for years. Sales plummeted, and prices didn’t hit bottom until 1996 after losing more than a quarter of their value.

Today, the economy is in better shape. But after a nearly unbroken 25-year period of price increases, Toronto looks shaky again. Afford ability is as bad as it was during the late 1980s bubble, according to Na tional Bank of Canada. Royal Bank of Canada’s economics department calls it a “historic correction,” and says national home resale volumes may fall more than they did in the early 1990s, peak-to-trough.

The most frenzied speculation this time around took place in the suburbs and outlying cities near To ronto to which people flocked when Covid hit, searching for more space.

There, the correction has ar rived swiftly. In the cities of Kitch ener and Waterloo, Ontario, about a 90-minute drive west, the bench mark price is down 16 percent in six months. In Oakville and Mil ton, two closer suburbs that are home to many finance profession als, they’ve dropped 14 percent.

But prices are still significant ly higher than they were before the pandemic, so there could be more declines to come.

China

IMAGES of unfinished housing blocks symbolize the bleak state of Chinese real estate, where buyers are paying for homes that they can’t oc cupy. That led to a mortgage boycott this year, with homebuyers threat ening to halt making payments.

About 2 million unfinished homes presold by developers have halted construction, according to estimates from S&P Global Rat ings. That’s reminiscent of a prop erty bust 30 years ago on Hainan Island, the country’s tropical resort island dubbed “China’s Hawaii.”

Property developers emerged there in the 1980s after it became one of the first areas of China to liberalize its economy, drawing mi grants seeking work. That in turn boosted demand for housing, mint ing the country’s first batch of prop erty entrepreneurs, including Soho China Ltd.’s founder Pan Shiyi.

Home prices more than tripled between 1989 and 1992, but the boom imploded the following year after Beijing tightened monetary policy and lending into the sector. More than 600 buildings were left abandoned, local media reported at the time.

China has pursued similar policies to contain its boom over the last three years. Financing has been squeezed and the gov ernment asked banks to slow the pace of mortgage lending. That triggered a wave of defaults and left millions of square feet of un finished buildings.

In 1999, the State Council stepped in to help resolve unfin ished projects, including turning part of them into subsidized hous ing for low-income workers. The government has turned again to that playbook, offering 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) in special loans to ensure stalled housing projects are delivered.

According to George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford Uni versity’s China Centre, the under

lying fundamentals look “pretty glum for the foreseeable future.”

“We may get a property bust,” he said. “China has joined up with the rest of the world in experienc ing property problems.”

While many economists say the crippling housing downturn won’t get much worse and that the stimulus will kick in this year or next, few are calling for a sharp re bound. But the policy moves, along with a gradual easing of Covid re strictions, may help the market find a floor.

Australia AUSTRALIA saw a big run-up in the home prices during the pan demic, but the central bank has jacked up its benchmark interest rate by 250 basis points in a mat ter of months, and the market has gone into reverse.

Values are falling faster than they were during the early 1980s and the early 1990s recessions, ac cording to Tim Lawless, research director at CoreLogic.

The firm’s combined capitals index, which includes home values in Australia’s eight capital cities, dropped 5.5 percent in the past five months. Over the same timeframe in the 1990s downturn, housing values were down 2.9 percent. It’s even worse in Sydney, where prices have fallen for eight consecutive months and are now 9 percent off the peak.

“In 1994, we had the most rapid increase in interest rates,” said Paul Cameron, senior econo mist at real estate firm PropTrack. “We saw a kind of two downturns in the property market—one after the 1989 run-up in prices and the other after the increase in interest rates. At the moment, we have got both those scenarios.”

One concern in Australia, and echoed in other economies too, is stretched household finances. The debt-to-income ratio is at 187 per cent, compared with about 70 per cent during the 1990s.

“Arguably households are much more sensitive to the cost of debt now than what they were back in those previous recessions,” Law less said, though he stressed the economy remains strong, as does employment.

Sweden

THERE are similar dynamics at play in Sweden. Property contin ued to boom through the pandem ic, but that’s changed after interest rates jumped from zero to 1.75 per cent this year.

House prices are falling—at a record pace based on some mea sures—and highly leveraged com mercial property companies are coming under pressure from rising rates, which has parallels to the 1990s financial crisis.

Back then, rising rates popped a commercial real-estate bubble fueled by credit deregulation. The bust, which reverberated across the financial sector, thrust Sweden into a crisis that would see public debt and unemployment soar, and force the government to take con

trol of distressed private banks.

While policy makers are con cerned, there are factors that could prevent events now from spiraling out of control in the same fashion.

Leverage among commercial prop erty owners is far below levels at the beginning of the 1990s, which followed a period of rampant credit expansion.

But at the same time, household borrowing is a massive risk, with debt-to-income ratios around 200 percent, up from about 150 percent before the global financial crisis.

UK BACK in the UK, Prime Minister Liz Truss’s government has again cut the rate of stamp duty to bol ster the market.

That was announced as part of a big tax giveaway (some of which was subsequently cancelled) that hurled UK markets into turmoil. Bond yields jumped, contribut ing to soaring mortgage interest rates, and a number of lenders even pulled home loan products off the market.

That backdrop will make it hard to encourage demand, which property portal Zoopla says has fallen 20 percent since the socalled mini-budget, leaving it at its weakest since the pandemic started.

“The steep repricing of mort gages—with rates unseen for more than a decade and a sharp deterio ration of affordability” may “shock buyers and freeze housing activ ity until rates normalize at least a bit and buyers readjust their ex pectations,” said Iwona Hovenko, Bloomberg Intelligence European housing analyst.

Broker Hamptons Interna tional warned before the stamp duty cut that home prices are likely to decline if the Bank of England’s base rate exceeds 2.5 percent. It’s already at 2.25 percent, and ex pected to rise to at least 3 percent early next month. The average 5-year fixed rate mortgage reached a 14-year-high this month.

“Rather than a credit crunch, the current shock looks more like the one that landed in the early 1990s when interest rates spiked, house prices slumped and the re covery was slow,” said Niraj Shah, an economist at Bloomberg Eco nomics.

The last two housing slumps began in London before spreading out from there, according to Danny Dorling, professor of human geog raphy at the University of Oxford, who’s researched the UK crash in the 1990s.

And the capital is showing some signs of trouble now. Prices are more than £4,000 below their February peak, researcher Acadata Ltd. says, and values are falling in 10 of the city’s 33 boroughs.

“Property is another asset that will suffer globally from the harm inflicted by the Fed and other cen tral banks,” said Hugh Hendry, a real estate investor and former hedge fund manager. “Stressed investors will dump, prices will swoon.”

Canada DRIVE from Toronto’s main air

THE China Evergrande Group Royal Peak residential development under construction in Beijing, China. BLOOMBERG

Angel R.

Soaring dollar leaves food piled up in ports as world hunger grows

By Agnieszka de Sousa, Ekow Dontoh & Ismail Dilawar

In Ghana, importers are warn ing about shortages in the run up to Christmas. Thousands of con tainers loaded with food recently piled up at ports in Pakistan, while private bakers in Egypt raised bread prices after some flourmills ran out of wheat because it was stranded at customs.

Around the world, countries that rely on food imports are grappling with a destructive com bination of high interest rates, a soaring dollar and elevated com modity prices, eroding their power to pay for goods that are typically priced in the greenback. Dwin dling foreign-currency reserves in many cases has reduced access to dollars, and banks are slow in releasing payments.

“They cannot afford it, they cannot pay for these commodi ties,” said Alex Sanfeliu, world trading head for crop giant Cargill

Inc. “It’s happening in many parts of the world.”

The problem isn’t a new one for many of the countries—nor is it limited to agricultural commodi ties—but the reduced purchas ing power and dollar shortages are compounding wider strains across global food systems follow ing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The International Monetary Fund has warned of a catastrophe at least as severe as the food emer gency in 2007-08, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week called for more food aid for the most vulnerable, while the World Food Program says the globe is facing its largest food crisis in modern history.

On the ground, many importers are struggling with rising costs, shrinking capital and difficulty in obtaining dollars to ensure their shipments are released from cus

toms on time. That means cargoes get stuck at ports or may even be diverted to other destinations.

“There was always a historical strain on making these payments, but at the moment it’s unbearable pressure,” said Tedd George, a con sultant specializing in Africa and commodities markets.

In Ghana, where the cedi has lost about 44 percent this year against the dollar—making it the second-worst-performing curren cy in the world—there are already worries about supplies ahead of Christmas.

“We think there is going to be a shortage of some food items,” said Samson Asaki Awingobit, executive secretary of Ghana’s importers and exporters asso ciation, which includes buyers of

grains, flour and rice. “The dollar is swallowing our cedi and we are in a hopeless situation.”

To be sure, some countries may be cushioned by their pur chases in other currencies like euros, while energy-exporting nations will profit from overseas revenues. Global food-commod ity costs have also fallen for six straight months, giving hopes for a relief to consumers.

But the soaring dollar threat ens to erode some of that bene fit, according to Monika Totho va, an economist at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, which sees this year’s global food import bill at a record high.

The situation is still fragile. Concerns are mounting anew

over supplies out of the Black Sea region as the war in Ukraine escalates and there are questions over the future of the deal to ship grains out of Ukrainian ports.

Weather shocks have driven vol atility in recent months, stocks are low and soaring fertilizer and energy prices are boosting food production costs.

As the Federal Reserve contin ues to tighten monetary policy, the dollar’s strength versus curren cies in emerging and developing markets will add to inflation and debt pressures, the IMF said in its global outlook this week.

In flood-ravaged Pakistan, gov ernment moves to prevent foreignexchange outflows meant that con tainers holding food like chickpeas and other pulses piled up at ports last month, sending prices surg ing, according to Muzzammil Rauf Chappal, the chairman of the Cereal Association of Pakistan.

The situation eased after the appointment of new finance min ister who pledged to clear pending transactions for businesses that have been delayed because of a dol lar shortage in its interbank market.

“The situation was quite dan gerous,” said Chappal, whose com pany is the country’s biggest pri vate sector wheat importer. “We were expecting the country to face a serious grain crisis.”

In Egypt, one of the world’s top wheat importers, shortages

have plagued private sector mills that supply flour for bread that isn’t part of the country’s subsidy program.

About 80 percent of millers have run out of wheat and stopped operations as some 700,000 tons of grain remain stuck at the coun try’s ports since the start of last month, according to the Chamber of Cereal Industry. The supply ministry said Wednesday it would provide wheat and flour to private sector mills and pasta factories.

Cargill’s Sanfeliu said he ex pects global wheat trade flow to shrink by as much as 6 percent in the upcoming months, with corn and soybean meal flows dropping by as much as 3 percent, as devel oping countries struggle to pay for food and animal feed.

In Bangladesh, business con glomerate Meghna Group of Industries may have to cut the amount of wheat it had planned to import before the war broke out amid at least a 20 percent jump in wheat import costs due to the stronger dollar, said Taslim Shahriar, the company’s procure ment official.

“Currency fluctuations are cre ating huge losses for the company,” said Shahriar. “We have never seen this before.” With assistance from Arun Devnath, Abdel Latif Wahba, Asantha Sirimanne, Tarso Veloso Ribeiro, Souhail Karam, Katarina Hoije, Ama Tanoh and Ed die Spence/Bloomberg

FOOD importers from Africa to Asia are scrambling for dollars to pay their bills as a surge in the US currency drives prices even higher for countries already facing a historic global food crisis.

A CONTAINER ship docked at a flourmill in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/BLOOMBERG

The World

Myanmar villagers say army beheaded high school teacher

By Grant Peck The Associated Press

BANGKOK—The decapitated body of a high school teach er was left on grotesque dis play at a school in central Myan mar after he was detained and killed by the military, witnesses said Thursday, marking the lat est of many abuses alleged as the army tries to crush opposition to military rule.

According to witnesses’ de scriptions and photos taken in Taung Myint village in the rural Magway region, the headless body of 46-year-old Saw Tun Moe was left on the ground in front of the school’s spiked gate and his head was impaled on top of it. The school, which has been closed since last year, was also burned.

Neither the military govern ment nor the state-controlled media have released information about the teacher’s death.

Myanmar’s military has ar rested tens of thousands of people and been blamed for the deaths of more than 2,300 civil ians since seizing power last year from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“We are appalled by reports that Burma’s military regime ar rested, publicly mutilated, and beheaded a schoolteacher in Mag way Region,” US State Depart ment spokesperson Ned Price said on Twitter. “The regime’s brutal violence, including against educators, demands a strong re sponse from the international community.” The United States officially refers to Myanmar by its old name, Burma, which was changed by a previous military government.

In September, at least seven young students were killed in a helicopter attack on a school in a Buddhist monastery in the Sagaing region in north-central Myanmar. The military government denied responsibility for the attacks. The UN has documented 260 attacks on schools and education person nel since the army takeover, the UN Child Rights Committee said in June.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military’s February 2021 seizure of power was met by na tionwide peaceful protests and civil disobedience that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The repression led to wide

spread armed resistance, which has since turned into what UN experts have characterized as a civil war.

The army has conducted major offensives in the countryside, in cluding burning down villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, allowing them little or no access to humani tarian assistance.

Myanmar’s military has long been accused of serious human rights violations, most notably in the western state of Rakhine. In ternational courts are considering whether it committed genocide there in a brutal 2017 counterin surgency campaign that caused more than 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to neighboring Bangladesh for safety.

The slain teacher, Saw Tun Moe, was a longtime educator who had participated in antimilitary protests before taking charge of a high school founded by the country’s pro-democracy movement in his native Thit Nyi Naung village.

The National Unity Govern ment, an underground organi zation opposed to military rule

that styles itself as the country’s legitimate administrative body, opened a network of schools this year as an interim education sys tem in parts of the country where it believed armed militias loyal to it were strong enough to defend themselves.

Saw Tun Moe also taught math ematics at his village school and another nearby alternative school and was involved in the adminis tration of Thit Nyi Naung, where he lived with his family. He previ ously taught at a private school in Magway, also known as Magwe, for 20 years.

The NUG’s education arm mourned his death in a statement late Thursday that praised him and other fallen teachers as “rev olutionary heroes” and expressed solidarity with the teachers and students who continue their re sistance to the military.

His death occurred as a column of about 90 government soldiers carried out sweeps of at least a dozen area villages this month.

A villager told The Associated Press by phone that she was among about two dozen villagers includ ing Saw Tun Moe who were hiding behind a hut in a peanut field at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday when a group of more than 80 soldiers accompa nied by armed civilians arrived, shooting their guns into the air. The military arms and employs civilian auxiliaries who serve as guides and take part in raids.

The villager, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she feared being punished by the authorities, said they were caught by the troops, who seized their phones and other belongings and at an officer’s command separated three men from the group, but took away only Saw Tun Moe.

“Our heads were bowed at that time and we didn’t dare to look at them. Later, one of the soldiers called to him, ‘Come. Come fatty, follow us,’ and took him away. The soldiers treated him leniently, so we didn’t think this would hap pen,” the villager said.

She said Saw Tun Moe was taken to Taung Myint village, more than a kilometer (almost a mile) north of Thit Nyi Naung, and killed there the following day.

“I learned on Monday morning that he had been killed. It is very sad to lose a good teacher who we depended on for our children’s education,” the villager added. She said her two children studied at his school.

A villager from Taung Myint village said he saw Saw Tun Moe’s body at about 11 a.m. Monday af ter the soldiers had left.

“First, I called my friends, then I looked at the body more closely. I immediately knew that it was Teacher Moe. He used to visit our village as a schoolteacher in the past few months, so I recognized his face,” said the villager from Taung Myint, who also asked not to be named for his own safety.

Photos taken by his friend showed the teacher’s body and head. An old campaign poster with Suu Kyi’s photos covered the corpse’s thigh. Fingers sev ered from his right hand had been placed between his thighs, accord ing to the villagers. A three-finger salute is a gesture adopted by the country’s civil disobedience move ment, inspired by “The Hunger Games” series.

On an outside wall of the school, which was partially burned Sunday by the soldiers, is scrawled graf fiti with an ominous warning: “I will be back, you [expletive] who ran away.”

Pregnant women struggle to find care after Pakistan’s big floods

By Riazat Butt & Shazia Bhatti The Associated Press

RAJANPUR, Pakistan—The first five months of Shakeela Bibi’s pregnancy were smooth. She picked out a name, Uthman, made him clothes and furniture. She had regular checkups at home and access to medicine. Then an ultrasound revealed the baby was upside down. The doctor told Bibi to take extra care and rest.

And then came this summer’s massive floods. Bibi’s home in the southern Pakistani city of Rajanpur was inundated.

When she spoke to The Associated Press last month, she was living in a camp for displaced families. With her due date approaching, she was afraid over the possibility of a breech birth with almost no health care accessible.

“What happens if my health deteriorates suddenly?” Shakeela said. She has a blood deficiency and sometimes low blood pressure, but she said she can’t have a proper diet in the camp. “I’ve been in a camp for two months, sleeping on the ground, and this is making my situation worse.”

Pregnant women are struggling to get care after Pakistan’s unprecedented flooding, which inundated a third of the country at its height and drove millions from their homes. There are at least at least 610,000 pregnant women in flood-affected areas, according to the Population Council, a US-based reproductive health organization.

Many live in tent camps for the displaced, or try to make it on their own with their families in flood-wrecked villages and towns. Women have lost access to health services after more than 1,500 health facilities and large stretches of roads were destroyed. More than 130,000 pregnant women need urgent care, with some 2,000 a day giving birth mostly in unsafe conditions, according to the United Nations.

Experts fear an increase in infant mortality or health complications for mothers or children in a country that already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Asia. They also warn of dangerous, longterm repercussions for women, such as an increase in child marriage and unwanted pregnancies because of the disruptions in the lives and livelihoods of families.

Rasheed Ahmed, a humanitarian analyst at the UN Population Fund, said the health system was already poor before, and he warned now of “death, disability, and disease” if the health of pregnant women is ignored.

“The biggest shortage is female health care workers, medical supplies and medicine,” he said. “Resources are another challenge. What are the government’s priorities? Are they willing to spend the money?”

At camps in the flood-hit towns of Fazilpur and Rajanpur, pregnant women told the AP they had received no treatment or services for their pregnancies since arriving at the camps nearly two months ago. Clinics handed out medicines for minor ailments, but nothing for mothers-tobe. The next day, after the AP visited a local medical center to alert their plight, female health workers went to check on the women and distribute calcium sachets and iron supplements.

Shakeela Bibi and her family eventually left the camp, taking their tent with them and setting it up close to their wrecked home. Authorities gave them a month’s worth of flour, ghee, and lentils. She is now past her due date, but doctors have assured her that her baby is fine and don’t think she will need a Caesarian.

Perveen Bibi, an 18-year-old who is five months pregnant and not related to Shakeela, said the lack of health facilities in the camp forced her to travel to a private clinic and pay for an ultrasound and check-up. But she was prescribed medicine she can’t afford to buy.

“I used to have a good diet, with dairy products from our livestock,” she said. The family had to sell their livestock after the floods because they had no place to keep them and no way to feed them.

“We need female doctors, female nurses, gynecologists,” said Bibi, who has one daughter and is expecting a boy. She had a son around a year ago, but he died a few days after his birth. “We can’t afford ultrasound or IV. We’re just getting by.”

In the camps, families of five, seven or more eat, sleep, and spend their days and nights in one tent, sometimes with just one bed between them. Most sleep on floor mats. Some survivors only have the clothes they fled in and rely on donations.

Outdoor taps are used for washing clothes, washing dishes, and bathing. The pregnant women said there were shortages of clean water and soap. They were scared of infections because of open defecation at the camps. A bathroom was set up, but it has no roof and tents surround it.

Amid the devastation, organizations and individuals are doing what they can—the UNFPA is delivering supplies for newborn babies and safe delivery kits across four flood-hit provinces.

A Karachi-based NGO, the Mama Baby Fund, has provided 9,000 safe delivery kits, which include items for newborns, across Sindh and Baluchistan provinces, as well as antenatal and postnatal check-ups for 1,000 women. The Association for Mothers and Newborns, also based in Karachi, has provided more than 1,500 safe delivery kits, mostly in Sindh.

Ahmed from the UNFPA says pregnant women have different needs to the rest of the displaced population, needs that aren’t being met by state efforts.

“The government’s response is very general, it’s for the masses. It’s about shelter, relocation,” Ahmed said. “I’ve heard about women miscarrying because of mental stress, the physical stress of displacement and relocation.”

The health crisis triggered by the flooding will reverberate among women because it will take long to rebuild health facilities and restore family planning, according to Saima Bashir from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.

“Women and young girls are very vulnerable in this situation,” said Bashir. She pointed to increasing reports of child marriage.

Even before the floods, 21 percent of Pakistani girls were married before the age of 18, and 4 percent before the age of 15, according to UN figures.

The rate is increasing for several reasons. Some parents marry off their daughters as a way to obtain financial support from the boy’s family so they can rebuild their homes. Others fear for the safety of their girls in displaced camps and believe marrying them off will protect them from abuse or secure their future. Also, the destruction of schools in the floods closes off other options; some girls who would have gotten an education or possibly gone on to work will stay at home instead.

In the next few years, those girls will get pregnant, Bashir said, especially given limited access to contraception.

“There will be more unwanted pregnancies,” she said. “This is... compounding this crisis, and it’s adding to the population.”

MAKING EVERYDAY MORE EXCITING FOR EVERYONE

By Patrick P. Tulfo

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Fleeing Xi’s China, journalist makes fresh start abroad

By Dake Kang The Associated Press

BEIJING—Investigative journalist

Wang now lives alone in cen tral Tokyo after being blacklist ed in his homeland. His jour ney from on-air personality at the heart of China’s vast state media apparatus to reporter in exile illustrates how even gov ernment-backed critical report ing has been curtailed under Xi Jinping, China’s most authori tarian leader since Mao Zedong.

Unlike many muckrakers, Wang hasn’t given up. Deep in debt and armed with little more than a lap top, a tripod, and a camera bor rowed from a friend, Wang is back in business—this time on YouTube and Twitter, both banned in China.

“Here I can tell the truth, and nobody will restrict me anymore,” Wang said, sitting in his Tokyo studio, a living room in his mod est three-story walk-up.

Thousands of delegates are congregating in Beijing this week to reaffirm Xi as leader of the rul ing Communist Party for a third term, at the country’s most impor tant political meeting in a decade.

Fearing arrest, Wang said he won’t return until Xi is out of power.

“He demands absolute obedi ence,” Wang said. “The media has become like the army: a tool that pledges unconditional allegiance to the party.”

Under Xi, China’s once feisty reporters have fallen in line. The Communist Party’s propaganda arm has taken direct control of agencies managing newspapers, broadcasters, and radio stations. A

powerful new agency has silenced critical voices on the Internet, cre ating a vast censorship apparatus powered by thousands of censors.

Privately, many Chinese jour nalists say Xi has quashed in dependent reporting. Publicly, they stay silent. Xi’s very name is mouthed carefully, in scripted lines, whispers or pseudonyms.

“The change these past 10 years has been dramatic,” said Zhan Jiang, a retired professor of jour nalism at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Wang never imagined a life out side China. A native of mountain ous Shaanxi province, Wang joined CCTV in 1998 after obtaining a master’s in history.

At the time, Chinese media was on the cusp of what Wang calls a “golden age.” Investigative jour nalism flourished under thenleader Jiang Zemin, who talked Tibet and Taiwan with Western journalists, and Zhu Rongji, a tough, reform-minded premier who battled corruption.

It nurtured hopes of reform in China’s one-party state—more like Singapore than the former Soviet Union, with some space for free discussion.

“Just because China is under the leadership of the Communist Party doesn’t mean it can’t have an active media,” said Zhan, the retired professor.

At CCTV, Wang was first a producer, then commentator, be fore he moved to investigations

in 2011.

There, he developed a repu tation as a tough, experienced journalist, two former CCTV em ployees said, though they added his critical tendencies could make him difficult to work with. They declined to be named to speak candidly about Wang.

Soon after, Xi took power in 2012. At first, Wang looked for ward to the new leadership. With the country’s economic boom, of ficials raked in millions in brazen backdoor deals, their sons and daughters flashing Rolexes and racing Ferraris across Beijing’s flyovers.

Xi promised to change all that, vowing to crush corruption. He visited a humble bun shop, por traying himself as a man of the people.

The crackdown came. Banquets were banned, red carpets rolled up, and thousands of officials ar rested.

But as Xi consolidated power, signs of trouble started emerging at CCTV. Controls tightened. One by one, top reporters trickled out.

Then, in 2016, Xi visited CCTV and other state media.

“Party media should be sur named the party,” he declared, urging loyalty to the Communist Party above all else.

“We knew then there would be earth-shattering changes,” Wang said.

Though Xi was combating cor ruption, instead of wielding trans parency and the rule of law, Xi em powered a secretive organ of the party to detain officials instead.

“Xi doesn’t think the media should be a watchdog,” Wang said. “He thinks they just need to be propaganda organs.”

The final straw, he said, was when an investigation he worked on for months was killed.

It was an expose of Beijing’s ambulance dispatch system. Through backdoor connections, Wang found, an official had set up a parallel network that whisked patients to a second-rate clinic in Beijing’s far north, generating rev enue for hospital management but causing life-threatening delays.

But days before Wang’s story went to air, the party’s Central Propaganda Department said it was canning the story. Infuriated, Wang stopped coming to work, then resigned.

It wasn’t just CCTV. Across China, thousands of journalists quit the industry.

At Caixin, a respected finan cial magazine, the politically con nected editor-in-chief stepped aside. At the Beijing Daily News,

a tabloid with a rebellious streak, the publisher stepped down and was later detained. At Southern Weekly, a revered liberal broad sheet, propaganda officials tan gled with reporters.

Wang tried to continue. He switched outlets, hosting an interview show online that gar nered tens of millions of views. But in June 2019, Wang’s social media accounts were suddenly deleted, depriving him of mil lions of followers.

Overnight, Wang was politi cally toxic. His new outlet, once eager to capitalize on his star power, backed out of renewing his contract.

For a couple of years, Wang mulled what to do. The pandemic left him stranded during a visit to Japan, and when he returned to Beijing late last year, he heard he wouldn’t be able to work in me dia again. If he wanted to stay in China, Wang realized, he’d have to quit the job he loved.

Wang made his choice: He bought a one-way ticket back to Japan.

“I can’t go on in China,” Wang said. “If I became a public rela tions director, it’d be a betrayal of my career.”

Now, Wang is teaching himself Japanese. He has learned how to edit video on his own and operate on a shoestring budget.

Since he started broadcasting in May, he has attracted many viewers, with nearly half a million followers on Twitter and 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. Though both are banned in China, Wang hopes his reports will trickle over China’s Great Firewall and into the country.

His aim, Wang said, is factbased news for mainland Chinese, one that stands apart from con spiracy-laden competitors driven by hatred of the government.

“Nobody believes a serious Chinese outlet can be established overseas,” he said. “But I want to give it a try. I think it’s very im portant for the whole Chinese-

speaking world.”

In July, he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring a crew and flying to Ukraine. Wang said he wanted to bring frontline re porting to a Chinese audience— pointing out that only one channel viewable in mainland China sent reporters to the war.

The result, he said, was that China’s coverage of the war was saturated with Russian misinformation.

“Such a large country with only one source of information on such a huge event,” Wang said. “That’s very sad.”

Wang has plenty of detrac tors. Nationalists brand Wang a “traitor” online, questioning why he lives in Japan and accus ing him of peddling “anti-China” content. On the other extreme, anti-Beijing activists suspect Wang’s motives, pointing out he spent decades inside state media toeing the party line.

Zhang Dongshuo, a lawyer in Beijing, said he appreciates Wang’s channel, tuning in occasionally to get news unavailable on state me dia. But Zhang added that Wang’s lack of access has made his reports duller, and the difficulties of scal ing China’s firewall has shrunk his audience.

“It’s going to be tough,” Zhang said. “He’s in an awkward situation.”

Still, outside of Xi’s China, Wang hopes there’s space for someone like him. He narrates the news, talking China’s “zeroCovid” policy and the recent party congress, peppered with observa tions drawn on his experience in side the system.

At times, he cuts in with commentary.

“We’ll have to wait till the day journalists can truly express themselves freely,” Wang said, signing off on a recent broadcast. “I hope that day comes soon.”

Cash is king for sanctioned Russian, Venezuelan oligarchs

By Joshua Goodman The Associated Press

MIAMI—It was a deal that brought together oligarchs from some of America’s top adversaries.

“The key is the cash,” the oil bro ker wrote in a text message, offer ing a deep discount on Venezuelan crude shipments to an associate who claimed to be fronting for the owner of Russia’s biggest aluminum com pany. “As soon as you are ready with cash we can work.”

The communication was included in a 49-page indictment unsealed Wednesday in New York federal court charging seven individuals with conspiring to purchase sensitive US military technology, smuggle oil and launder tens of millions of dol lars on behalf of wealthy Russian businessmen.

The frank talk among co-defen dants reads like a how-to guide on circumventing US sanctions—com plete with Hong Kong shell compa nies, bulk cash pick ups, phantom oil tankers and the use of cryptocur rency to cloak transactions that are illicit under US law.

It also shines a light on how wealthy insiders from Russia and its

ally Venezuela, both barred from the western financial system, are mak ing common cause to protect their massive fortunes.

At the center of the alleged con spiracy are two Russians: Yury Orek hov, who used to work for a publicly traded aluminum company sanc tioned by the US, and Artem Uss, the son of a wealthy governor allied with the Kremlin.

The two are partners in a Ham burg, Germany-based company trading in industrial equipment and commodities. Prosecutors allege the company was a hub for skirting US sanctions first imposed against Rus sian elites following the 2014 inva sion of Crimea. Both were arrested, in Germany and Italy respectively, on US charges including conspiracy to violate sanctions, money laundering and bank fraud.

On the other end of the deal was Juan Fernando Serrano, the CEO of a commodities trading startup known as Treseus with offices in Dubai, Italy and his native Spain. His whereabouts are unknown.

In electronic communications among the men last year, each side boasted of connections to powerful insiders.

“This is our mother company,”

Orehkov wrote to Serrano, pasting a link to the aluminum company’s website and a link to the owner’s Wikipedia page. “He is under sanc tions as well. That’s why we [are] acting from this company.”

Serrano, not to be outdone, re sponded that his partner was also sanctioned.

“He is one of the influence people in Venezuela. Super close to the Vice President,” he wrote, posting a link showing search results for a Venezu elan lawyer and businessman who is currently wanted by the US on money laundering and bribery charges.

Neither alleged partner was charged in the case nor are they iden tified by name in the indictment. Additionally, it’s not clear what ties, if any, Serrano really has to the Ven ezuelan insider he cited.

But the description of the Rus sian billionaire matches that of Oleg Deripaska, who was charged last month in a separate sanctions case in New York. Some of the proceeds he allegedly funneled to the US were to support a Uzbekistani track and field Olympic athlete while she gave birth to their child in the US.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan is media magnate Raul Gorrin, ac cording to someone close to US law

enforcement who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Gorrin remains in Venezuela and is on the US Immi gration and Customs Enforcement’s most-wanted list for allegedly mas terminding a scheme to siphon $1.2 billion from PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil company.

A US-based attorney for Deri paska didn’t respond to requests for comment. Gorrin declined to com ment but has rejected other criminal charges against him as politically motivated.

While US sanctions on Venezue lan oil apply only to Americans, many foreign entities and individuals with business in the US stay away from transactions involving the Opec nation for fear of being sanctioned themselves.

For that same reason, Venezuela’s oil sells at a deep discount— about 40% less than the market price, ac cording to the indictment. But such choice terms require some unortho dox maneuvering.

For example, instead of instant ly wiring funds through Western banks, payment has to take a more circuitous route.

In one transaction this year cited in the indictment—the $33 million

purchase of a tanker full of Ven ezuelan fuel oil— the alleged coconspirators discussed channeling payments from a front company in Dubai, named Melissa Trade, to shell accounts in Hong Kong, Australia and England. To hide the transaction, documents were allegedly falsified to describe the cargo as “whole green peas” and “bulky paddy rice.”

But as is often the case in clan destine transactions, cash appears to have been king.

“Your people can go directly to PDVSA with one of my staff and pay directly to them. There are 550,000 barrels...to load on Monday,” Ser rano wrote Orekhov in a November 2021 message.

There was also discussion of drop ping off millions in cash at a bank in Moscow, Evrofinance Mosnarbank, which is owned by PDVSA. It was a major conduit for trade with Russia until it too was hit with US sanc tions in 2019. The two defendants also contemplated a possible mirror transaction whereby cash delivered to a bank in Panama would be paid out the same day at a branch of the same unnamed institution in Cara cas, Venezuela’s capital.

But Orekhov’s preferred method of payment appears to be Tether, a

cryptocurrency that purports to be pegged to more stable currencies like the US dollar.

“It’s quicker than telegraphic transfer,” Orekhov wrote regarding a planned purchase of 500,000 bar rels of oil worth $17 million. “That’s why everyone does it now. It’s conve nient, it’s quick.”

It’s not just financial transactions that are a challenge however. De livering the crude presents its own risk because most shipping compa nies and insurers won’t do business with Venezuela and other sanctioned entities. In recent years, the US gov ernment has seized several tankers suspected of transporting Iranian fuel heading for Venezuela.

To obscure the oil’s origins, Orek hov and Serrano discussed instruct ing the Vietnamese tanker they were using to turn off its mandatory track ing system to avoid being spotted while loading in “Disneyland”—a coded reference to Venezuela.

While the vessel isn’t identified by name in the indictment, internal PDVSA shipping documents seen by The Associated Press show that it was the Melogy, a two-decade-old tanker owned and operated by a Hanoi-based company called Thank Long Gas Co.

The Associated Press video journalist Haruka Naga in Tokyo contributed to this story.

Wang Zhi’an once exposed corruption, land seizures, and medical malpractice in China, with millions of viewers and a powerful platform: state broadcaster CCTV.

WANG ZHI’AN speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo on October 5, 2022. Chinese investigative journalist Wang once exposed corruption, land seizures, and medical malpractice for state broadcaster CCTV. Today, he’s in exile in Japan, and starting again as an independent journalist on YouTube. AP PHOTO/EUGENE HOSHIKO

General who led brutal bombing in Syria is new face of Russian war

THE general carrying out President Vladimir Putin’s new military strategy in Ukraine has a reputation for brutality—for bombing civilians in Russia’s campaign in Syria.

He also played a role in the deaths of three protesters in Moscow during the failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 that hastened the demise of the Soviet Union.

Bald and fierce-looking, Gen. Sergei Surovikin was put in charge of Russian forces in Ukraine on October 8 after what has so far been a faltering invasion that has seen a number of chaotic retreats and other setbacks over the nearly eight months of war.

Putin put the 56-year-old career military man in command following an apparent truck bombing of the strategic bridge to the Crimean Peninsula that embarrassed the Kremlin and created logistical problems for the Russian forces.

Russia responded with a barrage of strikes across Ukraine, which Putin said were aimed at knocking down energy infrastructure and Ukrainian military command centers. Such attacks have continued on a daily basis, pummeling power plants and other facilities with cruise missiles and waves of Iranian-made drones.

Surovikin also retains his job of air force chief, a position that could help coordinate the airstrikes with other operations.

During the most recent bombardments, some Russian war bloggers carried a statement attributed to Surovikin that signaled his intention to pursue the attacks with unrelenting vigor in an attempt to pound the Kyiv government into submission.

“I don’t want to sacrifice Russian soldiers’ lives in a guerrilla war against hordes of fanatics armed by NATO,” the bloggers quoted his statement as saying. “We have enough technical means to force Ukraine to surrender.”

While the veracity of the statement couldn’t be confirmed, it appears to reflect the same heavy-handed approach that Surovikin took in Syria where he oversaw the destruction of entire cities to flush out rebel resistance without paying much attention to the civilian population. That indiscriminate bombing drew condemnation from international human rights groups, and some media reports have dubbed him “General Armageddon.”

Putin awarded Surovikin the Hero of Russia medal, the country’s highest award, in 2017 and promoted him to full general.

Kremlin hawks lauded Surovikin’s appointment in Ukraine. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire businessman dubbed “Putin’s chef” who owns a prominent military contractor that plays a key role in the fighting in Ukraine, praised him as “the best commander in the Russian army.”

But even as hard-liners expected Surovikin to ramp up strikes on Ukraine, his first public statements after his appointment sounded more like a recognition of the Russian military’s vulnerabilities than blustery threats.

In remarks on Russian state television, Surovikin acknowledged that Russian forces in southern Ukraine were in a “quite difficult position” in the face of Ukrainian counteroffensive.

In carefully scripted comments that Surovikin appeared to read from a teleprompter, he said that further action in the region will depend on the evolving combat situation. Observers interpreted his statement as an attempt to prepare the public for a possible Russian pullback from the strategic southern city of Kherson in southern Ukraine.

Surovikin began his military career with the Soviet army in 1980s and, as a young lieutenant, was named an infantry platoon commander. When he later rose to air force chief, it drew a mixed reaction in the ranks because it marked the first time when the job was given to an infantry officer.

He found himself in the center of a political storm in 1991.

When members of the Communist Party’s old guard staged a hardline coup in August of that year, briefly ousting Gorbachev and sending troops into Moscow to impose a state of emergency, Surovikin commanded one of the mechanized infantry battalions that rolled into the capital.

Popular resistance mounted quickly, and in the final hours of the three-day coup, protesters blocked an armored convoy led by Surovikin and tried to set some of the vehicles ablaze. In a chaotic melee, two protesters were shot and a third was crushed to death by an armored vehicle.

The coup collapsed later that day, and Surovikin was quickly arrested. He spent seven months behind bars pending an inquiry but was eventually acquitted and even promoted to major as investigators concluded that he was only fulfilling his duties.

Another rocky moment in his career came in 1995, when Surovikin was convicted of illegal possession and trafficking of firearms while studying at a military academy. He was sentenced to a year in prison but the conviction was reversed quickly.

He rose steadily through the ranks, commanding units deployed to the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, leading troops sent to Chechnya and serving at other posts across Russia.

He was appointed commander of Russian forces in Syria in 2017 and served a second stint there in 2019 as Moscow sought to prop up President Bashar Assad’s regime and help it regain ground amid a devastating civil war.

In a 2020 report, Human Rights Watch named Surovikin, along with Putin, Assad and other figures as bearing command responsibility for violations during the 2019-20 Syrian offensive in Idlib province.

He apparently has a temper that has not endeared him to subordinates, according to Russian media. One officer under Surovikin complained to prosecutors that the general had beaten him after becoming angry over how he voted in parliamentary elections; another subordinate reportedly shot himself. Investigators found no wrongdoing in either case.

His track record in Syria could have been a factor behind his appointment in Ukraine, as Putin has moved to raise the stakes and reverse a series of humiliating defeats.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has repeatedly called for ramping up strikes in Ukraine, praised Surovikin as “a real general and a warrior, well-experienced, farsighted and forceful who places patriotism, honor and dignity above all.

“The united group of forces is now in safe hands,” the Kremlin-backed Kadyrov said, voicing confidence that he will “improve the situation.”

Russian threats reawaken old nuclear fears in central Europe

By Vanessa Gera The Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland—Two stories beneath a modern steel production plant on Warsaw’s northern edge lies an untouched Cold War relic: a shelter containing gas masks, stretchers, first aid kits and other items meant to help civil defense leaders survive and guide rescue operations in case of nuclear attack or other disasters.

A map of Europe on a wall still shows the Soviet Union—and no independent Ukraine. Old boots and jackets give off a musty odor.

A military field switchboard warns: “Attention, your enemy is listening.”

Until now, nobody had seriously considered that the rooms built in the 1950s—and now maintained as a “historical curiosity” by the ArcelorMittal Warszawa plant, ac cording to spokeswoman Ewa Kar pinska—might one day be used as a shelter again. But as Russia pounds Ukraine, with shelling around a nuclear power plant and repeated Russian threats to use a nuclear weapon, the Polish government ordered an inventory this month of the 62,000 air raid shelters in the country.

The war has triggered fears across Europe, and these are espe cially felt in countries like Poland and Romania that border Ukraine and would be highly vulnerable in case of a radiological disaster.

After the Polish government order, firefighters visited the steel plant’s shelter last week and listed it in their registry. Warsaw’s lead ers said the city’s subway and other underground shelters could hold all its 1.8 million residents and more in the case of an attack with conventional weapons.

The ArcelorMittal Warszawa plant’s Karpinska is suddenly re ceiving inquiries about the shelter. Following Russian President Vlad imir Putin’s threats to carry out a tactical nuclear attack, “everyone is worried,” she said. “I believe that he will not [stage a nuclear at tack], that it would be completely crazy, but nobody really believed

he would start this war.”

Amid fighting around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Po land also drew up a plan to give po tassium iodide tablets to local fire stations, which would distribute them to the population if needed. There has been a rush elsewhere in Europe on potassium iodide— which protects the thyroid gland in the neck in case of radiation exposure—including in Finland where the government urged the population to buy them.

During the Cold War there were hundreds of thousands of shelters in Europe. Some dated from the buildup to World War II, while communist-era authorities also ordered that new residential and production facilities include un derground shelters.

Finland, which borders Russia, along with Sweden and Denmark, have maintained their shelters in order. Finland, for instance, main tains shelters in cities and other densely populated areas capable of accommodating around twothirds of population. A few of them are designed to withstand detonation of a 100-kiloton nu clear bomb.

While some countries still maintain their Cold War under ground shelters, after the collapse of the Soviet Union some were transformed into museums—rel ics of an earlier age of nuclear fears that would offer no real protec tion today.

Bomb shelters were a key ele ment in the former Yugoslavia’s preparedness doctrine against a nuclear attack.

The most famous of all, in a mountainous area 60 kilome

ters (35 miles) from Sarajevo in Bosnia, is a vast underground fortress built to protect military and political leaders. Known then only to the Yugoslav president, four generals and a handful of soldiers who guarded it, the Kon jic site was turned in 2010 into a modern art gallery.

“From the military-political and geopolitical standpoint, the global environment right now is unfortunately very similar to what it was like [during the Cold War], burdened by a very heavy sense of a looming war,” said Selma Hadzi huseinovic, the representative of a government agency that man ages the site.

She said the bunker could be returned to service in a new war, but with nuclear weapons having become far more powerful it would not be “as useful as it was meant to be when it was built.”

In Romania, an enormous for mer salt mine, Salina Turda, now a tourist attraction, is on a gov ernment list of potential shelters.

Many urban dwellers also go past shelters every day without realizing it while riding subways in cities like Warsaw, Prague and Budapest.

“We measured how many people could fit in trains along the en tire length of the metro, in metro stations and other underground spaces,” said Michal Domaradzki, director of the security and crisis management for the city of War saw. “There is enough space for the entire population.”

Attila Gulyas, president of the Hungarian capital’s Urban Trans

port Workers’ Union, has been involved in regular drills of the city’s metro lines. He was trained to shelter thousands of people as chief of the Astoria station at Bu dapest’s metro line 2.

“The system is still in place to day, it works perfectly, it can be deployed in any emergency” Gu lyas said. “Up to 220,000 people can be protected by the shelter system in the tunnels of metro lines 2 and 3.”

But with Russia waging an energy war against Europe and power costs soaring, for many the chief worry is how to get through the winter.

Sorin Ionita, a commentator with the Expert Forum in Bucha rest, Romania, said many consider a Russian nuclear strike improba ble as it would not “bring a big mili tary advantage to the Russians.”

Still, Putin’s threats add to a general sense of anxiety in a world in tumult.

Just days after the Russian in vasion began, Czechs bought po tassium iodide pills as a precaution of sorts against a nuclear attack. Experts say these might help in a nuclear plant disaster but not against a nuclear weapon.

Dana Drabova, the head of the State Office for Nuclear Safety said that in such a case, the antiradiation pills would be “useless.”

Eldar Emric in Konjic, Bosnia; Karel Janicek in Prague; Bela Szandelszky in Budapest, Hungary; Jan M. Olsen in Co penhagen, Denmark; Jari Tanner in Hel sinki, Finland; and Nicolae Dumitrache in Bucharest, Romania, contributed.

India’s economy lighting up on peak festive season demand

By Anup Roy, Ruchi Bhatia & Adrija Chatterjee

INDIAN shoppers are back in force online and in stores, splurging this festive season after the coronavirus pandemic damped celebrations and con sumption in previous years.

Online marketplaces Amazon. com Inc., and Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart saw sales jump 27 percent from a year ago to $5.7 billion dur ing the festival season’s first sale from Sept. 22-30, consulting firm RedSeer estimated. Traders esti mate spending of about 2.5 trillion rupees ($30.2 billion) at stores.

This year’s Diwali, the festival of lights that falls on October 24 and the equivalent of Christmas in the West, will be India’s first season of celebration since the pandemic began without virusrelated restrictions. The return of shoppers will serve as a boost

to consumption, the backbone of the economy.

New vehicle sales jumped 57 percent from a year ago during the nine-day ‘Navratri’ period that precedes Diwali, data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations show. Sales of twowheelers in India, an indication of rural demand, grew 3.7 percent from 2019 levels. Cars and sports utility vehicles sales soared 92 percent in September from a year earlier, according to Society of In dian Automobile Manufacturers.

India’s largest carmaker Maru ti Suzuki India Ltd. saw demand for its cars rise 20 percent yearon-year, led by its premium offer ing. “The growth numbers have been uniform in both urban and rural centers,” said Maruti’s Ex ecutive Director Shashank Sriv astava, with higher interest rates doing little to suppress demand.

As demand for goods rose, businesses ramped up capacity.

Total flow of financial resources from banks and non-banks to the commercial sector jumped nearly five-fold to 9.3 trillion rupees between the April-September period, from 1.7 trillion rupees a year ago, according to the Re serve Bank of India. “Non-oil non-gold imports remained resil ient, indicating sustained revival in domestic demand.”

Good monsoon rains and the withdrawal of pandemic restric tions accelerated economic activ ity in agriculture, the services sector, and in small- and medi um-enterprises. That was accom panied by a drop in the jobless rate to the lowest in more than four years in September.

The recovery in rural areas is also helping consumer firms to normalize their pricing strategy.

Haldiram’s, one of India’s top snack-makers, saw the category ra tio between small packs and fam ily packs return to 70:30, “which

reflects that rural areas are also buying,” said AK Tyagi, the compa ny’s executive director. “Gift packs are seeing tremendous demand.”

With the economic recovery taking shape and normalizing income levels, Indian households expect to spend more, accord ing to RBI surveys. Much of this spending is to buy essentials, which in recent months have turned costly due to supply side shocks. But overall consumer confidence also remains buoyant, indicating greater willingness for discretionary spending.

“For the first time in three years this festival season is see ing robust demand,” said Gaurav Kapur, chief economist of In dusInd Bank. “Since the start of the year, people are spending on goods and services, mall footfalls are increasing, airline seat occu pancy rates have jumped despite high ticket prices.” With assistance from Vrishti Beniwal/Bloomberg

COLONEL General Sergei Surovikin, Commander of the Russian forces in Syria, speaks, with a map of Syria projected on the screen in the back, at a briefing in the Russian Defense Ministry in Moscow, Russia, on June 9, 2017. Surovikin has become the face of Russia’s new strategy in Ukraine, which includes unleashing a barrage of strikes against the country’s infrastructure. AP/PAVEL GOLOVKIN

JACEK , 37, a local resident, closes a door to a shelter in the basement of a residential building in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. Fighting around Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons have reawakened nuclear fears in Europe. This is especially felt in countries near Ukraine, like Poland, where the government this month ordered an inventory of the country’s shelters as a precaution.

AP/MICHAL DYJUK

US: Iranian troops in Crimea backing Russian drone strikes

By Aamer Madhani & Zeke Miller The Associated Press

WASHINGTON—The White House said Thursday that Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks on Ukraine’s power stations and other key infrastructure, claiming it has troubling evidence of Tehran’s deepening role assisting Russia as it exacts suffering on Ukrainian civilians just as the cold weather sets in.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told re porters that Iran has sent a “rela tively small number” of person nel to Crimea, a part of Ukraine unilaterally annexed by Russia in contravention of international law in 2014, to assist Russian troops in launching Iranian-made drones against Ukraine. Members of a branch of the Iranian Revolution ary Guard Corps were dispatched to assist Russian forces in using the drones, according to the Brit ish government.

The revelation of the US intel ligence finding comes as the Biden administration seeks to mount in ternational pressure on Tehran to pull back from helping Russia as it bombards soft Ukrainian civilian targets with the help of Iranianmade drones.

The Russians in recent days have increasingly turned to the Iranian-supplied drones, as well as Kalibr and Iskander cruise missiles, to carry out a barrage of attacks against Ukrainian infra structure and non-military tar gets. President Volodymyr Zelen skyy said this week that Russian forces have destroyed 30 percent of Ukraine’s power stations since October 10.

“The information we have is that the Iranians have put train ers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” Kirby said. He added that the Biden ad

ministration was looking at im posing new sanctions on Tehran and would look for ways to make it harder for Iran to sell such weap ons to Russia.

The US first revealed this sum mer that Russia was purchasing Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles to launch against Ukraine. Iran has denied selling its munitions to Russia.

White House officials say that international sanctions, including export controls, have left the Rus sians in a bind as they try to restock ammunition and precision-guided munition stocks that have been depleted during the nearly eightmonth-old war. As a result, Russia has been forced to turn to Iran as well as North Korea for weaponry.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters that military officials “wouldn’t be surprised” if the Rus sians sought more drones from Iran “given their situation.”

Zelenskyy said last week that Russia had ordered 2,400 from Iran.

US officials believe that Iran may have deployed military per sonnel to assist the Russians in part because of the Russians’ lack of familiarity with the Iranianmade drones. Declassified US in telligence findings showed that Russians faced technical problems with the drones soon after taking delivery of them in August.

“The systems themselves were

suffering failures and not per forming to the standards that ap parently the customers expected,” Kirby said. “So the Iranians decid ed to move in some trainers and some technical support to help the Russians use them with bet ter lethality.”

The Biden administration re leased further details about Iran’s involvement in assisting Russia’s war at a sensitive moment. The administration has levied new sanctions against Iran over the brutal crackdown on antigovern ment protests spurred by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian security custody.

Morality police had detained Amini last month for not properly covering her hair with the Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab, which is mandatory for Iranian women. Amini collapsed at a police station and died three days later.

Her death and the subsequent unrest have come as the adminis tration tries to bring Iran back into compliance with the nuclear deal that was brokered by the Obama administration and scrapped by the Trump administration.

At the United Nations this week, Ukraine accused Iran of vi olating a Security Council ban on the transfer of drones capable of flying 300 kilometers (180 miles). Britain, France and the US strongly back Ukraine’s contention that the drones were transferred to Russia and violate a 2015 UN Security Council resolution that endorsed the nuclear deal between Iran and six nations—the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Ger many—aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear activities and preventing

the country from developing a nuclear weapon.

Kirby said the administration has little hope for reviving the Iran nuclear deal soon.

“We’re not focused on the on the diplomacy at this point,” Kirby said. “What we are focused on is making sure that we’re holding the regime accountable for the way they’re treating peaceful protest ers in their country and support ing those protesters.”

The White House spoke out about Iranian assistance to Russia as Britain on Thursday announced new sanctions on Iranian officials and businesses accused of supply ing the drones.

“These cowardly drone strikes are an act of desperation,” British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in a statement. “By enabling these strikes, these individuals and a manufacturer have caused the people of Ukraine untold suf fering. We will ensure that they are held to account for their actions.”

Among the individuals hit with asset freezes and travel bans by the British were Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, chairman of the armed forces general staff over seeing the army branches supply ing Russia with drones; Brig. Gen. Seyed Hojjatollah Qureishi, a key Iranian negotiator in the deal; and Brig. Gen. Saeed Aghajani, the head the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force UAV Command.

Shahed Aviation Industries, the Iranian manufacturer of the drones being used by Russia, was also hit by an asset freeze.

The Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed reporting.

Greek monastery manuscripts tell new story of Ottoman rule

By Costas Kantouris The Associated Press

MOUNT ATHOS, Greece—

A church bell sounds, the staccato thudding of mallet on plank summons monks to afternoon prayers, deep voices are raised in communal chant. And high in the great tower of Pantokrator Monastery, a metal library door swings open.

There, deep inside the medieval fortified monastery in the Mount Athos monastic Orthodox Chris tian community, researchers are for the first time tapping a virtual ly unknown treasure—thousands of Ottoman-era manuscripts that include the oldest of their kind in the world.

The libraries of the self-gov erned community, established more than 1,000 years ago on northern Greece’s Athos pen insula, are a repository of rare, centuries-old works in several languages including Greek, Rus sian and Romanian.

Many have been extensively studied, but not the Ottoman Turkish documents, products of an occupying bureaucracy that ruled northern Greece from the late 14th century—well before the Byzan tine capital, Constantinople, fell to the Ottomans in 1453—until the early 20th when the area be came Greek again.

Byzantine scholar Jannis Nie hoff-Panagiotidis says it’s impos sible to understand Mount Athos’ economy and society under Otto man rule without consulting these documents, which regulated the monks’ dealings with secular au thorities.

“Ottoman was the official lan guage of state,” he told The Associ ated Press from the library of the Pantokrator Monastery, one of 20 on the heavily wooded peninsula.

Niehoff-Panagiotidis, a profes sor at the Free University of Ber lin, said the oldest of the roughly 25,000 Ottoman works found in the monastic libraries dates to 1374, or 1371. That’s older than any known in the world, he said, adding that in Istanbul, as the Ot tomans renamed Constantinople when they made the city their own capital, the oldest archives only go back to the late 15th century.

“The first documents that shed light [on the first period of Otto man history] are saved here, on Mount Athos,” he said, seated at a table piled with documents and books. Others, the more rare ones, are stored in large wooden drawers.

These include highly ornate Sul tans’ firmans—or decrees—deeds of ownership and court decisions.

“The overwhelming majority are legal documents,” said Anas tasios Nikopoulos, a jurist and scientific collaborator of the Free University of Berlin who’s been working with Niehoff-Panagi otidis on the project for the past few months.

And the manuscripts tell a story at odds with the traditional understanding in Greece of Ot toman depredations in the newly conquered areas, through the con fiscation of the Mount Athos mon asteries’ rich real estate holdings. Instead, the new rulers took the community under their wing, pre served its autonomy and protected it from external interference.

“The Sultans’ firmans we saw in the tower...and the Ottoman state’s court decisions show that the monks’ small democracy was able to gain the respect of all con quering powers,” Nikopoulos said.

“And that is because Mount Athos was seen as a cradle of peace, cul ture...where peoples and civiliza tions coexisted peacefully.”

Nikopoulos said that one of the first actions of Murad II, the Ottoman ruler who conquered Thessaloniki—the closest city to Mount Athos—was to draw up a legal document in 1430 protecting the community.

“That says a lot. The Ottoman sultan himself ensured that the administrative system of Mount Athos was preserved and safe guarded,” he said.

Even before that, Niehoff-Pan agiotidis added, a sultan issued a mandate laying down strict pun ishment for intruders after a band of marauding soldiers engaged in minor thieving from one of the monasteries.

“It’s strange that the sultans kept Mount Athos, the last rem nant of Byzantium, semi-indepen dent and didn’t touch it,” he said.

“They didn’t even keep troops here. At the very most they would have a local representative who prob ably stayed at [the community’s administrative center, Karyes] and sipped tea.”

Another unexpected revela tion, Niehoff-Panagiotidis said, was that for roughly the first two centuries of Ottoman rule no ef fort was made to impose Islamic law on Mount Athos or nearby parts of northern Greece.

“Mount Athos was something like a continuation of Byzantium,” he said.

WHO COULD REPLACE TRUSS: SUNAK, MORDAUNT, JOHNSON?

By Sylvia Hui The Associated Press

LONDON—Liz Truss’ resignation as British Prime Minister on Thursday triggered another leadership race—the second in just four months—for the UK’s fractured and demoralized Conservative Party.

Truss, who quit after just 45 days in office, said her successor will be chosen in a leadership contest to be completed by the end of next week. Graham Brady, a senior Conservative lawmaker who oversees the party’s leadership challenges, said each candidate must secure 100 nominations from legislators to run and that the race will conclude by next Friday.

Former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, ex-Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among those considered credible contenders for the top job. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson may also return. Jeremy Hunt, who has been brought in as new Treasury chief to steer the economy, has ruled out running.

Whoever wins will become the fifth British prime minister in six years.

Here’s a look at the potential runners and riders:

Rishi Sunak, former Treasury chief SUNAK , 42, came second to Truss in the last Conservative leadership race, gathering 60,399 votes compared to her 81,326.

He quit as Treasury chief in July, in protest against then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership. In the contest to replace Johnson, Sunak positioned himself as the candidate who tells hard truths about Britain’s public finances. He argued that climbing inflation must be controlled first, and called promises by Truss and other rivals to immediately slash taxes reckless “fairy tales.”

Sunak was proved right when Truss’ unfunded tax-cutting economic stimulus package tanked the British pound and triggered chaos in the markets in September.

Sunak became Treasury chief in 2020 and steered Britain’s slumping economy through the coronavirus pandemic. He oversaw billions of pounds in government handouts to help businesses and workers hard hit by Covid-19.

Sunak was regarded by many as the Conservatives’ brightest rising star. Born to Indian parents who moved to Britain from East Africa, Sunak attended the

exclusive Winchester College private school and studied at Oxford. Some see his elite education and work for the investment bank Goldman Sachs and a hedge fund as a liability because it makes him seem out of touch with ordinary voters.

In the past year he faced heavy criticism for being slow to respond to Britain’s costof-living crisis. His reputation also took a hit after he was fined by police for attending a lockdown-flouting birthday party at Downing Street in June 2020.

Some also criticized him following revelations that his wife, Akshata Murthy, avoided paying taxes on her overseas income.

Penny Mordaunt, House of Commons leader MORDAUNT, 49, came third after Sunak and Truss in the last Tory leadership race, when she ran with a campaign named “PM 4 PM.” Mordaunt did not hold a senior post in Johnson’s Cabinet, and she positioned herself as offering a clean break from his scandal-tainted government.

A former international trade minister, Mordaunt is popular among Conservative lawmakers. Some believe she could be the right candidate to help heal the

party’s divisions. But she is largely an unknown figure to most Britons, and outside Conservative circles she remains best known for appearing on the 2014 reality TV show “Splash!”

Mordaunt played a prominent role in the pro-Brexit campaign. She was the first woman to become British defense secretary in 2019—though she was removed by Johnson after just three months in the post because she had backed another candidate for party leader, Jeremy Hunt.

Suella Braverman, former Home secretary BRAVERMAN , 42, resigned as Home Secretary late Wednesday, with a scathing letter criticizing Truss’ “tumultuous” premiership. Her move kicked off a chaotic night in British politics that ended in Truss’ resignation hours later.

A former barrister who became England’s attorney general in 2020, Braverman was the first to put her hat in the ring during this summer’s leadership race to replace Johnson.

During her short tenure as Home Secretary, a top government post overseeing immigration and counterterrorism, Braverman vowed to crack down hard on

asylum seekers, saying it was her “dream” to see a flight deporting those seeking refuge in Britain to Rwanda. She also wanted to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human rights.

She made headlines—and was mocked by opponents—when she complained recently in Parliament that travel disruptions caused by trade union strikes were to be blamed on left-wing, “tofu-eating wokerati.”

Ben Wallace, Defense secretary WALLACE , a 52-year-old army veteran, is popular within the Conservative Party. He has won admirers for his straight talk, particularly among Conservative lawmakers who pressed for the UK to increase its defense spending.

Wallace has raised his profile as a key government voice in Britain’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. But he recently said he wanted to remain in his current job. Earlier this week, he reportedly said “I want to be the Secretary of State for Defense until I finish” when asked if he wanted the top job.

Boris Johnson, former prime minister

THERE was intense speculation Thursday that

Johnson, 58, may return and put himself forward as prime minister again—just weeks after he was forced out of office by a series of ethics scandals.

Within hours of Truss’ resignation, several Conservative allies of Johnson’s voiced their support for him to return.

“The only person who has a mandate from the general public is Boris Johnson,” said one lawmaker, Marco Longhi. “He is the only person who can discharge the mandate from the people.”

Johnson led the Conservatives to their biggest win in decades in the 2019 general election, largely on the back of his promise to “get Brexit done.”

But his time in office was overshadowed by scandals over alcohol-fueled parties held at his official residence while national Covid-19 restrictions were in place. He still faces an ongoing investigation by Parliament’s privileges committee into whether he lied to lawmakers about Covidrule breaking at Downing Street.

He was forced to announce his resignation on July 7 after former allies in his Cabinet joined a mass exodus of government officials protesting his leadership.

NATIONAL Security Council spokesman John Kirby speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington on July 27, 2022. AP/SUSAN WALSH

Science Sunday

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

DOST DONATES BOATS TO PEREZ AND QUEZON MUNICIPALITIES

Rescue work in 2 Quezon LGUs given new life

Story & Photos by Bernard Testa

APATIENT needed an emer gency medical assistance some years back. Unfortunately the patient died because the fifth class is land municipality of Quezon in Quezon province does not have a fast craft to bring the person to the nearest hos pital, Mayor Juan Escolano told the BusinessMirror about the incident that occurred years before his term.

To address the lack of transporta tion system for emergency purposes, the Department of Science and Tech nology (DOST) Calabarzon donated two fiberglass rescue boats, one each to the Quezon province municipalities of Quezon and Perez on October 11.

The locally procured boats that cost at least P2.4 million each from Mie Barca boatcraft industries based in San Pedro, Laguna, have a top speed of 20 knots with two Endumax Parsun motors.

Escolano told the BusinessMirror that it took them only 18 minutes in the new rescue boat to travel from his local government unit (LGU) to Gu maca municipality in mainland Quezon province, where the nearest hospital is located.

It should be noted that using the regular roll-on roll-off boat to and from Atimonan pier in mainland Que zon province to Alabat Island takes around an hour.

The mild mannered mayor said the rescue boat will definitely be the core asset of the LGU in transporting patients seeking medical attention.

The boats can likewise play a vital role in the disaster and risk reduc tion management program by the two municipalities, which are prone to ty phoons, being exposed to the Pacific

ocean. They are located between Lopez Bay and Lamon Bay.

The boats can define the success of rescue operations during disasters and sea mishaps during typhoons and ferry sick islanders to the nearest hospital in Gumaca, the mayor said.

DOST Calabarzon Regional Direc tor Emelita Bagsit, together with DOST Quezon Provincial Director Maria Es peranza Jawili turned over the boats to the officials of Quezon and Perez LGUs in the presence of Office of Civil Defense (OCD) Regional Director Ma ria Theresa Escolano and Quezon Gov. Angelina Tan and Rep. Keith Micah Tan among others.

During the turnover and blessing ceremonies Governor Tan and Repre sentative Tan thanked the DOST for identifying the two municipalities as

Intl crop science confab tackles innovations for food security

SEOUL, South Korea—Innovation in crop science research became front and center in the international event organized to mark the 60th anniversary of the Korea Society of Crop Science (KSCS).

The KSCS, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (Koica), the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the Rural Development Administration of Korea (RDA) and the Korea University led the International Crop Science Conference titled “Innovative Direction of Crop Science Research for Food Security” at Korea University October 13 and 14.

Over 400 participants from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America attended the conference and explored the themes of innovative genomics research on staple crops, such as rice.

Koica Vice President Yun-Young Lee congratulated KSCS’s 60th anniversary, being at the forefront of crop science research, and encouraged international cooperation on innovative agriculture for global food security.

“It is necessary to pursue comprehensive and integrated approaches to deal with the global food crisis caused by climate change, wars or pandemic,” Lee said.

For the sustainable development goals and global value achievement, Lee said the Korean government has increased the official development assistance (ODA) aid.

“In order to implement the ODA operations,

Koica funds $60 million per year to the agriculture and fisheries programs, which aim to a) inclusive and sustainable rural development; b) promoting agriculture fishing industry and its value chain; and c) climate-change resilient agriculture and fisheries production system as well as conservation of natural resources,” Lee pointed out.

IRRI Director General Jean Balié said: “IRRI, for years, has been working with the government of Korea to find innovative ways to strengthen the country’s rice sector. This partnership, which catalyzed the use of technologies like rapid multiplication of seeds and the exchanging of rice genetic materials for large-scale planting in Korea, is now making waves in building the capacity of young and upcoming agricultural scientists and researchers here and abroad.”

Balié added: “We are happy to have been working closely with KSCS, Koica, the RDA and UPLB in this initiative, and we are beyond thrilled to be part of this conference, which is a great opportunity to take new and bigger steps to accelerate and scale innovations in agricultural research for impact on health, food and nutrition security, as well as economic, social, and environmental security.”

For his part, Chancellor Jose V. Camacho of the University of the Philippines Los Baños said the challenges of worsening climate change and the looming global food crisis “are daunting.”

“A united and multidisciplinary approach

beneficiaries.

The governor acknowledged that the rescue boats will enhance the disaster management capability of the LGUs.

They can also be used in Bantay Dagat coastal security against illegal fishing. They can also ferry personnel from LGUs to deliver documents to Lu cena, the provincial capital.

She said the boats can be used by health workers to easily transport med icines while doing their ocular health inspection and giving free vaccines to their constituents.

Bagsit reiterated the Science de partment’s commitment to commu nity empowerment. She said that the DOST had already turned over seven fiberglass boats.

One more boat will be transferred

focusing on innovative agricultural research and technology will be necessary to face and resolve these challenges. UPLB is happy and proud to collaborate with our counterparts in the Korean academe on this front,” Camacho said.

At the first plenary session, Dr. Ajay Kohli, IRRI deputy director general for research, discussed the role of international agricultural research institutes, in particular OneCGIAR, for global food security and future perspectives.

He said that despite the challenges of climate change, political unrest, and global health issues, the integrative research paradigm led by IRRI, with a strong partnership with Korea and National Agricultural Research and Extension Systems partners, enables them to secure global food security.

A special session was dedicated to agricultural genetics research under the KoicaUPLB-IRRI partnership through the Korea ODA.

The session addressed advanced bioinformatics, genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics research and tackled how the partnership can help in developing a strategy to address the current challenges of agriculture in the Philippines.

The cooperative project includes the establishment of the advanced agricultural genomics center at UPLB, PhD programs at hub-universities in Korea, and MSc programs and internships at IRRI to research genomics and OMICs in plant, animal, insect and microorganisms species.

IRRI and RDA led the meeting of the Temperate Rice Research Consortium, a research network that recognizes the need for a “consortium approach” to help solve issues on temperate rice improvement including biotic and abiotic stresses, yield potential, and nutrition.

to Tingloy municipality in Batangas, or a total of eight rescue boats allot ted by the DOST regional office to be donated this year.

Bagsit told the BusinessMirror that the mayors of Perez and Quezon LGUs will acknowledge the donated rescue boats through a memorandum of agreement with the OCD to transfer the ownership of the boats.

To make sure that the program is sustainable, Governor Tan told the mu nicipal councils of both towns to allot a budget for the preventive maintenance of the rescue boats.

Janice Irene Berris, head of the Planning and Operations Unit of DOST Calabarzon, told the Business Mirror that in order to further utilize the capabilities of the boats, the DOST funded Mapua Institute of Technol

ogy students to develop a technol ogy, called Automated Identification System, that can be easily monitored by the LGU and DOST field workers.

Based on the DOST-Calabarzon community needs assessment, the two municipalities are geographically iso lated and disadvantaged areas.

“They are very vulnerable to natu ral disasters and natural hazards. The

fiberglass rescue boats will capacitate their Municipal Disaster Risk Reduc tion Management Offices to do their jobs, especially during disaster,” Ber ris added.

In order to have a smooth transi tion with the transfer of the rescue boats, DOST and OCD will assist the LGUs in taking care of the fiberglass boats.

DOST-PCAARRD, Jollibee meet for possible agro-entrepreneurship

BEING the largest fast-food chain in the Philippines, every Fili pino knows Jollibee, including toddlers who are excited when they see its image.

Even the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Re sources Research Development of the Department of Science and Technol ogy (DOST-PCAARRD) recognizes the potential of having a partnership with Jollibee. It recently held an exploratory meeting with the food giant’s Jollibee Group Foundation Inc. (JGF) that is ex pected to develop into a joint program on agro-entrepreneurship.

DOST-PCAARRD said that recog nizing the shared goal of supporting the growth of smallholder farmers and agro-entrepreneurship, it will formalize the partnership through a signing of an agreement with JGF in the near future.

A workshop will likewise be sched uled to further determine and establish specific arrangements and protocols under the partnership.

The development of the partnership, which is aligned with the council’s goal of developing Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources-based enterprises, is being led by the DOST-PCAARRD’s Agri-Aqua Business Hub.

During the meeting, JGF Senior Program Manager Ma. Laize-Ar Cruzat said the foundation’s Farmer

Entrepreneurship Program was de veloped to increase smallholder farm ers’ income by helping them become agripreneurs.

JGF works with smallholder farm ers in improving their access to in stitutional markets and corporate buyers.

Included in JGF program’s inter vention package are: clustering, orga nizing and capacity building; access to financial services; and linkage to institutional buyers.

JGF Program Officer for Agri-tech nologies Jan Paolo Vicente said soil, weather, production, machinery and equipment are the general aspects of the technologies covered by the foun dation, with focus on soil health man agement, weather data processing and forecasting, production practices, and production machinery.

Meanwhile, DOST-PCAARRD SocioEconomics Research Division (SERD) Director Ernesto Brown provided in formation about the council’s man dates and how the banner programs are operationalized through the Industry Strategic S&T Programs.

SERD Assistant Director Meliza Abeleda, in an overview of the AgriAqua Business Hub, said its mandated functions and services in relation to the development of the agri-based micro, small and medium enterprises.

Technology Transfer and Promo tion Division Director Noel Catibog and TTPD Assistant Director Tom Cabagay discussed the council’s initia tives on technology transfer and com mercialization, as well as the patenting process of agricultural machinery and equipment that is intended for use by the farmers. S&T Media Services

THE fiberglass rescue boat that was donated by the DOST-Calabarzon arrives at the shore of Quezon municipality in Quezon province during sunrise on October 11. The sunrise gives a sense of hope to the emergency functions of Quezon and Perez LGUs due to the donated rescue boats.

QUEZON Mayor Juan Escolano (left), DOST-Calabarzon Regional Director Emelita Bagsit (right), Gov. Angelina Tan (center) and DOST Provincial Director Maria Esperanza Jawili (partly hidden) lead the ribbon cutting ceremony during the turnover of the rescue boats.

PEREZ Mayor Charizze Escalona (front, fifth from right) with Gov. Angelina Tan (fourth from right), DOST Regional Director Emelita Bagsit (third from right), DOST Provincial Director Maria Esperanza Jawili (sixth from right) after the ceremonial turnover and blessing of the rescue boats.

QUEZON Mayor Juan Escolano (fourth from right), Rep. Mike Tan (fifth from right), Gov. Angelina Tan (sixth from right) with DOST officials Regional Director Emelita Bagsit (fourth from left), Janice Berris (third from left), Office of Civil Defense Regional Director Maria Theresa Escolano (second from left) and DOST Provincial Director Maria Esperanza Jawili and other municipal officials after the ceremonial blessing of the rescue boats.

A ROLL-ON ROLL-OFF ship is berth at the Atimonan pier during sunset. It is one of the main transportation from Quezon mainland to the Alabat Island municipalities of Quezon and Perez in Quezon province.

SOME DOST officials and staff and members of the media ride a rescue boat during its trial run.

Sunday

Fatima’s Sis. Lucia one step closer to being beatified

VATICAN—The cause for the beatification of Sister Lucia dos Santos, the eldest child to witness the Fatima apparitions, has taken a step forward.

In a meeting at the Vatican, the postulators for Lucia’s cause submit ted the “positio” document contain ing testimonies and information detailing her heroic virtues to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.

Father Carlos Cabecinhas, the rector of the Fatima shrine, an nounced the update on the October 13 anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, the last Marian appari tion in Fatima in 1917.

The “Positio on the Life, Vir tues and Reputation for Holiness of Sister Lucia de Jesus dos San tos” will now be examined by nine theologians.

If the evidence of her heroic vir tue is confirmed by the Vatican’s saints office, and if Pope Francis decides to promulgate a decree, Sister Lucia will be designated as Venerable in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis canonized the two other Fatima visionaries, Jacinta

and Francisco Marto, in 2017. The two shepherd children, who died at ages 10 and 11, respectively, are the youngest nonmartyr saints in the Church’s history.

Lucia, who was 10 years old at the time of the 1917 Marian appari tions, outlived the other visionaries by decades, surviving until age 97.

She spent the final 50 years of her life in a Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal. As the only

Fatima visionary who was able to hear the Virgin Mary speak dur ing the series of apparitions at Fatima, her written memoirs have provided an important account of the Fatima message.

“At some point, there is no Fati ma narrative without Lucia’s ac count. I cannot imagine Fatima as it is without Lucia having provided an account for it, through her more and less known writings,” José Rui

Teixeira, Lucia’s biographer, said at a virtual event on the Fatima anniversary this month.

Teixeira, who helped to com pile documents for her sainthood cause, said that he had nearly 4,000 references in his bibliography.

Lucia’s canonization cause opened in 2008, three years af ter her death, after Pope Bene dict XVI granted a dispensation for the usually required five-year waiting period.

More than 15,000 letters, tes timonies, and other documents were collected during the dioc esan phase of her cause, which concluded in 2017.

In his latest update on Lucia’s cause, Cabecinhas said: “Let us pray for the cause of beatification and canonization of Sister Lucia.”

“Let us entrust our intentions and needs to her intercession with the same confidence with which the pilgrims of 100 years ago pre sented their requests to her so that she could convey them to Our Lady,” Cabecinhas added. Courtney Mares/Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

Simchat Torah: A Jewish holiday of reading, renewal and resilience

READING  can cause many different emotions. For some people, beginning a new book produces excitement about where the narrative will take them. Then there’s the plea sure of the plot itself, watching how events unfold.

Finally, there’s the sense of joy at the end: satisfaction, gratitude and anticipation at the prospect of beginning the journey of reading all over again.

The Jewish holiday, known as Simchat Torah, which began this year at sunset on October 17 until the evening of October 18, encom passes all these emotions.

During the festival, Jews cel ebrate another year of reading and studying Torah: the first five books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—which, according to Jewish tradition, were divinely revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai.

As a scholar of the Bible and the ancient Near East, I am struck by the ways in which Simchat To rah cultivates a sense of humil ity and resilience in the midst of profound joy.

Joy of Torah

SIMCHAT Torah is Hebrew for “the joy of Torah.” It is a celebration, often accompanied by dancing and singing, to mark the completion of the annual reading of this section of the Bible.

Each week of the year, congrega tions around the world read a par ticular portion of the Torah, called a “parashah,” in a specified order.

On Simchat Torah, the scrolls that contain this literature are removed from the ark, the special place where they are kept at the front of the synagogue.

While one or two scrolls are taken out during readings in the usual weekly service, Simchat To rah is one of the few times of year that all the scrolls are taken out of the ark.

Celebrants circle seven—or, in some traditions, three—times around the “bimah,” the stage where the scrolls are read dur ing services, while holding these scrolls and dancing.

This dancing, called “hakaf ot” in Hebrew, occurs both in the

evening and the morning of Sim chat Torah.

In some Jewish communities, people say they become the very “feet” of the scrolls, carrying them so the scrolls themselves can par ticipate in the dancing and joy. The rejoicing can extend into the streets.

The last liturgical section for the year is read, from the Book of Deuteronomy. During the same service the first section of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is also read.

In this fashion, Simchat To rah connects the ending of the reading cycle with the beginning of the new one.

This year, Simchat Torah occurs immediately after a holiday called Shemini Atzeret the day before. In Israel and for Reform Jews, how ever, both holidays are combined on the same day.

In either case, the celebrations come on the heels of another week long festival called Sukkot, or the festival of booths, when Jews com memorate the ancient Israelites’ wanderings in the desert after fleeing slavery in Egypt.

Centuries of celebration

UNLIKE  Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, the celebration of Sim chat Torah does not appear in the Bible.

Aspects of divinely ordained rejoicing and regular reading of the Torah do, however, appear in the book of Deuteronomy. For example, Deuteronomy 16 com mands the Israelites to “rejoice” in the festival of booths.

In Deuteronomy 31, Moses

commands the priests to read the law, or Torah, to all Israel during Sukkot.

The origins of the celebration of Simchat Torah as known today are likely medieval.

One of the most influential compilations of Jewish laws is called the “Shulchan Aruch,” writ ten by a 16th-century Spanish rabbi named Joseph Karo. The overall features of the holiday, or “yom tov” in Hebrew, are set forth there.

Lifelong journey

FOR modern Jewish thinkers, the celebration of Simchat Torah em beds some of the most profound aspects of life, including themes of humility and strength even amid suffering and a troubled world.

Writer and Holocaust survi vor Elie Wiesel, for example, saw in Simchat Torah a reminder that we never know everything, and much less than we think we know.

Even for a text as familiar as the Bible, an entire lifetime of reading the Torah week after week, year after year cannot begin to yield all the possible interpretations.

So, according to Wiesel, Simchat Torah is a time to take joy not only in completing the liturgical read ing cycle, but in the reminder that we always need to look again, and be willing to begin again—even stories that we think we know so well.

As Wiesel observed, this as pect of Simchat Torah could transform a person and how that person lives with others. He fa mously once said that “people become the stories they hear and

the stories they tell.”

The celebration of Simchat To rah had profound significance, in Wiesel’s view, since the very act of reading could make a better world.

Likewise, the biblical schol ar Baruch Schwartz calls attention to a prayer spoken during Rosh Ha shana and Yom Kippur, the High Holy Days, which take place weeks before Simchat Torah.

The words of the prayer speak the desire for “the discernment and understanding needed in or der to comprehend the Torah’s deepest mysteries.”

For Schwartz, this prayer an ticipates the deeper meanings of Simchat Torah, and prepares cel ebrants for them.

There is joy in ending and once again beginning the Torah because of its many puzzles. Bringing intellectual energy to interpreting these texts opens windows into the seemingly un ending dimensions of the Bible— and also into what it means to be human. Simchat Torah under scores the importance of revisit ing the familiar, and, in so doing, cultivates humility.

Reading the Bible in a world gone wrong THE biblical command to have “joy” in reading the Torah also lays a framework for resilience in the midst of troubled times.

Wiesel, himself born on Sim chat Torah in 1928, recounted witnessing Jews who had no Torah scrolls and lived amid unthinkable horror in a concentration camp. Yet, during Simchat Torah, one adult picked up a child and delight edly danced with him as though he were a Torah scroll.

Simchat Torah represents re newals in endings—almost as though Jewish communities are receiving the revelation from Mo ses again for the first time, start ing with the book of Genesis.

Such a cycle is not redundant, but instead can promote resilience.

As Wiesel notes, the biblical command to “rejoice” becomes the means through which tragedy can be endured—helping to explain Simchat Torah’s power and vitality today. Samuel L. Boyd, University of Colorado Boulder/The Conversation (CC) via AP

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

THIS year Diwali, a popular festival for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and Sikhs, will be celebrated on October 24, the Amavasya, or new moon day, of the month of Kartik in the traditional Indian lunar calendar.

Devotees across around the world will bring festivities into their homes by lighting earthen lamps called “diyas,” setting off fireworks, displaying colored electric lights and exchanging gifts. In northern India, this date also marks the beginning of the new year.

The day is specially dedicated to the worship of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of prosperity and good fortune.

Who is Lakshmi?

IN modern images, Lakshmi is typically depicted wearing either a red or a green sari. The upper two of her four hands are holding lotus flowers, while her lower right hand is upraised in the “do not be afraid” gesture, or “abhaya mudra.”

Her lower left hand is pointed downward with her palm facing out and golden coins are falling from it. She sits or stands upon a large red lotus flower.

Often, there are two elephants behind her with their trunks upraised. As poet Patricia Monaghan writes, sometimes these elephants “shower her with water from belly-round urns.”

Lakshmi is believed to be the consort of Vishnu, who is the preserver of the cosmic order, or “dharma.”

As Vishnu’s “shakti,” or power, Lakshmi is his equal and an integral part of his being.

In the Srivaishnava tradition of Hinduism, Lakshmi and Vishnu make up a single deity, known as Lakshmi Narayana. Also known as Shri, Lakshmi is believed to mediate between her human devotees and Vishnu.

Origins of Lakshmi

ACCORDING to the sources have studied as a scholar of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions, Shri in fact seems to be the earliest name given to this goddess in Hindu texts.

This word originally means splendor and it refers to all that is auspicious: all the good and beautiful things in life.

The name Lakshmi, on the other hand, refers to a sign, imprint or manifestation of Shri. These two words seem to refer to two distinct goddesses in the earliest Hindu literature, the Vedas.

By the first century, however, which is the period of the writing of the “Puranas,” or the ancient lore of the Hindu deities, these two deities appear to have merged into a single goddess, known as Shri, Lakshmi or Shri Lakshmi.

There are many stories of Lakshmi’s origins. In the most popular of these, from the fifth century Vishnu Purana, she emerges from the ocean when the Devas and Asuras, the gods and the antigods, churn it to acquire amrita, the elixir of immortality.

In another source—the Garuda Purana, a ninth-century text—she is said to be the daughter of the Vedic sage Bhrigu and his wife, Khyati.

Those who wish for prosperity in the new year say special prayers to Lakshmi and light diyas in their homes so the goddess will visit and bless them.

Jeffery D. Long, Elizabethtown College/The Conversation (CC) via AP

Pope extends reform process for year amid apathy, criticism

ROME—Pope Francis has decided to extend by a year a lengthy global consultation of ordinary Catholics about the future of the Catholic Church, amid limited participation by the laity and seeming resistance to his reforms from the hierarchy.

Francis announced on October 16 that the planned 2023 gathering of bishops would now take place in two stages—one session in October 2023 and a second in October 2024—to allow more time to find a way forward.

Francis in 2021 formally opened a two-year consultation process on the topic of “synodality,” or a more decentralized structure of the church with the laity having a greater role.

The process is part of Francis’s longterm goal of making the church more inclusive, participatory and responsive to real-world issues facing ordinary Catholics.

As part of the process, the Vatican asked dioceses, religious orders and other Catholic groups to embark on local listening sessions so ordinary Catholics could talk about their needs and hopes for the church.

Bishops conferences in August reported back the results, and an organizing committee recently met near Rome and completed a synthesis document.

But several dioceses and bishops conferences reported minimal participation. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, for example, reported 700,000 people participated in the consultation, in a country of 66.8 million Catholics. Many European countries also reported participation rates below 10 percent.

In addition, many of Francis’s opponents have scoffed at the entire

initiative. A leading critic and former Vatican official, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller of Germany, recently warned that it represented a “hostile takeover” of the church.

Others have pointed to a similar consultation process underway in Germany that has badly divided the church, amid debate on hot-button issues, such as sexual morality, women in leadership roles and the church’s treatment of LGBTQ Catholics.

Announcing the yearlong extension, Francis said the fruits of this first phase had been many “but in order to reach a full maturity, it’s necessary that we not rush things.”

Adding another year, he said, would allow for a “more extended discernment.”

“I trust that this decision will lead to an understanding of synodality as a constitutive dimension of the church, and to help everyone live it as a path of brothers and sisters who offer witness to the joy of the Gospel,” Francis said in his noon blessing overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

Already, the Vatican office organizing the meeting had extended by several months the deadline to let ordinary dioceses and bishops conferences report back. That office said the decision to extend the whole process by another year would “foster more mature reflection for the greater good of the church.”

It’s not the first time that Francis has split a synod meeting up into two sessions, with a year of breathing room in between them. He did that for his synod on the family, which took place over the course of two sessions in 2014 and 2015, and resulted in his 2016 document that opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Nicole Winfield/Associated Press

Diwali: A celebration of goddess Lakshmi, and her promise of prosperity, good fortune

DIWALI is celebrated in the honor of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, standing on a lotus. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

COMBINATION photos of Sister Lucia dos Santos as a girl and as a Carmelite nun. FACEBOOK, VIRGIN OF FATIMA

THE Feast of the Rejoicing of the Law at the Synagogue in Leghorn [Livorno], Italy,” oil on canvas by Solomon Alexander Hart (1806-1881). WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Biodiversity Sunday

Protecting the endangered tamaraw

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

TWO motorcades were held in Calintaan and Mamburao, Occidental Mindoro, on October 3. It was not for any common human activity, like for athletes, beauty queens or politicians. It was to celebrate an animal—the tamaraw.

Celebrated every October by virtue of Presidential Proclamation 273 of 2022, the Tamaraw Month is a “Special Month for the Conservation and Pro tection of the Tamaraw in Mindoro.”

The proclamation urged all govern ment offices and agencies on Mindoro Island to implement activities geared toward the conservation of the tama raw and its habitats.

The Tamaraw Month highlights the need to further strengthen the protec tion of Mindoro’s iconic animal from various threats, including hunting, environmental degradation and habitat loss, and most recently—bullfighting among highly territorial bulls fighting for supremacy in a shrinking territory.

World’s rarest buffalo

THE revered tamaraw, with scien tific name Bubalus Mindorensis , is the world’s rarest buffalo species.

Considered as a distant relative of the carabao, the so-called beast of bur den, the Philippine tamaraw is shy but aggressive when it feels threatened.

Smaller than most buffalos, in cluding the native carabao, it can be distinguished by its “V-shaped” horns.

The remaining population of this iconic mammal is concentrated in the hinterlands of Mindoro, in an area designated by the government as a protected area—the 106,655-hect are Mounts Iglit-Baco National Park (MIBNP).

Tamaraw conservation program

IN the 1990s, the government started

a captive-breeding program under the Tamaraw Conservation Program (TCP), which primarily aims to breed the wild buffalos of Mindoro in a con trolled environment.

The captive breeding program failed with only one tamaraw bred in captivity in “Kalibasib,” short for Kalikasan Bagong Sibol, which even tually died of multiple organ failure due to old age.

However, the program was able to protect and conserve the MIBNP, where the population of the wild buffalos slightly, but steadily, in creased based on an annual popula tion count being conducted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and its various partners.

Population decline?

IN the last two years, however, the protectors of MIBNP reported that the number of Philippine tamaraw is slowly decreasing.

In 2020, as the entire country was placed under a public health emer gency and community lockdowns to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the population of the tamaraw dropped to less than 500.

This is a far cry from its estimated number of 600 heads, including the juveniles that were previously rarely seen with the herd inside and outside the MIBNP.

Alvin Tabuga, technical staff at the TCP, said the tamaraw population has gone down to just 403 during the

last population survey in March and April this year.

Bullfighting

NEIL ANTHONY DEL MUNDO, as sistant protected area superinten dent of the MIBNP and head of the TCP, said this could be attributed to the continuous hunting for food and targeting of wild animals, including the tamaraw, for trophy.

It was also caused by natural death as a result of bullfighting, or the bulls fighting for territory.

“Our rangers found dead bulls, suggesting bullfighting is now hap pening,” del Mundo told the Busi nessMirror in an interview on Oc tober 12.

Speaking mostly in Filipino, del Mundo noted that the tamaraw is very territorial, and death among bulls that are fighting for territory is likely to happen as the population reaches the number that exceeds an area’s maximum capacity.

Regular patrolling

IN its 2022 third quarterly report, the TCP said 24 TCP rangers are assigned in three ranger stations to monitor activi ties in known tamaraw habitats, namely the Aruyan-Malati Tamaraw Reserve (AMTR), the Upper Amnay Tamaraw Habitat (UATH), and the MIBNP.

Asean to recognize new Biodiversity Heroes

Heroes Awards is a flagship initiative of the Asean supported by the European Union through the Biodiversity Conservation and Management of Protected Areas in Asean project; and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC). The ACB serves as the awards secretariat.

Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will each nominate one Asean Biodiversity Hero to represent their country.

In nominating an individual, they will consider the relevance of the nominee’s contributions to biodiversity conservation, the impact of the contributions to biodiversity conservation efforts in their respective countries and the region, the replicability of their actions, and the recognition they received in communities where they belong.

Also being monitored is the Mount Calavite Wildlife Sanctuary (MCWS), another protected area on Mindoro that was recently identified as being inhabited by the Philippine tamaraw.

The report said camera traps were put in different places in AMTR to monitor the tamaraw population, habitat and ecological assessment.

Proposed critical habitat

THE DENR in Occidental and Oriental Mindoro, along with the DENR Mi maropa, are proposing to declare as a critical habitat area outside the MIBNP.

To be called the Aruyan-Malati Siburan Critical Habitat for Tamaraw and Other Endemic Endangered Wild life, the monitoring and assessment of wildlife is being done in partnership with D’Aboville Foundation.

While it is a known habitat of the Philippine tamaraw, it is also threat ened by various illegal activities, in cluding slash-and-burn agriculture by Mangyan tribes.

Meanwhile, in the UATH in Sta. Cruz and Sablayan towns in Occiden tal Mindoro, and Naujan and possibly Victoria town in Oriental Mindoro, a TCP ranger station was put up to in tensify monitoring activities.

In the MIBNP report, del Mundo said besides kaingin, traps designed to capture tamaraw were found within

the “no-hunting zone.”

They were eventually dismantled and destroyed, he said.

Dead bulls

ACCORDING to del Mundo, in the sec ond quarter of 2022—on April 4, May 11 and May 19—three dead tamaraw bulls were recorded within MIBNP.

“They might have died due to bull fighting, as indicated in the wounds and injuries sustained by the carcasses that were found, “ he reported.

“It seems that there is really a need to expand the core habitat since it may have reached the carrying capacity and could well be on its tipping point as indicated by the frequent tama raw deaths due to bullfighting,” the report added.

According to del Mundo, the inci dent was also observed in the third quarter of the year.

“Disturbance in the periphery of the core habitats is now more intense, resulting in more bull fighting. Tamaraw bulls are highly territorial,” he added.

According to Tabuga, they are eyeing to expand the core habitat of tamaraw by another 3,500 hectares, to accommodate the increasing popu lation and avoid the death of bulls as a result of their fighting to dominate territories.

Support the protectors

“ THE tamaraw population recovered from less than 100 heads in 1969 to around 600 today, but without sup port, there’s no assurance that they will survive to the next century,” said Best Alternatives Director Gregg Yan.   Yan, a wildlife photographer, has been writing about the plight of the tamaraw and often join tamaraw population counts and assessments.

“First, we must continue support ing the people who are helping con serve the tamaraw: the rangers, who keep poachers at bay; tribes folk, who revere the buffalo; scientists, who gen erate useful data; legislators fighting for better laws; local government offi cials overseeing operations; and even schoolteachers, who are inspiring new generations of [Filipinos] to care not just for our tamaraw but all our endan gered and endemic species,” he said.

“Just as important is to protect vi tal tamaraw habitats, not just on the Iglit-Baco [mountain] range, but in the handful of other areas where the buffalo still roam,” Yan said.

He added that there’s a need to think about the dangers wrought by introduced cattle and water buffalo, which also graze in national parks.

“In the 1930s, a disease called Rin derpest almost drove the tamaraw to extinction. Another disease might just succeed if not addressed correctly.

My friend Dr. Mikko Angelo Reyes [a Mindoro-based wildlife veterinarian] always underscored the importance of biosecurity for wildlife conserva tion,” he said.

ies to understand the physical, social and economic components of risks. Our main role as scientists is to com municate and disseminate informa tion on hazards and their impacts, hoping these will guide efforts in disaster response,” said Centennial Grant awardee Dr. Noelynna Ramos, a professor of Geomorphology and Geohazards at the NIGS and the head researcher of the Geomorphology and Active Tectonics Research Laboratory.

UP Centennial Grant acknowledge researchers’ work on disaster, others

AMONG the numerous roadblocks to achieving global biodiversity targets, the lack of public awareness on the crucial role of biodiversity ranks as one of most concerning, according to the Convention Biological Diversity (CBD). Without keen awareness of the link between biodiversity and human survival, people are not likely to take conservation measures.

To help bridge this awareness gap, Asean will recognize outstanding individuals from the region who have contributed significantly to biodiversity efforts. The awards ceremony will be one of the highlights of the Seventh Asean Heritage Parks Conference to be held in Bogor, Indonesia, in November.

The Asean Biodiversity Heroes recognizes exceptional individuals from the Asean member states who have contributed significantly

to biodiversity efforts in their respective communities and countries.

“Since it was launched in 2017, the Asean Biodiversity Heroes has showcased the work of notable individuals from the business, academic, nonprofit, and government sectors to make the world a healthier place for future generations,” said Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, executive director of the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB).

“We shared stories of people who stood up for biodiversity and did what they can to help curb biodiversity loss. Our hope is that through the Heroes, we can boost public awareness and light a fire in people to stand up for biodiversity, too,” Lim said.

One of the commemorative activities for the 55th anniversary of Asean and the 17th anniversary of the ACB, the Asean Biodiversity

Each awardee will receive a Heroes’ fund worth $5,000 to augment the valuable advocacy efforts they are doing in their respective countries for biodiversity.

An Asean trophy and a special prize courtesy of MPIC will also be given to the awardees.

The laureates, who will be known as the faces of biodiversity conservation in the Asean region, will also be invited to share their advocacies in various regional events.

The 2017 Asean Biodiversity Heroes were Eyad Samhan of Brunei Darussalam; Sophea Chhin of Cambodia; Alex Waisimon of Indonesia; Nitsavanh Louangkhot Pravongviengkham of Lao PDR; Prof. Zakri Abdul Hamid of Malaysia; Dr. Maung Maung Kyi of Myanmar; Dr. Angel C. Alcala of the Philippines; Prof. Leo Tan Wee Hin of Singapore; Dr. Nonn Panitvong of Thailand; and Prof. Dang Huy Huynh of Vietnam.

THE Philippines is one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, according to a re cent international study. But some scientists from the University of the Philippines-Diliman College of Sci ence (UPD-CS) hope to change that.

The 2022 World Risk Report warned that out of 193 countries, the Philip pines has the greatest risk, exposure, vulnerability, and susceptibility to di sasters, further aggravated by a deep lack of coping and adaptive capacities.

However, timely to the release of the report, UP recently conferred the UP Centennial Professorial Chair and Faculty Grant on 98 UPD-CS faculty members from the Institute of Envi ronmental Science and Meteorology, and the National Institute of Geo

logical Sciences (NIGS), as well as from the National Institute of Phys ics, Institute of Biology, Institute of Chemistry, Marine Science Institute, Institute of Mathematics, and Na tional Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.

The conferment also came just days ahead of the UN-declared Inter national Day for Disaster Risk Reduc tion last October 13.

“The Centennial Grant is a welcome acknowledgement of, and support for the hard work that UP’s scientists and researchers put into their respective fields. It helps us to focus on the tasks at hand so that we can bring the sci ence to where it is most needed,” said UPD-CS Dean Giovanni Tapang.

“There are a lot of research stud

Centennial Grantee and atmo spheric physics expert Dr. Gerry Bagtasa said: “Much of the research we undertake is very meticulous and painstaking. For outside observers, they may not seem immediately im portant or even necessary. But patient persistence pays off, because we are eventually able to find underlying patterns that enable us to come up with practical, real-world solutions.”

“There is much that can and should be done in terms of disaster response in the country, and I’m thankful that UP and the College of Science under stand this and enable us to help ad dress these,” Bagtasa added.

The Centennial Grants are award ed annually to UP faculty members in recognition of their outstanding performance in the areas of teach ing; research or creative work; and public service.

In their various capacities, the Grantees’ research is helping improve our understanding of the natural world and, more specifically, the na ture of natural disasters and how best to respond to them.

THE 2017 Asean Biodiversity Heroes are (from left): Eyad Samhan of Brunei Darussalam; Sophea Chhin of Cambodia; Alex Waisimon of Indonesia; Nitsavanh Louangkhot Pravongviengkham of Lao PDR; Prof. Zakri Abdul Hamid of Malaysia; Dr. Maung Maung Kyi of Myanmar; Dr. Angel C. Alcala of the Philippines; Prof. Leo Tan Wee Hin of Singapore; Dr. Nonn Panitvong of Thailand; and Prof. Dang Huy Huynh of Vietnam.

PHOTO

UNIVERSITY of the Philippines Diliman officials and scientists, composed of (from left) Dr. Mario Aurelio, Dr. Gerry Bagtasa, Jamaica Pangasinan, former UPD Chancellor Michael Tan, current UPD Chancellor Fidel Nemenzo, Dr. Giovanni Tapang and Dr. Lemnuel Aragones during a news briefing on the Taal Volcano Eruption in January 2020.

PHOTO BY ANDRO SAMPANG, UPD COLLEGE OF SCIENCE

A TAMARAW family GREGG YAN PHOTO

THE tamaraw is smaller than most buffalos, including the native carabao, and can be distinguished by its “V-shaped” horns. GREGG YAN PHOTO

EXPENSIVE. POLITICAL.

By Graham Dunbar The Associated Press

GENEVA—The first World Cup in the Middle East is one month away, nearing the conclusion of an often bumpy 12-year journey for Qatar that has transformed the nation.

Qatar has faced skepticism about how it persuaded FIFA to vote for the country in 2010—criticism of how migrant workers were treated building stadiums and tournament infrastructure—and derision from the soccer world for changing the dates from the traditional June-July period to November-December.

The small Arab country jutting out into the Persian Gulf has overcome all of that, as well as hostility from neighboring states who imposed a three-year economic and diplomatic boycott that ended in January 2021.

On November 20, the biggest tournament in soccer will finally get started a couple hours after sunset at the 60,000seat Al Bayt Stadium—a new venue north of Doha built for the World Cup. The maroon-and-white clad national team from the host country will open a tournament that has come to define the gas-rich emirate’s image against the team from Ecuador—probably.

All 64 games over the course of 29 days involving 32 teams will be held in the Doha area, with many more shows and cultural events planned for a soccer-led party in the conservative Muslim society.

For one month, Qatar will relax its strict limits on where alcohol can be bought, including serving beer from World Cup sponsor Budweiser at the eight stadiums and at the official big-screen viewing site in Al Bidda Park.

Promises of “the best World Cup ever, on and off the field” were made Monday by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who said the same in Moscow four years ago when Russia hosted the tournament.

However, since the decisions in 2010 to pick Russia and Qatar as future World Cup hosts, 21 of the 24 men on the FIFA executive committee were variously convicted in criminal or ethics cases, indicted, acquitted at trial or implicated in wrongdoing.

The president of FIFA at that time, Sepp Blatter, is one of them, still banned from

Qatar’s 12-year journey as World Cup host is one month away

the sport he led for 17 years for various misdeeds. Blatter, however, has said he didn’t vote for Qatar.

About 1.2 million visitors are expected in Qatar for the first World Cup to be played in the middle of the traditional European soccer season, a move made to avoid the oppressive desert heat in the Middle East.

“We are opening our doors in Doha to them without discrimination,” the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last month.

There is one bit of unprecedented late doubt, however, with the actual lineup of the tournament still under appeal. Chile and Peru have gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to challenge Ecuador’s qualification, claiming it used an ineligible player.

This year’s tournament will be among the most expensive World Cups for fans to follow and certainly the most political in modern times. Currently, players from Brazil are being used as political weapons in an election campaign and players from Iran have been supporting protests at home following the death of a 22-year-old woman after being detained by the morality police.

Eight of the 13 European teams said last month their captains will wear an armband with a heart-shaped, multi-colored design at games to support the “One Love” campaign against discrimination.

The gesture is a clear breach of FIFA rules. It also reflects unease at home about taking soccer’s biggest event to Qatar, where homosexual acts are illegal and labor and human rights have been a decade-long controversy. Qatar points to changes in its labor laws in its defense and says LGTBQ fans won’t face arrest.

This week, the United States Soccer Federation joined six European federations in backing calls by rights advocates to create a compensation fund for workers, many from south Asia, who have been killed or injured.

“With the World Cup looming, the job of protecting migrant workers from exploitation is only half done, while that

of compensating those who have suffered abuses has barely started,” said Steve Cockburn, the head of economic and social justice at Amnesty International.

FIFA Deputy Secretary General Alasdair Bell said last week it is open to talks on remedy and reparations. It is unclear if any money would come from FIFA’s $6-billion World Cup revenues; the Qatari government, which has reformed many labor laws faster than its regional rivals; or construction firms, which employed the workers in physical and contractual conditions decried by activists as modern slavery.

The migrant workers have helped transform Doha into a futuristic city whose ambitions to rival regional hubs like Dubai and Singapore will be given a showcase by the World Cup.

“As you look around the country today, at the state-of-the-art stadiums, the training pitches, the metro, the wider infrastructure, everything is ready and everyone is welcome,” said Infantino, who moved from Zurich to live in Doha for the final year of preparations.

The infrastructure is there. The challenges for Qatar are on the human scale for a country of only 350,000 citizens in a population swelled to 2.6 million by migrants working in construction, domestic and service sectors, as well as in whitecollar jobs.

“The world will see that medium-sized and small countries are able to host global

New Clark City reaps another recognition

Sports Complex is the first major sports hub constructed by the government since the completion of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex in 1934.

The sports complex currently comprises three major facilities, namely, the World Athletics-certified Athletics Stadium, Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA)-approved Aquatics Center, and the 525-unit Athletes’ Village.

The sports complex hosted the athletics and aquatic events of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games. Today, it hosts the safe return of the country’s muchawaited sporting events, from triathlon to swimming to football.

events with great success,” the emir told UN delegates.

As for security, Qatar will rely on expertise and hardware from allies, including sniffer dogs, an anti-drone system and a surveillance airplane from France, and a warship and riot police from Turkey. The US military’s Central Command has its forward headquarters at Al Udeid Air Base.

This year’s World Cup will be hosted on the smallest territory since Switzerland in 1954 and will uniquely have most of the fans living together in one city.

Turkey is sending about 3,000 riot police for a tournament that—though typically bringing a wealthier type of fan than a stereotypical soccer hooligan—should see a boisterous, Western-style exuberance on Doha’s streets.

“We want to make sure that law enforcement...is in the right place,” US Ambassador Timmy Davis said this week. “We want to make sure that in the ministries there is a level of patience and tolerance for what the world brings when you invite the world to your country.”

One recent arrival to Doha was carrying 3 kilograms (6 pounds) of methamphetamine in a suitcase that was seized, Qatar’s customs service said this week.

A party scene is being created in Doha that will likely be a hub for ravers from across the Gulf states, with ticket prices running from $45 to $7,500.

Lineups confirmed this month include DJs David Guetta and Fatboy Slim, rappers DaBaby and Tyga, and singers Amr Diab and Jorja Smith, performing at open-air festivals deep into the Doha night when temperatures rarely drop below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit).

Close to the main airport, the Aravia festival site for 5,000 people is being run by a Saudi music promoter, and the nearby 15,000-capacity Arcadia Spectacular brings a flavor of storied English festival Glastonbury, including its giant, fire-breathing metal spider stage.

Post Malone, Maroon 5 and Black Eyes Peas are on the concert program at Doha Golf Club.

It all adds up to the pledge Qatari officials have made since 2009 when the hosting campaign started: We love soccer like you, come and enjoy it, but be respectful of our cultural traditions.

Paris 2024 Paralympics won’t open in stadium

PARIS—The world’s best Paralympic athletes, parading down France’s most famous boulevard with their prosthetic limbs, mobility chairs and stories of adversity, heading to a grand celebration of their prowess and sports on the Paris square where the French Revolutionaries of 1789 chopped off heads.

Paris organizers on Thursday announced their opening ceremony plans for the Paralympics, an event with 4,400 athletes that will follow the first post-Covid-19 pandemic Olympics in less than two years.

The attention-grabber is the venue itself: In a first, the Paralympic opening show will be freed from a traditional stadium setting and instead be held in the open in the French capital’s heart, on the Champs-Elysées boulevard and the city’s biggest square, Place de la Concorde.

The once blood-soaked plaza, where King Louis XVI, his queen, Marie Antoinette, and other nobles were guillotined during the French Revolution that laid the first foundations of modern France, is shaping up as an eye-catching focal point of the Paris Games.

Set like a gem between the Tuileries Gardens, the Seine River and the majestic Crillon Hotel, the square will be converted into the arena for the new Olympic sport of breakdancing, 3-on-3 basketball, BMX cycling and skateboarding, coming back to the program after its Olympic debut at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.

Only 17 days after the July 26-August 11 Paris Olympics, the Place de la Concorde will then take center stage for the unprecedented opening ceremony of the August 28-September 8 Paralympics.

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons predicted a ceremony that will be “a thing of beauty, and a once-in-a-lifetime event that will go down in all our histories.”

“This festival of inclusion all begins with the truly unique experience of thousands of Paralympians parading down the world’s most famous avenue. What an amazing thrill it’s going to be to enter the ChampsElysées and then make the journey down to Place de la Concorde, all the while being framed by the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre,” he said in remarks distributed by 2024 organizers.

Organizers said space will be made at the ceremony for 65,000 people—equivalent to the crowd at a large Olympic stadium.

French Paralympic and Sports Committee President Marie-Amélie Le Fur said breaking free of stadium confines “is a revolution.”

“Going down the Champs-Elysées to Place de la Concorde and sharing this with nearly 65,000 people, in the heart of the capital, will be a historic moment,” she said. “It’s unheard of.”

About 30,000 of those in attendance will be able to watch the ceremony for free.

The venue choice is part of a massive effort by Paris organizers to free the Olympics and Paralympics from the shackles of traditional sports venues and turn the French capital into a giant playground for sport during the Games, with the Eiffel Tower, Grand Palais and other landmarks used as competition venues.

The concept—encapsulated in the official slogan, “Games Wide Open”—is not without risk. The use of city sites as venues poses security, transport and logistical challenges.

The Olympic opening ceremony will also break with tradition, taking to the waters of the Seine instead of being held in a stadium.

Boats will parade the 10,500 athletes on the waterway from east to west. Organizers are planning for at least 600,000 spectators, most of them ticketless and watching for free, and are billing it as the largest opening ceremony in Olympic history.

The opening and closing ceremonies for both the Olympics and Paralympics will be directed by prize-winning French theater director Thomas Joly. AP

“It [mural] is a creative and effective way of inspiring Filipinos to think about the state of the planet today and encourages them to do what they can to secure the future, both on a personal level and on a large scale,” Grenz said.

“I hope it touches many people and sparks a need for positive change.”

The initiative aligns with MBC’s Business For Biking Program, which aims to support bike commuters via infrastructure, policy, and other activities to help mobilize the work force and improve business productivity.

THE New Clark City Sports Complex was recognized with a Special Recognition For Public Facility award for its innovative planning, architecture and design during the 10th PropertyGuru Philippines Property Awards.

“This feat is truly a testament to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority’s [BCDA] constant efforts to provide Filipinos the best public facilities possible by embedding sustainability, gender diversity and gender sensitivity, and

smart components from planning to design and implementation,” BCDA President and Chief Executive Officer Aileen Zosa said.

“With the help of our development partner MTD Philippines, architectural consultant Budji+Royal Architecture+Design, and all the men and women who worked on the Sports Complex, the New Clark City Sports Complex was born to give Filipinos a modern public facility they can be proud of,” Zosa added.

Opened in 2019, the New Clark City

The New Clark City also houses the National Academy of Sports, a green and climate-resilient learning center and training ground for deserving Filipino scholar-athletes.

“Our promise is to continue building on our vision for New Clark City so we can open up more opportunities and provide a smart, sustainable and inclusive haven not just to those who live and work within the metropolis, but also to its surrounding communities,” said BCDA Officer-in-Charge Executive Vice President Atty. Gisela Z. Kalalo, who received the special recognition on behalf of the organization.

MBC opens mural: Painting a Vision of Sustainability

THE Makati Business Club (MBC) unveiled recently a mural in Makati City to promote sustainable transportation and active mobility.

The program was is a joint initiative led by Allianz PNB Life and supported by AyalaLand, Makati Central Estate Association (MACEA) and MBC.

Makati Mayor Abby Binay joined the unveiling and supported the multi-sector call for sustainable and liveable cities.

“The unveiling of this mural is a testament to the commitment of the business sector, government, and advocacy groups to promote sustainable and inclusive transportation in Makati,” Binay said.

Binay said that the City Government of Makati plans to purchase a fleet of electric vehicles and deploy 440 electric buses as part of the city’s Climate Change Adaptation Program.

Allianz PNB CEO Alexander Grenz thanked

“In light of our commitments and responsibilities, we reaffirm the promotion of active mobility as being aligned with our goals in the private sector,” MBC Chair Ed Chua said. “Active mobility has been proven to be critical in making cities more sustainable, inclusive, and productive.”

The mural—located in Apartment Ridge Underpass along Ayala Avenue—was painted by local artist Glendford Lumbao. Also present at the unveiling were German Chamber in the Philippines

President Stefan Schmit and Executive Director Christopher Zimmer, Olympic pole vaulter Ernest John “EJ” Obiena, volleyball

phenom Alyssa Valdez and representatives and advocates from civil society Aldrin Pelicano (MNL Moves), Myles Delfin (Bike Scouts PH), Ira Cruz (AltMobility PH) and Keisha Mayuga (Life Cycles PH).

BASES Conversion and Development Authority OIC Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President for Legal Services Atty. Gisela Kalalo (center) receives the award from judge Raymond Rufino (right). With them is BCDA Marketing and Promotions Officer III Ms. Queenie Bautista.

MAKATI City Mayor Abby Binay leads the unveiling ceremony along with world No. 3 pole vaulter Ernest John “EJ” Obiena, volleyball star Alyssa Valdez, Allianz PNB CEO Alexander Grenz Makati Business Club chair Ed Chua, German Chamber in the Philippines President Stefan Schmit and Executive Director Christopher Zimmer, and representatives and advocates from civil society Aldrin Pelicano (MNL Moves), Myles Delfin (Bike Scouts PH), Ira Cruz (AltMobility PH) and Keisha Mayuga (Life Cycles PH).

AyalaLand, MBC, Makati City and MACEA for coming together in this initiative.

Beyoncé’s

my soul’ is the

for

A REAL LIFE PROMISE

Agaw Agimat’s new single is a heartfelt declaration of love

By Rick Olivares

FOR a band that cut its teeth writing political and social commentary songs, the last couple of years have seen alternative rock band Agaw Agimat pen some heartfelt if not heart-wrenching songs.

Their upcoming single “Iingatan Kita” which will be officially launched this October 29 at 70s Bistro is a song about a fear of losing a loved one according to writer and drummer Renmin Nadela.

Previously, vocalist Wendy Villanueva penned “Maghihintay” that was written for her mother who passed away in 2018.

For Nadela, this genesis of “Iingatan Kita” hit close to home.

“I wrote ‘Iingatan Kita’ for Wendy,” admitted Nadela after two episodes of rushing his girlfriend to the hospital.

“I had this realization that I could lose her after an operation at St. Luke’s Hospital several years ago. And right before the pandemic, I had to bring her again to the hospital. The latter was the scariest before she couldn’t breathe due to her heart condition.”

“I feared for her life and I promised that if given another chance at life, I would take good care of her.”

Moreover, Nadela penned a song. IN an interview with Nadela during a recent show at 70s Bistro, he divulged that during the lockdown of the ongoing pandemic, there was so much time to reflect on his life and career.

“I wondered if we would ever survive the pandemic kasi wala naman sa atin nakaexperience ng ganito. Naisip ko rin kung makakatugtog ulit kami. Maraming realization lalo na to do your best if given another chance to life and career. So heto na.”

Aside from writing and recording new songs that will eventually be a new album by Agaw Agimat (including guitarist Rene Serna, bassist Adeng Maron), Nadela has been busy with the Bandang X promotion that has been performing in and around the metropolis with other 90s acts.

“New opportunity ito for 90s bands,” he simply described, “for new and old audiences.”

Like the new Agaw Agimat song which is his declaration for his love for Villanueva, he is making the most out of this second shot at life.

The band will perform the new song live for the first time on October 29 at 70’s Bistro alongside the Breed, Luna, Mutiny, the Mothercampers, Jose Carlito, and Divided by Zero.

“Iingatan Kita” was produced by Rene Serna and Nadela and co-produced by P.O.T bassist Mally Paraguya. It will be released digitally by MMC Records Philippines.

SoundSampler by Tony M. Maghirang

From 007 to Ebe Dancel to Yeah Yeah Yeahs to Kubra Commander

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Sound of 007

CURATING 60 years of theme music from the James Bond movie franchise, this documentary never fails to mesmerize. Sure, the tidbits for example about awkward singing moments involving Shirley Bassey or Tom Jones should be a hoot not just for hardcore fans of Bond, the ultimate secret agent. So do the rare footages with Sir Michael Caine, Amy Winehouse, and Radiohead’s Tom Yorke. Overall, the two-hour special streaming exclusively on Prime Video offers inside information and an indepth look across six decades of James Bond’s iconic music rendered in various shades of the classical-pop-rock spectrum. It’s revealing, surprising and amusing in its unraveling of untold true stories behind the making of one of the most beloved soundtracks in cinema.

Tanging Kailangan,” the sense that marriage is a saving grace from despair comes through in some of the most moving lyrics heard this year. Then again, memorable lines still rule even in the happy orchestral sweep of pop tunes like “Huling Unang Sayaw” and the closing titular track. In words and music, Ebe Dancel with help from producer Rico Blanco captures the essence of ‘till death do us part.

from left field that easily tames one’s wild yearning for something new that’s something good too. On this their second album, the initial peg is raising the soul of Oasis in their Bealtesque period but after the Oasis-baiting “High On The Sky,” the Kubras have the smarts to rock their seminal influence in the title track, go country swinging in “Entropy” and psychedelicize their primordial instincts in “”I’ve Seen The Heathens Cry.” These rhythm tourists have a way of making Beatles’ covers night a boring proposition in comparison.

the madcap weirdness of the duo Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López aka The Mars Volta. Stevie’s gotta be the producer because the two Voltas can cook up on their own the epic majesty of multi-chordal progressive rock and the assshaking earthiness of soul and funk. Sweet thing is, on their newest self-titled release, they unleash lovely ballads in “Shore Story” and “Blank Condolences.”

So for all the ferment of “Black Night Shrine” or “Flash Burns From Flashbacks,” there are glad tidings from Mars Volta that even the little girls will understand.

Most of the music reviewed here can be listened to and even purchased on your favorite digital music platform.

JEAN ALEJANDRO Quarter After 2

C AGAYAN de Oro’s pride Jean Alejandro releases a remarkable album that also puts front and center other musical gems down South. Starting from the first track titled “Slow Master”, Ajejandro could have piloted his stellar take on fluidly cool R ‘n B end to end but he allows equally gifted homegrown musicians to share the limelight. In “Sideguy Interlude,” Jean is joined by Kagay-anon singer-songwriter and rapper Luiz Cabaron and Jon Mejia. Lucky Boondock$, a Canadian-Kagay-anon rapper, holds his own in “Toxic” while Davao-based R n B singer Mark Glenn Guingao puts his best voice forward in “Soju.” Such selflessness can only lead to greater things to come.

TWO decades from their beginnings among New York’s finest, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase still manage to make their new wave roots hang brightly. They’re not, as their latest album suggests, cooling it down but rather letting their major muse shoot out a range of red-hot sounds and styles in the service of Karen O’s malleable vocals. It’s primal electro-pop by way of Hall Madonna in “Fleet” as “Burning” sports a Stonesy groove while something swiped from the Flying Lizard energizes “Blacktop.” YYY’s back in triumphant trumping mode.

T. Anthony C. Cabangon Lourdes M. Fernandez Aldwin M. Tolosa Jt Nisay Edwin P. Sallan Eduardo A. Davad Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Leony Garcia, Patrick Miguel

EBE DANCEL Habangbuhay

M UCH admired singer/ songwriter Ebe Dancel collects all his memories and emotions drawn from some 50 weddings he has played in so far to fashion a four-track minialbum that is at once poignant and celebratory within the same song. Emotive because touching is the nature of Ebe’s voice and cheery since he is extolling the bond into one of two erstwhile separate souls. In opener “Manatili” and

KUBRA COMMANDER Rhythm Tourists

THIS five-piece who calls Cebu City home is an extraordinary find. They’re one of those groups

THE MARS VOLTA The Mars Volta

2113

Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

Roces Avenue

IMAGINE

Stevie Wonder funking it up in a prog-metal band and you’re in the zone of

Dela Rosa Street, Makati City, Philippines. Tel. Nos. (Editorial) 817-9467; 813-0725. Fax line: 813-7025 Advertising Sales: 893-2019; 817-1351,817-2807. Circulation: 893-1662; 814-0134 to 36. www.businessmirror.com.ph

YEAH YEAH YEAHS Cool It Down

Beyoncé’s ‘Break my soul’ is the new anthem for Gen Z, Millennial burnout

by Julia Hobsbawm Bloomberg

DOes culture eat strategy for breakfast?

The phrase has reverberated around boardrooms for decades, even though it’s a misquote of the late great management guru Peter Drucker, who in fact said “cul ture, no matter how defined, is singularly persistent.”

Indeed, it is. And this is a problem be cause the culture of dissatisfaction around work is all too evident.

One manifestation is the dip in wellbeing. Data from Deloitte shows that about one-third of employees and executives struggle with fatigue and mental health is sues. Citing Gallup’s latest workplace data, the World Economic Forum noted that “workplace well-being and satisfaction have plateaued after almost a decade of improvements.”

But this can’t all be blamed on the pandemic. In May of 2019, before Co vid-19 was sweeping throughout the world, the World Health Organization declared burnout “an occupational phe nomenon.” In fact, concern about work and well-being goes back centuries and was always linked to culture: it was Aris totle, after all, who worried about what it would take to create a sense of flourish ing or eudaemonia.

Now that CEOs around the globe are trying to maintain or reinvent both cor porate culture and future strategy in the wake of a pandemic that rewrote the rules

“ Be like Beyoncé: Release your mind to think afresh. There is no playbook ready to help you that isn’t out of date. So co-create new rules, new norms and ditch the top-down approach.”

ON TH e COV e R: The cover art of Beyoncé’s “Break my soul” courtesy of Parkwood e

of work, it’s popular culture that leaders should consider to win the hearts and minds of their workers—specifically pop music.

‘The Great Resentment’

TA k E this year’s zeitgeist tune “Break My Soul” by Beyoncé Giselle k nowles-Carter, known to her fans simply as “Queen Bey.” It’s a dance-based rallying cry for workers rejecting old constraints in new times from an album entitled Renaissance. And it’s rich in cultural data.

The song is an anthem not so much for The Great Resignation as The Great Resent ment. The chorus energetically exhorts lis teners to release “ya anger,” “ya mind,” “ya job,” “the time”—in that order. A word that crops up defiantly throughout is “motiva tion.” The implication being that it’s a bit thin on the ground.

“Break My Soul” isn’t the voice of an innocent generation from yesteryear during which work culture was infan

tilized and power lay strictly above the heads of the rank and file. A good example there is the innocently jolly “Heigh-Ho” from Walt Disney Co.’s Snow White in 1937.

Nor is it quite the pay and conditions anger of Generation X, those born be tween the 1960s and 1980s who grew up with 1970s hit songs like the distinctly unsubtle “Take This Job” and “Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck or indeed Dolly Parton’s feminist rallying cry in the song and film 9 to 5 from 1980, now reprised for the new times in a successful touring musical.

Beyoncé is speaking instead to the mil lennial generation and their younger Gen Z co-workers who are the future of the workplace, and whose emotional literacy expresses their resentment and disap pointment that the world of work, even if well paid, still doesn’t deliver for them.

They feel betrayed by broken promises of prosperity, security, status and well-be ing. Beyoncé told Harper’s Bazaar magazine last year that “I worked to heal generation al trauma and turned my broken heart into art that would help move culture forward and hopefully live far beyond me.”

Beyoncé and T.S. Eliot E XACT ly 100 years before Queen Bey’s 2022 anthem to existential generational malaise was streamed to millions, T.S. Eliot’s modernist poem The Waste l and was published to thousands, with notable similarities.

Both are in their very different ways landmark commentaries which simultane ously address working life—Eliot writes movingly of the “violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward”—and yet

move well beyond it to a bigger picture: our inner selves. Written in the aftermath of World War I, The Waste l and is the cultural equivalent of a pop song, with its long lyric to broken-ness.

Today’s global work force feels similarly broken, fragmented and discombobulated as if by war. Covid-19 universally left its losses and scars, which have opened up longing for a new fresh start.

l eaders need to do two fundamental things to get on the right track. The first is to acknowledge the sense of loss and pain.

Every workplace has to rebuild and redesign itself. There is no business as usual. Aim for a corporate culture which prioritizes comfort, security and certainty in an uncertain world. That does not mean providing a rigid set of rules but a flexible approach where possible to respond to the complexity of their lives.

Be like Beyoncé: Release your mind to think afresh.

There is no playbook ready to help you that isn’t out of date. So co-create new rules, new norms and ditch the top-down approach.

In order to do that you have to do some thing else: listen. Don’t tell, ask. Spend as much on employee evaluation as you do on getting under the skin of what customers think. Go beyond online evaluation forms and begin constant face-to-face and tele conferenced feedback sessions. They will be worth every dollar spent.

Culture doesn’t compete with strat egy—it complements it. But it has to be authentic. l et’s stop trying to make the workplace naively upbeat (Disney) and instead match the knowing beat (Beyoncé).

How many work projects are too many? Here’s why you should tell your boss to stop at five

WOR k ING across several projects is the norm for most jobs these days. In fact, more than 80 percent of employ ees juggle multiple work projects at once, according to recent research.

But are these working practices actually beneficial for firms, not to mention employees and the projects they work on? Our new research shows that working on too many projects ac tually harms performance across the board. We came to this conclusion after collaborating with a world-leading hy draulic pump manufacturer that has around 20,000 employees in more than 50 countries.

After observing hundreds of em ployees at this large multinational over several years, we found that juggling

more than five simultaneous projects can be detrimental to meeting project deadlines. But working on less than five projects can prevent people from achieving maximum productivity.

Thus, managing five projects at a time seems be ideal, but not all employ ees and firms have a choice. The good news is that our research also points to three key conditions for better han dling of multiple work projects.

Who you are

R ESEARCH shows that deep special ization in a task can allow employees to work more efficiently. Think of a logistics specialist who has a combi nation of relevant education and work experience in supply chains. She can utilize the same practices across all

projects without needing to “reinvent the wheel.” Similarly, an engineer who knows everything about a certain type of software can more quickly grasp the requirements of each new project relat ed to that system.

Which projects you work on

SIMI l AR projects might require almost identical solutions that can be repeated time and again. For example, if a writer works on three or four projects catered toward a similar audience, they can use the same templates or tools to execute certain tasks.

Who you work with S EEING familiar faces across multiple projects saves time on lengthy intro ductions, misunderstandings and clari

fications, according to our research. Colleagues that know each other can rely on shared experiences and use best practices from the past.

In the end, working on too many projects harms employees, projects and firms. It affects employee productivity and morale and can lead to burnout.

So, rather than overburdening em ployees, managers should improve how they allocate their time.

This creates a win-win situation for employees and firms. Companies can still have people work across multiple projects. But to balance productivity and employee demands, they can allocate more special ized workers to simultaneous projects involving familiar faces and similar de mands. And that’s how teamwork makes the dream work. The Conversation