BusinessMirror September 25, 2022

HOPE WITHOUT BORDERS

A Filipino with the volunteer health group Doctors Without Borders shares a stateless people’s quest for a decent life after being treated so inhumanely for decades.

By Cai U. Ordinario

AMASSIVE blaze can erupt from mundane activities such as cooking and could send entire communities living in makeshift shelters scrambling for their lives.

In 2021, these community fires killed 15 Rohingya refugees and injured 560 others. A total of 45,000 people were displaced, with many hoping against hope that the same thing does not happen to them again.

But such is the challenge of liv ing in uncertain conditions. Com munities, including people working to help them, are also affected by their misfortunes. One such organi zation is Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Jan Vincent Sotito, a Filipino nurse who is currently working as a project coordinator in Cox’s Bazar,

Bangladesh, knows this firsthand.

A major fire in Cox’s Bazar happened just before he arrived in the community. He recounted that when the Doctors Without Borders team arrived at the site in Balukh ali, they found that along with the houses of refugee families, their clinic was also in cinders.

Despite this, they wasted no time in setting up teams that will handle mental health and health promotion in the community. Their mental health team provided psy chological first aid to those strug gling to come to grips with the fire that razed their homes and caused

their loved ones to perish. Another health team, Sotito said, also be gan working especially in helping those who were injured by the fire. Most of their injuries were caused by their attempts to save what lit tle they had as well as members of their family.

But the loss of lives and prop erty caused by catastrophic events such as fires in Rohingya refugee camps could not compare to the re ality of everyday life as a refugee.

Sotito said a gamut of health prob lems and human-rights violations continues to plague these margin alized people.

“ There are many problems

and there is only so much we can do. The refugees rely mostly on hu manitarian aid. It is a difficult life for them, and the health issues are many,” Sotito said.

Reality on the ground

BASED on Human Rights Watch, the Rohingya have faced discrimi nation and repression since the Myanmar government denied them citizenship in 1982. This has made them stateless for the past four decades.

The situation of the refugees dramatically deteriorated, Sotito said, in the past five years when the

SOTITO: “There are many problems and there is only so much we can do. The refugees rely mostly on humanitarian aid. It is a difficult life for them, and the health issues are many.”

Putin’s call-up brings reality of war home to many Russians

By Bloomberg News

PRESIDENT

Vladimir Putin’s order to call up as many as 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine triggered alarm and demonstrations as Russians were forced to confront the reality of the deadly conflict.

Police detained about 1,400 people at protests against the or der in 38 cities Wednesday night, according to the OVD-Info moni toring group.

Some of the male detainees were handed draft notices at police stations, and protesters may face criminal charges under the harsh laws against criticism of the war the Kremlin has imposed since the February 24 invasion. Some uni versity students who joined the demonstrations were threatened with expulsion, which could annul draft exemptions.

For millions of Russians who’ve been largely shielded from the reality of the Kremlin’s bloody seven-month war, Putin’s speech early Wednesday announcing a “partial mobilization” came as a shock. The authorities provided few details of how the order, which is the first in Russia since World War II, will be implemented and who will get drafted.

Regional governments quickly began issuing orders for reserv ists—a huge category covering people who served as conscripts, contract soldiers, and part-time of

ficers—to prepare to be summoned and banning them from leaving the area, according to Pavel Chikov, a lawyer who advises on conscrip tion cases. Doctors in Moscow also received mobilization notices, he said on Telegram.

Videos posted on social media showed draftees in the Yakutia re gion in Siberia being taken away by bus, seen off by crowds of tearful relatives.

Authorities in some cases came in the middle of the night to round up conscripts in order to fill the regional quotas that the mili tary sets.

They took my 40-year-old son at night,” said Antonina, a pension er in the Far East who declined to give her last name. “Everyone who was taken in our village was over 40, not a single young one. They’ll grab anyone. There’s total panic and confusion.”

The mobilization order will af fect 300,000 people and apply only to those with military experience, according to Defense Minister Ser gei Shoigu. Students and people who haven’t served in the army won’t be called up, he said.

calls you to join the army and of fers to take part in the war with your own physical body,” Lithu anian Prime Minister Ingrida Si monyte said.

‘Major problem’

“ONE of the consequences of mo bilization will be the fact that the apolitical and passive population will be trawling the Internet and social media to search for answers over mobilization,” Tatiana Stano vaya, founder of the R.Politik re search group, said on Telegram. “And they’ll find them not where the Kremlin wants them to, and not just information about how they’ll be drafted.”

Putin’s “major problem is his confidence that the people support him by default because he’s a leader who’s doing the right thing in the national interests,” she added.

Worried relatives of those fac ing the call-up for war vented their anger on the Telegram channel of Vyacheslav Volodin, the lower house of parliament’s speaker and a Putin ally. In March, the Russian president promised in his annual message of congratulations on In ternational Women’s Day that he wouldn’t call on reservists to serve in Ukraine.

But the presidential decree doesn’t specify which categories of Russia’s 2 million reservists will be called up and has a secret clause.

Sold out

MANY Russians didn’t find com ments like that reassuring.

L egal restrictions on leaving the country for those subject to mobilization “haven’t been im plemented yet because it’s a par tial one,” said Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Defense Committee in the lower house of parliament, according to RBC. “As for how things will go in the future, we’ll see, as they say.”

Finland’s border service re ported a 50-percent surge in car traffic overnight and Georgian TV broadcast long lines on the Rus sian side of the border. Google data showed a spike in search requests for “how to leave Russia” and even “how to break an arm.” Social me dia were flooded with reports of soaring airline ticket prices.

A t ravel agent in Belgrade said tickets on Air Serbia, which offers the only flights from Rus sia to Europe, are sold out. “Until very recently, passengers looking

to fly out of Moscow immediately had to wait for several days, maybe a week. Now there’s nothing, not even with stopovers” until midOctober, said Viza Air Travel agent Verica, who declined to give her last name.

For many, the prospect of fighting in the war prompted dras tic action. Kirill, the owner of an IT company, said he’s urgently relo cating his 100 Moscow-based staff to Dubai to prevent them from be ing called up.

Many borders remained closed to Russians. The leaders of the Bal tic states said their countries won’t offer asylum or humanitarian visas to men trying to flee mobilization.

“ The war was OK for them when they saw it on TV, sitting on a sofa, but it is no longer OK when your government and your Shoigu

A media outlet set up by jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny fanned the discontent by broad casting a conversation with the son of Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Pes kov, in which the program’s host posed as an official from the mili tary recruitment office.

Nikolay Peskov, 32, said he wouldn’t obey the summons and would “sort this out at another lev el,” according to the audio record ing. Peskov later said his son’s com ments were taken out of context and that he would make the “only right decision.”

Public disquiet over the call-up may also boost inflationary expec tations and lead consumers to pull deposits out of banks, said Locko Bank economist Dmitry Polevoy, highlighting what he called “the burden of mobilization costs.”

HOPE WITHOUT BORDERS

Continued from A1

Rohingya experienced violence, with their villages razed to the ground and their people killed or sexually abused. The Rohingya fled and close to a million found their way to Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.

MSF said Cox’s Bazar hosts one of the biggest refugee camps in the world, where nearly a million Rohingya sought refuge after flee ing persecution in Myanmar.

Doctors Without Borders has been supporting the Rohingya popu lation in Cox’s Bazar with primary healthcare, including mental health, sexual and reproductive health, and anti-sexual violence efforts.

MSF provides a range of spe cialized healthcare to the commu nity across eight active facilities and two “standby” emergency fa cilities. These facilities serve more than 925,000 Rohingya refugees living in the camps as well as a growing number of patients from the host community.

Services include general healthcare, treatment of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hy pertension, emergency care for trauma patients, mental health and women’s healthcare.

D octors Without Borders also provides key support to water and sanitation activities in the camps such as latrine desludging, fecal sludge treatment, maintenance of hand pumps, tube wells and water networks, as well as hygiene promotion.

Knowing the things happening all over the world, war, terrorism, calamities, the Rohingya issue has been pushed aside. In Bangladesh, the role of foreign organizations is not just to provide aid or healthcare. We also help the Rohingya commu nity be heard, and talk about the

situation for the international com munity to notice and to give impor tance,” Sotito said.

Health-seeking behavior

BASED on data from MSF between January and July this year, out patients in Cox’s Bazar reached 253,859 people. This was very high compared to patients admitted at 12,029 only.

Sotito said this was despite the presence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, hypertension and asthma among the Rohingya. There were also a number of Hepatitis C cases as well as a rise in scabies infections.

“One of the most challenging things I have observed is how some people come to the hospital when they are already in critical condi tion due to traditional practices in the community, lack of trust in healthcare providers, combined with exclusion from healthcare in Myanmar,” Sotito said.

He added that it was com mon for the Rohingya to ask for Discharge Against Medical Advice (DAMA) and choose to seek treat ment from their traditional heal ers. The local healers have also assisted in home deliveries as tra ditional birth attendants (TBAs).

Sotito said these different factors contribute to premature deaths in the community. “We need to work on strengthening and reinforcing our strategy.”

Global plea HAVING seen the difficulty of the Rohingya in these camps, Sotito said it is important for the world to again give their people some atten tion.

The Rohingya people and the aid workers helped them recognize the importance of the efforts of the

Bangladeshi government. Howev er, more needs to be done for these stateless people.

Humanitarian attention to the Rohingya is challenged by other crises around the world. As announced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Hu manitarian Affairs, funding for the Rohingya Joint Response Plan (JRP) decreased to $602 million in 2021 from $629 million in 2020.

As of August 2022, the funding stands at only $266 million.

He said this is not enough to help a people whose fragility con stantly exposes them to sexual vio lence, intimate partner violence, child labor, bonded labor, forced criminal activity, and other forms of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.

Without legal status they are exposed to the risk of being sub jected to arbitrary arrest, deten tion, extortion or even forced de portation,” Sotito said.

With this, he said countries must stop treating the Rohingya as a security threat. This will only keep them on the sidelines with their needs constantly brushed aside as if they did not matter.

In communities such as those in Cox’s Bazar, a simple house fire could turn disastrous and deadly in a matter of minutes. A simple dis ease could end the lives of a people before their time.

A mid the chaos that engulfs the Rohingya’s daily lives in camps like Cox’s Bazar, there are organi zations like the MSF trying their best to make things better for a forgotten people.

They are lighting the fire in the hearts of the Rohingya, allowing hope for a better future to burn de spite their sordid circumstances.

RIOT police detain a demonstrator during a protest against mobilization in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, September 21, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a partial mobilization of reservists in Russia, effective immediately. AP/DMITRY SEREBRYAKOV

Tycoon running a quarter of China’s copper trade suffers liquidity crisis

By Alfred Cang & Jack Farchy

Execs: US casinos learned some useful lessons from pandemic

By Wayne Parry The Associated Press

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.—The Covid pandemic forced most US casi nos to close for months, causing payrolls, revenue and earnings to tumble.

But the forced shutdowns and highly regulated recoveries also taught the industry useful lessons that will endure even after the pandemic is a distant memory, panelists at a major casino conference said Thursday.

Speaking at the East Coast Gaming Congress, executives from major gambling companies said the changes they were forced to make because of the pandemic had some benefits.

“We learned lessons that can’t be unlearned,” said Thomas Reeg, CEO of Caesars Entertainment.

“It forced us and gave us the ability to say to our guests that things that used to be viewed as an entitlement, maybe they don’t need them as much as they thought they did,” added Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International. “Do you need a buffet? Should you have a buffet?”

The conference was held in the Hard Rock casino in Atlantic City, whose buffet is still operating. Some of Hard Rock’s casinos in other states, in cluding Florida, offer buffets while others do not.

David Cordish, chairman of the Cordish Companies, which operates casinos in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maryland, said the pandemic of fered his business an opportunity “to tighten the ship.”

“We have not gone back to buffets,” he said. “It certainly wasn’t fun. Being closed for months was horrendous for employees. But there were a lot of lessons learned.

“What we did—and we may need to do it again—is when we were shut, we put in every possible type of health and safety screening you could do,” including hand sanitizers and barriers between player posi tions at table games, measures that were commonly adopted at casinos across the country.

Cordish said those expenses paid off handsomely once the casinos were allowed to reopen in mid 2020.

“People were fed up with being cooped up and came pouring back to the casinos, particularly when we did these things,” he said. “Since we reopened, business has been terrific.”

Eric Hausler, CEO of Greenwood Racing, which owns Pennsylvania’s Parx casino, said the pandemic opened his eyes to one particular liability.

“We had a restaurant that was open every day for lunch and never made any money,” he said. When the casino reopened after its pandemic-related closure, “We didn’t bring it back, and no one ever said a thing about it.”

Jeff Gural, who owns two racetrack casinos in upstate New York, had a similar experience.

“We had a Subway sandwich place that didn’t work,” he said. “Then we converted it to a pizza place and that didn’t work. Someone suggested converting it to a sushi place—and I don’t like sushi. And it succeeded.”

Gural also said closure helped him realize that spending big money on broadcast ads, billboards and car giveaways wasn’t bringing in the re turn he expected, making it easier to scale back spending on such things.

Daily housekeeping of casino hotel rooms has become another casu alty of the pandemic in some places. In June, Atlantic City’s main casino workers’ union filed a complaint with the state that four casinos were failing to clean guest hotel rooms daily as required by law, and one admit ted it did not have enough housekeepers to clean every room every day.

Hospitality industry leaders say the combination of a shortage of housekeeping workers and the reluctance of some guests to allow hotel workers into their rooms during their stay has led to the abandonment of a daily room-cleaning standard in resorts across the country.

One lingering effect of the pandemic is smaller payrolls. This is due both to workers who were let go during or shortly after the closures and have not been rehired, and a continuing difficulty in attracting new work ers across the gambling industry, as with many others.

Jayson Guyot, president and CEO of Connecticut’s Foxwoods Resort Casino, said he ordered a complete restructuring of the business from top to bottom during the closure—something that would have been difficult to do had it still been operating.

“It enabled us to rebuild our margins from 10 to 13 percent to 18 to 20 percent now,” he said.

But he also voiced a common concern: Foxwoods has not yet returned to its pre-pandemic business levels.

That is a major preoccupation for Atlantic City’s casinos, which collec tively have yet to return to 2019 revenue and profit levels for in-person gambling.

Second-quarter earnings, released in August, show that five of Atlan tic City’s nine casinos failed to exceed their pre-pandemic profit levels, and the resort as a whole saw a decrease in profits of nearly 1 percent.

Atlantic City has thousands less casino workers than it did before the pandemic struck. It, like virtually every other casino market, has strug gled to attract new workers and retain existing ones.

Hard Rock recently made headlines by spending $100 million to give big raises to 10,000 non-tipped workers, most of them in the US. Other com panies have given smaller raises recently. Foxwoods has raised its hourly minimum wage from $10.50 two years ago to $14.50 now, Guyot said.

A born trader with an infectious sense of humor, the 57-year-old grew Maike Metals International Ltd. through the rough-and-tum ble rush for commodities in the early 2000s, to become a key con duit between China’s industrial heartlands and global merchants like Glencore Plc.

Now Maike is suffering a li quidity crisis, and He’s empire is under threat. The ripple effects could be felt across the world: the company handles a million tons a year—a quarter of China’s re fined copper imports—making it the largest player in the most important global trade route for the metal, and a major trader on the London Metal Exchange.

With his wide network of con tacts giving enviable insight into China’s factories and building sites, He has been a poster child for China’s commodity-fueled boom over two decades—mak ing a fortune from its ravenous demand for raw materials and then plunging it into the red-hot property market.

But this year, Beijing’s re strictive Covid Zero policies have hit both the property mar ket and the copper price hard.

After months of rumors, He admitted publicly last month that Maike had asked for help to resolve liquidity issues.

He said the problems are tem porary and affected only a small part of his business, but his trad ing counterparties and creditors are being cautious. Some Chinese domestic traders have suspended new deals, while one of the com pany’s longest-standing lenders, ICBC Standard Bank Plc, was con cerned enough that it moved some copper out of China that had been backing its lending to Maike.

Even if it can secure support from the government and state banks, industry executives say Maike may struggle to maintain its dominant role in the Chinese copper market.

Much as He’s rise was a micro cosm of China’s economic boom, his current woes may mark a turning point for commodity markets: the end of an era in which Chinese demand could only go up.

“In some ways Maike’s story is the story of modern China,” said David Lilley, who started dealing with Maike in the 1990s, first as a trader at MG Plc and later as cofounder of trading house and hedge fund Red Kite. “He has skillfully ridden the dynamics of the Chinese economy, but no one was prepared for the Covid lockdowns.”

This account of He’s rise to the pinnacle of China’s commodities industry is based on interviews with business associates, rivals and bankers, many of whom asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation.

A spokesperson for Maike de clined to comment on this story, but said in response to earlier questions from Bloomberg on

September 7: “Our company has been deeply involved in the de velopment of the commodity industry for nearly 30 years. It had maintained a steady devel opment as witnessed by every one. It will soon resume normal operations and continue to con tribute to the development of the industry and the local economy.”

Copper boom

BORN in 1964 in the Chinese province of Shaanxi, He’s first encounter with copper came when he got a job procuring industrial materials for a lo cal firm. As a young man, he was paid to guard cargoes of copper in trains crisscrossing China—which could be a cold job on freezing winter nights.

In 1993, He and several friends established Maike in the western city of Xi’an, known as the capital of China’s first emperor and the location of the iconic Terracotta Army statues. The group took out a loan of 50,000 yuan (about $7,200) to buy and sell me chanical and electrical prod ucts. But He’s early encounter with copper had made an im pact, and they quickly moved their focus to scrap metal, cop per wire and refined copper.

With a personable nature, a broad grin and a light-heart ed sense of humor, He was a natural commodity trader whose charisma would help him build a wide network of friends and business contacts.

As China’s economy lib eralized, He used his con nections to make Maike a middleman between big international traders and China’s burgeoning throng of copper consumers.

In the space of 15 years, China would go from consum ing a tenth of the world’s copper supply to 50 percent, triggering a supercycle of skyrocketing prices for the metal which is used in electrical wires in ev erything from power cables to air-conditioning units.

Commodities casino

THIS was a wild era when, for many, China’s commodity mar kets were little more than a casi no. Groups of traders would team up to bet together, launching am bushes against their opponents on the other side of the market. The bravest players would be nicknamed after the martial art masters of popular novels.

While many traders came and went in these go-go years, He persisted.

“We did a huge amount of busi ness together over 20 years,” said Lilley. “There were times when the Chinese metals trade was a real wild west and he stood out for his honorableness. He would always make good on his word.”

He also had another charac teristic essential for a successful

commodity trader: an appetite for risk.

His big break came in the early days of the supercycle. In May 2005, China’s metals in dustry gathered in Shanghai for the Shanghai Futures Exchange’s annual conference. Copper prices had risen sharply, and most of the producers, fabricators and traders in the audience thought they would soon fall. Even China’s mighty State Reserve Bureau had made bearish bets.

They were shocked to hear Barclays analyst Ingrid Sternby predict that copper would hit new highs as Chinese demand ex ceeded supply. But she was soon proved right, as prices more than doubled in the next 12 months.

The SRB’s losses became a na tional scandal, and most Chinese traders missed the opportunity to cash in on the gains.

He was not among them. Pay ing close attention to demand from his network of Chinese con sumers, he had built up a bullish position and profited handsome ly from the global price surge.

It was a pattern he would suc cessfully repeat many times over the years. His preferred strategy involved selling options—on the downside, at the price his Chinese customers were likely to see as a buying opportunity, and on the upside, at a price they were likely to consider too dear.

While he enjoyed some of the trappings of success, people who have known He for many years say he remained down-to-earth even as his net worth swelled to levels that probably made him, at his peak, a dollar billionaire.

In Shanghai, he would regu larly have lunch at a restaurant serving cuisine from Xi’an, where he’d eat his favorite steamed cold noodles and fried leek dumplings for 50 yuan ($7).

Financial flows

THE evolution of He’s business mirrored the changes taking place in the Chinese business world. Although he had started simply as a distributor of physi cal copper, he soon pioneered the growing interconnections be tween the commodities business and financial markets in China.

As Maike grew to become the country’s top copper importer, He began to utilize the constant flow of metal to raise financing. He could ask for prepayments from his end customers, and also borrow against the increasingly large volumes of copper he was shipping and holding in ware houses. Over the years, the con nection between copper and cash became well established, and the ebbs and flows of China’s credit cycle became a key driver of the global market.

He would use money raised

from his copper business to speculate on the ex change or, increasingly, invest in China’s booming real estate sector. Starting in around 2011, He built hotels and business centers, and even his own ware houses in Shanghai’s bonded zone.

“In some ways Maike’s story is the story of mod ern China.”

As the state became an ever more dominant force in China’s business world, He turned his focus to investing in his hometown, Xi’an, backing projects under Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.

This year, however, He’s empire started to wobble.

The city of Xi’an faced a month-long lockdown in December and January, and further restrictions in April and July as Covid re-emerged, hurting He’s property investments. His hotels sat almost empty for months, and some commercial tenants simply stopped paying rent.

Maike was one of a number of companies that plunged their fortunes into the property market in the boom years, said Dong Hao, head of the Chaos Ternary Research Institute. “After the sharp turn around in real estate last year, such companies have encountered various difficulties,” he said.

Nickel squeeze

THE Chinese economy’s wider malaise has also caused the copper price to slump, while at the same time Maike suffered the result of growing caution among banks toward the commodity sector in China. Trust in the industry was hurt by the historic nickel squeeze in March, as well as several scandals involv ing missing aluminum and copper ores.

In recent weeks, Maike began experiencing dif ficulties paying for its copper purchases, and several international companies—including BHP Group and Chile’s Codelco—paused sales to Maike and diverted cargoes.

The future is uncertain. He met a group of Chinese banks in late August at a crunch meeting organized by the local Shaanxi government. Maike later said that the banks had agreed to support it, including by offering extensions on existing loans.

But its trading activity has largely ground to a halt as other traders grow increasingly nervous about dealing with the company. And, in the wake of Maike’s troubles, some of the biggest banks in the sector are pulling back from financing metals in China more generally.

Within China, He’s woes elicit mixed emotions. Many mourn his situation as tragic for the Chinese commodities industry and emblematic of an economy increasingly dominated by state companies.

Others would be less sad to see the end of a busi ness model that elevated copper to a financial asset and sometimes caused import margins to diverge from physical fundamentals.

“For many years, traders like Maike have been quite important in the importation of copper into China—they’ve bought very consistently to keep the flow of financing going,” said Simon Collins, the former head of metals trading at Trafigura Group and the CEO of digital trading platform TradeCloud. “With the property market like it is, I think the music could be stopping.”

With assistance from Winnie Zhu/Bloomberg

FROM a start guarding trains full of metal from thieves on freezing winter nights, He Jinbi built a copper trading house so powerful that it handles one of every four tons imported into China.

A DEALER wears personal protective gear while working at the Golden Nugget Casino in Atlantic City, N.J. on July 2, 2020. Participants in a major casino conference on Thursday, September 22, 2022, in Atlantic City said the pandemic and its monthslong closures taught them some useful lessons that could continue even after the pandemic is a distant memory, including not offering things like buffets that used to be taken for granted by casino players. AP/SETH WENIG

Drowning small island nations:

‘This is how a Pacific atoll dies’

By Pia Sarkar The Associated Press

While experts issue warnings about the eventual uninhabit ability of the Marshall Islands, President David Kabua must reconcile the inequity of a sea wall built to protect one house that is now flooding another one next door.

That is the reality of climate change: Some people get to talk about it from afar, while others must live it every day.

Natano and Kabua tried to show that reality on Wednesday on the sidelines of the UN Gen eral Assembly. Together they launched the Rising Nations Initiative, a global partnership aimed to preserve the sovereign ty, heritage and rights of Pacific atoll island nations whose very existence have been threatened by climate change.

Natano described how rising sea levels have impacted everything from the soil that his people rely on to plant crops, to the homes, roads and power lines that get washed away. The cost of eking out a living, he said, eventually becomes too much to bear, caus ing families to leave and the nation itself to disappear.

“This is how a Pacific atoll dies,” Natano said. “This is how our islands will cease to exist.”

The Rising Nations Initiative seeks a political declaration by the international community to pre serve the sovereignty and rights of Pacific atoll island countries; the creation of a comprehensive program to build and finance ad aptation and resilience projects to help local communities sustain livelihoods; a living repository of the culture and unique heritage of each Pacific atoll island country; and support to acquire UNESCO World Heritage designation.

The initiative has already gained the support of countries like the United States, Germany, South Korea and Canada, all of which have acknowledged the unique burden that island nations like Tuvalu and the Marshall Is lands must shoulder.

A UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in February spelled out the vulner ability of small island developing states and other global hotspots like Africa and South Asia, whose populations are 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather compared to less vulnerable parts of the world.

If warming exceeds a few more tenths of a degree, it could lead to some areas—including some small islands—becoming uninhabit

able, said report co-author Adelle Thomas of Climate Analytics and the University of the Bahamas.

On Wednesday, Natano noted that Tuvalu and its Pacific neighbors “have done nothing to cause cli mate change,” with their carbon emission contribution amount ing to less than .03 percent of the world’s total.

“This is the first time in history that the collective action of many nations will have made several sovereign countries uninhabit able,” he said.

Representatives from other na tions who attended Wednesday’s event did not deflect responsi bility. But whether they will do enough to turn things around re mains to be seen.

Several have pledged money to help island nations pay for early warning systems and bring their buildings up to code to bet ter protect them from hurricanes and other weather events. But there was less talk of mitigating the problem of climate change and more about how to adapt to the devastation it has already wrought.

“We see this train coming, and it’s coming down the track, and we need to get out of the way,” said Amy Pope, deputy director general of the International Organization for Migration.

Germany’s climate envoy, Jen nifer Morgan, who also attended Wednesday’s event, spoke of her country’s target to reach carbon neutrality by 2045. But while Ger many remains committed to phas ing out coal as a power source by 2030, it has had to reactivate coalfired power plants to get through the coming winter amid energy shortages as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

For the president of the Mar shall Islands, wealthy nations could be doing much more. Dur ing his speech to the UN Gener al Assembly on Tuesday, Kabua urged world leaders to take on sectors that rely on fossil fuels, including aviation and shipping. He pointed to the Marshall Is lands’ carbon levy proposal for international shipping that he says “will drive the transition to zero emission shipping, chan neling resources from polluters to the most vulnerable.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has likewise encouraged going after the world’s largest polluters. During his opening re marks to the assembly on Tuesday, he pushed for richer countries to tax the profits of energy com panies and redirect the funds to both “countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate cri sis” and those struggling with the rising cost of living.

In the meantime, as wealthy countries urge action instead of words in their own UN speeches, Kabua, Natano and their fellow island nation leaders will con tinue to grapple with their daily climate change reality—and try to continue to exist.

Pia Sarkar, a Philadelphia-based journalist for The Associated Press, is on assignment covering the UN General Assembly.

Gates Foundation prods UN, honors world’s ‘Goalkeepers’

By Thalia Beaty T he Associated Press

NEW YORK—Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates com bined characteristic op timism with sobering questions about persistent gender inequality and hunger at an event focused on reaching global development goals that the Gateses’ foundation con vened on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Bill Gates again made the case for investments in agricultural technologies—like modified seeds that are drought resistant—to ad dress food insecurity. But the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also announced Wednesday a $100 mil lion donation meant to respond to hunger and malnutrition more quickly. The donation will fund projects like a private sector part nership to subsidize fertilizer for African farmers, as well as other initiatives.

French Gates lamented the slow movement toward gender equality in a speech, asking, “How can we go about changing the face of power in our institutions, in our commu nities, and, yes, in our families?”

The annual Goalkeepers events at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York took place for the first time in person since before the start of the coronavirus pandemic. They are meant to draw attention to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals related to poverty, hunger, equity, health, education and cli mate change mitigation.

Progress toward meeting many of the goals by 2030 has stalled and in fact, slid backwards, according to assessments by the Gates Foun dation as well as UN agencies.

However, the foundation did mark some successes, honoring the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Ley en, for her leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic. It hailed the European Union’s export of more than a billion vaccine doses and promised new investments in health care manufacturing in Af rican countries.

In a speech accepting the Global Goalkeeper Award on Tuesday eve ning, von der Leyen said she shared it with “millions of ordinary Euro peans who have helped us all make it through the pandemic.”

That is despite the world’s dis mal record on health equity as measured through access to tests,

treatments and vaccines. Numer ous barriers hampered broader vaccine production—from lack of manufacturing capacity and raw materials to opposition, from Gates and others, to loosening in tellectual property rules.

“The bottom line is that should never, ever happen again,” said Mark Suzman, the foundation’s CEO, when asked if the foundation should do anything differently to ensure equitable vaccine access. He also emphasized the foundation’s commitment to building better pandemic response plans.

Vanessa Nakate also received an award for her work to reduce suffering. The Ugandan activist started protests to demand action on climate change in her country and now has founded initiatives to install solar panels and efficient stoves in schools there.

In an interview with The As sociated Press earlier this month, Nakate said the human costs of the climate crisis are still miss ing from global summits like this one. “It’s really the human face that tells the story, that tells the experiences of what communities are going through,” she said.

The foundation also recog nized Afghan journalist Zahra Joya, founder of the news orga nization, Rukhshana Media that covers issues affecting women, and the doctor, Radhika Batra, who cofounded an Indian non profit, Every Infant Matters.

Abby Maxman, Oxfam America president, pointed to the block buster profits earned by fossil fuel companies as an example of the gulf between what the world knows it needs to do in order to achieve a livable future and the actions we are actually taking.

“It really is extraordinary that as humanity faces these truly ex istential crises, there is still more incentive to destroy our planet than to save lives and save the planet,” she said.

At this year’s general assembly, Antonio Guterres, the UN Secre tary-General, told world leaders in his opening remarks that they need to tax the profits of fossil fuel companies.

Leaders are not bound by the suggestion, and the UN generally lacks enforcement mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their commitments and pledges, like those made to meet the global development goals.

Climate migration: Indian kids find hope in a new language

By Aniruddha Ghosal AP Science Writer

BENGALURU, India—Eightyear-old Jerifa Islam only remembers the river be ing angry, its waters gnawing away her family’s farmland and waves lashing their home during rainy season flooding. Then one day in July of 2019, the mighty Brahmaputra River swallowed everything.

Her home in the Darrang dis trict of India’s Assam state was washed away. But the calamity started Jerifa and her brother, Raju 12, on a path that eventually led them to schools nearly 2,000 miles (3,218 kilometers) away in Bengaluru, where people speak the Kannada language that is so different from the children’s na tive Bangla.

Those early days were diffi cult. Classes at the free state-run schools were taught in Kannada, and Raju couldn’t understand a word of the instruction.

But he persisted, reasoning that just being in class was better than the months in Assam when submerged roads kept him away from school for months. “Initial ly I didn’t understand what was happening, then with the teacher explaining things to me slowly, I started learning,” he said.

The children were born in a low-lying village, flanked by the Himalayas and the river. Like many parts of northeastern India, it was no stranger to heavy rains and naturally occurring floods.

But their father, Jaidul Islam, 32, and mother Pinjira Khatun, 28, knew something had changed. The rains had become more erratic, flash floods more frequent and unpredictable. They were among the estimated 2.6 million people in the Assam state affected by floods the year they decided to move to Bengaluru, a city of over 8 million known as India’s Silicon Valley.

No one in their family had ever moved so far from home, but any lingering doubts were outweighed by dreams of a bet ter life and a good education for their children. The couple spoke a little Hindi—India’s most widely used language—and hoped that would be enough to get by in the city, where they knew nearby vil lagers had found work.

The two packed what little they could salvage into a large suitcase they hoped to someday fill with new belongings. “We left home with nothing. Some clothes for the kids, a mosquito net, and two towels. That was it,” said Islam.

The suitcase is now filling up with school exercise books—and the parents, neither with any

formal education, said their lives center on ensuring their kids have more opportunities. “My children will not face the same problems that I did,” the father said.

The family fled the low-lying Darrang district, which receives heavy rainfall and natural flood ing. But rising temperatures with climate change have made monsoons erratic, with the bulk of the season’s rainfall falling in days, followed by dry spells. The district is among the most vulnerable to climate change in India, according to a New-Delhi based think tank.

Floods and droughts often oc cur simultaneously, said Anjal Prakash, a research director at India’s Bharti Institute of Public Policy. The natural water systems in the Himalayan region that peo ple had relied on for millennia are now “broken,” he said.

In the past decade, Prakash said, the number of climate mi grants in India has been growing. And over the next 30 years, 143 million people worldwide will likely be uprooted by rising seas, drought and unbearable heat, the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli mate Change reported this year.

India estimates it has around 139 million migrants, but un clear is how many had to move because of climate change. By

2050, cities like Bengaluru are predicted to become the pre ferred destination for the nearly 40 million people in South Asia forced by climate change to leave their homes, according to a 2021 World Bank report.

“Especially if you’ve aspirations for your second generation, you have to move,” said Prakash.

In the suburban area where Jerifa and her family now live, most people are from Assam state, many forced to migrate because of climate change and dreaming of a better future: There is Shah Jahan, 19, a security guard who wants to be a YouTube influencer. There is Rasana Begum, a 47-yearold cleaner who hopes her two daughters will become nurses. Their homes, too, were washed away in floods.

Pinjira and Jaidul have both found work with a contractor who provides housekeeping staff to the offices of US and Indian tech companies. Jaidul earns $240 a month, and his wife about $200—compared to the $60 he’d made from agriculture. Raju’s new private school fees cost a third of their income, and the family saves nothing. But, for the first time in years, in their new home—a 10 feet by 12 feet (3 meters by 3.6 meters) room with a tin roof and sporadic electricity—they feel optimistic

about the future.

“I like that I can work here. Back home, there was no work for women. ... I am happy,” said Pinjira.

For now, Raju dreams of doing well at his new school. He has ben efitted from a year-long program run by Samridhi Trust, a nonprofit that helps migrant children get back to the education system by teaching them basic Kannada, English, Hindi and math. Teachers test students every two months to help them transition into staterun free schools that instruct in Kannada—or in some cases, like Raju’s, English.

“My favorite subject is math,” said the 12-year-old, adding that his favorite time of day was the bus ride to school. “I love looking out of the window and seeing the city and all the big buildings.”

His sister, who wants to be a lawyer someday, has picked up Kannada faster than he has and chats happily with new classmates at her nearby government school, switching easily between her na tive and adopted tongues.

Their parents work alternate shifts to ensure somebody is home in case of emergencies. “They are young and can get into trouble, or get hurt,” said Khatun. “And we don’t know anybody here.”

Their anxiety isn’t unique. Many parents worry about safety

when they send their children to schools in unfamiliar neighbor hoods, said Puja, who uses only one name and coordinates Samri dhi Trust’s after-school program.

Children of migrants often tend to drop out, finding classes too hard. But Raju considers his school’s “discipline” refreshing after chaotic life in a poor neigh borhood.

His mother misses her family and speaks with them over the phone. “Maybe I’ll go back during their holidays,” she said.

Her husband does not want to return to Assam—where floods killed nine people in their district this year—until the children are in a higher grade. “Maybe in 2024 or 2025,” he said.

Every afternoon, the father waits patiently, scanning the street for Raju’s yellow bus. When home, the boy regales him with sto ries about his new school. He says he now knows how to say “water” in Kannada, but that none of his new classmates know what a “real flood” looks like.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of an ongoing series exploring the lives of people around the world who have been forced to move because of rising seas, drought, searing tem peratures and other things caused or exacerbated by climate change.

WHILE world leaders from wealthy countries acknowledge the “existential threat” of climate change, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano is racing to save his tiny island nation from drowning by raising it four to five meters above sea level through land reclamation.

PRESIDENT of the Marshall Islands David Kabua addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, at UN headquarters, Tuesday, September 20, 2022. AP/JASON DECROW

• Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Nutrio microbial-based fertilizer may be the answer to PHL’s sugar woes

THE price of local sugar is ris ing due to lack of supply. At the same time, the price of inorganic fertilizer continues to rise.

This new microbial-based fertil izer could provide a new landscape for sugarcane farmers and local sugar production. It could help increase the local production of sugarcane and the supply of sugar in the local market.

With 50 percent use of the fer tilizer, the reduction on the use of inorganic fertilizer could lower the production cost in sugarcane.

Nutrio, a microbial-based foliar fertilizer, a patented and registered product, can help farmers increase yield and save costs amid the rising prices of chemical fertilizers in the market.

The product is ready for roll-out to sugarcane farmers in the country, said the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Re sources Research and Development (DOST-PCAARRD).

Dr. Virginia M. Padilla, researcherinventor of Nutrio, announced that the product is now fully registered at the Fertilizer and Pesticide Author ity of the Department of Agriculture (DA-FPA) with Product Registration 6445 issued in July 2022.

This means that the quality of Nutrio conforms with the prescribed standards and can be available to the market for sale, distribution and use.

Actually Nutrio can also be used for rice, corn, eggplant and other

short-duration crops.

Fullmight Agricultural Corp. (FAC) registered Nutrio biofertilizer for use in producing annual and biennial

PhilAAST discusses food security, governance, entrep in 71st confab

AFTER celebrating its Platinum Jubilee last year, the Philippine Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology (PhilAAST), through its President and DOST Assistant Secretary Diana L. Ignacio, led the Philippines’ super body of researchers in the conduct of the hybrid annual convention held on 9 September 2022.

Ignacio said the 71st Annual Convention, which was keynoted by newly sworn in Science Secretary Renato U. Solidum Jr., provided a “platform for discussion and interaction on food security, governance, and entrepreneurship as its three pivotal sustainable development programs for the next few years.”

She added, “It serves as a venue, as well for the presentation of the most recent findings and developments related to the impact of the changing environment on current issues, such as energy sustainability.”

PhilAAST aims to promote and strengthen the scientific and technological collaboration among its member- and nonmember researchers, currently numbering 114,900.

The 71st Convention brought together great minds from the science and industry sectors.

Of special note are the presenters of the Entrepreneurship Program who are also authors of the book “Science for Success.”

The presenters and authors included former science secretary Prof. Fortunato T. de La Peña; Robina Y. Gokongwei-Pe, president and CEO at Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc.; and Maria Ester Follosco-Bautista, president

and treasurer of the CL Follosco Group of Companies.

The book is the second of three books on entrepreneurship launched by DOST under the “Science for the People Series,” which also included the books “Science for Scale” and “Science for Social Change.”

The books highlight the triumphs of small and medium enterprises that were achieved through the help of technological innovation and creative thinking.

In the synthesis of webinars part of the convention, PhilAAST Secretary and DOST-ITDI Director Annabelle V. Briones presented the essence of the Energy Series Webinar, which she said: “Called for the Philippines to accelerate energy transitions through a system-of-systems approach that will consider technology, policy, social, and market systems.”

During the celebration, the winners of various awards were announced, namely: the Dr. Gregorio Y. Zara Awards for Basic Research; Dr. Gregorio Y. Zara Awards for Applied Research; Dr. Paulo C. Campos Award for Health Research; David M. Consunji Award for Engineering Research; LEADS Agri Award for Agricultural Research; Dr. Ceferino L. Follosco Award for Product and Process Innovation; Dr. Michael R. Purvis Award for Sustainability Research; and Dr. Lourdes E. Campos Award for Public Health.

Established in 1951, PhilAAST, formerly PhilAAST, is an association of scientists and technologists in the country that aims to promote science’s value in the community.

AMGuevarra/S&T Media Services

industrial crops, such as sugarcane.

FAC is the spin-off company grant ed by the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) with the license to

manufacture and distribute Nutrio. It was founded by the family of Padilla upon her retirement as a University Researcher at the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnol ogy (BIOTECH) of UPLB.

Padilla added that the Patent for In vention 1-2017000199 filed by UPLB has been granted by the Bureau of Patents of the Intellectual Property of the Philippines in April 2021.

The patent grants the owner the exclusive right throughout the Phil ippines to make, use, sell or import Nutrio biofertilizer.

Nutrio is a significant output of a series of research and development activities undertaken for five and a

half years by UPLB-BIOTECH through the funding support of the DOSTPCAARRD.

The R&D activities involved the DOST-supported project on develop ment and field testing of endophytic bacterial inoculant as new biofertil izer for sugarcane and eggplant, and the DOST-PCAARRD-funded proj ect on toxicological study and pilot testing of Nutrio biofertilizer for improved production of sugarcane in Regions III and VI.

Currently, DOST-PCAARRD has been supporting the project spinoff commercialization of Nutrio for improved production of sugarcane and other agricultural crops in

the Philippines through the DOST start-up grant funds.

General results in pilot test areas and technology demonstration areas in Regions III and VI showed that Nu trio improved cane and sugar yields by up to more than 30 percent, when used in combination with one half of the rates of chemical fertilizers used by farmers.

Also, instead of applying 100 per cent of the recommended rates of the Sugarcane Regulatory Adminis tration, a farmer can apply only 50 percemt of it without sacrificing the yield outcomes.

With this application rate, a farmer can generate a 50 percent savings from the cost of chemical fertilizer input.

A hectare requires 20 packets, or 2 kilograms (kg) of Nutrio powder. The first 1kg of Nutrio is diluted in 1,000 liters (L) of water and sprayed onto the leaves of the plants two months after planting sugarcane.

The second 1kg is also diluted in 1,000L of water and sprayed four months after planting.

With DOST’s support for commer cialization, the company is expected to meet foreseen demands in the market.

Individual farmers, small and large sugarcane plantation areas in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao will benefit from this science-based technology intervention.

The product is available for sale by order at FAC based in Los Baños, Laguna. Ofelia Floresca-Domingo/S&T Media Services

PHL’s Cloma, Villanueva advance as finalists in Breakthrough challenge

By Lyn B. Resurreccion

FILIPINO high-school students

Kyle Christian Cloma and Jaz Villanueva have advanced as finalists in the global Breakthrough Junior Challenge, joining with 14 oth ers, with Cloma topping the Popular Vote in Asia.

Cloma and Villanueva advanced to the finalists level from among the 32 semifinalists after the Popular Vote that ended on September 20. This was the first time that two Filipinos qualified as finalists.

Cloma, 16, from Mandaluyong City, has his entry titled „Negative curvature“ using the mathematical “Theorema Egregium,” Latin for “Remarkable theorem.”

The theorem was a result of dif ferential geometry that was proved by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1827. The Gaussian theory shows that the cur vature of a surface does not change even if one bends the surface without stretching it.

Villanueva’s video focuses on Einstein’s Theory of General Rela tivity. She said it is a continuation of the idea that theories will keep developing with us.

The others finalists are Popular Vote topnotcher Ema Donev, 14, of Cro atia; Minatullah Ammar Abduljabbar,

The winner will be announced in November.

The winner of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge will be awarded a $250,000 college scholarship. The science teacher who inspired the winning student will win a $50,000 prize. The winner’s school will also receive a state-of-the-art science lab valued at $100,000, the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.

The 2017 Challenge winner was Hillary Diane Andales, 18, from the Philippine Science High School-East ern Visayas Campus. Her entry topic was “Relativity and the equivalence of reference frames.”

The students created 90-second videos on wide-ranging topics, from quantum entanglement to time trav el to adaptive immunity and T-Cell therapies.

The contest is designed to inspire fresh, creative explanations of funda mental concepts in the life sciences, physics and mathematics.

The videos were judged according to the following criteria: engagement, illumination, creativity and difficulty.

For the eighth year, students ages 13 to 18 were invited to create origi

nal videos that illustrated a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or mathematics.

Since its launch, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge has reached 202 countries with more than 80,000 registrants. The 2022 instalment of the global competition attracted more than 2,400 applicants.

The Breakthrough Junior Chal lenge, founded by Yuri and Julia Mil ner, aims to develop and demonstrate young people’s knowledge of science and scientific principles; generate excitement in these fields; support science, technology, engineering and mathematics career choices; and en gage the imagination and interest of the public-at-large in key concepts of fundamental science.

DOST’s STARLib augmented reality app launched

THE Department of Science and Technology’s Science and Technology Information Insti tute (DOST-STII) launched recently its STARLib, or the Science and Tech nology Augmented Reality Library App.

At the same time, the Dr. Geminiano T. de Ocampo collection was turned over to the DOST-STII Library.

Dr. Geminiano T. de Ocampo is a National Scientist, a leader and pioneer in modern Philippine ophthalmology.

STARLib is a mobile app that adds a new creative dimension to

the experience of DOST-STII library clients and visitors. The app serves as a personal guide and map for li brary clients and visitors navigating DOST-STII, which is especially use ful for first-time DOST-STII clients.

Augmented reality is a technology that adds computer-generated en hancements into a real environment in real time to make the experience more meaningful by interaction. It blends digital components into the real world to enhance each other.

SUGARCANE plants are applied with Nutrio biofertilizer. Technology developer Dr. Virginia M. Padilla (right), joins a farmer-cooperator from Pando, Concepcion Tarlac, during the field demonstration trials. PHOTO FROM DR. VM PADILLA

THE improved packaging and labeling of Nutrio biofertilizer in packets of 100-gram each, and the certificates of its patent and product registration. FAC PHOTO

17, Iraq; Armani Adams, 17, Trinidad and Tobago; Sahand Adibnia, 18, USA; Abel Dagne, 18, USA; Elias Fariz, 16, USA; Yunseo Ha, 15, USA; Noor Abbas Haideri, 16, USA; Alex Kader, 16, USA; Sean Lewis, 18, USA; Weber Lin, 17, USA; Aryan Malhotra, 15, USA; Vas anth Narayanan, 18, USA; Milo Shan, 17, South Africa.

FORMER Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña (left), also a former PhilAAST president, and current PhilAAST President Diane L. Ignacio, also the DOST assistant secretary, are with PhilAAST awardees and new members Dr. Imelda Ongo, Dr. Rilee Butch Cervera, Dr. Mario Aurelio, Dr. Nilo Bugtai. PHILAAST FACEBOOK PAGE

FILIPINO students—Kyle Christian Cloma (left photo) from Mandaluyong City, and Jaz Villanueva from Las Piñas City—advance to the finalists level in the current global Breakthrough Junior Challenge. They advance after the Popular Vote that ended on September 20. Cloma topped the Popular Vote in Asia. BUSINESSMIRROR SCREENSHOTS FROM VIDEOS

DOST-STII IRAD Chief Allan C. Taule (from left) , former Science secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña, Science Secretary Renato U. Solidum Jr., Taguig City Mayor Maria Laarni Cayetano, DOST-STII Director Richard P. Burgos, and DOST-STII Chief of Finance and Admin Division Arlene Centero lead the launching of STARLib app.  NONOY LACZA

Faith

Pope: Christians cannot be indifferent to corruption

while Christians can sometimes be “naive, not knowing how to take the initiative to find ways out of difficulties.”

Editor: Lyn Resurreccion

Cardinal Tagle to speak at Manila conference on FABC’s 50 years

CARDINAL Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangeliza tion, will be among the speakers at the “Celebrate Asia in Manila,” a conference to mark the 50th anni versary of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC).

(CBCP) will also deliver a talk.

The conference will end with a Mass to be presided over by Cardinal Jose Advincula, the archbishop of Manila.

Speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace, the pope said in his Angelus address on Septem ber 18 that people can “start to complain and play the victim” in times of crisis, even in the Church.

“Brothers and sisters…in our world today there are stories of corruption like in the Gospel: dis honest conduct, unfair policies, selfishness that dominates the choices of individuals and institu tions, and many other murky situ ations. But we Christians are not allowed to become discouraged, or worse, to let go of things, remain ing indifferent,” Pope Francis said.

“On the contrary, we are called to be creative in doing good with prudence and the cleverness of

the Gospel, using the goods of this world, not only material but all the gifts we have received from the Lord, not to enrich ourselves, but to generate fraternal love and social fellowship,” he said.

The pope’s comments on cor ruption were inspired by a parable in Sunday’s Gospel in the Church’s liturgical calendar, Luke 16:1-13 a reading that the pope admitted can be difficult to understand at first glance.

He said: “Jesus tells the story about corruption: a dishonest manager who steals and then af ter being discovered by his mas ter, acts shrewdly to get out of the situation. We ask ourselves: what is this shrewdness about … and

what does Jesus want to tell us?”

“Jesus uses this story as a way to put before us a provocation when He says: ‘The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light,’” the pope said.

Pope Francis commented that those who live by “certain worldly standards” today seem to know how to get by even when in trouble,

“I am thinking of times of personal or social crisis, but also Church crisis: sometimes we give in to discouragement or we start to complain and play the victim. Instead, Jesus says we can also be clever according to the Gospel, awake and alert to discern reality and be creative to find good solu tions for us and others,” he said.

Pope Francis encouraged people at St. Peter’s Square to remember: “To inherit eternal life then, there is no need to accumulate goods in this world, but what matters is the charity we have lived in our frater nal relationships.”

The pope prayed for people in Ukraine and all victims of war. He said that he was sorry to hear about the fighting in Armenia on the border with Azerbaijan, and is praying for a ceasefire.

“Let us pray to the Blessed Vir gin Mary so that she may help us be like herself, poor in spirit and rich in mutual love,” he said. Courtney Mares/Catholic News Agency via CBCP News

Westminster Abbey witnessed a millennium of British history

THE royal funeral for Queen Elizabeth II at Westmin ster Abbey on September 19 was a public ceremony on a truly global scale. In the days before, long snaking queues of mourners waited to file past her coffin as it lay in state in West minster Hall.

Hundreds of world’s leaders descended upon London for the event while international media covered the pageantry with seem ingly endless interest.

After the funeral at West minster, the late queen’s body was taken to Windsor Castle for burial.

Yet Elizabeth’s death added a remarkable new chapter to the long relationship between Eng lish sovereigns and the complex of buildings at Westminster that form the seat of the modern Brit ish state.

The sight of scores of sailors pulling the queen’s coffin on a gun carriage and the distinctly Tudor-style red uniforms of the Yeomen of the Guard were among the many details of the royal fu neral that evoked powerful ties to Britain’s imperial past.

However, many aspects—in cluding the sailors—are by no means ancient. Despite their emphasis upon tradition, royal ceremonies have always been somewhat fluid and reflective of the politics of their day.

As a historian on early mod ern England, I am conscious that the public rituals of monarchy in the 16th and 17th centuries sought to project reassuring el ements of continuity amid dra matic changes.

Modern royal weddings and funerals at Westminster Abbey have been similarly adapted to contemporary needs, and are largely products of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Westminster Palace, dominat ing the skyline with Big Ben and the Victoria Tower, is of a simi lar vintage.

Built to replace the ramshack le old medieval and Tudor West minster Palace which burned down in 1834, the current West minster Palace complex was de signed to provide a suitably his toric-looking new home for the Houses of Parliament.

However, nearby Westminster Abbey and Westminster Hall, the major surviving section of the old structure, hark back to England’s medieval past. They offer genuinely ancient settings

Projecting power

WESTMINSTER Abbey became a church of royal importance in the 1040s, when Edward the Confes sor, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, replaced an older monastery dedicated with a new construction of suitably royal proportions.

The project was so important that Edward and his new royal ab bey were featured in the famous, 70 meter-long Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Norman con quest of England in 1066 after Edward’s death.

Edward himself was buried within the Abbey, and canonized as a saint a century later, turn ing his tomb into a royal shrine.

Westminster also served as the venue for the coronation of Edward’s eventual successor on the throne, William the Con queror.

William’s crowning began a tradition of coronations in the abbey that will presumably con tinue with Charles III some time in 2023.

Edward’s Westminster Abbey was replaced in the mid-1200s with the modern-day building, although the two great towers that now loom above the abbey were not added until the early 18th century.

This rebuilding was carried out during the long and tumul tuous reign of Henry III, whose father, King John, had famously been forced to agree to the Magna Carta, which put limits on the monarch’s power.

Henry endeavored to rebuild

Henry presented its monks with a crystalline vial of what was supposedly Christ’s own blood, brought from Jerusalem by Crusaders.

Matthew Paris, a monk and chronicler in the 13th century, describes how the king himself carried the dubious relic on foot from St. Paul’s Cathedral in Lon don to Westminster Abbey on the feast day of St. Edward the Confessor in 1247.

A more enduring addition by Henry III was the so-called Cos mati Pavement, a mosaic installed by craftsmen from Rome in 1268 to 1269.

Laid in front of the abbey’s high altar, the pavement ensured that subsequent kings of Eng land would not only be crowned while seated upon the throne of Edward the Confessor, but also within a 24-foot square artwork, which symbolically represents the cosmos and represented the new sovereign as the motivating force of the universe.

King, queens and poets WESTMINSTER Abbey has also been a frequent venue for royal funerals and burials.

Since the early 19th century, almost all British sovereigns have been buried at Windsor Castle, including Elizabeth II. However, most earlier kings and queens were interred in tombs and vaults at Westminster.

Perhaps the most spectacular contribution to this tradition was the new chapel at the eastern end of the abbey, which was built in the early 1500s by Henry VII.

The first of the Tudor sover eigns, he had a tenuous dynastic claim on the throne and, by the end of his life, a heavy burden of tyranny and illegality—and the chapel was a way to atone.

It became the final resting place for most of the Tudors, ar guably England’s most famous and glamorous royal dynasty.

Westminster Abbey was never solely a burial place for monarchs and their families, however. For centuries, aristocrats and fa vored commoners have also been interred there.

One part of the abbey is known as Poets’ Corner, where a selec tion of illustrious literary figures have been buried, beginning with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales,” in 1400.

In 1599, he was joined by Ed mund Spenser, whose allegori cal poem “The Faerie Queene” included elaborate praise for Elizabeth I.

Spenser’s coffin was ac companied to his grave by the leading poets of Elizabethan London, including William Shakespeare.

When Shakespeare himself died in 1616, he was buried at his hometown church in Stratfordupon-Avon, but a memorial in his honor was installed at Westmin ster Abbey in 1740.

Other illustrious individu als interred there include sci entists Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking.

Over the centuries, West minster Abbey has endured a variety of dangers: everything from 17th-century Puritans try ing to destroy religious images inside, which they considered idolatrous, to a homemade nail bomb planted by a suffragette in 1914, to the bombs dropped by the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War.

Westminster has done more than recover; the church has effectively become a kind of national cathedral. It offers a deep sense of historical continu ity, which reassuringly obscures the relative modernity of many public rituals of monarchy—the same ones millions of people around the world have watched play out this past week. Paul Ham mer, University of Colorado Boulder/The Conversation (CC) via AP

An initiative of the Pontifical Mission Societies-Philippines and the Manila archdiocese’s Of fice for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, the event will be held at the Manila Cathedral on September 26.

Organizers said the half-day conference aims “to highlight and deepen the reflections and real izations” of the recent diocesan and national synodal consulta tions in the country.

“It also aspires to expand the experience of Synodality by joining the ‘Church in Asia’ in building awareness, interest and sense of participation as it celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the FABC,” they said.

Besides Tagle, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan and president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines

The FABC was established in 1970, when Asian bishops came together for the first time in Ma nila for Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Philippines.

Activities to mark the fed eration’s 50th anniversary were originally scheduled in 2020 but the Covid-19 pandemic hampered all the plans.

To commemorate the mile stone, the Asian bishops will gather in a general conference in Thailand’s capital of Bangkok from October 12 to 30.

David will lead the Philippine delegation along with other mem bers of the bishops’ Permanent Council and heads of some CBCP commissions.

Pope Francis has earlier desig nated Tagle as his special envoy to the largest gathering of Asian bishops. The cardinal will offici ate the assembly’s closing Mass at the Assumption Cathedral on October 30. CBCP News

Belgian bishops propose prayer for gay couples, not marriage

ROME—Belgian bishops last week published a proposed text for a prayer liturgy for same-sex couples that includes prayers, Scriptural readings and expressions of commitment, de spite a 2021 Vatican directive barring church blessings for gay couples.

The Flemish-speaking bish ops stressed that the “moment of prayer” was by no means akin to a sacramental marriage, which Catholic doctrine says is a lifelong union between a man and woman.

Rather, they said their proposal is part of the Belgian church’s ef fort to be more responsive to its gay members and to “create a cli mate of respect, recognition and integration.”

They cited Pope Francis’s call for the church to be more welcom ing to gays.

The publication of the text, first reported by the Dutch news paper Nederlands Dagblad, marks the latest salvo in efforts by more progressive churches to extend greater outreach to gays, led by the German church and its controver sial “synodal” process of dialogue with the German laity.

Catholic teaching holds that gays must be treated with dignity and respect, but that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Last year, the Vatican’s doctrine office decreed that the church can not bless same-sex unions “be cause God cannot bless sin.”

The proposed Belgian ceremony includes an “opening word, open ing prayer, Scripture reading” as well as the texts of two proposed prayers—one committing both parties to themselves and the other, a prayer of the community for the couple—and ends with the “Our Father prayer, a closing

prayer and a blessing.”

Tommy Scholtes, spokesman for Belgium’s bishops conference, denied the proposal amounted to a “blessing” much less a sacramen tal marriage.

He said it was part of the Bel gian bishops’ decision to create contact people within each diocese in charge of pastoral care for gays.

With such “point of contacts” created, Scholtes said there will be “an opportunity for homosex ual couples to pray together, and others will also be able to pray for them.”

“But there is no blessing, no ex change of consent, there is noth ing like a marriage,” he told The Associated Press.

The text of the proposed com mitment prayer suggests that the couple thank God for letting them find each other and pledge to be there for one another throughout their lives.

The community then responds with a prayer of its own, praying for God’s grace to “make their com mitment to each other strong and faithful.”

The Rev. James Martin, who has championed greater church outreach to the LGBTQ commu nity, said the Flemish-language text suggests a blessing.

Given a same-sex couple in the prayer, “then you are asking God to be with same-sex partners not only in the home they share, but in what the prayer calls their ‘com mitment,’” Martin said.

“So, unless I’m missing some thing in the translation, while the prayer is not a formal ratification of same-sex marriage, when you invoke the mercy of God on anyone, you are asking God to bless them.” Nicole Winfield and Samuel Petrequin/Associated Press

VATICAN—Pope Francis recently said that Christians should not become discouraged or remain indifferent to stories of corruption, but instead “be creative in doing good with prudence.”

for the modern rituals of monar chy, often televised for a global audience.

authority in response to royals’ troubles during his father’s reign, not to mention his own. Part of this plan involved trying to bring Westminster Abbey even greater fame, especially since he regard ed Edward the Confessor as his patron saint.

THIS photo was taken during the wedding ceremony of Jeffpw (right) and his partner in Amsterdam on January 1, 2001. The ceremony was held within the first month that marriage was opened to same-sex couples in the Netherlands. WIKIPEDIA CC BY 3.0

POPE Francis attends the Congress at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation of the 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, on September 15.

AP/ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO

THE coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard with the Imperial State Crown and the sovereign’s orb and sceptre, is carried out of Westminster Abbey after her State Funeral, in London, on September 19. King Charles III, Camilla, the Queen Consort and members of the Royal family follow behind. The queen, who died on September 8, at age 96, was buried at Windsor alongside her late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year. DANNY LAWSON/POOL PHOTO VIA AP

Asean Champions of Biodiversity

Biodiversity Sunday

PHL’s Tubbataha Reefs, 4 others eyed for Asean marine protected area management project

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

FIVE sites in the Philippines, including the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP), have been named among candidates for a marine protected area (MPA) management project in the Asean to be implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The TRNP, a popular diving destination in Palawan, is a Unit ed Nations Educational, Scien tific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site, an Asean Heritage Park, and a known sea bird sanctuary.

Besides TRNP in the Sulu-Cele bes Sea, the four MPA candidates in the Philippines are the TicaoBurias Pass Protected Seascape in Masbate province, Bicol region;

Agoo Damortis Protected Land scape and Seascape in La Union province; Bani-Bolinao-BurgosInfanta, Dasol-Agno MPA Network in Pangasinan province; and Tur tle Islands Wildlife Sanctuary in Tawi-Tawi province in Mindanao.

The Department of Environ ment and Natural Resources (DENR) recently convened the stakeholders of the project titled, “Effectively Managing Networks

of Marine Protected Areas in Large Marine Ecosystems [LME] in Asean [Enmaps],” to gather and consolidate data as it is scheduled to submit its project proposal to Global Environment Facility (GEF) by March 2023.

The sites being chosen for Enmaps are biodiversity-rich sites that also face threats of

environmental degradation.

Beneficiaries of the project are Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Other Asean LME sites under the project are the Gulf of Thai land, Andaman Sea of the Bay of Bengal, the Indonesian Seas and the South China Sea.

The Asean Enmaps project will

Manila Water reaffirms commitment to protect water bodies during Intl Coastal Cleanup Day

MANILA Water joined simultaneous cleanup activities in different parts of Metro Manila last September 17 in celebration of this year’s International Coastal Cleanup Day and in observance of the National Cleanup Month.

Together with volunteers from the public and private sectors, employees from Manila Water Foundation (MWF), Wastewater Operations, Advocacy and Research Department, Project Management Group, Enterprise Regulatory Affairs Group and 503rd reservists of the Company cleared waste and debris along the coast of Manila Bay and Manila Baywalk Dolomite Beach in a nationwide cleanup drive organized by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Manila water said in a news release.

According to DENR, the event was attended by 4,000 volunteers and a total of 3,500 sacks of garbage was collected.

In Taguig City, army reservists from Manila Water joined the cleanup drive at Pinagsama Creek.

The company brought water tankers and provided water stations for volunteers,

with water safe for drinking and handwashing.

MWF, in partnership with Unicef, distributed bottles of alcohol for the attendees.

Protection of water bodies has always been one of the key initiatives of Manila Water’s environmental advocacy, notably “Toka Toka,” the first and only environmental

movement in the country that promotes proper management of wastewater in every household as an important share (or “toka”) in reviving rivers and waterways.

Manila Water, in partnership with local and national government agencies and barangays, conduct tree planting, waterway cleanups

and desludging caravans.

“This day is a call to action for every one of us to take part in keeping our coasts and beaches clean. We remain steadfast in our commitment to help in the rehabilitation of Manila Bay,” said Jennifer de los Santos, head of Manila Water’s Advocacy and Research Department.

“We continue to pitch our part with the able help of our partners—the DENR, DENRNational Capital Region, Laguna Lake Development Authority, Local Water Utilities Administration and Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System— to whom we extend our sincerest gratitude,” de los Santos added.

The company also joined the series of synchronized waterway cleanup drive organized by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority in partnership with different barangays in Metro Manila.

Last September 10, Manila Water volunteer employees assisted in cleaning the Maytunas Creek in Barangay Addition Hills in San Juan City, and Buhangin Creek in Barangay Plainview, Mandaluyong City.

Maynilad, TV5, PHL Navy join Intl Coastal Cleanup

MAYNILAD Water Servic es Inc. (Maynilad) par ticipated in the 37th In ternational Coastal Cleanup (ICC) drive, which was held simultane ously in different locations within the National Capital Region.

The West Zone water conces sionaire rallied volunteers from among its employees as well as from TV5 Network Inc., Cignal TV, Alagang Kapatid Foundation and the Philippine Navy’s Naval Reserve Command to assist in the

cleanup drive, Maynilad said in a news release.

They were able to collect around 1,000 kilograms of trash from the Manila Bay coastline near the grounds of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

The company also provided a water station and water tanker during the event.

Since 2010, Maynilad has been supporting the cleanup drive, which is spearheaded by the De partment of Environment and

Natural Resources.

Other cleanup sites this year include Tanza Marine Park and Barangay Tangos North and South rivers in Navotas; San Francisco River in Quezon City; Baseco, Dolomite Beach and SM by the Bay in Manila; and the Las PiñasParañaque Wetland Park.

The International Coastal Cleanup is the world’s largest vol unteer effort to clean the ocean.

In 2003, Presidential Proclama tion 470 was issued declaring

the third Saturday of September of every year as ICC Day in the Philippines.

Every year, volunteers remove tons of trash from coastlines, riv ers and lakes.

The cleanup drive also aims to raise environmental aware ness and provide information that will guide and influence governments, corporations and industries in developing smart solutions to the marine debris problem.

be executed by the Asean Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) in collabora tion with the DENR’s Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB).

It includes national technical working groups from the Foreign Assisted and Special Projects Ser vices of the DENR; the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources; National Fisheries Research and Develop ment Institute; and the intergovern mental organization Partnerships in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia.

The coastal and marine biodi versity of Asean are known to have 20 percent of the world’s seagrass beds, a third of the world’s man grove forests with 45 to 75 tree species, and a third of the world’s coral reefs with more than 75 percent of species of coral and 40 percent of fish species.

The GEF, multilateral environ mental fund, has been concerned that the world’s oceans have been reaching their ecological carrying capacity, a limit to their ability to produce fish for food.

“More than 75 percent of world fish stocks are already fully ex ploited, overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion,” ac cording to the GEF web site.

Enmaps aims to develop and improve the management of net works of MPAs and marine corri dors within selected LMEs in the Asean region.

It likewise aims to conserve globally significant biodiversity and support for sustainable fisher ies for people’s livelihood and oth er ecosystem goods and services.

GEF has supported sustainable governance of 23 LMEs involving the collaborative work of many countries. The world’s oceans is known to be divided into 66 LMEs.

This area covers 7.7 million square kilometers with 173,000 km of coastline.

LMEs are huge marine areas extending beyond boundaries among countries which is why col laboration is important. Enmaps has a cost of $77.596 million. Of this, $12.548 million consists of GEF grants.

14 dead sperm whales found beached on Australian island

CANBERRA, Australia—Aus tralian wildlife authorities are investigating the deaths of 14 young sperm whales that were found beached on an island off of the south eastern coast, officials said.

The whales were discovered on Monday afternoon on King Island, part of the state of Tasmania in the Bass Strait between Melbourne and Tasmania’s northern coast, the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment said in a statement.

A government Marine Conserva tion Program team traveled to the island on Tuesday and was conduct ing necropsies of the whales to try to determine their cause of death.

Photos distributed by the depart ment showed whales lying on their sides in shallow water on the rocky shore of the island.

Authorities were planning to con duct an aerial survey to determine whether there were any other whales in the area.

The department said it is not un usual for sperm whales to be sight ed in Tasmania and the area where they were discovered on the beach was within their normal range and habitat.

“While further inquiries are yet to be carried out, it is possible the whales were part of the same bach elor pod—a group of younger male sperm whales associating together after leaving the maternal group,” the Environment Department said.

In the meantime, surfers and swim mers were being warned to avoid the immediate area in case the corpses of the whales attract sharks to the waters nearby.

Two years ago, about 470 longfinned pilot whales were found beached on sandbars off of Tasmania’s west coast in the largest mass-strand ing on record in Australia.

After a weeklong effort, 111 of those whales were rescued but the rest died. AP

A BATTERY of barracuda taken in Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park JUN V LAO/WIKIPEDIA CC BY-SA 4.0

Tasmania,

MANILA Water employees team up with volunteers from various public and private organizations and institutions in cleaning up Manila Bay during the International Coastal Cleanup Day, as the company recognizes the importance of coastal clean-up in keeping the waterways clean and pollution-free.

FiberXers flash new hoops brand in Comm’s Cup

THE Converge FiberXers have showcased undying grit and a fighting spirit that echo their battlecry #NeverBackDown.

B eing the newest team in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), Converge CEO and co-founder Dennis Anthony Uy has made the goal clear from the start: “We are here to compete to win,” he said.

W ith their eyes locked in on the prize, the Converge FiberXers exceeded expectations and concluded their very first conference by impressively landing a spot in the playoffs in the 2022 Philippine Cup.

The young team has stayed true to Uy’s vision in embodying the same drive and passion that has also turned the young company to one of the top players in the telecommunications industry.

Converge is now present nation wide, and our goal is to become a house hold name,” Uy said. “As we provide our consumers with top-notch broadband connectivity, we also want to showcase how much we value sportsmanship and competitiveness, and joining the PBA gives us the ability to do just that—to show off our brand.”

I n its preparations for the Commissioner’s Cup, the FiberXers have gone all out in shaping up and training to reach even greater heights this time around.

The team has since made significant additions and changes in its coaching staff and lineup and Uy said that he’s excited to see how it all manifests on the court.

Right now, our team’s chemistry is looking good,” Uy said. “Coach Aldin [Ayo] really is a tough coach. He is very detailed, and I trust in his system. The boys have been training hard nearly everyday.”

Uy stressed that in the Commissioner’s Cup, the FiberXers intend to show a new brand of basketball: faster, tougher and more exciting.

LONDON— Novak Djokovic is still awaiting word on whether he will be allowed to return to the Australian Open in January after missing the tournament this year because he is not vaccinated against Covid-19.

It’s really not in my hands right now,” Djokovic said Thursday at the Laver Cup. “So I’m hoping I will get some positive news.”

D jokovic is a 21-time Grand Slam singles champion—a total that stands second among men, behind only Rafael Nadal’s 22 and one ahead of Roger Federer’s 20—and he has won a record nine of those trophies at Melbourne Park.

But he was deported from Australia last January after a 10-day legal saga that culminated with his visa being revoked; he originally was granted an exemption to strict vaccination rules by two medical panels and Tennis Australia in order to play in the Australian Open.

Australia has since changed its border rules—since July 6, incoming travelers no longer have to have provide proof of Covid-19 vaccinations, or even provide a negative Covid test.

The Australian Border Force said after Djokovic’s visa was canceled that “a person whose visa has been canceled may be subject to a three-year exclu sion period that prevents the grant of a further temporary visa.”

However, it added: “The exclusion period will be considered as part of any new visa application and can be waived in certain circumstances, noting each case is assessed on its own merits.”

A Tennis Australia spokesperson said Friday that any decision on Djokovic’s visa for the January 16 to 29, 2023, tournament was not its decision to make.

The 35-year-old Djokovic, who is from Serbia, has insisted he will not get the shots against the illness

Sports

BusinessMirror

Ouch! Mets set MLB record with 106 hit batters in season

MILWAUKEE—The New York Mets set a major league record with 106 hit batters this season when Mark Canha was plunked twice and Luis Guillorme once in Wednesday’s 6-0 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Ne w York has been hit one more time than the 2021 Cincinnati Reds.

“ It’s like a broken record at this point,” Canha said. “We just kind of roll our eyes when it happens now and move on. There’s nothing you can do except capitalize on it, make it hurt, and it’s all you can do. Yeah, sure, we’re frustrated. It’s like not a great thing to happen to your team.”

Mets manager Buck Showalter has repeatedly complained about the amount of times his players have been hit. He signaled for the ball after Guillorme was struck on the left foot by Jake Cousins’ slider in the ninth.

Associated Press. “I couldn’t believe it had happened. It had been 32 at-bats and I was in my 33rd at-bat, got a pitch to hit and fortunately I got my first hit.”

It came at last on June 28, 2013, a line-drive homer off Cardinals reliever Joe Kelly to end the longest hitless streak to begin a career by a non-pitcher since Chris Carter began 0-for-33 with the A’s in 2010.

Even after all that, Vogt eventually turned into a two-time All-Star and earned his own signature chant of “I believe in Stephen Vogt!” from fans who appreciated his path and struggles.

The 37-year-old journeyman played for Tampa Bay, Oakland, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Arizona and Atlanta, joining the A’s for a second stint this year. He will be honored at Oakland’s final game of the season, at home October 5 against the Angels.

Vogter is one of the most inspiring players I’ve ever managed,” said former A’s manager Bob Melvin, now skipper in San Diego. “What he means to a clubhouse is immeasurable—two-time All-Star, beloved in Oakland. One of my all-time favorites. Definitely has a future in managing.”

NO VAX NOVAK’S AUSTRALIAN OPEN HOPE GETS BOOST

caused by the coronavirus, even if it means missing tennis events.

He was not able to enter two of this season’s four Grand Slam tournaments, including the US Open that ended this month. The United States and Canada currently bar entry to foreign citizens who have not received Covid-19 vaccines, and so he also missed four other events in North America in 2022.

D jokovic was able to get into France, losing to Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals at the French Open in June, and England, winning the title at Wimbledon in July.

The Laver Cup, which begins Friday, is Djokovic’s first competition since Wimbledon.

“I don’t have any regrets. I mean, I do feel sad that I wasn’t able to play [at the US Open], but that was a decision that I made and I knew what the con sequences would be,” he said Thursday. “So I accepted them and that’s it.”

Djokovic has spent more weeks at No. 1 in the Association of Tennis Pro fessionals (ATP) rankings than anyone else, breaking Roger Federer’s record, and is No. 7 this week, in part because of a lack of activity and in part because there were no ranking points awarded to anyone at Wimbledon this year.

I’m not used to making, obviously in the last 15-20 years, longer breaks between the tournaments, but it is what it is,” Djokovic said. “That’s kind of the situation I was in. I’m just excited to be able to play here now—and most of the other indoor [tournaments] for the rest of the season.”

A former professional tennis playerturned-coach from Chile, meanwhile, received a lifetime ban from the sport Thursday for a record-high number of match-fixing offenses.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) said Sebastián Rivera was found guilty of 64 match-fixing offenses, “the highest number ever detected for a player by the ITIA or its

Liscano shines in Dapitan City

UNHERALDED Nathalie

Liscano stole the thunder from the big guns to rule the premier girls under-17 division of the recent National Youth and Schools Chess Championships in Dapitan City, Zamboanga del Norte.

L iscano, an unrated 16-year-old from Midsayap, Cotabato, scored 7.5 points out of a possible 10 on seven wins and a draw against three losses to claim the crown.

She will represent the country in international age group tournaments, including the Sixth Asean Youth Championships tentatively set November 4 to 13 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Liscano already clinched the title in the 10th and penultimate round after she beat Xhyllon Reganion that cushioned the impact of her final-round

defeat to top seed Jamelin Ruth Lim.

It was Liscano’s second title of the year after the Mindanao Ladies Open online tournament last March.

A ngela Joelle San Luis clinched second while Lim was third each finish ing with 7.0 points apiece the event bankrolled by Dapitan City Mayor Seth Frederick “Bullet” Jalosjos and sanc tioned by the National Chess Federa tion of the Philippines headed by Rep. Prospero “Butch” Pichay.

Jerish John Velardo topped the Open U17 section with 5.0 points in seven rounds. The other winners were John Cyrus Borce and April Joy Claros (U15), Christian Gian Karlo Arca and Kaye Lalaine Regidor (U13), Oshrie Jhames Reyes and Nika Juris Nicolas (U11) and Bince Rafael Operiano and Mary Janelle Tan (U9).

predecessor the Tennis Integrity Unit.”

R ivera, whose highest ATP ranking was 705, was also fined $250,000. He had been provisionally suspended in June while the charges were investigated, but he “failed to engage meaningfully with the disciplinary process,” the ITIA said.

Two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep, on the other hand, has undergone nose surgery to improve her breathing and will not play again until next year.

I n a post on Twitter on Thursday, the ninth-ranked Romanian wrote that she felt “completely exhausted” after her first-round loss to qualifier Daria Snigur at the US Open last month. She then decided to follow medical advice and have an operation to help her breathing issues that have affected her “for many years” and were getting worse.

Halep posted a picture in her tweet, showing her nose bandaged.

I felt it’s the right time to do it and also to do something for myself as a person,” she wrote. “That is why I did also the [a]esthetic part.”

In the long Twitter post, Halep said she was close to ending her tennis ca reer in February because she didn’t be lieve she could get back into the top 10. She said she rediscovered her passion for the sport after choosing to work with a new coach, Patrick Mouratoglou.

2022, you have been an interesting year full of everything!” wrote Halep, who won the French Open in 2018 and Wimbledon in 2019. “See you on court, 2023! I feel I still have a lot to do on a tennis court and still have some goals.” AP

CHESTER NEIL REYES, 17, ruled the Araneta City Chess Tournament held recently at the activity area of Ali Mall.

R eyes accumulated 7.0 points to win the open category and bring home P10,000. He bested 68 other participants, including 50-year-old Romeo Alcodia, who was named Best Senior Player.

A lekheine Nouri and Christian Arroyo placed second and third, respectively, with 6.0 points each. They bagged P5,000 and P3,000, respectively.

N arciso Gumila and Kevin Arquero completed the top five with 5.5 and 5 points, respectively, and received gift certificates from Pizza Hut.

C ompleting the top 10 all with 5.0 points each were Rommel Lucion, Phil Martin Casiguran, Richlieu Salcedo, Sherwin Tiu and

A sked what he planned to do with the ball, Showalter quipped, “it would be obscene to tell you” before adding: “I gave it to the hitting coaches. They can do with it what they want to.”

The Mets were banged up in other ways Wednesday, too. Mets center fielder Brandon Nimmo hurt his left quadriceps while stealing second base and left after the first inning. Left fielder Jeff McNeil banged up his right wrist against the chain-link fence in a failed attempt to catch Brosseau’s drive.

C anha was hit near the hip in the third and the ribs in the fifth. He has been hit a big league-high 24 times this year and tied Seattle’s Ty France for last year’s high with 27.

I’m closer to the plate and I don’t move,” Canha said. “We have a lot of good hitters, dangerous hitters, and you have to pitch good hitters in, and we tend to get hit a lot.”

A record 2,112 baters were hit last year, topping the 1,984 in 2019. Batters were hit 1,875 times entering Wednesday with two weeks remaining.

“ Teams are having to try and figure out ways to get us out, and I guess that’s part of the way, trying to pitching inside,” Nimmo said, “and so you’re going to get hit when that happens.”

Cincinnati pitchers have set a record with 99 hit batters this year, one more than last year’s Chicago Cubs.

Veteran Oakland Athletics catcher Stephen Vogt, meanwhile, will retire after 10 major league seasons and a long, patient road to break into the big leagues at age 27.

Not to mention a nearly 15-month wait to finally get his first hit.

Vogt endured an 0-for-32 hitless streak to start his career that began in Tampa Bay and ended in San Francisco’s East Bay.

“ It was like a year-and-a-half wait in between my first at-bat and when I got the first hit,” said Vogt, who shared his future plans with The

Vogt showed little emotion as he ran the bases for his first hit that day, aside from high-fiving third base coach Mike Gallego while rounding for home. Vogt’s father, Randy, had taught him humility and to pick his moments.

I n fact, Vogt remembers only three times that he visibly celebrated a big hit with a triumphant fist pump or arm raised to the sky, and he asks his own children not to flip their bats.

He did show some joy after a three-run triple in Thursday’s 9-5 loss to the Seattle Mariners, patting his chest and pointing to the dugout.

I remember I was a big Barry Bonds fan and I said, ‘Dad, why does Barry Bonds stand at home plate and watch?’ It was his famous spin the circle one when I was a kid,” Vogt recalled. “He said, ‘Stephen, when you have 500 home runs in the major leagues you can do whatever you want. Until then, you put your bat down and you run around the bases.’”

O ne of those times Vogt made an exception came a few months after his first hit, in October 2013. He produced his first career gamewinning hit with a single off Justin Verlander in the playoffs for a 1-0 win against the Tigers that sent the best-of-five AL Division Series back to Detroit tied at 1.

A fter striking out twice against Verlander, Vogt fouled off seven pitches in a 10-pitch at-bat that ended the seventh with his third K. Vogt’s next time up, he lined a basesloaded single into left-center that won the game.

“ For me, what it’s been about is persevering through adversity and persevering through being the guy that everyone always said, ‘Yeah, he could be good, but,’” Vogt said.

“...If one person says, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I can do it,’ then that’s all that matters.”

H e had left the Rays organization for the A’s on April 5 that ‘13 season, traded back home to his native California and only a few hours from where he grew up in Visalia. Then Oakland designated the fan favorite for assignment in June 2017.

A m ajor shoulder injury in May 2018 while rehabbing with Milwaukee cost Vogt that year and threatened his career, but he endured surgery and a long rehab to land with the Giants in ‘19. AP

tops Araneta chessfest

Joshua Michael Yongco.

C asiguran, 11, was also named as the Best Kiddie Player.

DENNIS UY: We are here to compete to win.

T he one-day chess fest was highlighted by the exhibition at Araneta City’s Giant Chess Board in Ali Mall by Woman FIDE Master

and National University standout Allany Doroy and her coach, US chess master Jose Aquino. The tournament was the second chess event organized by Araneta City, in partnership with the National Chess Federation of the Philippines.

NATIONAL Chess Federation of the Philippines Director Martin Gaticales poses with winners Chester Reyes, Alekheine Nouri, Christian Arroyo, Narciso Gumila and Romeo Alcodia.

THERE’s hope that unvaccinated Novak Djokovic could play at next year’s Australian Open after the Australian government has changed its border rules in July 6 that incoming travelers no longer have to have provide proof of Co vid-19 vaccinations, or even provide a negative Covid-19 test. AP

THE New York Mets’ Mark Canha is hit by a pitch during the fifth inning of their game against the Milwaukee Brewers Wednesday in Milwaukee. AP

A8 SundAy, September 25, 2022 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

CHARM, TALENT AND GRIT Beabadoobee captivates fans for one night in Manila

of it—may have helped; learning to play six strings seemed easy enough.

The first song Bea wrote with her guitar was “Coffee,” the runaway hit that bought her instant stardom on YouTube in 2017 and paved the way for her recording career.

Bea has since released several EPs: Lice, Patched Up, Our Extended Play, Space Cadet, Loveworm, and an acoustic version of Loveworm. Fake it Flowers, her first full-length album, was released in 2020. Her latest album, Beatopia, was released in July 2022. She is currently on tour to promote the new album.

An emotional songwriter

BEA’S creative process hasn’t changed in the last five years. “It’s way, way emotional. It definitely starts with chords first. I can never really write a song without a guitar,” she said, when asked about her songwriting.

“I’d find chords, then I’d find a melody, then I’d add lyrics,” she added. “I started writing music as a

a particular era or genre.

“One day I just want to make a bossa nova sexy song. And the next day, I wanna make a rock song. There are no rules to music,” she said. “I just want to sound like me.”

Worth it

BEA may have been cackling with energy during the press conference, but those manifestations of her wit and her devotion for her craft were magnified ten-fold once she hits the stage.

She opened her set with “Worth It,” a single from Fake It Flowers. The intro served its purpose, with drumbeats crashing into everyone’s senses and distorted guitar riffs seemingly transferring a surge of energy to further hype up the already excited audience. And when Bea opened her mouth to sing into the microphone, that surge of energy—the excitement of the crowd— escalated momentarily. And then, everyone gradually calmed down, lost in the sound of Bea’s voice as if enchanted by some mystic force.

OVERSIZED

hoop earrings. Tattoos on her arms and legs. A gray/black raglan-style cap-sleeved shirt paired with a short knife-pleated skirt and knee-high leather boots. Jet-black hair flowing errantly past her shoulders and down her back. Heavily lined eyes on an almost bare face. Her look is edgy, it speaks volumes. It speaks rock ’n roll, loud and proud.

She doesn’t look like the type to have a glam team fawning over her and she doesn’t need one. Her pretty asian features and irrefutable charm are all she needs to grab your attention. Beatrice Kristi Laus—popularly known as singersongwriter Beabadoobee—can easily make a grand entrance but doesn’t even seem to try.

In a press conference hours before her show presented by Live Nation last September 16 at the New Frontier Theater, she candidly and unabashedly answered questions, giggling and at times ever so casually cussing in between her statements. She speaks with almost the exact same saccharine voice she uses when singing, in a thick British accent you’d expect from someone who migrated to London when she was only three years old.

“I didn’t have many Filipino friends in London so they really tried to keep the culture alive,” Bea said during the roundtable interview. She said she grew up in a “very Filipino” household. Her Ilonggo parents served Pinoy dishes and let her watch teleseryes. While she can barely form a complete sentence in Filipino without some form of coaching, she claims

that she used to understand it fluently.

She’s had her fill of Pinoy pop culture, alright. She knows John Lloyd Cruz, Derek Ramsey, Anne Curtis, and Kim Chiu. She grew up listening to the Apo Hiking Society, the Eraserheads, and the Itchyworms.

Bea’s parents stressed the value of religion and of having a proper education and enrolled their daughter in an all-girls Catholic school. Her dad was very strict.

High school, though, was a difficult time for Bea. “I was kind of one of the only Asian girls,” she said. There were only two other Filipino kids in her school.

“It was tough. If I hung out with the Asians, I’d be too different,” Bea added. But if she hung out with the white kids, she’d still feel out of place. She was, however, able to withstand the challenges through the help of friends who accepted and loved her for who and what she was. Unfortunately, Bea got expelled from school before finishing Year 13.

Seeing how devastated Bea was, Bea’s father gave her with a second-hand guitar when she was 17 years old to cheer her up. This proved to be a good move on the part of the concerned parent. The years Bea spent trying to play the violin—all seven

form of therapy.”

When Bea writes songs, she doesn’t fuss over what genre her music is going to fall under. She does credit music heroes that may or may not have had an influence on her sound. She is a selfconfessed fan of Pavement, Sonic Youth, and the Cardigans, among others. She even wrote and recorded a song titled “I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus,” an obvious reference—and in reverence—to the frontman of Pavement.

Bea has been labeled a “‘90s revivalist” and has this to say about it: “I listen to a lot of ‘90s music but I am not trying to be from the ‘90s because that is lame. I’m just super inspired by these bands.”

Her album, Fake It Flowers has the grunge/alternative-rock ‘90s sound that people have been referring to, and Bea acknowledges that the songs in the album may ignite a bit of nostalgia in someone who is particularly fond of music from that era. She is, however, quick to point out that she does not want to be tagged to

Bea also played other songs from the same album, such as “Together,” “Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene,” and “Care,” which was one of the crowd favorites.

She tried her best to connect with her Filipino audience in between songs, despite her broken Filipino and thick British accent taking over.

“Pasensya na ang Tagalog ko konti lang. Pero it’s good to be back home,” Bea said at the beginning of her set. “Ako po is Beabadoobee!”

Bea shifted from playing one guitar to the other. Sometimes, she held a mic and pranced around the stage while singing, like she did as she belted out the lyrics of “He Gets Me So High” and “The Perfect Pair,” the bossa nova tune from Beatopia.

Bea also played “She Plays Bass,” a single from her 2019 EP Space Cadet, and this performance was arguably one of the liveliest from her set.

“This is our last song,” Bea said towards the end of her set. Someone from the audience shouted, “More!”

Bea responded. “Charot!” Everyone else laughed.

And then suddenly, everyone fell silent, as she strummed the opening chords to the “Coffee” that bedroom hit that possibly made a fan out of every single person in the room. Bea concluded her set with “Cologne,” leaving not her scent, but the impression that spending a little over an hour to witness her perform both the catchiest and most endearing of songs, with all the charm, talent and grit possible, while wearing a Filipiniana embroidered top in a packed theater on this particular evening was all worth it.

Text and Photos By Jill Tan Radovan

Beabadoobie

SoundSampler by Tony M. Maghirang

IN THIS ROUND-UP

Punk’s not dead, post-OPM and getting effed

“Mainlander” could be a James bond mini-movie where the hero meets an untimely demise. There are nine more tracks with titles like “Pornography” and “Last Oxygen: that can really trigger unique interpretations in your mind’s eye.

ENA MORI

THE artist named Ena Mori must be the wild one in the album title. You see, she makes pop music that’s at once nostalgic and forward-looking. Nostalgia issues in the form of well-made pieces with special attention to detail unlike your typical OPM, and progressive not only in the way the Pinay-Japanese lass tempts her emotional range but also in lyrics that are outside of the limbo of “love-till-themoon-turns-blue-or-die trying of modern Filipino pop. In “A Higher Place,” Ms. Mori intones, “A higher place/I’m falling from/A tragedy. I’m landing on/ My broken feet/The sky wasn’t meant for me.” Also check out these ‘wild’ tracks: “King of The Night,” “DBTWO!” and “Vivid.” As with post-punk, could there be such a subgenre as postOPM like Mori’s kind of music?

THE CHATS Get Fucked

IF you’re deeply yearning for the once-underground commotion of Peter and The Test Tube Babies, GBH and UK Subs, Aussie trio The Chats, in spite of their inane name, have a debut whose Oi! factor torches pop-punk for what it’s worth and currently, a sophomore release titled “Get Fucked” that totally demolishes the need for limp-wristed punk rock in this day and age. They hide the mayhem in such titles as “Boggo Breakout” and “The Prince of Smokes” with crazy words that go “Panic attacktack-tack-tack-tack-tack” (8x) but it’s the overall sound of extreme agitation expressed in three chords and insanely hammering drums that should keep you bouncing happily till the cows say “Fuck off!”

the rock element. She expands instead on her chosen themes to subject not just love gone wrong but also familial ties, sexuality and race issues and she’s breaking out as the next pop princess albeit with a heavier psychic baggage than those who came before her. At her best, Sawayama’s an acoustic balladeer in “Phantom,” pop diva in “This Hell” and country-style banger in “Your Age.” She has become an all-around contender even to the crown itself.

massive 17-track compilation. The participating bands are informally slotted into two halves: the first 9 tracks carry the influence of poppunk while the remainder hems and haws with classic hardcore punk. Most of the pop-punkers come fuming with frustration in the “Loveyou-once, hate-you-now” front. The hardcore boys push a more politicized agenda starting with We The Oppressed’s angry tirade titled “Anarchy in my Head.” The Class and The Tinge nail the tormentors some more by affixing their radical messages to rabid Oi! punk last heard in the “Punk and Disorderly” compilation. Oy, punk, the barrio lads are rocking too!

Check out digital music platforms, especially bandcamp, for the albums reviewed here.

THE BETHS Expert in a Dying Field

SPADES RAN

Beautiful Demon

EACH track in this allinstrumental album runs beyond the 5-minute mark and every one of them is a cycle of stormy moments, placid passages and strange unnatural sounds. The composer advises that the album “can be interpreted however you want. So, here goes. Opener “The Haunting” has the feel of an ambulance on the throes of death. “Lobotomy” sounds like soundtrack to fairies cavorting playfully in the forest.

RINA SAWAYAMA Hold The Girl

THE initial peg on New Zealanders The Beths is that they’re a power-pop band from the once and future home of great power popsters. Nevertheless, their third and newest album reveals The Beths to be a great folk rock band able to pair gorgeous shimmering chords, infectious harmonies and layered choruses to some of the most rousing lyrics heard all year. Sample from “When You know You Know: ‘We could be aglow in the streetlight/Running down the road to jog the memory/Like tit for tat, that is you for me/And it’s quite a cost but nothing comes for free.” Lead vocalist and guitarist Liz Stokes puts her unique stamp on words and music. These masters of power folk rock shall never fade away.

Niggel Figueroa Anabelle O. Flores

Tony M. Maghirang, Rick Olivares, Leony Garcia, Patrick Miguel

Kaye VillagomezLosorata Annie S. Alejo

Bernard P. Testa Nonie Reyes

T

WO years ago, Ms. Sawayama ingenuously blended Britney Spears with Korn and Queen to offer a deliciously attractive and chart-busting musical alternative to Taylor Swift. Now, on Rina’s second album titled “Hold That Girl,” she’s still up to the same tactics but with reduced stress on

STRUGGLE RECORDS PH PunkOragon Sampler

PUNK and indie bands from the Bicol Region are all over this

Sales: 893-2019; 817-1351,817-2807.

893-1662; 814-0134 to 36.

MUSIC

Don’t Blame The Wild One!

T. Anthony C. Cabangon Lourdes M. Fernandez Aldwin M. Tolosa Jt Nisay

Edwin P. Sallan Eduardo A. Davad

What do we owe future generations? And what can we do to make their world a better place?

by michael Noetel Australian Catholic University

count, there could be a lot of them, and we can make their lives go better.”

C A n we—and should we—justify focusing on future generations when we face problems now? MacAskill argues we can. He identifies some areas where we could do things that protect the future while also helping people who are alive now. Many solutions are win-win.

We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back. So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?

This is the key question in What We Owe the Future, a book by Oxford philosopher William MacAskill. It argues for what he calls longtermism: “the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” He describes it as an extension of civil rights and women’s suffrage; as humanity marches on, we strive to consider a wider circle of people when making decisions about how to structure our societies.

MacAskill makes a compelling case that we should consider how to ensure a good future not only for our children’s children, but also the children of their children. In short, MacAskill argues that “future people

For example, the current pandemic has shown that unforeseen events can have a devastating effect. Yet, despite the recent pandemic, many governments have done little to set up more robust systems that could prevent the next pandemic.

MacAskill outlines ways in which we might be able to prevent engineered pandemics, like researching better personal protective equipment, cheaper and faster diagnostics, better infrastructure, or better governance of synthetic biology. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future.

The same win-wins might apply to decarbonization, safe development of artificial intelligence, reducing risks from nuclear war, and other threats to humanity.

change, are already firmly in the public consciousness. As a result, some may find MacAskill’s book “common sense.” Others may find the speculation about the far future pretty wild (like all possible views of the long-term future).

MacAskill strikes an accessible balance between anchoring the arguments to concrete examples, while making modest extrapolations into the future. He helps us see how “common sense” principles can lead to novel or neglected conclusions.

teenager,” with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom:

Even if you think [the risk of extinction] is only a one-in-a-thousand, the risk to humanity this century is still 10 times higher than the risk of your dying this year in a car crash. If humanity is like a teenager, then she is one who speeds around blind corners, drunk, without wearing a seat belt.

Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. But MacAskill makes a compelling case for longtermism through clear stories and good metaphors. He answers many questions I had about safeguarding the future. Will the future be good or bad? Would it really matter if humanity ended? And, importantly, is there anything I can actually do?

The short answer is yes, there is. Things you might already do help, like minimizing your carbon footprint—but MacAskill argues “other things you can do are radically more impactful.” For example, reducing your meat consumption would address climate change, but donating money to the world’s most effective climate charities might be far more effective.

SOMe “longtermist” issues, like climate

For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation). It makes humanity look like an “imprudent

Longtermism helps us better place our present in humanity’s bigger story. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren. MacAskill clearly shows that we owe it to them. The Conversation

A ‘living book’ of poems, stories on climate featured at this year’s MIBF

In the face of the climate crisis, the world needs more ways to open up spaces of dialogue that reimagine solutions and fortify hope. Artists, writers, and storytellers of many kinds can help us do that.

During this year’s Manila International Book Fair (MIBF), the science-art-activism group Agam Agenda brought poems and stories about climate change to life. Through two special events, Agam Agenda exhibited their latest anthology titled, Harvest Moon: Poems and Stories from the Edge of the Climate Crisis, published by Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities and Milflores Publishing in 2021.

Spanning 24 countries and 11 languages across Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and Latin America, Harvest Moon is an anthology of poems, stories, and photographs that reckon with and reflect on the climate crisis.

At the opening ceremony of the MIBF, Agam Agenda made a splash with a rhythmic, creative performance led by musicians of Drum Circle PH. The Agam Agenda also hosted a multidisciplinary panel discussion about climate science, eco-poetry, and the arts on September 17. During this unique event, poets, artists, scientists, and activists came together to

reflect on our ecological as well as cultural crises.

“We have a narrow window of time to shift course on increasing global temperatures,” said Dr. Rosa Perez, a climate scientist and one of the lead authors of the Contributions of the Working Group 2 (WG2) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr. Perez highlighted the need for more ambitious efforts to build resilience, raise climate finance, and address the vicious cycle of loss and damage for climate vulnerable countries.

The climate scientist suggested a lifestyle change among people, including food waste reduction, mangrove restoration, and shifting to renewable energy. Dr. Perez said that food waste reduction is essential as rotten foods emit methane, which is a long-lived greenhouse gas. Mangrove restoration improves the capacity of mangrove forests and swamps to absorb greenhouse gasses and protect the coastal areas. Finally, shifting to renewable electricity helps restore and protect nature.

Transdisciplinary visual artist Derek Tumala also joined the panel discussion. Tumala shared his latest online artwork in the intersection of art, science, and technology titled Tropical Climate Forensics:

an expansive diorama that provides a visual language of the climate crisis.

Drawing from a spectrum of studies and narratives on climate change, Tumala’s artistic approach is about “creating solidarity among institutions and communities,” focused on the science behind biomes, or the world’s bioregional landscapes. He also shared his collaboration using the poetry of Harvest Moon

On climate activism, Ferth Manaysay, the Deputy Branch Manager and Programs Lead of Climate Reality Project Philippines, spoke about the ongoing collaboration for global poetry workshops

with Agam Agenda. In the spirit of creativity and solidarity, Climate Reality and Agam Agenda gathered individuals from across the world to reflect on shared bioregions and environmental challenges.

Harvest Moon contributor and medical doctor Joey Tabula concluded the multidisciplinary panel with poetry readings and insights on eco-poetry.

“Para sa akin ang eco-poem ay tula kung saan ang tao...ay di sentro ngunit kanilalang ng mundo,” Tabula explained. He then read his own Filipino translation of the piece “Farol de Combate” by Marjorie evasco, originally written in Balak sa Binisayà, from the anthology.

Harvest Moon continues to be exhibited as a living book of poems and stories on climate change, sharing the lived experiences of vulnerable communities and reimagining the conversations about climate.

The limited Philippine edition of Harvest Moon is available at a significantly marked down price of P599. Purchase a copy on Shopee and Lazada via Milflores Publishing, Fully Booked, Ayala Museum Shop, Mt. Cloud Bookshop (Baguio City), or Solidaridad Bookstore (Manila).

For more about Harvest Moon and science-art-activism initiatives for climate action, visit agamagenda.com.

Your great grandchildren are powerless in today’s society. but the things we do now influence them: for better or worse.

We can make the lives of future people better

Things you can do to protect future generations

PoeT PhysiCian Joey Tabula holds a copy of The harvestMoonanthology, a book of poems, stories, and images on the climate crisis, by award-winning writers and photographers from all over the world. it is published by institute for Climate and sustainable Cities and Milflores Publishing. ICSC/AgAm AgendA

The book cover of What We owe the Future by William Mac a skill. The author explores the concept of longtermism, or “the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.”

NINUNO, Melvin John Pollero

The MADE 2022 awardees expose

By Carla Mortel Baricaua Images courtesy of Metrobank Foundation, Inc.

ADVERSITY is the preparation for greatness, and what better way to exemplify this truth than the recent triumph of four Metrobank Art and Design Excellence (MADE) awardees. In its 38th edition, this year’s MADE follows the theme “Emerge: Step into Your Boundless Future” and calls on Filipino artists to come out, explore their potential, show their ingenuity, and “create art that mirrors the human experience.” Accepting the challenge, these four artists tapped on their creativity and imprinted their humanity into their works of art.

Melvin John Pollero’s discern ment of embracing and standing by with his own artistry came after the pandemic’s height, which eventually led him to join MADE.  “Ninuno,” his piece that garnered the grand award in the Oil/Acrylic on Canvas category, tells of the sorry state of our en vironment, and the burgeoning

issues of indigenous groups that bothered his sensibilities. “My interest deepened when these different minority groups went to our university. I was made aware of their plight through the help of discussions and immersion with the groups. This is where I learned the importance of understanding the relationship between the en

vironment and our ancestors.”

His interaction with the Badjaos and Aetas gave him the latitude to synthesize that ex perience, translate his insights into his art, and present his piece as an alternative way of seeing these social issues.  “For me, we should learn from our brothers how to protect Mother Earth, a legacy we can leave to our children.”

For Raymundo Ador III, adversity came as a health and social crisis. “When the pandemic came, people were affected because they fear for their physical and mental health, livelihood, the welfare of their loved ones, and what will happen in the following days. To top it all, when the number of cases continues to rise, there was limited mobil ity because of lockdowns and social distancing.”

During the pandemic, it be came difficult for him to create, to paint. Thanks to his girl friend, who pushed him out of his slump, and join the MADE competition for the first time. More than a therapeutic act, his entry “Dalawang Libo’t Dala wang Pu at Hanggang Kailan?”

won the grand award in the Watermedia on Paper Category.

“My entry was a self-portrait. It was my own story during the pandemic, about my depression. You can find many symbols such as the skull but underneath it all that there’s a story of hope not only for myself but also for others. In our hearts, we hope that the day when we overcame the situation will soon come.”

Riding on that hope, Ador reveals that his grand win now inspires him to continue on this path and paint some more.

Nineteen-year-old Mateo Cacnio was bold and proved to be artistically uninhibited when he created “Politika” which garnered him the grand award

in the Sculpture Recognition Program.  After hours of study and research on the prime mov ers of modern sculpture, Cacnio challenged himself to depict his notions out of his initiation and frustration over local politics as his contribution to today’s social thought.

“From the perspective of a University of the Philippines stu dent, I created this piece during the electoral period. It was a very surreal experience as a first-time voter. As the title suggests, this work aims to give another defini tion to politics and what it con veys in our social environment. Like in a usual fight in general, it parallels the conception of people breaking each other mentally and physically for higher authority. In this piece, I want to represent the culture of politics by utilizing two biomorphic figures fighting each other.”

Along the theoretical lines of constructivism, he pro cessed and played with the properties of aluminum. “It projects the look of the mate rial but, I wanted the metal to look liquid, to project there’s fluidity. My art aims to express the fluidity and expression of the human body with space. Nevertheless, I long for the in ner dynamic sensation of the subject matter using biomor phic shapes and gestures. The appearance of my creations is a direct, personal expression of what I feel about my subject.” And to that end, he succeeded.

Jun Orland Espinosa be lieves that adversity and the burden it brings is part of life just like faith and hope. As an artist, he is more concerned “about the emotion of every in dividual on how they deal with their feeling every time they encounter disaster, severe prob

Melvin John Pollero

Raymundo Ador III

Politika, Mateo Cacnio

their humanity in works of art

lems, calamities in life.”

His recent trip made him face his beliefs after witnessing the stark realities of the aftermath brought by typhoon Odette to his hometown. “I went home to Bacolod to spend Christmas and I saw how people were affected by typhoon Odette. My brother was also affected because his house was hammered down by a fallen tree. At that time, it looked hopeless: houses were damaged, most people were out of work with no other means of livelihood, and people were in mourning, or in debt. These are depressing, and can bring anxiety or thoughts of suicide.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw people as trees enduring heavy rains, floods, and destructive wind. “Is there still hope that the tree will still live after it has been uprooted caused by the disaster?” Espinosa asks. While there’s hope for the up rooted roots, it needs to touch the ground to recover and for Espinosa, faith with action en dures dying hope.

“Faith must be more potent than personal calamities to con quer the chaos.  At first glance, you will experience chaos and morbidity in my artwork. But then I challenge the viewer to seek hope using his faith despite the apocalyptic scenery of the sculpture,” adds Espinosa.

Fittingly enough, he chose tree roots as the material for his sculp tures. “I don’t want traditional materials that most artists use. I looked for untraditional material to stand out. I found out that the roots of trees are an unusual ma terial because it is complicated to handle due to their overlapping sections.” However, Espinosa has also conquered his work’s burden with faith and hope, bagging the Special Citation in the Sculpture

Recognition Program with his piece titled “Underneath”.

In response to the chal lenges brought by COVID-19, MADE has emerged to become a CSR program for the arts. While the country is facing a major health and economic crisis, MADE has persisted and continued to adapt, ensuring its support for artistic develop ment, endeavors, and welfare of Filipino visual artists.

This year, each grand award ee will receive P500,000 worth of cash assistance while each special citation recipient will receive P100,000. They will also be given the “More” trophy, de signed and crafted by Juan Sajid, a 2007 MADE Awardee, and will

automatically become members of the MADE-Network of Win ners, the group of awardees and designers previously recognized

by MADE.

Since its establishment in 1984, MADE has awarded more than 400 artists and designers

who are now established in their respective careers or are estab lishing their names in the art and design scenes.

Mateo Cacnio

Jun Orland Espinosa

Underneath, Jun Orland Espinosa

Dalawang Libo’t Dalawang Pu at Hanggang Kailan?, Raymundo Ador III

Benildean student filmmakers rule AdU filmfest

Award-winning filmmakers Vahn Leinard Pascual and Andre Joachim “Aki” Red led the 1-2 punch of Benilde as sophomore Caitlin Macaraig joined them in the Realifilm “Liwanag sa Dilim” winning circle. They are all tak ing up Bachelor of Arts in Digi tal Filmmaking at the DLS-CSB School of Design and Arts.

Pascual’s “Silang Mga Na ligaw sa Limot” (They Who Were Lost in Oblivion) bagged the Realifilm Gold Award and Best Director prize, while “Safety Shots” of Anakpula Productions brought home the Realifilm Sil ver Award, Best Cinematogra phy, and Best Actor for Red.

In addition, “Ihi sa Bote,” written and directed by Ma caraig of Kiken Films, secured the Realifilm Award of Virtue, Best in Production Design, and Best Actress for her cousin Mary Grace Macaraig as Elise.

In “Silang mga Naligaw sa Limot,” a girl (Joy Romero Ar sola) wakes up after a typhoon surge, recalls the disastrous event that had happened, and later sees a lifeless body lying by the seashore.

Pascual shared that they want to tell the narrative of people who were victimized by typhoons and abused by those in the government. “The con cept just popped out in my mind when my family decided to go on a beach trip for three days. And with no screenplay and limited equipment – just a tripod, a small camera with kit lens, and my friend as an actress, we decided to make my vision happen.”

“I also talked to my friend Giulia Saavedra if I can also use her real footage of the typhoon that recently hit our provinces. And luckily, she accepted it since we have the same goal – to share the real stories of people,” Pas cual narrated. “This film is a call for help,” he explained.

Pascual was awarded Film Ambassador by the Film De velopment Council of the Phil ippines and Ani ng Dangal by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. This after “Silang Mga Naligaw sa Limot” got the jury’s special mention from the 14 th Tbilisi Sunrise In ternational Youth Film Festival in Georgia.

In “Safety Shots,” Red focuses on a filmmaker’s attempts to cre ate a film out of unused takes from his previous works, at the height of a creative block brought about by the repetitiveness of pandemic living.

Red, who also acted in the film, shared that he faced a “severe creative burnout”. “Everything around remained just as restric tive and repetitive. Days become harder to differentiate from each other. Frustration was a primary motivator in the creation of this film; frustration from having no control of the inevitable death of passion brought about by an inef ficient pandemic response.”

“I wanted the film to inten tionally feel unpolished and freewheeling; to be angrier and more confrontational without the angst when it comes to its un conventional structure for a pan demic film. I wanted to impart to the audience the struggles of the youth facing prolonged iso lation,” Red revealed.

Meanwhile, “Ihi sa Bote” re calls Elise’s childhood trauma as she catches up with her parents and boyfriend one afternoon. As her father brings up her pe culiar habit of peeing in bottles when she was younger, everyone laughs at her. However, she feels uncomfortable about it.

Macaraig created the film with the hope that such matters should be given more attention.

“This is just a step in creating a world that is far from any form of trauma and it’s about time

we initiate healthier conversa tions. Because to feel is to be human, and no child should feel any different from anyone else,” she stressed.

Pascual has made at least 20 short films, including “Sina Alexa, Xander at ang Universe,” which topped the recent Cin eMapúa Film Festival and Ma

nila Student Film Festival, and “Alingasngas ng mga Kuliglig,” which won Best Picture and a co-production grant from the In ternational Silent Film Festival Manila’s Mit Out Sound: Silent Film Competition.

On the other hand, Red won the top prize in the 19-21 age category of the third MSFF for

“Lilipad na si Birdie,” the Bronze Award for the same film at Reali film in 2019, and the Best Sound Design for “Signal Notice” at the 8 th Nabunturan Film Exhibition or NABIFILMEX in Davao de Oro.

Compared to “filmfest veter ans” Pascual and Red, it was Ma caraig’s first time joining a film festival. “I’m still in shock that I already got accepted, nominated, and even awarded. None of this would have happened without my crew, actors, mentors, and everyone who supported the film. The entire experience was very fruitful, and I’m greatly humbled to be a part of this event,” she said.

“It’s unfair to expect children to be resilient. There are still par ents who forget that the smallest things they say or do can leave a mark on their children, espe cially in our country. It’s wrong to assume that they can just move on,” she asserted.

Red, who felt that the pan demic made him a passive artist, crafted the message of his film to critique the dangerous cul ture of “desperately waiting for solutions to arrive without doing anything about it” that is pres ent in different sectors of our society. “Waiting for a solution without concrete actions only prolongs the struggle,” he added.

Pascual’s message, in a way, concurred with both Macaraig and Red. “Resilience should not be glorified. Instead, we should demand accountability from those in power to create a bet ter system to lessen the devas tation the Philippines experi ences during times of disaster,” he concluded.

Screenwriter Gilliann Ebreo and filmmakers Mike Sandejas and Joselito “Jay” Altarejos made up the jury of the Reali film competition this year, with the theme “Go Overboard: With stand Obstacles of Disarray.”

Andre Joachim

Vahn Leinard Pascual

Ihi sa Bote

Safety Shots

Silang Mga Naligaw sa Limot

Story by Seymour Barros Sanchez

THREE film majors from De La SalleCollege of Saint Benilde recently hauled the majority of awards at the annual Realifilm competition of Silip@ Lente, a student film organization based at Adamson University.

Caitlin Macaraig

Aklat Mirasol unveils indigenous stories for kids

By Kathleen A. LLemit Images courtesy of Aklat Mirasol Publishing House

A group of women publishers, however, have banded together to break these stereotypes and paint a picture of Mindanao and the indigenous peoples of the Philippines that aims to de scribe them beyond curiosity and novelty through a series of books that put the spotlight on their way of life and culture.

Aklat Mirasol Publishing House is among the publish ers featured at the returning Manila International Book Fair held at the SMX Conven tion Center in Pasay City from September 15 to 18.

Named after a flower that strikingly resembles the sun and is said to look its way often, Ak lat Mirasol is envisioned to be a women’s publishing house dedi cated to creating books for Fili pino children and young adults.

“This was named Aklat Mira sol in recognition of the vision of a world where children and youth are steeped into reading despite the proliferation of on line games. Like the sunflower, its face is always towards the light, towards children and the youth who reads and who thinks critically,” said its founders.

Focus on children of Mindanao, indigenous people

CURRENTLY there are three books published by the indepen dent company founded on April 8 this year.

Growing up in Mindoro, Ro wena Festin would see how the Mangyans were seen as “uncul tured” and “uncivilized.” When she came of age and found herself gifted with words, Festin consci entiously wrote on the indigenous peoples of her birthplace.

“I remember my Mangyan

encounters when I was in high school, every Christmas when we were part of the feeding pro grams for the Mangyan in our school. That was the first time that I had a close encounter with Mangyan children,” the Palanca awardee recalled.

“Ako si Dumay Gawid, Ha nunuo Mangyan” introduces the Hanunuo Mangyan’s in digenous culture through their clothing, weaving, and embroidered designs on their weavings and baskets.

Illustrated by Ma. Victoria Esquillo and written for preschool and school-age children aged 2 to 7, the book also tells about Mangyan’s writing sys tem, the surat-Mangyan.

Seasoned journalist and edi tor Carla Mortel Baricaua wrote “Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang Agong” to enlighten her readers about

the struggles and plight of the indigenous community.

The story first appeared as part of the workbook “Ang Ag ong: Halina’t Magsaya, Matuto at Maglaro,” a collaborative project between TFPCDI at Association for the Rights of Children in Southeast Asia (ARCSEA). The workbook was translated into Manobo and Cebuano and was distributed to daycare centers in Arakan Valley, North Cotabato in 2007.

“Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang Ag ong?” tells the story of three Manobo children and their expe rience reclaiming their ancestral lands from a foreign enterprise. It is illustrated by Ginella Solis.

“As a children’s book, I hope it reaches more readers and opens the door for more read ers to find out more about the lives, struggles, and culture of our indigenous communities,” Baricaua shared.

Human rights advocate and NGO worker Pia Perez wrote

about the life of Fr. Fausto Ten torio or more popularly known as Fr. Pops to Cotabato locals in “Nasa Arakan ang Puso.”

Written for kids aged 7 to 12, with illustrations by Bay ani Olaguer, it tells the story of the Italian missionary’s love for the Lumads and the indigenous community.

“Nasa Arakan ang Puso” is Perez’s first children’s book. Apart from publishing children’s books, Perez is also the founder of ARCSEA.

The three books represent the first two categories of books published by Aklat Mirasol.

The Mga Kwentong Pambata Tungkol sa Mindanaw series is all about the history and situation of the people in Mindanao. The children characters in this series describe their experiences in con nection to their being Filipinos in Mindanao and their ancestral land. The series Nais Kong Mag pakilala sa Iyo, meanwhile, aims to introduce to the young readers

the different Philippine ethnic groups, and the culture and way of life of the Filipinos.

The section for Mga Akdang Pangkabataan leans toward con tributing young adult books that tell about the experiences of young adults as active mem bers of society. This section publishes books that will help the youth understand, accept and respect people, disregard ing their looks and beliefs. A title under this category is set to be released in 2023.

“Through the Mirasol books, I wish that the children will fully understand that though people are different from each other, there is no such thing as uncivilized or un cultured people. Each ethnic group has its own district culture and ex periences that must be respected,” said Festin said.

The books come in physical form and can be availed by con tacting Aklat Mirasol on its of ficial Facebook account. These will soon be available via Shopee.

CONFLICT and unfamiliar culture often come to mind to a lot of people when they think of the people of Mindanao. In a similar way, the indigenous peoples of the Philippines are often subjects of curiosity for many for their unfamiliar ways to most people.

Carla Mortel-Barricaua

Rowena Festin

Pia Perez

IN